Why are American artists incapable of playing anything whimsical straight?
There's no shortage of metal bands that will take a mashup like "Armenian Christian Werewolves":
youtu.be/hC8uoGW2ptcOr joke like "space opera set in the 1990s":
youtu.be/lRfXD9mKdNgAnd give it the same serious treatment as a song about, like, the life of Charlemagne. A mangaka has no problem naming a Victorian Englishman Robert E.O. Speedwagon in a supernatural revenge fantasy. But ask American artists to adapt whimsical characters and suddenly it's "superheroes are dumb, but we can fix that with tacticool jumpsuits" or "I'll only use the He-Man characters that would be at home in Lord of the Rings."
