Akiba Meido Sensou

Everyone says that this isn't your typical cutesy maid anime. That it's gritty. That it's very "out there". That it's over the top. They're wrong. Akiba Maid War tries to be gritty, but all it really is is a failed parody that doesn't take itself remotely seriously. Instead of being a gangster parody with a touch of cutesy maids, it's a cutesy maid show with a touch of gangster parody. It's like someone thought it would be funny to have maids running around with guns, so they gave some maids some guns. It's still cute. It's still wholesome. It's still light-hearted. All that's changed is ... the fact that the maids occasionally resort to random acts of violence. Apparently, throwing violence and blood into a cute show about maids makes it gritty. No, what makes a show gritty is the tone. Akiba Maid War has the exact same tone as a comedy anime about cute maids. This is the worst possible combination of themes, because instead of having a show purely about maids or a show purely about gangsters, you have a show that's an incomplete and mismatched mix of the two in a way that doesn't do either theme justice. For example, there are multiple fight scenes where maids get absolutely slaughtered. Blood splatters everywhere, and you can see maids dying all over the place. Dark, right? No. Because the tone still hasn't changed. It still feels like a light-hearted and cutesy maid show, even despite the violence. It feels like someone gave the maids weapons and said "shoot that maid over there, I guess". The maids still act like maids, just maids with guns. They still have cute voices, cute and clumsy movements, and cute facial expressions. They have no will to fight, and even if they did, they would still just be terrible fighters. It's also very hard to take a fight seriously when every possible detail is meant to be comedic, such as the consecutive falling of bodies, or the constant spurting of blood from a corpse's head. Everything about this show is light-hearted, from the maid's casual interactions to the blatant violence. Of course, there is nothing wrong with the comedy aspect of the show. It is supposed to be a parody, afterall. But once the concept or tone of a parody strays too far from whatever is being parodied, it ceases to be a parody. Elements of both must be mixed together in a way that compliments both genres, and this show just does not do this. The parody element of this show feels very rushed and feels more like a gimmick rather than an actual element to the show. The writer simply threw in elements and tropes from a gangster movie and called it a day. There is little authenticity or effort to represent the parodied genre. As a result, it just feels like your typical cutesy maid anime.

Furthermore, the show doesn't take itself seriously. Fine, it's a comedy, but even comedies need to have some degree of dignity. In one episode, the maids have a baseball game. It's ridiculous, unfunny, and hard to watch. The entire episode is just the maids hurling insults at each other and fighting. It's cliché, boring, and embarrassing. Frankly, it's an insult to the gangster genre. Heck, it's an insult to parodies too. The problem is, the show doesn't know when to take itself seriously and when not to. Every so often, there is an attempt to mimic the gangster genre with an interesting concept that would in theory work well in a parody. However, it's underplayed, ignored, and usually not even done well. It feels all over the place and inconsistent, with no single gangster trope being fleshed out properly. And again, it's all because the author is trying to keep this light-hearted tone, which just doesn't work with a gangster parody. It's like having a gun that's painted solid pink. It's something that's supposed to be scary, painted in a silly color; a parody. But this scary/funny effect is entirely ruined when it turns out the gun is just a water gun. The only thing left is the minute undertone of violence, which is vastly overshadowed by the ridiculous appearance and function of what used to be a frightening weapon.

As for the characters, they're uninteresting and annoying. Each character symbolizes one main character trait, making them 2D characters with no depth whatsoever. Worse still, these single character traits aren't even entertaining or funny. As if it couldn't get any worse, the voice actors speak like it's a chore, and the awkward lines don't help either. Every time a character swears, it sounds like a child swearing for their first time. It's awkward, forced, and out of place. Also, there are so many unemotional characters that it's almost as if they have to be that way because their voice actor simply couldn't care to put in any emotion.

The best part of this show is without any doubt the opening. It's gritty, serious, and intense, with a tad bit of parody at the end. And most importantly, there are no emo voice actors to be heard. If only the actual show had been like this too.

I liked this show in the beginning, because I genuinely thought it had some good writing (only in the first 2), but it quickly went south with the writing as it depended on too many tropes and cliches. This show is meant to be exaggerated, however, it goes to a point where there's barely any explanation and multiple plot holes. The main character, Nagomi, drags everyone down with her with barely a redemption arc. There is lack of character depth for most of the characters, as again, the "development" of said so characters purely depends on plot holes and cliches. I wouldve liked this show ... if it had better writing, but I genuinely cannot understand how in near the end of most episodes, it turns into a 180. Nagomi's ideals changes constantly with no reasoning (she wants no violence, yet asks why other characters dont react back, etc). I do not recommend this for anyone unless they want to laugh at how absurdly bad the writing can be.

EDIT: Only reason I gave it a 3 is because of Ranko, without her it'd be a 0.

This was so bad. First 5 eps were quite good. 8/10. Then it started going downhill. It got worse with every episode. Even then if it ended with episode 11 minus last w mins i would still give it a 6. But the last episode was just as bad and didn't redeem itself at all.

More info to let myanimelist publish my review -
The concept was unique I think? Atleast i haven't seen it before. The story wasn't though. And I didn't enjoy it precisely because of that. It would have been better if it didn't follow the cliche.
The art style was good.
One character was ... quite good. Another was very stupid. The rest were there just to make up the numbers. They literally changed their personality as the plot demanded almost like different people.
The entire thing was unrealistic. Like seriously this is not possible unless the entire world selectively ingores them.
The only way to enjoy this series is if you agree with the stupidity of it or you are the kind that enjoys something so bad that it seems good.

In the three episodes that I've seen, the show explains absolutely nothing of the premise. Maybe it's nice to keep some degree of mystery, but there has to be a limit. You can't expect me to go along with this nonsense without giving me at least a tiny bit of reason. It doesn't even have to be all that sophisticated or anything, it could just be something like "we wanted to make a crazy maid blood and gore show with no logic and all action" and that'd be enough for me but give it to me in advance, so I know what to expect. Don't ... make it seem like there's some bigger picture that I'm just not getting.

Oh, and aside of explaining things to me, you also owe an explanation to the hapless FMC you put in the middle of this. Sure, she might have been too shaken by all of this at first to even ask any questions, but we're three episodes in and it's about time to start trying to make sense of things instead of bathing in this "ignorance is bliss" nonsense.

Wanton murder, blood and gore can be fun to watch with the right setup. A common excuse to make it acceptable to the viewers is if the killed guys are aliens, zombies, criminals or similar. I guess we can chalk this show's case up to the criminals category... but... can we really? Should we blindly assume that all the slaughtered maids in the first episode were "bad girls" when we have our main character standing right there in the middle of it being an obvious counter-example for such assumption? No. I don't want to accept this. Authors, fuck you! You get a 1.

Edit: I'll probably still watch it to the end though.

How not to do marketing.

First of all, PSA: this series is a gun bunny blood opera - Black Lagoon, John Woo, Quentin Tarantino. Hot chicks in fetish getups dual-wielding pistols and murdering each other in campy over-the-top shootouts. The creators decided to completely hide this fact from all the promo materials, probably thinking it was clever. It’s not clever, it just makes the potential audience miss out on the show. I am the target audience of gun bunny shows, I had seen all trailers of this series before the season started, and I had decided to skip it because those had given me a completely ... wrong impression of what this show was about (I picked it up later after hearing from other people who saw it). This marketing failure matters because it mirrors the creative failure of the actual content of the series - it thinks itself far more clever than it actually is.

Camp is effectively a form of deadpan comedy. A campy show, ironically, needs to take itself seriously in order to work. Black Lagoon takes itself seriously, so when over-the-top bullshit starts happening, it’s unexpected and impactful. Akiba Maid Sensou does the opposite of treating itself seriously, it can’t help but make obnoxious winks and nods to the audience all the time, which ruin the immersion. It’s like a comedian that starts giggling and asking “get it?” in the middle of telling a joke before the audience hears the actual funny parts. Maybe the joke itself is great, but not with a botched delivery like that. When a gunfight’s choreography is synched to a poppy maid-themed song playing in the background, this is funny and cool. But when the gunmen break out into literal dance moves for that song, it’s immersion-breaking cringe.

A shame, because the series has all the ingredients to be good. The “maid cafes as yakuza clans” premise is fun, the buddy cop duo of main leads have good chemistry, and the situational comedy is funny when it’s not overdone. It’s just that it is overdone all the time.

4/10 for “good concept, bad execution.”