Gli amici di Roland
Gli amici di Roland

You are comfortably seated on a bench. Take your ID card, open it on the palm of your hand, raise your arm. A damn satellite located thousands of kilometers above your head will be able to photograph the pimple you had when they took the picture. Incredible, isn't it?

Let's imagine the same scenario a few years from now: you’re still sitting on the same bench, but this time you take your protonic cell phone and write this text: “Mina, the components!!!!” You send it, and from the same satellite, torso, legs, and arms will be dispatched along with an impulse to activate the nanospheres flowing in your blood to transform you into a big-headed Jeeg, so you can kick anyone's butt. We could have amazed you with special effects, but we are science, not science fiction. The real science fiction, when I used to watch that badass cartoon, was figuring out what happened to Hiroshi's motorcycle once he transformed into Jeeg. No, let’s stay calm and repeat all the steps: the pendant launched the impulse; Hiroshi transformed into a sort of humanoid; he jumped and coiled up to form the big head… And the motorcycle? Who knows? It disappeared from the frame, keeping me up at night trying to figure out what happened to it. I rule out the possibility of a new bike every episode, because they didn't have a penny, the Aniba had conquered everything. So, in my opinion, there are three hypotheses: a) a handyman caught the bike on the fly; b) the workaholic Mina, once the components were launched, also took care of retrieving the bike; c) Kit Supercar was waiting for her, and together, while Jeeg fought the monster of the week, they went for a drink. The problem was that these cartoons raised more doubts than certainties. Another example: what the hell kind of dog was Hello Spank? A collie? A poodle? A setter? A fox terrier? Who knows? The only certain thing was that he had strange sexual tastes: in my life, I've always seen dogs mounting other dogs, often males with males, but a dog that wanted to hump a cat, I swear I've never seen! And Chobin, do you remember Chobin? Oin oin oin how cute is sweet Chobin!!! What the hell was Chobin? An alien? If so, he definitely had to come from the galaxy of Cazziopea, because he looked an awful lot like a scrotum with legs or a flaccid bouncing penis or four little sausages in a pan!!!! These cartoons were full of more or less explicit sexual references! Aside from Lady Oscar’s seductive boob, my mother wanted to forbid me from watching the Smurfs: she said they were amoral, that it was impossible for 100 males to live with just one female, and eventually, something obscene would happen! Remember that mothers are always right: the birth of the baby Smurf confirmed her fears… In short, once the smurf candles were blown out and they retreated into the smurf mushrooms, they smurfed hardcore!!!!! Science and technology were turned into a mockery: first and foremost the robot weapons. It wasn't necessary for them to have a scientific principle, but they needed grandiose names: Rotating Hammer, Space Halberd, Proton Beam. And Kyanshan, do you remember Kyanshan? Yes, the one with the white suit and the mechanical Doberman, the one with horns that harnessed solar energy to kill enemies! Well, I think modern science should take a cue from this guy, because with so many cuckolds around and with what oil costs, urgent need of solar energy is a pressing issue, and to hell with $70 a barrel for oil!! Physics, on the other hand, was ridiculed by Holly and Benji so much so that I even wrote a math equation about it: add the big tooth of twin Derrik number 1 to the big tooth of twin Derrik n. 2, multiply by the time needed to remain balanced on a crossbar, divide by 1,500,000 (length of the playing field), multiply by a goal scored by 11 players simultaneously, subtract the Japanese national team made up of 11 forwards respectively (Lippi learns…). Done? Good, multiply everything by Bruce Harper’s bomb-head and you'll have the only mathematical equation of the Infernal Catapult!!!! One of the things I feared most as a child was that, just as we watched them, the cartoons might notice us and maybe a villain might decide he was annoyed by me and enjoy kicking my butt. Or someone like Phantaman, who may have been good, but made me crap my pants just the same… But the worst thing that could happen was if Candy Candy noticed you or, even worse, if Candy fell in love with you: terrible disasters would happen, like dying falling off a horse, and if it didn’t happen to you, rest assured she'd catch someone close. The incredible thing was that Candy's friends were even more unlucky than her, that if one fell in love with a guy, he would leave for the war and die in an air strike. It seemed that that damn Pony House had only borne witches! And instead of locking them in a well to make video tapes that no one would ever watch, they were put to do, guess what job? Nurses… In my personal jerk ranking, in first place, with no possibility of appeal, is Ataru Moroboshi. You're a loser, girls won't give it to you even for money, your parents are weird, very weird, your best friend wields a sword, has more money than Berlusca, and despises you to death. The hottest girl in the universe comes, falls in love with you, calls you darling and prances around you half-naked, and you, I mean you, what do you do? Or rather, what don't you do??? Let’s draw a veil over it, shall we… those cartoons I internalized: a classmate of mine was identical to Don Chuck the Beaver, another was the spitting image of the golfer Lotty and, let’s be honest, how many times have we happened to meet the living double of the balloon Bruce Harper? Raise your hand if, having a cigarette in your hands, you didn’t bend and crumple it imitating Jeegen in Lupin or if your most hidden desire was to roast a piglet on a spit, just like Gypsy, Conan's friend did. But those theme songs, those theme songs were something sublime! Listening to them again in the punk-rock-ska version, by these four friends of Roland is something unique. Four grown-up kids raised on Girella and Nesquick enjoying adapting the classics of the '80s to a modern key. Yes, because the '80s are not Madonna or Michael Jackson, they are fine as long as we’re joking, but when things get serious, when each of us delves deep into our own hearts, we know well that nothing can compete with those theme songs: the soundtrack of the best years of our lives.