Akudama Drive S1E1: “Se7en”
This review was fast lane commissioned by @Doby Mick.
I know nothing about this series. @Doby Mick warned me that it was exceptionally violent and gory, but that's about it. So, let's watch some violence and gore I guess. First episode is titled "Se7en," which is a proto-1337 substitution I've seen before at least twice or thrice. Less cliched in Japan, maybe.
We start out with ominous, low-energy music, and an artsy pan over what looks like...I wanted to say Seattle, but that isn't actually the Space Needle I don't think. Similar, but not the same.
Panning down, and settling into higher detail, we see a really beautifully animated cyberpunk metropolis. Actually, "cyberpunk" might be the wrong word, because this place is much too lively and happy looking to be "punk." Still images don't really do justice to seeing the streetlife and holograms in motion, but even so, just look at this place:
The music picks up, and it's very unique. Sort of a Chinese flavored techno piece, that conveys alienation and foreignness but is much lower-key on the dread and oppression than you might expect. Which certainly fits the visuals.
Also, there's a kitty.
Some brighter, more dramatic holographic walls split the cityscape suddenly. The kitty watches them, their light reflected in its kitty eyes.
Then, we cut to a happy-go-lucky young woman going through her morning routine. She puts on her shapeshifting smartclothes, reads the holobulletins displayed against the sky as she leaves her apartment (most of them are mundane sounding, except for one about a public execution that her eyes linger on. Well, okay, maybe this place is actually kinda dystopian after all lol), and heads to work. She rides an airship there, and then...we jump to evening, with her riding back to her home neighborhood. That was a little abrupt, not gonna lie; had to rewatch it to get that there was a timeskip.
On her way home, she sees a cat (not the same one from the intro) about to be hit by a car, and runs out into the road to grab and dash to safety with it. She and the cat escape unharmed, but the car ends up hitting the forcefield at the side of the road as its driver swerves out of the way, leading to her being yelled at by the driver and many passers by.
That cat just letting someone grab and run with it without scratching is kind of a headscratcher. Gengineered future cats that are more trusting, maybe? Could be.
The girl apologizes for causing the accident as she reaches the other side of the street, and sort of morosely walks into an alley. The cat eventually decides that it doesn't want to be carried by this random person anymore, and wriggles free; I guess even futuristic genetic engineering has its limits. She's distracted from her feline misadventure when she looks up and happens to see a takoyaki stand. She was on her way to get some food before going home anyway, and she hasn't had takayoki for a while, so she orders some.
The tough looking guy ahead of her in queue accidentally drops some change before he leaves with his food, and she goes chasing after him trying to return it. Dawww, what a cinnamon bun. He ignores her calling after him, so she follows him to his futuristic motorbike-type-thing to wave it in his face. He still seems loathe to acknowledge her existence.
When she makes herself impossible to ignore, he tells her that dropped change is bad luck, so he doesn't want it anymore. While she's wheedling, he throws his disposable takoyaki tray on the ground, and then she starts lecturing him about littering.
...okay, she's crossing the line from saccharine to obnoxious now.
He blows her off, driving his scifibike away. She whines into his dust cloud, and eventually throws his tray away and returns to the stall to get her own. She doesn't have cash, though, and the vendor doesn't take the futuristic credit-equivalent that she offers. The girl looks at the dropped coin she picked up a minute ago. It's exactly enough to pay for the meal, but she doesn't want to use it. Either because she's started believing in the bad luck thing, or (more likely, given her anything) she's loathed to use someone else's money even after they've made it clear they're not coming back for it. She stares at the coin for a painful few seconds, before asking the vendor if she can run to an ATM and come back. The vendor accuses her of planning to ditch without paying, and calls the cops. The girl is promptly arrested and dragged into a precinct full of surly cyborg thugs.
Um...did that actually happen, or is she just catastrophizing in her imagination? I'd think the latter, but...I dunno, something about how detailed this all is makes it seem like it's supposed to be real. Also, we cut to the motorbike guy now, which makes this seem like it's supposed to be an actual cliffhanger. So I guess I'm about 70/30 on her actually having been arrested? 65/35?
So, Motorcycle Guy now. He's meeting with a couple of shady looking men in leather jackets like his who wire some credits to his account and give him a small box to take to a place called Nishinari warehouse, where their gang is in dire need of it but where these two men can't show their faces in person for whatever reason. They give him the standard gangland courier sendoff ("if you run away with this you're dead fucking meat!") and off he goes.
In style.
He cartoonishly bike-parkours across the city while bombastic music plays for a while, aided by his vehicle's built-in magnetic treads, grappling hooks, and jump jets. Interrupted only by this informative still:
"Estimated sentence?" I guess he either escaped prison, or that's just an approximation of what he's likely to get if they catch him.
There's also a random James Bond shot where he shoots the camera for no reason, lol.
Anyway, he gets to his destination, where two gangs are having a slapstick shootout.
The gunfire briefly stops when his bike crashes through the roof of the building. I thought it was down to shock at first, but no, it's just etiquette. They all politely wait for Motorcycle Man to hand the device to its recipient, who thanks him tersely, and then they wait for him to get out of the way before resuming their battle.
Motorcycle Man leaves, and the warehouse explodes behind him. He doesn't seem like he expected this, but he doesn't seem surprised by it either. Just sort of nonchalantly accepting of the outcome. If nothing else, the deliverers' warning that he was dead if he failed to deliver it in time wasn't a threat at all, just a good natured safety precaution. So that was nice of them.
He lights up a cigarette and takes a little break for himself after this high-speed mission, but his break is interrupted by his smartphone. Someone just wired him several million yen (I guess we're actually in future Japan then, if the currency is named) along with a message to pick up the briefcase laying on the ground to his right. He looks to the right, and yup, there's a briefcase.
A shady job, even by MotorMan's extremely low standards. But it's an amount of money he can't refuse, so he picks it up and waits for his next instructions.
Elsewhere in the city, a long haired man is under attack by an army of several hundred police robots.
He's already killed about as many, judging by the size of the pile he's standing on, but he doesn't seem confident about this next wave. Perhaps he's tiring, or just running low on ammo. After musing on it for a second though, he decides to have a better attitude about this, and proceeds to tear the robots apart with his bare hands. He then gets a splash page much like the Courier's.
As he starts scavenging the robots for parts, he receives a text message. It's related to that public execution that was telegraphed earlier. Someone is willing to pay a handsome sum to have that execution prevented, and will also be regarding it as a chance for this "Brawler" to prove his usefulness for future jobs. Brawler seems to be tickled by the offer. Something about his reaction makes me think that "Cutthroat" is someone known to him. An old rival or something, perhaps? If so, rescuing them would be one hell of a one-upmanship show.
We then cut to a kid in a classic blue-hued hacker cave, insinuating his way into a major bank's information network.
Let me guess, is his name going to be "Hacker?"
Either these criminals are not very creative with their underworld pseudonyms, or these are their actual names and they really just never were given a fair shot in life.
Like the others, Hacker receives a message promising 100 million yen for the rescue of Cutthroat. We get a little more information this time too; our mystery employer is now informing everyone that they're calling upon multiple parties, but will give the prize to only the ONE of them who succeeds at the rescue. This is a competition, not a heist recruitment sequence.
Hmm. The only "named" character to not be given this pitch is Courier. He was just paid a similarly massive sum to deliver a package. Hmm.
Next, we cut to a train, where an old man has collapsed onto the floor clutching his chest and convulsing. Oh boy, who are we introducing now? The Assassin? The Poisonmaker? The Guy Who Pretends To Be Dying And Then Robs People? A scantily clad woman gets up from her seat and tells everyone, in a breathy femme-fatale-ish voice, not to worry, there's no need to call an ambulance. She steps up to the convulsing man and kicks him roughly onto his back.
There's a flurry of scalpels and bonesaws, many close-up shots of cleavage, and heart monitor sound effects. The Doctor gets to work, and her splash page drops. It's very, very Araki-looking.
"Doctor." That doesn't really have criminal connotations like the other names/pseudonyms have so far, but I have a feeling she'll do her best to make up for it with onscreen behavior.
And, sure enough, she starts operating on the man having the heart attack, right there on the floor of the moving train. No sterile environment, no preparation or warning. Several other passengers start crowding around and asking what the hell she's doing. She tells them to stop distracting her, and stabs each of them to death with a scalpel to make them stop distracting her. She then stitches up the heart attack patient, who she's apparently saved.
"When the patient woke up, his skeleton was missing and the doctor was nowhere to be found! Hahahahaha!"
This one is definitely a little further outside of the criminal norm than the others.
She gets a message similar to the others we've just been introduced to, and seems as enchanted with it as the rest. Smiling, she tucks her phone back into her cleavage (we saw her draw and replace at least half a dozen other items in there over the last 120 seconds. Wonder if she can crack walnuts with them too...) and murmurs to herself that this could be a pleasant distraction.,
I wonder if there was any conscious Team Fortress 2 inspiration in this show. This "meet the team" montage is EXTREMELY TF2. Not just the structure, but the type of dark slapstick humor and over the top cartoon violence. Granted, the art style looks like it might also have taken a nod or two from the Borderlands series, so if anything I'd suspect this series had multiple videogame influences.
Cut to the police station. I'm guessing the rest of the team-to-be will get their introductions in the second half of the episode, since that's only four so far and the episode title is "Se7en." Granted, Cutthroat and Busybody Takayoki Girl might be the fifth and sixth members of the team, but even then we'd still be missing one. Maybe the person who's offering the 100 million yen prize is number seven.
Anyway, it's almost execution time for Cutthroat. We cut to them restrained in a cell, and...okay this just HAS to be riffing on Ergo Proxy:
Is there any way this isn't riffing on Ergo Proxy? There is not any way this isn't riffing on Ergo Proxy.
I'd continue this review for at least a little while before splitting it, since I'm not quite at the halfway point and at only *just* over 2K words. However, I'm also at SV's image limit (this really is a very visual show), and I have a feeling that there's only going to be more to talk about after this point now that the introductions are at least mostly out of the way. So, this is as good a point as any to cut it.
