LogFAQs > #970364472

(I mostly did airing anime this week, but now I have four days off work! I'll spend some time with family, but I'll also work on finishing some shows. I'll be back on Wednesday with some actual recommendations. Have a good Christmas, everyone!)

BONUS. Akiba Maid War
https://myanimelist.net/anime/52193/Akiba_Meido_Sensou
Fall 2022 (12 episodes)
My Score: TBA, MAL Score: 7.71/10
Best Character: Mannen Ranko

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxN-HbcE0XQ

Premise: Wahiru Nagomi follows her dream and moves to Akihabara to work at a maid cafe. However, it turns out that the life of a maid is a lot more violent than she was expecting.

The Good: Akiba Maid War is an action comedy that takes a story better suited for a hardened yakuza gang and uses cute maid girls instead. It's an undeniably fun and unique idea. The first episode especially left me with high hopes, it had flashy action and the contrast of cute maids and gang violence was great. Maid cafes all have unique twists (the main group is modeled after pigs, but there are a bunch of different animal or alien mash-ups). The setting gave me a similar vibe as the old movie The Warriors with its themed gangs. One of the main characters, the older maid Ranko who had just gotten out of jail, really impressed me early on. It really felt like AMW would be the easy choice for anime of the season.

The Bad: Sadly, Akiba Maid War never lived up to its full potential. Of the seven characters in the pig cafe, only two of them feel fleshed out. Ranko and Nagomi get most of the screentime. Everyone else still has a unique character and a few neat moments, but mostly it felt like they were just there to fill out the scenes, which was a huge letdown. As for the main two, I mostly just found Nagomi annoying. Her innocence didn't fit in the violent maid underworld, and it was never satisfyingly explained why she stuck around after her first brush with death. Ranko was still easily the best girl, but even she had moments where her central character changed in an instant for reasons that weren't adequately explained. Basically, none of the characters were great. Even more disappointing, the setting and overall story were both half-baked too. This kind of gang story would've benefited from clear power structures and realistic retaliation whenever one faction crossed another. Instead, it never felt like anything mattered or built into anything bigger. Whether the pig cafe was fine or in trouble or being actively hunted changed on an episode by episode basis, often by the literal whims of some higher-ups. Eventually I just stopped caring because it didn't feel like the characters were actually influencing anything.

Overall: I'm glad that Akiba Maid War exists. My favorite thing about anime is that it can have off-the-wall genre mashups like this. Sometimes the result of mixing, say, cute girls and counterterrorism, results in a fun story like Lycoris Recoil. Then other times an idea that seems like a winner, yakuza maids, winds up falling flat. I didn't like any of the characters by the end, and the plot was all over the place, but Akiba Maid War was still a fun experiment. I'll most likely end up ranking it somewhere in the 3/10s, but I'm glad I watched it.