Akiba Maid Sensou – 07

「獣抗争史! 秋葉外生命体血戦!!」 (Kedamono Kousoushi! Akibagai Seimeitai Kessen!!)
“Creature Gang War Chronicles: The Bloody Extra-Akiba Terrestrial Showdown!”

Episode 07 of Akiba Maid Sensou was an eventful one as Manami is on the verge of descending on Ton Tokoton. But in order for any of the pig maids to have any chance of survival, they first need to make contact with Nagomi in any way they can.

IT’S TIME TO GO BACK TO THA OLD ME

It feels like they raced through so much of the story just to get Manami out of the picture. Rather than risk having to build up to Nagomi’s revenge story by making Manami a scarier force to be reckoned with, they make Manami look like she’s way in over her head despite having the upper hand in manpower.

Leadership predictably pulls the rug out from under her for being inconvenient, but why not build those ground rules and cut ties before all this happened? Was it convenient for Maidalien to keep her around even though they didn’t like her? Was ex-communication not an option until they got on the news for murdering a fellow Maidalien maid?

If they were going to screw her over this way, there had to have been a better way to tell her she’s not welcome back other than waiting until she’s tossed like six cups of green tea at the current president. I suppose that they wanted to cut the cord under the assumption that they’d wipe out Ton Tokoton in the process of getting rid of Manami, but even then, the plan wound up having them get absorbed into the Creatureland Group. It just feels like they were going to cut her off regardless, but told her far too late in the game that she was a liability.

And honestly, the stuff with Nagomi coming back felt so premature and forced the comparison between her and Ranko’s tragic past with her sisterhood. Ranko always came off more like a caricature of a vengeful gangster than an actual character, but I did expect more from Nagomi.

Living out Nerura’s wishes of keeping her wits as a maid is fine and all, but how does Nagomi’s logic steer her towards thinking she can still be a normal maid in a reality where all the maids are killers? The idea of killer gangster maids is ingrained in the entire image of what maids are in this universe, so it doesn’t make sense how she still jumped to the conclusion that she’s still going to be a happy-go-lucky maid at Ton Tokoton of all places. Or that she can avoid murderous vengeance if she comes back?

It just felt like they needed to press fast-forward on Nagomi’s development so she can prematurely avenge Nerura by sticking to her own code. But if the only thing keeping her from getting out of dodge is the idea that maids are about love and harmony, how will she react knowing that maids in this world are about violence and destruction? Like, was she sleepwalking through all this? You’d have to demolish everything from the Creatureland Group to the authorities and rebuild it all from the ground up if you’re going to have maids in Akihabara be about love and peace.