Twenty years on from the record that redefined their career, My Chemical Romance have opted for something considerably stranger than a standard commemorative campaign. To mark two decades of The Black Parade, the band teamed up with visual artist Lauren Tsai to produce Prelude To The End, a nine minute animated short that expands on the visual world of the 2006 release. Rather than simply setting vintage audio to fresh animation, the project gathers an eclectic vocal cast that brings together Billie Eilish, Phoebe Bridgers, video game creator Hideo Kojima, and actor John C. McGinley.
Tsai created the film through UNREAL INC., her independent animation studio, weaving the universe of her piece The Dying World into "The End.", the opening track from The Black Parade. The narrative follows Astrid, voiced by Tsai, as she navigates an unsettling New England boarding school that is slowly being buried under piles of rubbish. When the school administration throws away her prized sketchbook, Astrid drops down a trash chute in pursuit. Her tumble pulls her out of the institution and into a surreal landscape populated entirely by discarded thoughts and forgotten ideas.
The vocal roles pull together recognizable figures from completely different corners of popular culture. With Tsai voicing Astrid at the center of the story, Billie Eilish steps in as Astrid's friend, while Phoebe Bridgers supplies the voice of her sister. The staff members overseeing the decaying boarding school are voiced by equally familiar talent. John C. McGinley, known for his work on the television comedy Scrubs, plays The Dean, while video game designer Hideo Kojima takes on the role of The Teacher.
For Tsai, taking charge of the production marks a full circle creative moment. As a young artist, she spent hours crafting her own animated tributes set to My Chemical Romance songs. Reflecting on the finished collaboration, Tsai called the opportunity an absolute dream, pointing to her long standing respect for Gerard Way's creative output and expressing deep gratitude that he took inspiration from her visual world.
The creative ties between the people involved also predate this project. In 2023, Tsai collaborated with Bridgers by directing an animated music video for "Cool About It", a track by Boygenius. Bridgers has tackled the band's catalog on stage before, teaming up with Sloppy Jane during an appearance at SXSW in 2022 to cover "Welcome To The Black Parade". The short film also reconnects Bridgers and Eilish, who shared a bill in 2023 at London's Electric Ballroom when Bridgers and her Boygenius bandmates Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus joined Eilish to perform "When The Party's Over".
Prelude To The End is also being shown in a theatrical setting, screening before My Chemical Romance take the stage for their October 30 and October 31 concerts at the Hollywood Bowl. Those dates close out the American leg of the Long Live The Black Parade tour, on which the band has been playing their 2006 album in full alongside selected songs from their wider catalog. The tour has already sparked outside headlines, drawing legal action from the company representing the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders over the appearance of lookalike uniforms during an onstage gunfight sequence.
The release of the short comes right behind an expanded twentieth anniversary edition of The Black Parade, issued on October 23 with six bonus tracks, including previously unreleased recordings from a 2007 live performance in Hoboken, New Jersey. While retrospectives usually look strictly backward, Way recently raised the topic of new music when speaking directly to tour audiences. He told crowds that the band has always shared a desire to record another album together if conditions allow, adding that fans deserve another record and promising that whenever it finally happens, it will be awesome.
