You should watch: Akudama Drive

If Reservoir Dogs was an anime with a talking cat, it would be this.

Hi all,

Some of you were already subscribed to my Tinyletter anime newsletter, and some of you are totally new to this! Thanks for joining me as I migrate the operation over to Substack, complete with a very succinct cover image by Blue Delliquanti. To the former: Don’t worry, nothing will change. This newsletter will continue to be free and sporadic, though my thought is that the easier-to-use interface will make newsletters more frequent than one every few months.

This week, let’s get into Akudama Drive. (Watch here.)

One of the highlights of last season’s batch of anime, the sleek and tightly wound 12-episode series doesn’t hide its influences: You see it in the cyberpunk world of Blade Runner, its heist plot worthy of Heat, and its Reservoir Dogs-like ensemble cast of quick character sketches. Most of the episode titles are also the names of movies. Can’t get more obvious than that.

Our protagonist is a nice, normal girl with an office job in Osaka, which exists as a sort of vassal state to the Kanto region after a ruinous inter-Japanese war nearly wiped the former off the map. Furthering Osaka’s troubles are a proliferation of Akudama, criminals characterized as the worst of the worst. Akudama Drive’s Osaka reminds me of a Main Street Electrical parade, but with a lot more mud on its wheels. Throughout the show, each character is nameless, referred to only by their “occupation” or their relation to others — Hoodlum, Doctor, Sister, Cutthroat. And it can just take a press of a button, the merest clerical gesture, to be singled out as an Akudama.

Through no fault of her own, our normie suddenly finds herself caught up with a gang of Akudama who have reluctantly teamed up to steal a mysterious vault from a bullet train headed to Kanto; unable to push against the momentum of the situation, she becomes classified as an Akudama, a pariah, herself.

It’s such a pleasure to watch, though the currently available stream of the series includes some really blatant censorship of the especially gory bits. The series, directed by Tomohisa Taguchi (who also worked on the Persona films), constantly brings attention to its own sense of bravado and style, but I mostly found that aspect of it charming. If you watch it, let me know what you think!

---

Other recommendations:

The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen is a graphic novel that demonstrates how stories can help us articulate the things and feelings we can’t name on our own. The story follows Tien, a young Minnesotan boy who helps his refugee mother practice her English by reading fairy tales with her. While Tien struggles to communicate his queerness to his parents, the narrative cuts to those fairy tales, in which pretty girls in even prettier dresses struggle to escape the tragic fates that life has in store for them. (Buy it here.)

Attack on Titan by Hajime Isayama likely merits its own newsletter entry, but it feels appropriate to foreshadow it, at least. I’ve been reading this manga since it started in 2009, through all of its paradigm-shifting twists and upsets, so I took the time to re-read it from the beginning this weekend. The story centers on the last remnants of humanity, who live within a walled domain plagued by mysteries (see: Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haibane Renmei). Why are there giant humanoids outside, intent on eating people? Who built the walls? What else is out there? Many readers waited years for answers to these questions, but if you start now, you can just read and find out! (Buy it here.)