Parents' Guide to On-Gaku: Our Sound

ON-GAKU: OUR SOUND is a Japanese anime film about three high school burnouts who spend more time playing video games, smoking cigarettes, and intimidating their rivals than actually going to school. Quietly imposing Kenji (voiced by real-life Japanese rocker Shintaro Sakamoto) is feared by his classmates and rumored to be a master of the Spaghetti Fist form of kenpō; he shows up for fights but scares most of his opponents before he actually has to do damage. He and his two best friends, Asakura (Tateto Serizawa) and Ota (Tomoya Maeno), are called "The Three Musketeers." One day a Good Samaritan asks Kenji to hold his bass guitar so the stranger can run after a mugger -- but instead of waiting for the man to return, Kenji keeps the guitar and decides that he and his pals should start a band by stealing instruments from the school's music room. With zero experience or understanding of the foundations of music, the trio comically jams without any purpose other than to impress their only other friend, Aya (Ren Komai). Kenji demands that another band from school play for them, and the musically trained front man of that band, Morita (Kami Hiraiwa), invites the newbies to enter a local rock festival. Meanwhile, a rival gang sick of Kenji's status is trying to track them down for an old-fashioned rumble.