Caribbean Cutthroats (DJ Rouge and Riff De La Luka)

CANON: Caribbean Cutthroat


NAME: DJ Rouge
AGE: 21
OCCUPATION: Cocaine Harvester


NAME: Riff De La Luka
AGE: 25
OCCUPATION: Street Guitarist


Let me ask you all a practical question. How is it that a West African drug worker (DJ Rouge) becomes part of a team called The Caribbean Cutthroats if those two locales are separated by a big fucking body of water like the Atlantic Ocean? Maybe Mr. Rouge is a Caribbean transplant. Either that or the whole thinking behind this would-be anime series was completely misguided and uneducated.

The idea for the weekly television show Caribbean Cutthroat was conceived after listening to “Peruvian Cocaine” by Immortal Technique and misinterpreting the lyrics. Immortal Technique is an articulate speaker; how exactly does someone like me misunderstand what he’s trying to say?

Because when I first heard the song, I was 19 years old and had the maturity of someone half my age, which meant no research and an unwise worldview. For further insight as to what the hell I was thinking, here’s how the series was supposed to go before I pulled the plug after two episodes.

For the first ten episodes of the anime series, DJ Rouge and Riff De La Luka were going to venture around the Caribbean and into South America drumming up as much cocaine business as possible. This unlikely pairing of the quiet and introverted sword-slinger DJ and the loudmouthed and boisterous capoeira fighter Riff had to constantly watch each other’s backs despite DJ being highly annoyed with his partner’s loud ways. American and Columbian assassins both wanted DJ and Riff’s heads on pikes. Sometimes the two governments had to compete with each other just to see who got the kill.

But DJ and Riff weren’t killed. They were sent to a Colorado prison for all of the drug charges as well as the murders of several government agents. The next ten episodes of Caribbean Cutthroat were supposed to document their time in jail. All the sodomy, all the beatings, and all the heartache of growing old behind bars would have made for a depressing anime series. Sadness and anime weren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, but this was taking it to an entirely different level. And this was going to be for ten whole thirty-minute episodes. That’s 300 minutes of brutal prison action. All for what? A small sense of false hope?

Even though only ten episodes were ordered for Caribbean Cutthroat’s prison point, several decades went by before DJ and Riff were released into American society. They could have been deported back to their respective home countries, but that would have actually made sense and my 19-year-old self wouldn’t have wanted it that way. Instead, old man Riff De La Luka, who somehow retained his positive charm throughout his many decades in prison, found delight in being a toilet cleaner for a local school. If he ever did have pain on the inside, he was doing a damn good job of hiding it.

DJ Rouge made no attempt to hide his own pain. He was miserable upon being released. He somehow found work pumping gas despite the fact that he could never smile or put on a brave face for his customers. Naturally, he didn’t get any tips, only derision from the jerk-off customers. Even his boss thought he was too melodramatic.

All the rage and sorrow boiling inside DJ’s body would eventually explode in the final episode of Caribbean Cutthroat, where he would attempt to commit suicide and make a public example of himself in the process. He wanted his death to have a huge impact on society, but the one person who was finally able to talk him down was old man Riff De La Luka. It was Riff’s positive charm that bonded the two former drug runners together after all this time of being annoyed at each other.

Oh, and can you guess how many episodes were ordered just for this miserable display of sadness? Ten. Altogether, that’s 30 episodes building towards Riff and DJ finally becoming best of friends (Riff had no problems with their relationship, but DJ did). The first ten episodes were fun and adventurous. The next twenty episodes were about sorrow and pathos. You think any TV executive in Japan is going to take this would-be anime seriously enough to produce it? I don’t think so.

Even with all of my fantasies of publishing this anime under a new division of Gracie Films called Gracie Anime, it wasn’t going to unfold. The logo for Gracie Anime would have been a samurai shushing people with his katana instead of his finger while the words “Gracie Anime” would be superimposed on a full moon in the night sky. Good fantasy, but not good enough for reality.

DJ Rouge and Riff De La Luka need new jobs and those jobs aren’t cleaning toilets or pumping gas. They probably won’t be drug smugglers either. These two warriors are the closest things to gaijin samurais I have. Wait a minute. Gaijin samurai? Oh, that opens the door to a lot of possibilities! We already have street samurais in Shadowrun canons and hip-hop samurais in the form of Mugen and Jin from Samurai Champloo. Do you think DJ and Riff deserve a piece of the pie? I do! But sometimes it’s better for the main characters to nibble on the pie crust before eating the whole fucking thing. Wouldn’t want them to get upset tummies.

　

***RANT OF THE DAY***

“There’s a market for everything, man! There’s a market for pet psychologists! There’s a market for twisted shit fetish videos! For nipple rings! For River Dancing! For chocolate-covered roaches! But you can’t find one for hardcore hip-hop?!”

-Immortal Technique-