Akiba Maid Sensou – 01

OP Sequence

OP: 「メイド大回転」 (Maid Daikaiten) by The Ton Tokoton Staff

「ブヒれ! 今日からアキバの新人メイド!」 (Buhire! Kyou kara Akiba no Shinjin Maid!)
“Oink It up! Starting Today, You`re an Akiba Maid!”

Forget any of the shonen fare you might’ve looked forward to this fall. Akiba Maid Sensou is about to become your latest obsession. Its wickedly creative twists and turns were more than enough to be one of the most explosive premieres of the season, if not the year. If this anime is a sign of things to come this season, we’ll be ending the year with the biggest bang imaginable.

PIGS IN HUMAN CLOTHING

Right from the get-go, the show doesn’t hesitate to immediately set the tone with a maid being shot dead in the rainy streets of 1985 Tokyo. From there, the anime leans into the murky cruelty of a cutthroat industry being juxtaposed with the cutesy veneer of a maid cafe experience. Their idea of an OP is comprised of idol phrases being juxtaposed with scenes of murder and strong-arming. If you wanted a maid anime that has more in common with Takashi Miike’s Dead or Alive than Blend-S, you’ll want to keep your eyes glued to the screen for this one.

Switching back to the duality between its maid theming and dark tone, the 90’s yakuza film comparison is dead-on with how it handles violence and death without any sense of tact. The young & plucky Nagomi’s light-hearted first day on the job is immediately derailed when she has to deal with delivering deliberate death threats to rival companies and taking contraband firearms to send the message more thoroughly

Aside from the final moments of dread Nagomi faces before she realizes she’s stuck in the brutal Oinky Doink Cafe for the long haul, the most seriously the show takes itself is when one of the unfortunate members of the Wuv Wuv Moonbeam cafe is forced to chop off her pigtail as if it’s one of her limbs. It makes it all the more hilarious when the maid screams bloody murder about losing her pigtail, and yet the show barely registers the horror behind the cruelly violent world it paints.

Every instance of gory brutality is treated with less gravity than a girl losing her pigtail as maid veteran Ranko fires point-blank at the head maid’s forehead. I could barely register if she had truly been killed since the show has her comically shoot blood all over Nagomi’s paper bib as if it’s a cartoon water fountain. A girl was murdered and her blood showered our main protagonist, but all she can muster up at the moment is a meek “I never took my paper bib off. It’s stained now.” as she and Ranko quietly stroll out of the Wuv Wuv Moonbeam.

While the animation can look a bit unpolished at times, it’s the editing where the show really shines. I couldn’t pull my eyes away from the screen when Ranko’s street massacre of the rabbit maids was juxtaposed with the talented maid Yumechi’s in-house concert.

Jump Cuts make it so that Yumechi’s elaborate idol show complete with adoring fans is given the same grandiose pomp & circumstance as Ranko showering the streets of Akihabara with the blood of her rivals. The same neon glow sticks from Yumechi’s concert are waved for Ranko’s murder spree as she gets her dual pistols cocked and loaded for more. The beat and cadence of Yumechi’s song sync up with maid corpses flying in the air as neon blood spatters cover the screen.

IN THIS ECONOMY!?

The duality between the cutesy maid aesthetic and unbridled ultraviolence comes through the most with the musical segment. Still, the wickedly dark comedy of Akiba Maid Sensou also shines through in its theming and setting.

Spring 1999 is an appropriate period to capture the bleak absurdity that the anime is aiming for, considering where Japan was by this point. With the post-bubble era ushering in the Lost Decade, the timing of the anime has it aiming squarely near March 3rd, when the Bank of Japan announced that it’d implement a zero interest rate policy to temporarily stimulate the economy. Between March 1998 and March 1999, the government injected trillions in public funds into major banks as credit banks and trading firms began to shudder.

As the Oinky Doink Cafe languishes enough to be forced to do dirty work to stay afloat and appease debt collectors, it’s hard not to think of the show’s satirical edge coming into play with their brutality. From what I’m seeing, it looks like the economic conditions that businesses faced in 1999 are reenacted in the anime through a vicious war between Akihabara’s maid cafes to stay afloat.

A more obvious comparison is that it mirrors a mafia war story with yakuza ordeals being acted out through the maid cafe industry. The Oinky Doink Cafe is saddled with some extreme debt as they have to regularly shovel racket money to debt collectors who only allow them to conduct business on behalf of the Creatureland Group.

Through said connections, they often have to rely on said debt collectors to survive because it’s a rinky-dink operation that’s as unsuccessful as other underdog maid cafes. That means being regularly forced to confront rival maid cafes run by Creatureland Group’s rivals for the sake of making their money’s worth through doing the debt collectors’ bidding.

The manager of the Oinky Doink cafe is so used to the economic conditions and the high turnover rate they are saddled with that she’s fully prepared to make another New Hire advertisement with the full expectation that she sent those girls to die to clear part of their debt. Through everything that’s happened in the first episode, I find it easy to believe that the perfect storm of acting out a 90’s yakuza thriller through a war between maid cafes is a deliberate measure to tackle the absurdity and cruelty of having to operate a business during an era of economic stagnation and outright desperation.

MAID IN HEAVEN

One detail I wish to mention before capping off the post is how much I appreciate the cast of this anime. It’s always nice to hear Satou Rina show up, and her performance as the cold calculated Ranko works well to strike an unnerving, foreboding feeling. Kondou Reina has had a fun year with a variety of roles and hearing her as the bubbly yet fearful Nagomi bounces off well with the harsh, mechanical nature of Ranko’s violence.

For fans of Cyberpunk 2077: Edgerunners, you’ll be excited to know Kurosawa Tomoyo keeps up the momentum she’s had as Rebecca with her role as the well-meaning yet brutally honest Shiipon. It is funny to see Tanaka Minami as the musically inclined Yumechi given how she’s easily one of the standout members of Zombie Land Saga‘s Franchouchou as Hoshikawa Lily. This paragraph was also mainly an excuse to fawn over Takagaki Ayahi, who I keep narrowly missing in anime. I love so much of the work she did in the early 2010s and haven’t seen her in as many recent productions, so hearing her as the laidback, opportunistic, and desperate Manager was a nice surprise.

Needless to say that the chaotic messiness of Akiba Maid Sensou is as stylish as it is addictive, and carries a wicked sense of humor with its bloody, poppy atmosphere. I’m excited to see what’s on the horizon for this anime given how the first episode captures a chaotically grotesque and morbidly hilarious story that I haven’t found in an anime in ages. Here, I’ll give the show a little good luck charm.

｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆　　 ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆
Moe Moe Kyun <3

ED Sequence

ED: 「冥途の子守唄」 (Maid no Komoriuta) by Satou Rina