Apocalypse Hotel

Episodes 1-2

What are we even doing all of this for? It's a question that inspires reams of philosophical literature in the best of times, but it gains an especially sharp edge during the worst of it. I remember mornings throughout April 2020, as I drove on a disconcertingly empty highway to my place of employment, when I asked myself the same thing. And I find myself thinking about it again when I see, on a now daily basis, how quickly the people in power erode our norms and liberties. Do we stick to our routines to spite these upheavals? Perhaps they are our subconscious reassurances that, as long as this planet continues to spin, we have a chance to repair the damage. Or do we keep clocking in because we are meat machines following our crude programming until we all meet our inevitable end?

Apocalypse Hotel embraces our present (and future) absurdity with a warm air of melancholy and the soothing power of slapstick. The anime's wry handling of serious subjects is evident as early as its opening scene, which wickedly juxtaposes a luxurious hotel advertisement against a nauseatingly familiar montage of worsening pandemic headlines. It's efficient, and it doesn't pull its punches. Moreover, it means that the show's silliest divergences always exist in the context of this loss. That's a tricky tonal juggling act that the series has yet to fumble.

It helps that the story finds a strong foundation in its main cast. Most of the hotel's AI staff are nonverbal (not counting bleeps and bloops), but the show still manages to quickly establish their personalities and relationships through body language and other interactions. The Flycatcher bot is a precocious little stinker. The two Cleaner bots share a heated rivalry. The Cook takes pride in their work. And so on. While Yachiyo and Doorman stand out because they can speak, they feel like part of an ensemble cast.

Yachiyo is also a fantastic protagonist. As the hotel's acting manager, she's serious about her commitment to its upkeep, because she turly believes that humans will one day walk back through its opulent doors. She is, however, not infallible. We've already seen her glitch out a couple times when things don't follow standard operating procedures, and the anime extracts some great comedy of those moments. The shower cap debacle was a hoot, and her “screams internally” error found an immediate home in my reaction image folder. More importantly, these scenes humanize her. As is common in stories about sentient androids, it's their imperfections that most closely mimic their creators. I appreciate, too, that Yachiyo isn't just joke fodder. We see her take charge in the daily standup meetings. We see her grieve for the Driller robot. She's a service industry soldier.

The creative team behind Apocalypse Hotel deserves plenty of praise for making his strange hodgepodge work as well as it does. I highlighted some of the big names in the season preview, so I won't restate them here. What I will say is that I admire how much confidence is on display, despite the fact that this is Kana Shundo's first job as series director. A lesser leader may have shied away from a running gag like Doorman's constant overheating, but Shundo sallies forth, and it makes me laugh every time. That might seem stupid—and it is—but it also spurs me to think about how he and Yachiyo have played out this routine for the past century. Doorman's sole want in life is to open doors, so he does it, to nobody's benefit, to the point of breaking down. Echoes of Camus and Kafka ring throughout his whole ordeal. It's funny, and it's devastating. And you need that to be a running gag in order to maximize those feelings. That's the measure of genius at work here.

We can find plenty of post-humanity stories to link Apocalypse Hotel to. For example, there's the pastoral iyashikei quality of Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, or there's the irreverent philosophical inquiries of NieR:Automata. Thematically, however, Apocalypse Hotel reminds me of the similarly hospitality-focused film The Grand Budapest Hotel. In it, concierge Gustave sums up his raison d'être with the line, “there are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.” It's a credo he immediately lampoons by trailing off into curt profanity, but Zero, his lobby boy, later repeats those words with admiration for his former teacher and partner. The upkeep of the Grand Budapest Hotel's pomp and circumstance seems inconsequential in the face of the film's Nazi equivalent, which invades and repurposes the hotel in the final act. Nonetheless, the film finds nobility and heroism in Gustave's anachronisms. Even if he molded his life on an illusion, he did so to serve others.

Apocalypse Hotel tackles analogous contradictions and futilities. This is best seen in the second episode, where the hotel receives a guest of the extraterrestrial persuasion. Nojyujarmar enters and leaves as an enigma. Yachiyo never manages to sustain a proper conversation with him. Every accommodation is a crapshoot. They settle payment by looting bills from a collapsed bank. It's a total farce. At the same time, though Yachiyo bids him goodbye with an OK hand gesture angled just the way he likes it. However slight it may be, they made a connection. The Gingarou Hotel provided one miniscule semblance of comfort and civilization for a complete stranger, and that made Nojyujarmar's experience on Earth just a little bit better—or, at the very least, memorable. That ultimately may not amount to anything, but for Yachiyo, that's her entire reason for being. Even if she was programmed to think that way, it's as real and important as anything you or I do.

In short, this anime is a delight. I love silly stories that deal with serious subjects, and so far, this has been Apocalypse Hotel's forte. It can muse on the potential extinction of humankind while simultaneously facilitating the most unhinged Shinichirō Miki performance I've ever heard. It can take the downfall of humanity and spin it into a beautiful dream of what could have been, shining and glimmering alone on a moss-covered corner of Tokyo. There's no need for a hotel in the apocalypse, yet one exists. What else is there to do but make the most of it?

Episode 1 Rating:

Episode 2 Rating:

Apocalypse Hotel is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Tuesdays.

Steve is on Bluesky for all of your posting needs. Apparently, he is ANN's subject matter expert when it comes to anime about hotels and/or girls in the post-apocalypse. You can also catch him chatting about trash and treasure alike on This Week in Anime.