if I had a nickel for every time I watched an anime with visible cygames sponsorship that was extremely over the top, I'd have two nickels and also be wondering if I am missing some nickels somewhere
I've gotten pretty good at doing my wanikani flashcards every day. they're something snackable to finish off while I'm groggy in bed, rolling around on the train, or just in line at the conbini. one of the words that pops up in wanikani endgame (which puts you somewhere near being able to bs JLPT N2, as I found out) is 冥土.
冥土 means "underworld (in the Hades sense)". it is read meido. "haha, meido," I thought at one point to myself, probably while walking to the home furnishings store to pick up some toilet paper. it turns out I wasn't the only one who thought this.
welcome to akiba 冥土 war.
akiba maid war is a fairly easy to explain idea. what if you took an over-the-top crime drama and just put like, moe moe kyun into it?
the show is set in the gritty 1990s akihabara, where turf wars run the maid cafes of electric town, and maids are shanked in the streets on the regular. in one episode, some recurring customers mournfully discuss how this is the first time they've had their oshi maid die. as I type this, I wonder if they would also celebrate if their favorite racked up a body count? nobody's supposed to know, but there's hardly a lip that can stay sealed in the face of carrots and guns.
anyway, the show centers around Nagomi, a typically cheerful protagonist who brings naivety and optimism to Tontokoton Cafe (gleefully localized as Oinky Doink Café), a bottom-feeding family of the Animal Group.
her idealism is immediately doused in enough blood to make a 1974 Chevy Nova blush, shed at the hand of deuteragonist and fellow maid Ranko, a properly stoic foil with a lot of buried history in town and a willingness to get her hands dirty to protect what's important to her.
together, the two form the driving force of the show, which careens between a few modes, including genre parodies, over-the-top violence, and scriptwriting out of a Like a Dragon game.
to say it is cohesive would probably be an exaggeration - the show takes a break the episode after an impactful death to play a game of baseball (which shows the town meaningfully changing but still... it's a very one-note, long game of baseball) - but it is exceptionally watchable and eventually hits its stride by nailing home a bunch of character-driven moments that tie all the loose ends of the plot together, from prison to panda, in a way that gives me the rollercoaster Like a Dragon feel I desired.
I will admit that I hunted for those moments, and I am very biased, since maids are not really my cup of tea and doing wotagei with guns was cringy to me approximately every time, but there is simply something that feels right about a mafia drama that takes two characters, formerly friends, who were forced down separate paths in life due to things they can't take back, and places them on a collision course with each other, destined to have a fight they don't know if they want to win.
that's just good content! like a Like a Dragon game, it's not realistic nor is it fully sensible - but it is entertainment, baby.
the genre parodies take a close second, launching the show off to a start down a slightly sillier track - the second and third episodes cover underground gambling and fight club episodes (shoutouts to the アキバふわふわぁすい～とくらぶ, which flickers its lights to reveal アキバふぁいとくらぶ), which hit upon common tropes in the genre in entertaining fashion before immediately swerving right into "well that scheme actually worked extremely terribly and not at all so uhhhhh Guns Time".
honestly it's a subversion of expectations so blunt that it makes me cackle, and extremely fitting of the Oinky Doink Cafe crew, who on their best days are weirdos, and on their worst days are losers. the manager of the place, who I spent weeks thinking was actually that one disaster woman from Chainsawman when I saw her on Twitter, earns a special spot as the leader with exactly, or possibly less than, zero redeeming qualities - and both she and the scriptwriters know it.
the final scene of Akiba Maid War (not counting the post-credits, which do exist) is one that perfectly embodies every one of the things it brings to the table - its drama, its violence-as-antics, its ridiculous characters - and puts an exclamation mark on the series with a cathartic, over-the-top tension release.
I don't think it's a series that is for everyone - I can imagine it being both too silly and too serious at the same time for some, and the maid dressing is certainly the cilantro of theming - but I think it scratches a certain itch that I was happy to have scratched