Music / The Lethal Weapons

The Lethal Weapons are a Japanese band consisting of two people: Cyborg Joe (vocalist) and Ai-kid (producer, guitarist, keyboardist). They play rock/pop music heavily influenced by the musical styles of the 1980s, with frequent references to pop culture of the time, or the peculiarities of life in Japan.

All of their music is available on their YouTube page (often with English subtitles!) and available for purchase on iTunes and streaming on Apple Music, Spotify and other streaming services.

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This band's music and videos provide examples of the following tropes:

• Broke Episode: "Shaking Shaking" is about a white-collar worker who never gets paid enough, and "Half price time sale" is about lower-class people desperate to get discounted food at the supermarket.
• Gratuitous English: many songs feature English words and phrases inserted into otherwise-Japanese lyrics. However, they're pronounced perfectly well, as the vocalist is American.
• Inherited Illiteracy Title: In this case, more like Inherited Illiteracy Lyrics. According to the video description for "DQN, any errors in the lyrics are intended by the producer. Given that the song is about people who would rather fool around than study and admit their vocabulary is limited, the implication is that the characters are not quite literate.
• List Song: "Genesis" largely consists of a list of names of different Sega Genesis games.
• Market-Based Title: most of the time, the English-language title seen on YouTube and streaming services is just a translation (sometimes simplified) of the Japanese song title, but occasionally there are significant differences.
  • The English title of "Ukiyo-e Road Movie" is unrelated to the Japanese original (東海道中膝栗毛), which seems to mean "Traveling on foot along the Tokaido road".
  • "夏の日のメガドライブ" (which seems to translate to "Summer Days' Megadrive") is retitled "Genesis" for obvious reasons.
• Parody Assistance: "Shoryuken Doesn't Come Out" has a second version performed with the help of CAP-JAMS, Capcom's own music band.
• Pastiche:
  • "Premium Friday Night" portrays a white-collar worker waiting for the work week to end as if they're in a horror movie.
  • "Cockroach Nightmare" is a horror-movie-like song about a cockroach infestation.
  • "Sayonara Rock Star" is a self-admitted tribute to Van Halen.
• Retail Riot: a downplayed variant in "Half Price Time Sale", where people desperate to get discounted goods at a supermarket are fighting for them and swarming like zombies.
• Ripped from the Headlines:
  • To express their feelings about the COVID-19 Pandemic, they recorded a variation of the song "You are Mother Fucker" called "Corona Mother Fucker".
  • "After the Rain" is a song thematically about the world returning to normal life after overcoming the worst parts of the COVID-19 Pandemic, with the lyrics directly addressing "all the people who fought the virus."
• Song Parody:
  • "Shoryuken Doesn't Come Out" is a cover of Ken's theme from Street Fighter II with lyrics all about being unable to perform the titular Dragon Punch in the game.
  • "Danger Zone" instead has silly lyrics about dangerous situations.
• Shout-Out: for a band with a strong dedication to the 1980s, there are numerous.
  • Several to Back to the Future:
    • Ai-kid's keytar is styled electronic parts, including a date display reminiscent of that on the DeLorean.
    • Several videos feature a cardboard DeLorean as a vehicle the band members drive.
    • The "Genesis" video has a flux capacitor in the room where the kid versions of the band members are playing games.
  • "80s Action Star" is one big shout-out to all the big-name action movie stars of the Eighties.
  • The "After the Rain" music video features the band riding a dragon similar to Falcor over the world.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The "Theme of The Lethal Weapons" is in part very reminiscent of the Ghostbusters (1984) theme.

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