Akudama Drive S1E2: “Reservoir Dogs”

Is every episode of this show just named after a different movie? Looking ahead at crunchyroll's playlist, the answer is...yes, yes every episode of this show is just named after a different movie. And not just crime or action movies either, though those titles are the majority. Well, okay then.

Where we left off, seven criminals of highly variable experience and notoriety have been assembled and had bomb collars put on them by Crimelord Kitty. Let's find out what ridiculous bullshit happens next.


The episode has an in media res start. Some time has evidently passed since their forced recruitment by the Kitty King of Krime, and the seven of them are about to go out on a mission that involves something called the "Shinkansen."

According to google, the shinkansen is Japan's bullet train network. If it means the same thing in this show that it does in real life, then these guys are about to either a) use the city's train system for some courier hijinks, or b) pull some goddamned Carmen Sandiego tier shit.

Takoyaki stammers nervously. Cutthroat cackles over some blood on his knife. Courier smokes a cigarette while looking surly and disaffected off in the corner. Some switching camera angles reveal that they're standing on a train platform, and that there is a litter of dead cops (people, not robots) at their feet. These are presumably the source of the blood that Cutthroat is playing in. Kitty is also here, and everyone snaps to attention when she turns around and prepares to speak.

Roll intro!

It's a surprisingly understated OP, for such an over-the-top show. I kind of get the impression that the creators realized they wouldn't be able to top any given 90 seconds of the actual show in terms of bombast, so they opted to go the opposite route with the intro and contrast it instead. That's not to say that it's mellow, per se. It's got plenty of action poses, and a chaotic gangster-rap-ish song playing over it. But it's still lower octane than most of the show itself, and its aesthetics hinge mostly on the computer/cyberpunk theme than on the videogame bloodsplatter fights. Overall it does the job, albeit not super memorably.

Rewind two hours, to the moment the previous episode ended. Ah, okay, that "some time" in the future was significantly less than I inferred. Cat Capone has just revealed herself as the mastermind, and the seven recruits are trying to wrap their minds around this development. At first, amusingly, some of them think that Takoyaki might be behind everything and using ventriloquism to make it seem like the cat is talking. She insists that that's not it though, and Catpone distances herself from Takoyaki in order to make the truth of this clear. Hacker hears something distinctly speaker-like in the cat's voice, and suspects that it's actually a robot. And, Catpone confirms this! Alright, so it's not literally a sapient evil cat crime lord, just a cat-shaped avatar being (remotely or otherwise) controlled by the real mastermind. That's kinda too bad.

Granted, the real mastermind could just be an actual cat using robotic body-doubles. I'll hold out hope for that possibility.

When they demand to know why they have bomb collars on them (except for Cutthroat, who legitimately doesn't seem to care. I guess him having been two seconds from execution sort of puts his new situation in a different perspective, for him), Catpone says that that's just an extra precaution. Really, she's reasonably confident that the money alone should be enough to secure their loyalty.

Courier and Brawler start insulting each other to work off the tension, but Catpone has little patience for this and cuts it off almost immediately.

She's given the full reward to all of them. She never really wanted them to outcompete each other; just to make a show of competence for themselves, with whoever survived and played a role in the rescue in the end getting the full prize and a welcome aboard that they can't refuse. This also extends to Takoyaki and Hoodlum; they were technically instrumental in ensuring that the others all survived, so they're proven credits to team. No matter how they feel about this.

It's not clear if they're also getting paid for tonight, though. Catpone doesn't yet know where their bank accounts are, obviously, but will she pay them after she learns this? Possibly. She does seem to be extremely extra with regards to both carrots and sticks.

Anyway, Catpone says that they have another challenge ahead of them now. Hoodlum is eager to start, since he'd like to get a few dozen million yen. Heh, he shouldn't have opened his mouth; now Catpone just isn't going to pay them anything for it. Takoyaki, for her part, is just sinking into an abyss of existential despair. Especially when Catpone says that this next task is one that no Akudama has ever succeeded at before: attacking the Shinkansen.

Just "attacking" it? Nothing more specific? Hmm. It must mean something different in this setting after all, then.

Brawler is excited to try this task, just for the challenge. The others are much more hesitant. Hoodlum and Takoyaki are actually terrified at the prospect, the former's enthusiasm having completely inverted.

The dialogue also reveals that the Shinkansen is the only way of getting in or out of the city, and is believed to be literally sacred by the inhabitants. Hmm. Does it refer to the airship system, maybe? Perhaps. Catpone counters that people can worship it all they want, but the Shinkansen is still just a manmade piece of technological infrastructure; it's not magic, and it's not protected by anything but humans with known tech and resources.

Also, she promises a billion yen for the completion of this task. She doesn't specify if that's supposed to be apiece or divided between them, but still, that's a lot. I'm not sure who this cat is even supposed to be if she can throw that kind of money around willy-nilly. But then, I'm also not sure why she's a cat, so.

Police reinforcements are about to arrive, so they need to make tracks for now and finish the conversation in a more secure location. Fastforward back to the train station, where they're waiting for a vehicle that doesn't seem to be coming. Likely due to what they just did; this neighborhood is probably locked down by now. Also, it's a "bus" they want, not a train. I put "bus" in quotation marks because that word seems to refer to the airships. One of which an impatient Brawler now leaps onto (from nearly a kilometer away), kills the pilot of, and tries to bring to the platform to board the others. Only, he doesn't know how to drive one of these things.

The others just shake their heads and groan while Hacker maneuvers one of his drones into the bus and takes control. Which Brawler attributes to his own quick learning skills. Lol.

I guess Hacker doesn't have enough drones to carry more than one person through the air, or they'd have just flown away that way.

As they ride the bus, Takoyaki sits by herself in back and tries to convince herself that she can play the part of "Swindler" and make it out of this alive. Doctor tries to bum a cigarette off of Courier, offers him tit access when he refuses, and gets pissy when he still refuses. Cutthroat grins at the red lights outside the window, and then starts bouncing around the vehicle touching everything red that he can find. Okay, he likes blood so much because it's red I guess. Hoodlum convinces Brawler that he's a super badass who was sentenced to a million zillion years in jail for crimes so bad he can't even talk about them.

Hacker, meanwhile, just drives the airship. At least, until Cutthroat bounces into the cockpit and bangs on all the red buttons.

The button that you only press for emergencies causes the airship to go down in a trail of fire and erupting black smoke. Right, that one. You know, the emergency button. For situations where doing that can save lives.

They're going down (and also forward, at extremely high speeds...) toward a truly disgusting hotel. Like, "Saudi oil baron with zero dignity left" disgusting.

They careen toward the geisha-hologram-covered abomination like a fist of divine judgement, unable to slow or steer the "emergency-mode" airship. Then, an instant before the impact, we cut to a historical interlude. Conveyed by way of an in-universe children's edutainment show featuring a pair of extremely shitty puppets.

The story up until now, it seems, has been taking place in the sprawling of Kansai. To the east, there's another city, called Kanto, which is said to be the home of the gods and their chosen ascended. Just as I was starting to suspect that the "gods" are AI's or something equally cyberpunky, the puppets cheerfully provide us with a much more mundane, much more depressing, explanation. At some time in the past, there was a war between Kansai and Kanto. Naturally, the gods of Kanto defeated the foolish and wicked mortals of Kansai, but in their mercy they rebuilt their ruined city state and taught their people a better way to live. To this day, the people of Kansai live under the rule of the holy city, connected to it by the sacred Shinkansen, and there has been only contentment and prosperity ever since.

Okay then! I misunderstood before, when I said that the Shinkansen was the only way in and out of "the city." The city they were talking about back there during the Shinkansen discussion was Kanto. IE, the Shinkansen bullet train line is the only way for people to get into Kanto from Kansai, and is therefore every bit as defended as you'd expect an imperial capital's extraction lines to be.

I've got to give this show credit. Even though it's at least 70% parody, it's come up with a much more unique and interesting geopolitical setting than most other things in adjacent genres. When was the last time you saw "city state that's been conquered by a crazy theocracy" as the setting of a cyberpunk story? It's a novel way of arriving at the kind of social inequality, corrupt police state, heavily armed disaffected rebels, etc that would typically just be blamed on nondescript "megacorps."

It's way more interesting than a backstory needs to be for this kind of show, honestly.

Back to our antiheroes. They all survived the crash, but the airship is totalled, and the hotel isn't in great shape either. As everyone gets their bearings and grumbles or brags or politicks at each other (Brawler and Hoodlum are starting to have a serious bromance going on), Cutthroat notices that Takoyaki is pretty shaken from that crash. So, he helps Swindler to her feet. I'll just call her Swindler going forward, as it's what everyone else seems to be calling her.

She's creeped out at first, since he's, you know, himself. He's extremely sweet and caring, though, so she starts to calm down and wonder if he has a gentle, loving side as well. But then it turns out that he's only acting this way toward her because her clothes are pink, and pink is very close to red, and he loves red. So, he muses aloud in a fawning tone of voice, that means that he loves her, and that she'll be his forever. Her assessment of him naturally changes once again to take this new data point into account.

While Swindler tries to talk Cutthroat down, the others finish pulling themselves together and ask Catpone if this is a decent enough place for her to finish their next mission briefing.

Erm...is this really a secure location? It didn't look like it was closed for maintenance or anything before they crashed into it, and even if it was they did kind of crash into it in clear sight of the entire surrounding city. So...are they even alone in the building at the moment?

...my question is answered for me a moment later. No, they are not alone in the building, and even if they had been it wouldn't have lasted long. A small army of police and robots have closed in on them, and the hall they're in starts filling up with bullets.

Well, looks like I was right lol. An external cut shows even more armed men and robots taking up encircling positions around the hotel. As the airship falls out of the side of the building and smashes into the ground, they prepare for the long haul.

We overhear the officers in charge of the siege receiving word that two "executioners" are inbound to assist them, which seems to surprised and alarm the officers in question. Hmm. I'm guessing these "executioners" might be connected to whoever sent that giant killbot after the akudama in the police station? It didn't exactly seem to be under police control (even if it had roughly the same goals as them), and the akudama were all surprised to see it there, so it must not be something that city cops typically have access to even to defend critical hubs.

Maybe the executioners etc are Kanto's occupation force, rather than just local Kansai collaborators like the cops? That could be.

Back inside the hotel, the first wave of attackers have been reduced to blood, bodies, and scrap metal. Swindler is shivering in shock and trauma, with blood splatters all over her. Which naturally prompts Cutthroat to...well, I can't say I didn't see it coming, but it's still disturbing.

This is probably made slightly less creepy by the probability that Cutthroat isn't interested in anything to do with sex at all, and this really is all just him reacting to her always having red or pink stuff on her. Probably. I don't know that that's how Cutthroat works yet, but he's been fairly heavily telegraphed to be that kind of child psycho archetype (apparent physical age notwithstanding).

...nevermind. When she panics even harder because of him doing this, he explains that leaving the blood on her skin for too long will make it less pretty. Alright then, no, this is as rapey as it looked lol.

Luckily for Swindler, everyone is then called over by Catpone, who has decided to use this respite between waves of police attackers to finish briefing everyone on the mission ahead.

There's a big factory complex called the Kyushu plant where Kanai's labor and material resources are used to produce products that are then moved to Kanto via that bullet train system. Just as I surmised then, the shinkansen is basically one of those British Empire era railroads that runs from the extraction site to the harbor and nowhere else.

Swindler doesn't know about the Kyushu plant, though. Strange. I'd have thought a large enough number of Kansai residents would work there that she'd have to. Well, she's not all that smart OR all that curious or perceptive, so I guess it's plausible.

Anyway, Catpone doesn't want to do anything as ambitious or featherbrained as blowing up the shinkansen like it initially sounded. Rather, there's a shipment that she wants them to steal for her. What kind of shipment could be worth paying them (each?) a billion yen? Well, Catpone reveals that Courier's superpowered motorbike was manufactured at that plant, and also implies that Kanto is a world leader in arms development and production. So, they're gonna be stealing high-end military hardware, up to and including armed vehicles. That'll definitely pay the tab.

...

Also, I'm starting to feel like Kanto is at least partly a "take that" at the United States? The conjunction of weird chauvinistic religious practices, military-industrial complex, and imperialism-with-a-good-PR-team kind of seems like a satire of the US. Granted, there's plenty of connections with Japan's own politics to point out as well, but it could be partly both.

...

Catpone particularly wants them to grab a certain 1.5 meter vault that's going to be transported at a certain time in the near future. She won't tell them what's in the container, and it's irrelevant to the job she's paying/threatening them for regardless. They won't be able to catch up to the train once its in motion, so the plan is to hit the station while they're loading it. Of course, Kansai Station is one of the most fortified and heavily guarded positions in the entire region, which is why Catpone needs a full team of superelite infiltrators for the job.

Hmm. Catpone may be planning to just kill them all and keep the money once they've done this job, but depending on what her interests actually are she may have further use for them. I'm guessing she's either a rival tycoon in Kanto's arms industry trying to screw over a competitor, or the agent of an outside enemy. The former would probably be more in keeping with the black comedy and "everyone is an asshole" tone of the series.

Someone mentions that the only location in Kansai that's better protected than this station is the central computer facility that crunches all the city-state's surveillance and census data. Swindler mentions that this IS a place she knows about, since she goes there all the time. She seems to be genuine in this offhanded familiarity, so I suspect she works at like, the facility's food court or something. Everyone looks at her in shock, though, and Hacker whispers in awe that even he has never managed to get into that place.

For the first time so far, Swindler starts living up to her adopted moniker.

It's a good change. Up until now, she's done pretty much nothing besides panic, babble nervously, and rescue cats. Hopefully she'll start warranting the protagonist position by the end of this second episode.

So, they have their work cut out for them. It's expected to take about 20 minutes for the train to load, and if they start the operation before then the package just won't be brought out at all. The train itself is extremely heavily armored, and the only access points are the cargo doors; anything that doesn't have a cargo IFF chip attached to it will be vaporized by a deadly forcefield if it passes the threshold. None of the station or train's computers are networked, so any hacking will have to be done again on each individual machine. Ten minutes after leaving the station, the train will start passing through the "Absolute Quarantine Zone," an immense irradiated firestorm region left over from the war, so if they want to abandon the train after it starts moving they'll only have ten minutes to do so (well, Brawler can probably deal with those conditions, but probably only him). Breaking the tracks ahead of the train before it can reach the AQZ is impossible because...well, Catpone doesn't explain exactly what is defending those tracks, but says that it has a military grade defence grid that would make an overt attack on the tracks at least as hard as infiltrating the station.

Doctor says that this just sounds impossible. Catpone replies that if it weren't this difficult, she wouldn't be offering them a billion yen. Fair point, that. When Courier asks where she wants the item delivered to, Catpone says that she'll tell them that once they get their hands on the package.

Also, when Catpone talks about the AQZ, she pulls up a visual aid that fills in a little bit more historical background.

That graphic puts the TQZ in the eastern half of the Kansai region of the Honshu island, blocking off the Kanto region further east. So, these futuristic city-states are in fact their namesake fragments of a Balkanized Japan. I wonder how long it's supposed to have been since the country broke apart?

Once again, much more attention to history and worldbuilding than I was expecting from this type of story. I thought they were going to leave the location vague and just use Japanese cultural markers for the audience's convenience. A small, but pleasant, surprise.

The akudama start discussing their odds of success here. Some of them are markedly more optimistic than others (you can probably guess which tend toward which). Catpone reminds them that if anyone wants to back out, that's perfectly fine; she can just blow up their heads. Just then, there's an explosion behind them whose coincidental timing provokes some shocks and shrieks from those present. The back wall of the room they've been loitering in blows open, and a pair of what I assume are Executioners step out of the smoke.

White uniforms. Lightsaber-katana type weapons. They address each other as "Master" and "Pupil." They're this settings take on the cyber-samurai archetype that's been joined at the hip to the cyberpunk genre ever since William Gibson inexplicably decided to put one in "Neuromancer." They even get their own splash page, which may signify that they'll be recurring characters (Catpone didn't get one, true, but we also haven't seen her true body yet, so it might just be waiting for then).

Master and Pupil also introduce themselves as being under the Kansai government, though, so I guess I was off about them being Kanto soldiers. Though...I suppose it could be a case of "pro-Russian rebels" in Ukraine, or SS officers serving "under" the Vichy regime.

Nobody is happy to see these guys, except for Brawler, and even he is slightly less foolhardy than usual. Executioners are serious business, it appears. Hoodlum promptly hides behind the couch and throws his hands over his head, declaring that they're all dead. Hacker flies out the window with Catpone in hand, and wishes the others the best in this battle.

The others are understandably outraged at this, but it might not actually be Hacker's fault. It seems as likely as not that Catpone ordered him to fly her avatar to safety instead of fighting.

The fight begins, and the executioners quickly prove that their reputation is VERY well deserved. Master kicks Courier through a wall, leaving him slumped on the floor in the hallway outside. Moments later, Cutthroat makes the mistake of putting his (relatively) squishy self in between Pupil and Brawler, which results in him being hurled out a 30th floor window.

Eh, he'll be fine.

At some point, a button on a wall console accidentally gets pressed, prompting the room's entertainment suite to dim the lights, play psychedelic techno, and fill the room with holographic marine life. It's a nice little diagetic way of adding a soundtrack and dramatic animu lighting to the chaotic fight.

Brawler seems to be an even match for Pupil, until she manages to hit his arm with her lightkatana. It doesn't cut through his cortosis skin and neutronium musculature, but it does stun him long enough to be beaten down. Doctor tries to sneak up behind Pupil while she's standing over Brawler, but Pupil hears her, and cuts her throat in a spray of blood.

Well damn. I think Doctor is going to need cyber-reconstruction or the like.

After shutting off the lights and music, Pupil finds Swindler and Hoodlum hiding behind a flipped table. Since they don't seem to be attacking, and she doesn't recognize them, she pulls out a scouter and consults its read on their power levels. Facial recognition identifies Hoodlum (albeit without our camera zooming in enough to reveal his actual name ) by his criminal record and in-progress four year jail sentence. She's a little surprised to find a mere hoodlum traveling with this high-powered murderous group.

And yes, she says "just a hoodlum," and elaborates that those are the lowest and least serious of the akudama. So these aren't actually their names a la "Horse" and "Rider." I didn't think so, but you can never be sure.

Hoodlum is embarrassed to have the true insignificance of his criminal career spoken aloud. I guess he's lucky that everyone else in the room besides Swindler is unconscious. Speaking of Swindler, she does something very surprising now, and throws a sandal at Pupil. When that gets her attention, Swindler stands out in the middle of the room and tells "Mr. Hoodlum" to run and save himself while he still can.

This is the most proactive that Swindler's been since she saved what she thought was a cat back in the station. Is she just sticking her neck out for Hoodlum because she's learned that he isn't actually a killer like the others, or would she have done this for any of them despite her attitude toward criminals? She's very law abiding, but she's also cartoonishly selfless and virtuous, so it could really be either.

Pupil's scouter reports that her power level is zero; no criminal record, no arrest history. Before Swindler can explain the situation and hopefully be given a way out of this and a chance to be Takoyaki again, Hoodlum ruins it for her. He gibbers out the bullshit story that she made up earlier, about "Swindler" being so good that she's never even been identified, and that if the full extent of her crimes were known she'd be the most wanted woman in the country.

Pupil seems to buy this, much to Swindler's dismay. Hoodlum has no idea what he's just done. She learned his secret, but he's still nowhere near hers. Not that this is working out in her favor so far; obviously, this kind of show couldn't let a good deed go unpunished.

Meanwhile, Brawler and Courier have managed to get back to their feet, but Master easily beats them back down again. He gets even Brawler down to his knees, and levels his lightkatana to attempt an execution (it'll take a few hundred swings, but eventually he might get deep enough to hit an artery or something). He even has a pretty badass finishing quip that really fits Brawler perfectly:

Luckily for Brawler (and all the rest of them, probably), the bloodied Courier uses this free moment to take remote control of his superbike and bring it up to the top floor. With Master's attention of Brawler and Pupil's on Swindler and Hoodlum, he has enough time to get his bike into position and line up a railgun shot.

The force of the blast is more than the already badly damaged tower can withstand. Everything above the level of the airship impact crumbles and falls off of the building, forcing the cops surrounding it outside to flee the rubble in a blind panic.

When the smoke clears, the two executioners pick themselves up. They managed to not get blasted out of the building, even though most of the building got blasted out of the building. I'm not going to bother asking how.

They're determined to continue the hunt. I guess they're going to be our primary antagonists for the next while. Well, to the party as a whole, I mean. There's plenty of antagonism to go around within Kitty's Bunch Of A-Holes.

Speaking of them, Hoodlum, Swindler, Brawler, and Courier are warming their hands over a trash fire somewhere. Swindler is ecstatic, and somewhat disbelieving, at her own continued survival.

As they take their well-needed rest, Hacker hovers down to join them, Catpone still in his arms. No one really has it in them to complain at Hacker for ditching, which I'll attribute at least partly to them realizing that he likely didn't have a choice in the matter. Catpone expresses approval of their performance back there; surviving against a pair of Executioners is no mean feat even by high-tier akudama standards.

Doctor soon approaches. When asked how the hell she's still alive, she explains that she performed surgery on herself in the fraction of a second she had between hitting the floor and bleeding to death out her neck.

I lol'd.

The only one still missing is Cutthroat, who was thrown out the window. I'm sure he'll show up soon enough, with or without an explanation.

Catpone tells Swindler that she thinks she has an important part of her to play in the heist. Swindler begs and babbles that no, she really doesn't think this mission calls for her particular skillset. Then we cut to some sinister technological imagery.

Either part of the train system, part of the surveillance system, or a glimpse of some malevolent AI archvillain whose role isn't yet established. Anyway, that's the episode.


Well, there was some interesting stuff here. I've already talked at length at how surprised I was to have actual worldbuilding in this grimderp slapstick show, but it bears repeating. I'm normally not all that impressed with spectacle fights, but this show does it much better than many others. I can usually grasp the tactics (or lack of tactics, on the part of the dumber characters) that everyone is employing, and they seem like they're trying to be effective with the spectacle just happening naturally due to the inherent zaniness of their world. That makes a huge difference, for me. The mystery of Catpone's remote controller (assuming she isn't actually just a sentient robot cat with criminal ambitions) is engaging enough.

On the other hand, as far as characters go there really isn't much. They're basically all one-note gag characters, with Swindler arguably being the worst of the lot even if her "shtick" is slightly more complicated than some. The silliness and flatness are sort of necessary in order to make these characters palatable to the audience (they'd be unwatchable if they read as actual people), but they also make it harder to build investment rather than just distant amusement. Granted, this could change as the show continues, but in these first few episodes it didn't really trend in that direction.

Overall, I think I'd put this in the same category as Zombie Land Saga. It's a fun show, but there's not really all that much for me to analyze. I'd be happy to keep watching it, but I'm not sure I'd be happy to keep reviewing it.