Maid cafés are a staple of Japanese otaku culture, particularly in Akihabara where they first gained traction in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. It’s a fun, kitschy concept that allows customers to feel like royalty for an afternoon, but what if there was more to it than that? What if, behind the smiles and omurice ketchup drawings, there lay a seedy underbelly of violence and corruption that tested the mettle of even the strongest maids?
Enter Akiba Maid War, an original anime from PA Works that just debuted this Fall 2022 season. Here, maids work for yakuza-esque syndicates, engage in bloody turf wars, and gamble their organs for protection money... all while embodying the cuteness and professionalism of a true maid, of course! Here are our first impressions of Akiba Maid War!
A Bonkers Premise Treated Seriously
Now, this may sound like the writers hit “maids” and “yakuza” on a dartboard and decided to just go ham with it. And while we can’t guarantee that that isn’t what happened, there’s a bit more to the premise than a simple jumble of contrasting anime tropes. 冥途 and メイド (both pronounced “meido”) mean “underworld” and “maid” respectively, but the former is what’s actually used in the Japanese title of the show. Combine that wordplay with the rise of maid/cosplay cafés during a time of economic recession in Japan’s history and it’s easy to imagine a Tarantino-style neo-noir tale set in the pivotal years of the late ‘90s that defined so much of the country’s modern nerd landscape.
What really elevates this series to more than just a passing curiosity, though, is how serious the characters are about everything. Whether it’s a bloodbath or a karaoke performance, these girls are determined to be the best maids they can be. Even in the ending song – a mournful ballad cast against the setting sun – cutesy lyrics like “moe moe kyun” are sung with the same grandeur as those about pulling the trigger and learning the meaning of pain. Some comedy anime ruin the joke by being too tongue-in-cheek for their own good, but Akiba Maid War plays its bonkers ideas so straight that we can’t help but be swept along for the ride!
Is There Really Enough Here for a Full Series?
The only problem we can see happening here is that the anime runs out of good ideas before the season is through. So far, there hasn’t been much of an overarching story besides Ranko’s nebulous revenge mission; instead, each episode has thrust the girls of Oinky Doink Café into a different kind of thriller or grindhouse plotline that they must fight their way through. So far, we’ve had a rival café showdown (complete with gunplay choreographed to an idol tune), a high-stakes gambling battle a la Kakegurui or Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor, a few rounds in an underground fight club run by anime figurine smugglers, and a spirit-breaking bootcamp run by the ominous Creatures Group that oversees the animal-themed maid cafés.
We’re not sure what the writers will come up with next, but we’re definitely paying attention at this point. Still, if they can’t string these individual ideas together into a coherent storyline that makes sense with the world they’ve created, Akiba Maid War may squander the momentum that it’s built up so far.
Final Thoughts
We hope that this absurd anime lives up to the early promise that it’s shown in these first few episodes and becomes a dramedy classic that people can mention in the same breath as things like the Yakuza games and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. But what do you think of Akiba Maid War so far? Let us know in the comments, and thanks so much for reading!
Author: Mary Lee Sauder
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