Akiba Maid War

Episode 4

The 'world' of Akiba Maid War is the effective joke the entire series is built around: The seedy criminal underworld enacted by participants of cutesy Akihabara nerd-culture. It worked great in those opening three episodes, where we could be delighted simply by the dissonance of anime maids shooting up rival establishments, gambling their lives away in a casino, or beating the holy hell out of each other in underground fight clubs. But keeping such a world open for further funtimes is going to require a little maintenance, some upkeep, some building of that world such that it can continue. So it goes that this week's fourth episode turns inward, focusing on the functions of the Oinky-Doink Cafe itself, and the realization that we haven't actually seen much merry maid activity out of the girls thus far.

If that sounds like it might come off as too grounded for your tastes, don't worry, as this week's episode still opens with Nagomi getting yeeted off a building before we flash back to a tribunal with the apparent Maid Mafia Don who gut-shots a hapless maid mook as an example before the eternally-suffering Chief is threatened with a similar sort of burn notice. Money made in the maid meido must mainly be made by maids after all, and Oinky-Doink's continued coming up short, on account of all the poorly-considered schemes involving stuff like gambling and fight clubs, needs a ringer to get them back up to standards. This is no typical training montage to surmount, with Maid Drillmaster Sano ensuring that plenty of absurd and hard-boiled turns drive what we're watching even as we remain largely localized within the cafe itself this week.

All the psychological manipulation, corporal punishment with magical-girl sticks, and outlandish wood-carving loyalty-building exercises that Sano puts the crew through are in service of provoking a driving question: What is being a maid about, particularly in the twisted context of Akiba Maid War? That's a smart point to at last address here, given how such an inquiry must be lingering after Nagomi's shocked revelation at what her new employment entails, as well as what we learned about Zoya's earlier attempt to enter the maid force last week. Sure, we can gather that someone like Ranko is out for bitter revenge (including a revelation in this very episode that she was busted for something fifteen years ago), but what motivated someone with otherwise-simplistic ambitions like the gyaru Shiipon to get involved in this cutesy criminal business?

Shiipon isn't the focus of this whole episode, but she emerges at the center of multiple angles that central "What is being a maid about?" question. The self-styling subculture appearance her fashion is built on would mark her out as an independent actor from the start, and so she's the one to most directly rub up against Sano's attempts at criminal corporate brainwashing. Extra-legal employment oughta be built on some form of freedom, you would think, so having to kowtow to the 'Organization' in 'Organized Crime' runs counter to the effectively chill vibes (firefights and explosions notwithstanding) that Shiipon sought even as Oinky-Doink was barely scraping by under Chief's leadership. We don't get a ton on her actual background, some nostalgic flashbacks to her finding what amounted to an effectively-employed home in the cafe, but it's enough to make clear that she genuinely loves the place the way it is and the kind of self-sufficient free-acting life it affords her. And her intersection with Ranko in that moment, the latter happily assisting her in potential escape, speaks to the broader points of this episode: Everyone in this underworld has some sort of backstory, big or small.

The mechanical aspects of the organizational worldbuilding alongside snippets dedicated to humanizing Shiipon shouldn't underscore that this episode is still plenty full of that absurd Akiba Maid War magic. That aforementioned Nagomi-yeeting is part of a whole overly-dramatic ploy by Sano that involves implicitly throwing all the girls off the roof, even Ranko who seemingly just kind of rolls with the whole thing! And the show is sure to spice things up as we expect at this point with sights like maids wielding chainsaws (these girls are coming for you this season, Denji) or a climactic scene of that corporate-propaganda wood sculpture being blown up with a rocket launcher. It's all intersected with scenes of temporarily-fired Chief and her panda pal Okachimachi (who is not a panda) digging through gutters and eating out of trash, because the crew behind this show apparently already caught wind of how much I love Chief specifically because of how pathetic she is. Shiipon's sighting of Chief in her critical moment, by the way, is initially played as Shiipon realizing she doesn't want to end up falling to that level, but is later made out that the gyaru simply realized how much she wanted her shitty old boss back. It's important to be happy and comfortable in the place you work.

For all those wild indulgences punctuating it I just described, I can see this still coming off as a lower-key entry in the canon of Akiba Maid War that one would otherwise hope would be continuously escalating. To that end, I can say that I really do appreciate this one's efforts in adding expansion and depth to the odd pastiche of a place its story occupies. The snippets of acting-out personality and implied background we get for Shiipon truly do sell that idea that any others like the adorable main maid Yumechi or even the friggin' panda have their own places here. And as Shiipon and her bomb makeup demonstrate in this one, having your own place where you feel like you belong can be the best reason to do anything, least of all working as a criminal murder-maid.

Rating:

Akiba Maid War is currently streaming on HIDIVE.

Chris is a freewheeling Fresno-based freelancer with a love for anime and a shelf full of too many Transformers. He can be found spending way too much time on his Twitter, and irregularly updating his blog.