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「姉妹盃に注ぐ血 赤バットの凶行」 (Shimai Sakazuki ni Sosogu Chi Aka Batto no Kyoukou)
“Blood in a Sisterly Troth and the Menace of the Red Bat”
Akiba Maid Sensou pulls out its highest stakes yet when the Manami the Crimson Supernova returns from prison to see that a Creatureland cafe wiped out Wuv Wuv Moonbeam in her absence. While her rage propels her to start a war with both Ton Tokoton and Creatureland, it begs to question if a Creatureland girl and a Akiba Bang Bang girl could ever become sisters.
AKIBALIENS
Seniority is a crazy thing. Manami just shows up as a washed-up relic of her time to assume control over Akiba Bang Bang in its entirety, as if they just saved the seat for her this whole time. Even the maids at Maidalien aren’t interested in her turf war nonsense until she starts accosting and attacking the other maids for not going all in on her idea.
It doesn’t help that her grand plan to have all of the cafes in Akiba Bang Bang target Ton Tokoton and other Creatureland cafes wound up bringing out all the spies to leak their plans to Nagomi and the police. The cops might be in the pockets of most of the maid organizations, but it was enough to rattle Manami into begging for blood. She comes off as more of a foolish, disorganized, despotic figure than someone who’s willing to throw away more of her maids’ lives to satisfy a revenge plot.
THIS IS THY SHEATHE
I feel bad for all of the Nerura distrust and slander I’ve done so far because she was a real trooper who took her bond with Nagomi to heart. I was really touched when Nerura went as far as to take part in the sisterhood ceremony with Nagomi. It had a very intimate feel that made it all the more personal for Nagomi to be invested in her new sister’s safety.
I also appreciated that Nagomi made it clear that their bond would never be abused to take advantage of Nerura’s connections to Akiba Bang Bang. Much of the show wants to tackle Nagomi’s descent into violence, but I think that Nagomi showing a backbone and wishing to protect Nerura from being used by Ton Tokoton is where I feel she developed into a stronger character.
Where she went from being meek and scared of confrontation to outwardly defying her fellow maids because Nerura’s warmth was truly what kept her heart protected this whole time while her co-workers kept throwing her into one dangerous situation after another. While I have no doubt in my mind that the Manager set them up for this to escalate with the sisterhood idea, I believe at the very least Nagomi standing up for herself is a more valuable lesson for her to take away than the necessity to take up arms for her cafe’s merry band of burn-outs.
And one last applause to Nerura for having the guts to betray Akiba Bang Bang for both her and Nagomi’s sake. Not only did her devotion to Nagomi push her to let her know about Manami’s plot, but propelled her to outright challenge Manami to a fight to the death if it meant adhering to her own moral code.
In turn, it’ll be scary to see what Nerura’s death does to Nagomi. If all of the talk about Nagomi having to confront her fear of violence to prevent her loved ones from dying was all build-up towards having to confront her sister being murdered, she’ll likely have a more vengeful takeaway from all of this. Where Nerura’s demise would be the one thing to radicalize Nagomi into wanting to demolish the entirety of Akiba Bang Bang in her sister’s memory. But when Nerura’s dying words urge Nagomi to stay herself, will she be able to respect that wish or will she go against her own moral code for revenge?
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ANNOUNCEMENT: This upcoming Thursday, I will be away on break. That means I wouldn’t be writing articles for Akiba Maid Sensou and Urusei Yatsura next week on the 17th. They might be posted by another author, but if they aren’t, I’ll have a double post set up for the week after.
my manger g/f
https://randomc.net/image/Akiba%20Maid%20Sensou/Akiba%20Maid%20Sensou%20-%2006%20-%20Large%2007.jpg
https://randomc.net/image/Akiba%20Maid%20Sensou/Akiba%20Maid%20Sensou%20-%2006%20-%20Large%2015.jpg
https://randomc.net/image/Akiba%20Maid%20Sensou/Akiba%20Maid%20Sensou%20-%2006%20-%20Large%2013.jpg
This episode got dark ridiculously quickly
I feel that whoever write this anime (being an original work) have no clue what they want to write or expect from this story. Is it a maid based story using yakuza lingo parody or a yakuza story disguised as maid culture. It is clearly lacking a vision or direction of the story and turning it into a parody that the director doesn’t understand but puts them anyway because it looks cool.
In episode 1, it clearly a nice parody of maid cafe daily work using yakuza based trope and lingo to explain their business competition, hardships and such without abandoning that it is indeed about moe maid culture even with all the bloodshed and gunfight as its background drop.
Ep.2 felt like a crappy parody of Hongkong gambling movie (commonly starred by the likes of Chow yun fat, andy lau, stephen chow) with no resolution and leaves us hanging, by simply giving up and resolve the conflict with the most basic gunshot instead of serving us with something fun like card tricks, Kansas city or at least parody of yugioh.
Ep.3 is crappy parody of Ashita no Joe or at least Ippo while trying to pretend a parody of fixed gamble prize fighter competition . Are they trying to write a maid story, a yakuza gangster story or hot blooded sport shonen story?
Ep.4 is trying to either pretend it is parody of Full Metal Jacket’s GunnSgt Hartmann’s training segment or some kind Youth School melodrama between passionate teacher and troubled students.
Ep.5 is blatant parody of Tom Harris’ Silence of the Lamb but i feel that director or story writer have no clue why the Gumb scene was memorable. I mean at least Clarice make peace with her past using sheep as symbolism, but here…. what are they trying to do with the birthday and all?
And ep.6 …. whatever. Neither chekov, nor foreshadowing. And we just get some wham episode to force character development. Yeah, will be nice if it end like Godfather where Nagomi make her entrance with everyone greeting her “Okaerinasai Ojousama, Otsukaresama deshita.” And a door were shut behind her.
But nevertheless…. imo, it is getting less fun watching the consecutives episodes.
That’s your opinion dude. If you ate just going to complain don’t watch. I prefer an original work tgats unpredictable over a boring adaptation of a another overhyped shonen or Isekai trash. We need more original shows like this instead of animated adverts for manga.
I’ve been taking the show with a grain of salt because it is a very messy show as far as its direction and its characters exist solely to play out roles you’ve seen in other crime dramas.
I feel like I enjoy the show more when I see it as an exploitation film where the cast is haphazardly paraded from one violent set piece to the next. But this falls in line with your examination that they just keep placing these characters in PG versions of R-rated films and hoping something sticks.
Bugsy Malone came to mind when I started to realize that a lot of what the show was going for was to replace the mobsters in a gritty crime drama with something more innocuous for a more comedic feel. They still have brutal violence and cruelty, but the emotional beats are stilted and completely thrown out the window because the push for parody turns them all into flat archetypes of characters you’d see in a movie.
If you water down mafia tropes with maid motifs and film parodies, you won’t have to worry about humanizing any of the girls when you can just rely on your audience’s familiarity with crime dramas to do the work for them. I was upset by Nerura’s death, but it felt too much like a movie scene for me to be as emotionally invested in Nagomi’s reaction.
I felt more goosebumps from the recent Family Guy scene where Lois catches Peter in bed with her mom than Nagomi being horrified by Nerura dying in her arms. That’s a real problem if you’re aiming to make a crime drama parody that still carries a human pulse. With so much of the emotion and tension drained from its scenes, it comes off like a Newgrounds parody of “Battles Without Honor and Humanity”.
My theory still rests with where I was at in Episode 3 where they latch towards parody because Cygames is attached and they weren’t going to do an anime about the criminal underworld that could potentially dive into their own connections to organized crime or their own foray into gambling.
By reassuring the audience that we’re still in parody mode and there is no intention of having any kind of satirical edge to the show, it’s a friendly reminder that its aim is to be entertainment and not to throw stones at glass houses. Where it’s main intention is to create an experience like an American adult cartoon where it relies entirely on your personal experience with pop culture and nothing else.
I can still enjoy it like a western cartoon sitcom or an exploitation film, but I’m not entirely expecting to connect on an emotional level to Nagomi’s development or Ranko’s backstory.
>>> if a Creatureland girl and a Akiba Bang Bang girl could ever become sisters.
I think the partnership between members of competing maid cafes is only for those who have not drunk the kool aid yet and for those who are only members figuratively. You can lump Nagomi into this category since she had no idea what she was signing herself up for. Seeing how the industry is cut throat, (Literally) and territorial. Nagomi turns to the only maid who lent an ear when she was alone on the streets, Nerua.
>>> I feel bad for all of the Nerura distrust and slander I’ve done so far because she was a real trooper who took her bond with Nagomi to heart.
I feel like Nerua represented what a normal Maid in Maid Cafe is really like. It allowed us to not forget that these girls are here to serve their guests, bring in new patrons, make money for the cafe, and profit for oneself. (I don’t know the minimum wage amount in JPN so I am using the word profit for oneself loosely.)
>>> Much of the show wants to tackle Nagomi’s descent into violence
Funny about this statement is that I think the BPO wants to tackle Maid Cafe Sensou and its descent into violence too..along with every other shows that have excessive use of murder, turfwar, weapons drawn out in public and the list goes on. Don’t take this seriously I just thought it’s funny that the BPO waited till EP06 to be openly upset.