Akudama Drive

Episode 3

In concert with its extremely extra exterior, Akudama Drive hunkers down and demonstrates the fundamentals of a fun heist with its third episode. Appropriately titled “Mission: Impossible,” the first part of their Shinkansen hijack involves infiltrating the train station and bypassing the hi-tech and highly-deadly security systems designed to disintegrate any intruders. Like the film series, the narrative hews to formula—our talking cat companion explains the details of the plan, the Akudama crew executes the plan, things inevitably go wrong, they improvise, and they persevere—and instead saves its innovations for the traps and their solutions. It's safe, and it's entertaining. Given Kodaka's involvement, I expect there will come a time when Akudama Drive will swerve into much twistier narrative corners, but for now, I appreciate the crowd-pleasing competence.

The heist is fun in large part due to the absurdity of its setting. The gang isn't breaking into a bank or stealing from a casino; they're going to a train station. In the real world, it's one of the few remaining modes of long-distance transportation that isn't utterly bogged down by a bunch of security theater, and Akudama Drive turns it into a deadly video game level. I like that incongruity, and I think it adds a lot to the setting. I also like that two facets of the heist—getting winded on a staircase and pressing two buttons simultaneously—are, intentionally or not, evocative of the Midgar act of Final Fantasy VII. The two team's solutions to the force fields are both brute-force and funny, and the ticking clock also adds enough suspense to round out that segment of the heist. Additionally, while Akudama Drive clearly loves movies a lot, it doesn't hold back from dunking on them. Hacker's side-eyed comments about the limits of computers and technology seem aimed less at Swindler and more at any number of Hollywood hacking scenes. It's low-hanging fruit, and arguably hypocritical considering the series' fast-and-loose relationship with the laws of physics, but I can't say I mind. I'm here for a good time, not a believable one.

I am, however, glad to see Akudama Drive making strides towards fleshing out its characters, even if those strides still haven't crossed the threshold of the show's neon-lit welcome mat. Swindler gets a bit of alone time to reflect on what she's doing, but she doesn't dwell on herself so much as her companions. As an ordinary, law-abiding citizen, she probably never saw the Akudama as anything but over-the-top bloodthirsty criminals. And they are. But she's also starting to see their human sides. Brawler and Hoodlum's fast friendship, while based on lies, seems rooted in the fact that they genuinely get along. Courier's demeanor remains impenetrably icy, but his curt words hint at a deeply personal motivation for his crime-ridden career. Hacker, meanwhile, vents his dreams of Kanto to Swindler (which is a death flag if I ever saw one). She's feeling less like a frightened outsider and more like a member of the group, even going as far as to risk her life in order to save the rest of them. These are the most basic of building blocks, but I hope their presence here means that Akudama Drive will continue to develop these arcs. As much as I enjoy the fireworks from these early attempts at teamwork, I'm always looking for good character writing to keep me invested in the long run.

The most important character in the show, for now, remains the setting. Kansai's eclectic blend of traditional, modern, and future aesthetic and architecture viscerally distinguishes the show from any other series. The city, within the show's context, feels like a cross between a preservation and a perversion of culture. In that regard, I think it's important to remember that this is a post-war Kansai rebuilt to satisfy Kanto. The Shinkansen station, meanwhile, gives us a glimpse of Kanto's similarly gaudy yet contrastingly bright aesthetic. It's dissimilar enough to make the Akudama comment on it, and it makes me all the more curious to see what life in Kanto is like. I also think it's interesting that the main hall of the station doesn't look all that different from modern ones, with almost identical ticket machines and turnstiles. That's surely intentional on Akudama Drive's part. And this has nothing to do with the narrative, but I'm a big sucker for the Danganronpa-style scene transitions that piece the background art together out of its component parts like a pop-up book. I know it's probably just there to remind people of the games. It still rules.

Finally, the episode opens with a glimpse into the workings of the Kansai Police's elite Execution Department. This doesn't provide a whole lot besides reassurance that our two cop buddies will almost surely be pursuing the “heroes” for the rest of the show, but thankfully the government propaganda cartoon later in the episode sheds a bit more light. The papercraft shark and bunny all but say “judge, jury, and executioner” when describing the job, so I'm hopeful that these Judges Dredd will be a font of satire on present-day policing. The sneaky line about undercover work also now has me looking at our squad and wondering which of the seven is a traitor. I'm not going to try to guess, and it might end up being nothing, but remember: I've played all the Danganronpa games. I have to be a little paranoid.

Akudama Drive's third episode further cements the series as a visually and aurally noisy spectacle, sure to either delight or repel audiences, with not a lot of middle ground in between. In other words, it's obnoxious, and I'm loving it. Honestly, if it just manages to maintain this momentum and keep these criminals stepping on each other's toes, I'm probably going to keep having a good time. However, since it keeps hinting at the bigger political picture at play, and slowly injecting a bit more heart into its characters, it's possible Akudama Drive could eventually reach the transcendent highs of its pedigree. Those might be loftier expectations than such an unapologetically kitschy anime warrants, but I have a voracious appetite for good garbage, and this Akudama is looking like a Snackudama.

Rating:

Akudama Drive is currently streaming on Funimation.

Steve is, most unfortunately, still in vtuber hell over on Twitter. We're all praying for his salvation.