Any series that’s a take on a young artist struggling to get started has a head start in my book.  I love that sort of story – creativity is an endlessly fascinating subject, even if it expresses itself in a medium one doesn’t know (or even care, necessarily) all that much about.  But then, if any sort of story is good enough knowledge of the topic is clearly not a prerequisite – I don’t care much about auto racing and I love Capeta, for example.

This episode of Tonkatsu DJ Agetarou takes us into staple territory for any series about a performing artist – the first performance.  I must confess I was pretty nervous for Agetarou as he got on stage for the first time, knowing that there’s so many things that can go wrong.  The lack of experience for any performer doesn’t manifest so much in knowing how to avoid the rough moments, but how to stay cool when they happen.  So when Agetarou’s crush Sonako walks in during his debut just as he’s really “frying” it, that moment of disaster seems to drag on forever.

Fortunately, Oily-san has foreseen this moment and built in a fail-safe – a portable with a sample of the popping oil from Shibukatsu.  That takes Agetarou to his happy place and he immediately pulls out his own secret weapon, the old-school soul stylings of “Rainy Lenny”.  Everyone from Agetarou’s nerdy friends in tuxes to the hot girls to the old geezer who thought he was coming for free tonkatsu can get into that, and the day is saved.  And while I don’t know much about the DJ world, I can only assume that when you start to get buzz online, big things are about to happen…