English Dub Review: Akiba’s Trip Episode “Whoa, I Battled with Game Cards!”

-Insert Cliche Card-Battle Quote Here-

Spoilers Below

The opening starts with a random monologue talking about the concept of card battle games and claiming it has a major significance to history. The monolouge itself does it’s best to comedically try and take itself seriously while talking about the latest card battle trend called “Battle Creatures” and even goes as far as go show an image of Hillary Clinton & Donald Trump playing a card battle game against each other.

I shit you not, this was taken straight from the episode.

We then cut to Arisa who’s working on a youtube-style ‘Unboxing video” of some card packs proclaiming that she’s going to partake in this “Battle Creatures” card battle trend and proceeds to open every card pack in an effort to get her hands on a rare card but to no avail.

But when Tomatsu shows up to check on her, he finds the room a mess with card wrapping packets everywhere and expresses concern when he see’s her sad.

After Arisa explains what’s going on, Tomatsu out of sheer dumb luck finds one last unopened pack and encounters a rare card called “30 year Hermit”. Wow’ed by this finding, Arisa encourages Tomatsu to partake in Battle Creatures which then cuts to Tomatsu letting his idiotic imagination run wild as it briefly switches to the overly skinny, colorful, pointy, disjointed art style of the Yu-Gi-Oh anime franchise complete with large bulging hamster-eyes and before getting to the show’s long-ass intro, the narrator says “A new age begins!”

After that time-wasting intro, we then cut to Tomatsu learning his way around the cards and Kage shows up. As they talk, we see random images of the cards and contrary to game’s title, most of the titular “Battle Creatures” are pictures of aren’t even creatures at all. They’re all poorly drawn humans and glowsticks and I think one of the characters from the Akiba’s Trip videogame is spotted in one of them.

After their convo they overhear that the green-clad vigilante group from episode 2 gets into an intense argument involving a girl that was recently added to the group and strangely enough the other vigilante groups are coincidentally also having a falling out in the same cafe all because of petty jealous in-fighting, If your quick to guess the plot-twist, it can easily be seen from a mile away due to some of the characters having overly colorful highlights contrast to their normal hair color.

Tomatsu not being a simple-minded dolt for once realizes it might not just be a coincidence for all the vigilante groups to disband all because of one girl in each group and goes to his vigilante group “Electric Mayonaise” to investigate.

When Tomatsu explains what he just witnessed, his sister Nikawa knows exactly what he’s talking about. Apparently, it’s called “Cir-crushing” which is a mean-spirited game where girls who newly join a pre-existing circle of friends slowly crush the circle through petty crushes & rivalries.

Tomatsu asks where Nikawa learned something like that but we never get an answer because it abruptly cuts to Arisa finding a youtube video with the journalist guy talking about how most of the vigilante groups are disbanding while every girl who just joined was at the “center of the friction”.

Arisa doesn’t think the girls are to blame since socially awkward boys can easily get excited over a girl merely talking to them but Mayonaka asks why is all of this concurrently happening until Raitu shows up with a flyer that’s specifically aimed at the Vigilante Groups within Akiba.

The flyer is to an establishment called “Princess Company” with Raitu further pointing out how sinister and oddly specific this all seems because why would a company limit themselves to just vigilante groups with Mayonaka agreeing with Raitu.

Tomatsu decides to investigate the “Princess Company” for answers and as they go there, Tomatsu comments how this place use to be when he was forced to work at that “butler bar” from “episode 7“ which further elevates their suspicions.

When they enter the building, he’s wowed by the display of beautiful women who offer to be in their group but Arisa turns down his offer yet goes as far as to break the fourth wall saying their comfortable being part of Tomatsu’s Harem which annoys Mayonaka a bit

Arisa’s words get the attention of some dude in a jacuzzi full of wads of cash introducing himself as Iketeru Masada The founder & CEO of the Princess Company. Masada’s charm leaves Arisa smitten but both Tomatsu & Mayonaka try to tell her to stay focused due to him being a “Bugged One” as he reveals very quickly. Much like a classic Bond Villain, Masada simple-mindedly reveals his evil master plan which is to use his girls to cause “Mass Drama” in an effort to for all the vigilante groups to disband leaving the town unprotected which makes me wonder if Police even exists in this fucking universe.

Masada sicks his bugged-one female henchwomen on Tomatsu but he ends up making quick work disrobing them of their outfits with the help of Arisa & Mayonaka. When Mayonaka tries to strike at him with her baseball bat, she quickly misses and her bat gets sliced up and her skirt gets torn by a razor-bladed playing card because the plot requires a pointless panty-shot for low-brow idiot teen boys.

Although Masada is skilled in combat, he isn’t particularly fond of it but prefers card battle games which Tomatsu accepts much to Mayonaka’s annoyance and suddenly it starts to parody Yu-Gi-Oh from its art style to the episode’s recap structure.

When the card tournament between Tomatsu & Masada begins, Tomatsu summons his first creature which isn’t a creature at all, It’s a bland pudgy nerdy character called “happy nerd equipped with long-blade glowstick” vs Masada’s Card “bright-eyed hot guy” which is obviously referencing the iconic “blue-eyed white dragon” card from both the anime & card game.

For once this battle starts to actually be funny because the battle is viewed from two different perspectives. When the card players are in action, the two let their imaginations run wild while reenacting references to Yu-Gi-Oh and it’s pointy disjointed art style juxtaposed to non-card players like Mayonaka who simply view it as a normal bland card game. Mayonaka even argues with Arisa about this because they can kick their ass in real life due to him being outnumbered while Arisa prefers to suspend her disbelief about what she’s seeing because she knows Tomatsu can win by saying “Real life violence should be used as a last resort”.

The card names start to get stupider and less creature-like due to them being actual people and actions like “Drinking games” or “otaku dance squads” with Masada proceeding to have the upper hand due to his cards being ridiculous heavy-hitters including “hidden breast girl”. and even make more dumb Yu-Gi-Oh jokes by repeating the phrase “disable the effect” in rapid succession.

Arisa continues to be in awe at this absurdity while Mayonaka is still unimpressed and pointing out the holes of the story while Arisa says to her “Don’t question the tropes” but at least the jokes aren’t low hanging fruit that relies on female on male violence like the previous episodes were guilty of.

Masada puts Tomatsu at a disadvantage at first but Tomasu has an upper-hand while spouting his “I believe in my deck” speech that Yu-Gi-Oh is guilty of using and proceeds to beat him using the “30-year hermit” card from earlier which I guess becomes his “dark magician” when he mixes it with another card and finishes him off and like a Power Rangers villain he fucking explodes over a fucking card battle game??

Even Mayonaka is left in disbelief at this nonsensical bullshit and Masada is revealed to be wearing sort of a toupee with only his bangs being actual hair. The Episode ends when Kage & Tomatsu witness at the same cafe from earlier the vigilante groups apologizing to one another and for their previous behaviors due to being manipulated by Masada’s Princess company.

The credits play a different tune, this time in the form of another lighthearted J-Pop song.

Overview

The villain’s master-plan of using “Cir-crushers” was surprisingly the least stupid of the bugged ones schemes. but it isn’t saying much. Attractive (or charismatic) individuals intentionally dicking with clubs & communities through toxic, petty or sociopathic tactics is a common story in almost every rabid fandom I’ve seen.

They went places I would have never expected any anime to go, referencing things in American culture like the Trump vs Hillary election, youtube unboxing videos, and meme I had to research called “30-year-old virgins become wizards”.

 

I never got into the Yu Gi Oh anime or card battle games in general but I felt the parodies were on point and properly replicated the art style & random quotes from the show and on the plus side you don’t even need to play a dumb card battle game to get them. When Akiba’s Trip isn’t lazily relying on low-brow sex jokes or female on male violence for cheap laughs, It excels because you get the impression that it’s either written by someone that enjoys these hobbies or at least consults a knowledgeable person.