Pupil Slicer on the Broad Spectrum of Anime’s Appeal to Heavy Metal Fans

Pupil Slicer has been pushing the boundaries of what heavy music is for quite a while now and received critical and fan acclaim for their 2023 album Blossom . Blending elements of numerous genres, the album (which made its way to many a Top 10 End of Year list last year) is a microcosm of the types of anime vocalist Kate Davies and drummer Josh Andrews like to watch. Read all about how anime weaved its way into the writing process, how their anime journey started, and Shinji-core in the conversation below! You received a ton of acclaim for your most recent album, Blossom . How exciting was it to get that album out into the world? Kate : It’s been sick. We sat on the first album for way too long before it came out and we were sort of bored of it by the time it was released. Whereas with this album, we only had it for five months before it came out. I stopped myself from listening to it too much because I wanted to be excited when other people were. I'm really happy with it. The album is super heavy and aggressive, and it’s no small wonder that it ended up on a lot of end-of-year top 10 lists. So congratulations again! Did your pathway to anime fandom influence the sound at all? How did you first get into anime? Kate : Like a lot of people my introduction to it was probably watching Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokémon as a kid. But the first thing I really sat down to watch with the intent of watching anime was Gurren Lagann , which led me down the rabbit hole to watch all of the Trigger stuff, like Redline , which really stood out to me. Recently they did Cyberpunk: Edgerunners , which I really liked. To be honest, I was never really obsessed with anime when I was younger. That was something I really came into more when I was older. I wasn't watching Bleach every week when it came out. Although since then I have watched a ton of Bleach , and I’m trying to stay caught up on the Thousand Year Blood War arc. I watched all of the Ghibli movies as well when I was younger. Then moved on to Ghost in the Shell , which then led me to read Fullmetal Alchemist and a lot of Junji Ito stuff. Since then I've just been trying to sort of catch up on everything I missed. Josh : I'm pretty similar to Kate actually in the sense that I got really into anime a bit later in life. When I was younger I watched Pokémon and Digimon . I actually preferred Digimon , I was one of those kids since there was a bit more of a story. Then Dragon Ball Z was really popular when I was in school as well. Then I dropped off for a while but I've been getting back into watching anime and reading manga over the past few years. It's been fun. Kate : More recently, I have been debating between watching JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and reading it and I think I settled on I'm gonna read it and then watch it. I watched Perfect Blue recently as well and that was really cool and was perfect since I also love cinema. It made me realize how much Western cinema pulls from these influential Japanese creations because someone like Darren Aronofsky pulls so much from everything Satoshi Kon has done. So I want to watch Paprika next because I've seen stuff that’s like shot for shot in Inception . Do each of you have a favorite anime from anything that you've watched? Josh : Think my favorite anime is The Tale of Princess Kaguya , the Studio Ghibli film, I just think it's just one of the finest films ever made. I mean, comparing it to the catalog of their films, it ascends even past some of the more influential ones. I just think it's a brilliantly made film. The animation style, the story, the music, I just love it. It's probably one of my favorite ever films. Kate : I think probably Ghost in the Shell . Or, I know it's recent, but Your Name. was like, I was in tears for hours after that film. It was so beautifully animated. Also, I LOVE Chainsaw Man . I really enjoyed the first episode. And then on the second episode, I took a break and came back to it and that one didn't hit as hard. But it was just because Pochita wasn’t in it as much. Overall it's so much fun. A show as extreme as Chainsaw Man is a nice parallel with heavy music. There are so many ways that show is “extreme” but also fun in ways that mirror what you see in the type of music you make. Do you think that draws the fans of both anime and metal together? Kate : I think it could because it seems like all of us like stuff across that broad spectrum. It's nice to be able to enjoy things across a wide range of stuff. There are some people who pigeonhole themselves into one genre or type of show. People with a broad mind who are like “I'm going to watch Nichijou - My Ordinary Life and I'm gonna watch Chainsaw Man ” are similar to the fans that listen to our band and listen to someone like our friends in HEALTH. To even get into heavy music at the start and put up with the screaming vocals, you need a certain level of openness to everything going on. Josh : Or is the crossover everyone in MySpace scene bands having Death Note hair? Do you find that your anime fandom makes its way into the songwriting process? Whether consciously or subconsciously? Kate : Junji Ito stuff, that certainly comes across. On this album in particular, a lot more of it was sort of video game related stuff going on. There's definitely times when you get influenced by the emotion of a certain scene or moment and then you want to channel that into a song. For something like that, there are actually a lot of End of Evangelion style themes on the new album. Those kinds of feelings are all informing or ended up making their way into the story on the album and the world we built. Josh : It kind of goes back to what we were discussing earlier about the different influences from different genres. I think anime is such a broad spectrum of media that there's something for everyone. So you know, if you're a big cinema fan, there's these big blockbuster anime movies to go to and then there's the darker, nihilistic series as well that you can draw inspiration from. I think our first album, Mirrors , is probably a little bit more nihilistic, and a bit more Shinji-core, if you will, that edgy, nihilistic viewpoint on the world. I guess if that's, you know, me looking at the lyrics and my interpretation, it's interesting to think about stories like that when you’re writing. See Pupil Slicer’s upcoming tour dates here . You can listen to Pupil Slicer’s critically acclaimed album “Blossom” here .

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