Urban Legends: Popstars & Anime

I mentioned once in one of my features that I found that Avril Lavigne was pretty shameless with promotions having inserted herself into graphic novel form in the terrible self indulgent "Make 5 Wishes" in which she appears as an imaginary friend to the protagonist Hana; the actual story itself makes for pretty grim and uncomfortable reading both in quality and content, and is the worst example of Original English Language Manga.
Avril's contribution doesn't stop there as she was involved with the music within the latest One Piece Movie singing cover songs of "How You Remind Me" by Nickelback and "Bad Reputation" by Joan Jett. Whether it's a good idea to use such well known western talent instead of the onslaught of Japanese Pop Talent available is anyones guess, but an A-Grade powerhouse like One Piece shouldn't need much to be popular.
But it's not just Avril Lavigne who contributed to the anime world, Micheal Jackson used a number of anime clips notably from Zillion & Akira in his music video "Scream".
Most people are of course aware of Daft Punk's involvement in the industry as Leiji Matsumoto's "Interstella 5555" is essentially a visual representation of one of Daft Punk's Albums.
But the weirdest contribution comes in the form of a rejected project featuring controversial Russian Lesbian pop duo t.A.T.u

Yes the image is real, in 2004 an anime movie about t.A.T.u was green-lit entitled t.A.T.u Paragate, the details about the actual film are pretty sketchy but considering the reputation of the group and how anime was at the time, it was intended to be a Sci-Fi adventure film. However before the film could be finished, t.A.T.u had a huge falling out with their manager and the producers of the film. t.A.T.u didn't want to play lesbian anymore which solves that legend. The girls themselves also fell out with each other leading both of them into solo careers; the film was shelved never to see the light of day.
So that's the story of t.A.T.u's failed anime film and some references to other pop star related trivia. Stay tuned for an Oscar special.

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