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“The violence is a part of the job,” says Nerula, an alien-themed service employee within the maid cafes of Akihabara, in a second of nonchalant, offhand absurdity that the brand new authentic anime Akiba Maid Struggle has now conditioned me to anticipate and love. In a sequence with an outrageous show of bloodshed, it may be the present’s dedication to a straight-faced matter-of-factness in regards to the violent lives of cafe maids that makes it even funnier, its characters internalizing “moe moe kyun” because the tenet for which they bleed (“moe’’ has a broad that means, however principally connotes a “cute” vibe). It seems like there’s extra anime than ever this season, however even amid a season stuffed with excessive profile exhibits like Chainsaw Man, Bleach, and Mob Psycho 100, Akiba Maid Struggle deserves your consideration.
Directed by Sōichi Masui (Sakura Quest) and produced by P.A. Works (additionally chargeable for this 12 months’s Ya Boy Kongming!) and Cygames, it’s a powerful contender for the funniest anime of the season, an authentic managing to carry its personal in a season full of heavy hitters. A broad homage to yakuza movies and different gangster photos, Akiba Maid Struggle supplants legal brotherhood with maid cafes dotted round Akihabara, every working because the arm of certainly one of two wider teams — the animal-themed “Creatureland” and the sci-fi themed “Maidalien” group — competing for management of the world and bristling towards a tenuous peace treaty.
Picture: P.A. Works/Sentai Filmworks
It considerably (and that’s excessive emphasis on “considerably”) remembers works like Kinji Fukasaku’s yakuza movies, like if somebody threw a frilly apron on his despairing and influential Battles With out Honor and Humanity saga; completely different in tone however tracing the evolution of warring gangs over the course of a long time and the betrayals and cycles of violence that remodel them. The Creatureland Group’s bid for enterprise dominance accommodates echoes of the Yamamori gang constructing themselves into the capitalist conglomerate Tensei Group. Because the present explores the ins and outs of what it means to exist within the moe mob, the underhanded politicking is compounded with echoes of the bloodiness of Takashi Miike’s work (the thoughts may even wander to Tarantino, contemplating the shared inspirations). Essential distinction is, the gangsters on this present additionally spend their time adorning omelets with ketchup faces.
Akiba Maid Struggle goes about contrasting these homages with the cuteness that its characters so earnestly characterize. You might say it’s in shut proximity to this 12 months’s Lycoris Recoil, which performed with the self-esteem of teenage assassins utilizing a restaurant as a entrance because the story unfurls a long-running conspiracy plot. Whilst each take pleasure in that gulf between cute and lethal as seen within the subgenre of girls-with-guns motion, Lycoris makes use of modern surveillance and authoritarianism as its set dressing relatively than legal enterprise, whereas Akiba Maid Struggle performs issues extra solely for laughs.
Picture: P.A. Works/Sentai Filmworks
The idealistic Nagomi is the viewers’s route into this absurdist historical past. Unaware of the barbarity of her chosen career, she learns the laborious means by way of numerous skirmishes with different rival cafes, confronting each other in dialogue laced with animal-themed threats, all admirably dedicated to silly wordplay with utter seriousness. As Nagomi joins the pig-themed Oinky Doink Cafe within the first episode, she befriends the seemingly gloomy Ranko, an older maid contemporary out of the joint for against the law not but disclosed.
Nagomi and Ranko’s first outing collectively is nothing in need of a catastrophe, nonetheless — Ranko introduces Nagomi to the truth of maid work, massacring a rival cafe on an errand initially meant to supply the 2 up as sacrificial lambs to appease an age-old beef. The result’s a deranged set-piece for the ages, with the episode spiraling uncontrolled following an extremely darkish gag the place blood from a headshot whistles out of the wound and onto poor Nagomi’s maid outfit not as soon as, however 3 times in delayed succession.
The shock of the second turns into utter mayhem, with a shootout struggle spilling out onto the streets as episode director Tomoaki Ota cuts again to Oinky Doink Cafe, the place Nagomi’s coworker Yumechi is performing a high-energy quantity referred to as “The Pure Maid’s Grasp-Killing Kiss.” The intercut sequence instances Ranko performing elaborate feats of gun-fu with wotagei (mainly a form of dancing executed by idol followers) to the resultant uptempo and vaguely threatening insert track about exploding hearts, with Ranko popping off rounds in time to the beat whereas knives and weapons each tackle the function of glow sticks. To borrow some important parlance, it rips.
Picture: P.A. Works/Sentai Filmworks
The present might have burnt out shortly after the shock of that first episode, however it capably transforms and regularly iterates on what could possibly be a single joke premise; throughout the context of the story itself, violence is merely anticipated. The seventh episode barrels into all-out conflict after real tragedy, with a classical soundtrack and sax solos scoring blood feuds. The eighth upholds that hallowed anime custom, the baseball episode, full with excessive roughhousing and, after all, a double murder. An early favourite of mine is the third episode’s journey to a struggle membership, which shortly turns right into a riff on Ashita no Joe, evoking Osamu Dezaki’s basic 1970 boxing anime with freeze frames of cross-counters and different iconic poses, in addition to the supervisor turning right into a sleazier tackle Joe Yabuki’s coach, Danpei.
The third episode additionally makes for a wonderful introduction to Zoya, a Russian expatriate who struggles to slot in as a consequence of her stoic look, who fights Ranko bodily and ideologically over whether or not or not the 2 of them may even be thought of “cute” or worthy of being maids. The present goes one step additional by enjoying out her backstory through a dramatic flashback, as she switches languages to Russian in one more second the place the present surprises the viewer by simply how critically it treats the main points (in an exquisite contact, Zoya’s voice actress, Jenya, deliberately leaned into her native Russian accent to get the function on level, aggressively rolling her R’s).
Picture: P.A. Works/Sentai Filmworks
Other than the motion, the personalities of its goofy lead solid are gratifying on their very own — Ranko is an apparent standout from the second she arrives, as she earnestly and really critically conducts maid work with superb monotone cadence. Simply as there’s extra to Akiba Maid Struggle than its floor absurdity, there are additionally compelling issues to Ranko, who’s each ruthlessly violent but additionally probably the most receptive to Nagomi’s naivety and quixotic pursuits of peace.
Then there’s the supervisor, an eminently watchable weasel who by no means stops making an attempt to press no matter minor benefit she will get, exploiting everybody in her care; she’s so terrible she comes again round to being completely watchable as she regularly sinks to new lows. To not point out that the Oinky Doink maids depend amongst their ranks Okachimachi, an arsonist in a panda mascot costume who silently acts like an precise panda.
Whereas there’s much more occurring when it comes to the present’s good comedic timing, the floor touches are a delight to expertise in and of themselves. Each episode begins with a shotgun blast of ’90s ephemera by way of the dingy video textures and The Prodigy-esque rave sounds of its opening track, “Maid Daikaiten” (sung by the solid). Its dirty synths out of the blue remodel into the form of sugary pop track that one would anticipate from a maid cafe, in an extension of the present’s enjoyable clashes of tone. (The ending, in contrast, is a hilariously soulful conventional enka monitor sung by Ranko’s voice actress, Rina Satō).
Picture: P.A. Works/Sentai Filmworks
Throughout the context of the episodes themselves, there’s a enjoyable conflict of tough brushwork and colourful glitz amidst some surprisingly well-choreographed fights, all of which assist to put the present inside this insane parallel-universe tackle this time period. It helps that the writers additionally know when to be honest and when to be silly, when to uplift the maids of Oinky Doink in addition to when to make their victories self-defeating — as well-meaning as a few them are, as they defend themselves additionally they blunder their means into a number of turf wars and standoffs that threaten to tear their livelihood aside. Such moments additionally show the writers’ good dedication to deepening a way of historical past in its absurdist re-creation of the district, which dovetails with how Akiba Maid Struggle expands into different style parodies because the story escalates its depiction of an lovely legal empire stuffed with stone-cold killers dressed like cattle.
In Akiba Maid Struggle, as talked about earlier than, brutality is solely an on a regular basis a part of the job simply as a lot as handing out flyers is, and the present has a number of enjoyable with displaying the assorted levels to which this infiltrates the trivia of operating Oinky Doink. Because it does so, its homages to yakuza movies are thrown right into a meat grinder with a wealth of different genres and anachronisms within the institution of its alternate historical past of Nineteen Nineties Akihabara and past (on this planet of Akiba Maid Struggle the connection between maids and violence is a proud custom of 200 years, with a competition and every little thing). That, and you’ve got cosplay maids throwing down in playing rings and struggle golf equipment. What extra might you ask for?
Akiba Maid Struggle is on the market to stream on HIDIVE.
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