English Dub Review: Akiba’s Trip Episode 3: What Happens When You Mindlessly Follow Someone Who offers you an Idol Debut”

After a one-week technical hiatus from Funimation, we’re back with our Akiba’s Trip coverage.

Spoilers Below

Episode 3 starts off with a pop-idol lifelessly singing before a glow-stick waving crowd with Niwaka watching it on TV as Tomatsu questions what she’s watching exactly.

Niwaka responds back saying it’s the concert of “Io Shiota” in which Arisa out of nowhere responds back explaining in an exposition-dump to Tomatsu that Shiota is an “Idol” within Akibahara and was once the “Center singer for GNZ34”.

In a random sequence, Tomatsu gets cartoonishly struck by a yellow electrical aura and realizes something is a bit off about the singer and after the needlessly bubblegum pop-shit that is the intro, we cut to Tomatsu briefly at the concert and coming back only to get a stern reprimand because they were supposed to be patrolling for “bugged ones” and insists they can do it late night only for Tomatsu to turn her down to watch her on TV.

He begins to keep going in his speech about seeing the experience live is better than recording it and Mayonaka’s eyes obscured in shadow and proceeds turn his back on him saying “Would you shut up?!”

We then cut to Mayonaka at a burger joint in frustration towards Tomatsu’s irresponsible behavior and rather than patrol the streets by herself, she stuffs her face in burgers with an excessive appetite equal to Goku (only less charming) and starts to regret saving him in the first episode and while the dubbed version inserts lines of dialogue, it cleary shows her eating while making it sound like she’s talking while stuffing her face.

Then we cut to a building at a maid cafe called “Maidreamin” where Tomatsu is jamming on his ear buds to some idol music and meets a friend named Kage (pronounced kah-gay) who offers him a higher quality sound to listen to the music with “canal-type earbuds”.  Tomatsu in response to this stupidly and hilariously gets the word canal confused “anal” and blindly thinks you have to shove them up your ass, (which is appropriately both the listening & viewing experience of this show in a nutshell) but Kage assures him it’s for his ears”.

As Tomatsu listens with the amplified sound of the canal-earbuds, he opens his eyes in amazement and then it cuts to him inside a headphone store where he proceeds to pine over the high-quality canal-based earbuds but instead decides to seek out something cool.

Tomatsu keeps getting put-off by the high prices of every pair of headphones he’s encountered until a crudely drawn rectangular-headed clerk helps him explaining they’re “ear speakers” and then we cut to Tomatsu with the new ear speakers and Nikawa is surprised at his purchase.

We then cut to a bar with the rectangular-headed earphone clerk and Kage bragging about the random high-quality sound-based equipment they sold to Tomatsu including some bizarrely-shaped speakers and even went as far as to purchase the vinyl edition of the “idol” music he’s listening to while the three ladies wonder wtf he’s talking about and realizes Idol songs are better heard live despite pointlessly spending money on tons of audio crap.

We then cuts back to another idol concert and it looks like they’re replaying the same footage from earlier with Tomatsu surrounded by crudely-drawn audience members waving glow-sticks around like idiots and then it cuts to him coming back and receives a credit card bill which becomes a rude awakening for the needless crap he spent and the money is in the millions at this point.

Tomatsu goes back to the job agency with the weird fingerless-gloved lady seeking a job that’s quick and simple and the gloved lady in response says she has some “perfect jobs” for him.  We then cut back to the three ladies with Mayonaka’s frustrations further exacerbated by Tomatsu’s slacker-ish behavior but Niwaka innocently tries to assure her this is how he sometimes acts when he’s “fixated” on something.

Arisa understands what’s going on in Tomatsu’s mind and by extension, the minds of people who adore the “idol” scene and hopes that she herself will someday become one and abruptly out of the blue, a strange lady shows up in a business outfit with a camera-man and holding what looks like a cross between a smoking pipe and a french cigarette holder offering her an idol job and while Arisa is thrilled, Mayonaka & Nikawa scream with apprehension.

They begin to talk at a cafe and they read out loud the business lady’s card that says “Chibusa Benikage” which turns out to be a name Arisa knows and in another exposition-dump, she explains Chibusa is a “famous former idol” who later wrote a play about her own experiences regarding the darker aspects of the industry called “Why don’t they Pay?” which became a success and moved on to be a media producer while the camera-man introduces himself as “Naisu Muramura”.

As the title of the episode implies, Chibusa is offering the three an Idol job wanting help them with their first debut with Arisa roping them into it despite the both of them objecting for different reasons. (Nikawa feels this is happening too fast while Mayonaka has a responsibility to protect people.)

Chibusa gives them the Idol team name “Mainas” and has them get in shape with a needless exercise jump rope montage that only exists to show closeup bouncy-boob shots with sound effects that tries too hard to be titillating for idiot teenagers (It’s even worse because Nikawa is underaged juxtaposed to the other two).

The second part of the montage has them learning to keep their composure in public settings by learning how to shake hands fast, proceeded by climbing a fake mountain while the camera-guy captures butt-shots and randomly it cuts to Tomatsu as it’s revealed that the series of jobs he’s partaken range from washing skyscraper windows to being an Amazon.com-style delivery guy.

It then cuts back to the main three girls as they’re being harassed by perverted fiends taking upskirt shots with their cameras and Naisu proceeds to take shots of Arisa & Mayonaka eating phallic shaped food and while I can let that slide since Mayonaka & Arisa are older, it doesn’t help that they had Nikawa licking a chocolate banana suggestively (I fail to see the hilarity of an Idol agency sexualizing a small child).

Meanwhile, at the job agency, Tomatsu demands another job from the fingerless-gloved woman who has just the job for him involving janitorial work during an Idol event.

We then cut to the three girls with Arisa being put-off by Mayonaka saying she can’t wear a bathing suit with Nikawa backing her up that she can’t wear skimpy clothing even if she wants to (since her species dies when they wear little to no clothing due to “too much oxygen” or some shit…)

Nikawa is understandably worried about the five men who are  in nothing except white undies but Naisu assures them they’re the “shower-squad” which cuts to a scene of Nikawa innocently perceiving what it means in her head. It may seem comical to some but even I went “WTF?” at the imagery.

Naisu gets Arisa to be in more suggestive poses at poolside and just as she’s about to go topless the two women stop her by pointing out how shady & unacceptable this all seems but Arisa stupidly thinks if she gets topless now she won’t have anything to fall back on career-wise. Chibusa shows up and reveals that the idol auditions were a scam intended to trick the three into filming “low-budget pornography”(This was carefully foreshadowed when Chibiusa told them earlier that “No Idol can succeed without a great body”).

Understandably disgusted by Chibiusa’s dishonest tactics, Mayonaka tells them off only for the big reveal that Naisu and Chibusa were “bugged ones” the whole time and like a bond villain, Naisu overzealously shares their diabolical plan to take over Akiba by having an Idol as a figurehead.

Chibiusa sends out the “Kurobug” imps to attack them and Mayonaka tells Nikawa to get to safety as her and Arisa combat the situation only for Nikawa to slip and fall face-first on the ground and in a suspenseful scene, which comes to a small comedic halt when the “shower squad” tries to jump in only to be cartoonishly thrown into the pool but as the imps are about to attack Nikawa, Tomatsu shows up in a janitorial outfit kicking their asses.

As Tomatsu tries to be clever by making cleaning puns about the ass-kicking he’s about to deliver we cut to an awkward silence before Mayonaka warns him to stay focused and after undressing Chibusa, they realize it’s Naisu who’s controlling the imps so Tomatsu uses his new “crowd control” skills from his experience in idol concerts to slide his way out of the crowd of imps and after quickly getting him nude, he throws him inside the pool along with the imps where he disappears in a small explosion of purple smoke & nothingness.

Chibusa wakes up with no recollection given that she was possessed and they cut to another scene with just her in a robe giving an apology by offering them a legit idol job with her as the producer, however Arisa is the only one who’s excited and we then cut to the 3 main girls performing a pop-idol stage dance in a choreographed dance-number singing entirely in Japanese which does its job to be catchy with its core audience.

After the song ends, it’s revealed that the crowd was small with only Tomatsu fawning over them much to Arisa’s annoyance that despite finally experiencing her dream, had higher expectations for a bigger crowd, but Nikawa points out there wasn’t enough time to publicize the event due to how sudden all of this was and the episode ends with Mayonaka not minding the praise regardless of how many people showed up.

Overview.

I think part of my main problem with this episode and, by extension, this show so far is that I’m mostly seeing this through the eyes of an average American and not as an “otaku”. Arguably I have an understanding towards the randomness of Japanese culture and I can see what this episode was attempting to satirically delve into. However the satire clashes and contradicts itself when it tries to be controversial.

Often times it felt like the idol that was singing lifelessly was done on purpose, as a satirical jab towards the way people can blindly get caught up in shitty pop-music in general. I’m surprised the singer herself wasn’t a “bugged one” which would’ve been a plausible yet predictable twist in the context of this badly written universe.

For some strange reason, whether we are dealing with a protagonist, a scantly-clad woman or a key character in the plot, there are random background characters who are drawn crudely with circles for faces, rectangular heads, and black-dotted eyes. All of this is inconsistent with the previous episodes where characters are normally drawn and feels both cheap & irritating.

During the scene when Mayonaka gorged on those burgers, I think it’s obvious that Mayonaka became more conscious about that kiss she had compared to the previous episodes when she resurrected Tomatsu but what is this hinting towards? A forced romance like every other anime that involves an angry bitch juxtaposed to an happy/goofy male protagonist? At least she’s less violent towards him in this episode which is why the rating is slightly up.

If I’m sounding repetitive with the issues I have towards Akiba’s Trip so far, that’s only because this show itself is.