For a music purchase, this was a first, but it was one I knew I wouldn’t regret.
I can’t exactly blast Nancy Kepner while cruisin’ around in my 6-4 or while whipping up the 202 doing 80, and get the same feeling like with Eazy-E or Paul Wardingham, but there is still a pride I have – a humorous, humbling pride that makes absolutely no sense at all – when I’m listening to her quirky lyrical prose that vividly illustrate the very moments, thoughts and struggles that I (and thousands of other otaku) have faced since my early adolescence.
Nancy Kepner is “share with your friends” type music. To the friends that share and don’t share your favorite pastimes (N-not the private ones, dammit! DX). You share it with bravery and say, “This is a part of me”. It’s also “laugh at yourself” music. When you need something to lift your spirits a little, this music is good for it.
I draw a mass quantity of my literary ideas and inspiration from music. With Kepner, because she’s an otaku making music for otaku, the inspiration and motivation is a given. And I don’t have to adapt a sound in my mind to a favorite anime, because her implications already place it there. With just a guitar and a voice – a voice that could easily be used in voice acting, just my opinion – humorous images and scenarios already flip through my mind like there’s a set of Anime Crack compilations set on shuffle and loop up there.
It’s music you can chuckle to and say, “Yeah, I’ve been there,” and has identifiable colloquialisms that only us within the otaku community truly understand. Kepner essentially takes the otaku way of life and puts it into song. She is an Otaku Folk Singer-Songwriter.
The album is available on Amazon at $8.99. Nancy Kepner also has two other releases out on Amazon and iTunes titled Tunes for the Otaku and Album for the Weaboo, both of which I plan to purchase once my checking account is looking a bit happier.
Eiichi P.I., Vol. 1 by James K. Penn now available on Amazon Kindle at $3.99
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