Review: Akiba’s Trip “Akiba’s First Trip”

Time to take a trip…

Spoilers Below

Based on the “videogame franchise of the same name“, the story takes place in “Akihabara” which is one of the biggest shopping districts in Japan and where we meet our protagonists.

Much of the plot is told from the perspective of our male protagonist Tamotsu who seeks out a rare figurine in the district with his sister Niwaka and randomly encounters a strange half-pink haired girl with a baseball bat who literally falls from the sky and does an overly dramatic “superhero landing”.

Without wasting time, the “half-pink haired-lady”, quickly strips the clothes off a cosplayer attacking who was accompanied by shadowy Imps, who collapse into clouds of purple smoke when defeated. (I wish I was making that up.)

When the brother & sister witness this random act of mind-fuckery, the half-pink haired lady proceeds to disappear jumping building-to-building blindly thinking it’s a “Street-Show” and go about their business.

Later as they eat, Tomatsu’s sister goes into an “exposition dump” thinking the “street show” they just witnessed could be tied with rumors that are circulated online (within this show’s universe) regarding an evil species of creatures called the “bugged ones,” Individuals who are infected by insects of unknown origin who can only be stopped by ripping their clothes off due to oxygen exposure.

As the plot goes further with its absurdity, Tomatsu decides to ditch his sister for wanting to go to a particular cafe in favor of picking up a rare line of action figures tied with a silly show called “Anatomy Rangers”.

Tomatsu proceeds to get his hands on a limited edition figure until it also ends up being grabbed by some blonde with a pink ribbon in her hair playing “Tug-of-War” ends up losing to her just from staring at her bouncy cleavage.

As Tomatsu further talks with the person he lost to in regards to this rare figure, the blonde introduces herself as Arisa who is wowed by his convictions and love for the franchise the toy is tied with but they get abruptly interrupted when the pink-haired lady from earlier busts through the building to attack her thinking she’s a “bugged one”.

The pink-haired lady keeps trying to make a brutal strike to the cosplayer who is evading each strike like she’s Jackie Chan and it escalates into a cartoonishly violent fight that throws them both out the window. After they both escape, Tomatsu overhears two strangers talk about a cafe that was under attack and he quickly figures out it’s the exact same cafe his sister could possibly be at and runs to her rescue.

When Tomatsu makes it to the crime scene, he tries to contact his sister who also has a cellphone but when he can’t get an answer, he jumps over the “police line tape” to search for her.

When Tomatsu enters the building he notices that nobody evacuated and when he asks a stranger where his sister is, The stranger rabidly attacks him like a savage animal and evades only to notice more of them behaving very zombie-like in terms of mannerisms.

Tomatsu ends up being saved when he’s stuck in a corner and the pink-haired one strips them all to their underwear in a blink of an eye which changes them back to normal. Luckily he also finds his sister who’s unconscious but what he didn’t fail to notice was a “bugged one” attempting to attack him with a fork only for the pink-haired lady to intervene again and take the fork-stab in the shoulder. (Damn!)

Tomatsu expresses concern for her injury given that the fork is still stuck in her fucking shoulder but she tells him to leave with is sister she stabs the fork back in her opponent’s face and knocks her with the bat.

Arisa shows up through the vents of the building John McClane-style in a red Chun-li looking outfit explaining that she genuinely realized she was human and resumed her mission elsewhere and out of curiosity followed the pink-haired girl into a building.

Tomatsu asks Arisa to get his sister to safety and he goes to check if the Pink-haired lady is doing ok and is determined to figure out wtf is going on in Akihabara.

We now cut to the rooftop where pink-haired lady is now facing seemingly impossible odds with her baseball bat now broken and as these cosplayers try to strip her of her clothing while giving her one of the most visceral beatdowns I’ve ever seen. (I couldn’t help but wince.)

Thankfully Tomatsu distracts them long enough with a fire extinguisher to where she can finally escape but the extinguisher ends up being empty and ends up saving the pink-haired lady again when he selflessly jumps in taking a broken baseball bat stabbing to the chest and the pink-haired lady proceeds to escape to help him by punching a hole in the rooftop ground.

The pink-haired lady tries to hear his dying words and starts to cry realizing all of this is her fault, she gives him a magic kiss that not only resurrects him but also makes his hair as half-glowy as her’s.

When Tomatsu wakes up she explains that she performed a ritual called “Transcend Providence” which has a number of side-effects and just when the enemies show up, Tomatsu ends up having instinctive stripping abilities instantly putting a number of these “bugged ones” in their underwear with the reflexes Hansel had in that scene from Zoolander where he instantly removed his underwear without tearing them off and reduces the small leader to being completely nude. (I couldn’t help but facepalm at this.)

The pink-haired lady gives her thanks and finally introduces her self as “Matome Mayonaka” and Tomatsu decides to call her “Mayo” for short. Mayonaka tells Tomatsu he’s no longer able to go back to his normal life and and has to fight the bugged ones along with her and decides to join her in this battle while getting her new clothes.

Overview.

Two really big questions filled my mind when seeing this episode:

1. If Oxygen kills these things, why aren’t the rest of their bodies completely covered? Not even their hands, face or bare arms? It’s not like they were “protoplasm” souls who possessed people to be sun-proof like the plot from the live action Scooby Doo movie!

And 2. Why are all the possessed individuals have so far been women? I’ve seen badly written zombie flicks at least try to explain how a virus works in comparison!

The opening theme ‘Ikken Rakuchaku Goyoujin’ by ‘Earphones’ is quite catchy if you’re into that “cheerful bubblegum” shit, so is the ending song ‘B Ambitious’ by ‘YuiKaori’.

The fight scenes next to the colorful art style are probably the only two redeeming aspects of this show. Their approach doesn’t hold back on the brutality which becomes shockingly visceral and along the lines of something like Fight Club. It often happens out of nowhere making the cutesy & colorful animation of the character designs shocking and wince-worthy whenever it takes this direction. Kinda like how in “Madoka Magica“, you wouldn’t expect the emotionally depressing & bleak storytelling to mix well with cutesy & colorful visuals.

The main reason I’m not rating this episode any lower is because the action scenes at least redeem the first episode enough to hold my attention and that’s being generous.

This is gonna be a long year…