My Life In Fandom: Remembering Leiji's Last Masterpiece - Interstella 5555 (w/ Daft Punk)

It's Friday, so it's time to downshift into the weekend. Today I bring back to your attention Daft Punk's collaboration with the legend Leiji Matsumoto: Interstella 5555. It's the movie made to go with the Discovery album, and its lead track is what propelled Daft Punk into popular awareness- something that would later lead to the pair's work on Tron Legacy.

As far as I know, this movie does fit into the wider Leijiverse, albeit at a far earlier period than anything else (because the story arc involves contemporary Earth, meaning we've got a UFO angle involved here), but most Leiji fans I know of don't take that assertion seriously. (I could be wrong; I don't know.)

But look at this story. You have good guys, bad guys, innocents exploited for crass commercial gain via mind control and literal deracination, all later to be undone by determined resistance. But it's not pozzed, so it upsets the Death Cult. No wonder here why it got memory-holed, along with everything else Leiji's done; if not for the recent Harlock and Yamato releases in Japan finding their international audiences, especially the Yamato remakes, he'd be on his way to languishing in obscurity.

While the album is easy to find, the movie is not. (Can't say if it's easy in Japan to find; I don't know.) In addition, Western media went out of its way to sever connections between the two parts of the whole; this plays into my previous commentary about Death Cult containment of what it can neither control nor destroy. Most know the music; they don't know the movie.

This musical--that's what it is--ought to be on any weeb's shelves. The album on its own should be also, even if all you use both for is a master to rip from when setting up your home media server.