Akiba Maid War

Episode 8

Baseball. That quintessential pastime both American and Japanese, which has inspired many books, movies, television shows, and, most crucially, outstanding one-off episodes of anime. "Baseball Blues" in Samurai Champloo. "The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya" in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. "Take Me Out to the Holosuite" in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. And now, we can add Akiba Maid War's "A Blood-Soaked Ballgame" to that pantheon of pitches.

Akiba Maid War doing a Baseball Episode is one of those ideas that pretty well sells itself, so I'm grateful to see the actual result live up to the storied pedigree of its concept. For one, this is as plot-relevant a baseball game as one could hope for from the show. We open right up with the funeral for the dearly departed Manami after the events of the previous storyline, all the alien maids decked out in black grieving versions of their serving outfits. It's one of many bone-dry gags in this episode that serve to make clear that we need not worry that all the heady deaths witnessed in that previous storyline will be bound by too much seriousness. Indeed, no sooner has Creatureland's Boss Maid Nagi crashed the mourning party than she's throwing down a challenge for Maidalien and Oinky-Doink to settle their scores exactly as foretold: over "A Friendly Game of Baseball".

Now obviously those of us returning to Akiba Maid War week after week would expect things to get way more outlandish than such a humble suggestion implies. And rest assured, hilariously violent upticks are included throughout the game, including two people winding up stabbed to death before it's over. This series has already demonstrated its propensity for engagingly-illustrated sports (blood or otherwise) with the MMA episode. So naturally this is one to bust out those Dezaki-style Postcard Memories painted up in service of showing bench-clearing brawls between these teams this week. This is the sort of action we're here for, right?

So in the name of the all-important subversion, of course the route Akiba Maid War winds up going with this story is one of an emotional anchor wanting to actually take the game seriously and avoid sullying it by devolving into resolving it with full-on violence. Sure, Nagomi has yet to properly step up on the murdery side of her maidly duties, but the hallowed game of baseball turns out to be something she gets well and truly fired up about. Part of it is due to the genuine memory she's trying to pay to her departed Sister Nerula. Part of it seems to be her searching for any kind of peaceful solution to the Akiba Maid conflict apart from out-and-out war. But she's as ridiculously committed to this bit as anyone else in this show has been to its main motifs, and she's driving everyone crazy who would prefer just to murder the opposition and get out of there.

As someone who can take things way too seriously myself, I almost want to read Nagomi's attitude as a meditation on the show's recent flirtation with sincere drama in its storytelling. Nagomi wants all the maids (and Venezuelan laborers filling out the outfield, thanks Chief) on the field to take this seriously, much as her mourning over Nerula's death presented that, followed by the badass resolution of Manami's sacrifice. But the moment of silence before this game for those fallen quickly devolves into trash-talking over it. One of Manami's comrades takes up her bat to play in her memory, and it winds up immediately broken apart like Homer's Wonder Bat in that one episode of The Simpsons. This is the kind of show Akiba Maid War is, and all of Nagomi's efforts can't change that any more than they can change the workings of Akihabara within, regardless of her resolve.

Or can it? The big joke that Nagomi actually manages to convince most of the maids to play through the game without murdering each other works because that turn is, itself, its own kind of absurdity. For Akiba Maid War, The Bit has always been that these cute frilly maids were actually mafia murder machines, so of course the natural swerve back is to see all these dolled-up Yakuza stand-ins play the game normally. It winds up both heartening and hilarious to watch the once-aliens-now-axolotls opposing team deny the deaths of their coach and her assassin, Weekend-at-Bernies-ing them along simply to entertain Nagomi's notions because her misplaced sincerity got through to them. As it also says something to see Nagomi accept those delusions for the sake of her, uh, growth in this world. She is going to need many, many years of therapy.

Baseball episodes of non-baseball-centric anime are great precisely because they let us see characters in an outside, often fundamentally absurd situation to their normal station, while still detailing their roles and team dynamics with each other. This episode of Akiba Maid War fulfills that requirement for success, seeing folks like Shiipon and Yumechi itching for a base-brawl before resigning to at least finish the game fairly for Nagomi's sake. And it provides a precursor to even heavier plot analyses of how maids playing this sort of game might continue to belong in this world, with the episode-ending, not-that-surprising revelation that Nagi is in fact Ranko's past Made Maid comrade. We get all that in an episode where we also get to watch a panda play baseball and two people get stabbed to death, meaning this gives me everything I could have asked for from a Baseball Episode of Akiba Maid War, plus that little bit extra.

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Akiba Maid War is currently streaming on HIDIVE.

Chris is a freewheeling Fresno-based freelancer with a love for anime and a shelf full of too many Transformers. He can be found spending way too much time on his Twitter, and irregularly updating his blog.