Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Akudama Drive
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fantaselion
Posts: 351 |
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My eyes are glazing over on this explanation, like seriously WUT? |
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Yuvelir
Posts: 1620 |
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Huh. Well. When this started I expected most of the characters in the first episode to die, but I didn't expect the takoyaki lady to be the only to (maybe) survive. I also didn't expect Courier to be dumb enough to enter Kansai aboard the shinkansen.
But boy, even if they went they did so with a bang. With several bangs. With lots of bangs. And a "fudge the police" as literal as it was bombastic. Swindler got her title card right at the end just as she commited her biggest swindle (come think of it, she spent the entire series directing where to go), although I don't know how she got Hacker's... stuff, or why she set up a blackout (with so much of a delay). On the other hand, what about Pupil? She seemed to be in the middle of a turncoat arc but that didn'ty go anywhere. |
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fantaselion
Posts: 351 |
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According to https://twitter.com/RanobeSugoi/status/1342189491692261376?s=19 the blu-ray will have 5 minutes of extra content about the executioners that had to be cut due to anime airing time constrants. |
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SHD
Posts: 1757 |
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Actually, if you follow the link to the Akudama Drive website they list the main additional scenes, and yes, they include scenes with the executioners but there's more than just that.
Quick & dirty: - Pupil & her Kouhai talking about their different views re: the Shinkansen. - Pupil & Kouhai scene after they fought the Courier, what the Pupil thinks of the Kouhai being terrified. - Kouhai making his will clear. - Scene with the Courier, the Brother & the Sister. The Sister showing some doubts. - The Pupil thinking about what it means to be an Executioner, gripping the Master's beam saber. - The Pupil confronting the Boss, showing their conflicting pride. - Scene with the little girl with the gun and the Kouhai. - The Pupil talking about the future and her strong beliefs in it. - Scene showing the relationship between the Master & the Pupil, this will include a very important line. - The Courier riding his bike like a boss, with the Brother and the Sister, in the final showdown. The rest is, I assume, smaller action scenes scattered here and there. Anyway, understandable loss of focus on the Executioners aside, this episode was the textbook definition of "sticking the landing". What a finale! Spectacle and emotions! And while this show will never be remembered for being high-brow, Swindler finally becoming an actual swindler just as she's claiming to be an ordinary citizen was just amazingly delicious. I honestly didn't expect to like this show at the start of the season, and I never ever expected it becoming my favorite anime of the year (right next to Deca-Dence). This will be a show I come back to over and over again! |
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overlordrae
Posts: 92 |
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This was a hell of a finale and I enjoyed the irony of Swindler claiming to be an ordinary citizen after she finally accepts that she is not an ordinary citizen. The collective realization of the citizenry that the state declaring someone is a criminal without trial to justify the force used against said person is certainly a poignant one in this day and age.
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11537 |
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It'll do. I enjoy how much you enjoy this series as much as I enjoyed the series. |
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90s-shonen-fan
Posts: 19 |
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and its unequivocal hatred of cops fully assuaged those fears
This is what cops are as an institution, and they deserve no sympathy or well-rounded character arc for it. It's beyond reformation. Especially in light of If anything is going to call itself “cyberpunk,” this is the bare minimum amount of revolutionary messaging I want out of it. Please explain? |
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tintor2
Posts: 2039 |
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Epic finale. After Danganropa I kinda expected a really dark but hopeful ending. I mean the series could have ended in the previous episode but they went really all out with providing the most overthetop endings to Courier and Swindler
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jdnation
Posts: 2070 |
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Excellent show! Fantastic production! A simple, but satisfying and well told story!
There's plenty of think about too amongst all the spectacle, and it's a highlight for sure! Glad it didn't pull its punches right up to the end!
Errr... because destroying the property and businesses of innocent people is exactly the sort of thing that leads to mass-poverty, and increasing the burdens on children, and results in more crime and murder. Your local mom'n'pop businesses that are burned down and looted and destroyed aren't Apple and Amazon, even if they are franchisee places, and let's not forget the other people employed there who would like to count on getting their wages for food and rent. So, no, it's not 'the same', but nobody is saying it is, and such rioters are no better than the same thugs they are protesting against.
Whoa there... this is exactly the same kind of tunnel-thinking that leads to the thing you are protesting against. This is also not what the show is about. As evidenced some of the executioner characters are clearly concerned with stopping actual knife wielding maniacs and child predators, and do possess a conscience and belief in their proper duty. The irony of the show is that it largely begins with a misunderstanding and a technology-dependent system that doesn't understand nuance. It's not 'anti-cop', but rather demonstrates corruption and failure of authority. There's no humanity in the system. It's technological labelling gone wrong... if anything this is also a metaphor for the problems with online social-media and how misunderstandings and out-of-context viral videos and news can be taken in a wholly wrong way. If anything it was Swindler's fake news that made the citizens become afraid and go berserk. So she's wholly to blame for that as well, even though we know she didn't intend it to go that far. Welcome to the power of carefully crafted online campaigns and deceptive editing, context and media. Where people are conditioned to respond to the soma of likes, dislikes and beeping bloop-de-bloops. Heck you can even make a case that this is what a authoritarian regime would look like trying to control people during a pandemic or general pandemonium. Akudama Drive isn't about anything specific other than to shed light and darkness on both sides. The Akudama ARE powerful and actual murderous criminals or con-artists! But they are also human and have their own personal motivations. Much like the cops. This ain't a black and white affair, and that's why it works. You sympathize with characters on both sides of the aisle. |
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SHD
Posts: 1757 |
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Reviewer having their "North-American-In-2020" glasses firmly welded on, and thus not noticing that the show is commenting on authoritarian systems and not the police per se. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ |
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Yuvelir
Posts: 1620 |
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Cyberpunk is punk. The purpose of the genre is to use the convenience but also the alienation of technology to denounce corporativism and authoritarism, and how that technology is used to drill propaganda 24/7. Repressive forces like the police get little sympathy because they're one of the key instruments of that all-devouring authority. Although saying that no single cop gets sympathy in cyberpunk... yeah, that's not how it goes. It's pretty usual to find the single cop/soldier/agent who has to learn the hard way that the system they served was manipualting and using them to hurt themselves and everything they thought they stood for. That said, even though she will get more scenes Pupil's case is not so important, since she didn't fight for justice, peace, the country, the people or whatever, she fought to serve her groomed hatred for Akudama. Then again, this show WAS particularly criticizing police forces (and in the end Boss was just power hungry, not righteous but misguided). Afterall what Hakobiya sliced in half wasn't a government hall, or the Seal Office or the Shinkansen which was the highest symbol of Kanto's rule (someone else did that, not by accident); it was the Kansai Police Dept. |
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Zeino
Posts: 1098 |
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But the real question here is Akudama Drive a superior Cyberpunk series to Psycho-Pass?
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lossthief
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 1440 |
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And the authoritarian system it's commenting on is the police. I don't know what mental gymnastics you managed to get "this show where the cops are a corrupt force that arbitrarily uses the label of criminality to justify violence" is somehow not commenting specifically on policing but you get the Gold. |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4138 |
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Death is hardwired into DNA. The word used to describe the effect of out of control body growths is "cancer". Considering human brains used in place of hard drives is called wet ware. The capability for digitizing personality isn't based on processing power but storage capacity as doing it faster isn't as impressive as doing it at all. Or as this series put it: buzz word, buzz word, buzz word. Finale: I saw this series, thank god I don't ever have to see it again. Swindler swindling the general populace into thinking she was merely an ordinary citizen so when the Executioners killed her on the air, they saw one of their own being killed. That was the highlight of the series. The rest of it was rather meaningless sadly. Swindler did destroy Kanto which would make the need for the twins moot . "Well, we were chasing them for Kanto. Let's just keep doing it." I thought Cutthroat only left a few Executioners alive... I don't know. And it's like I said previously, faceless fascism isn't fascism, it isn't even authoritarianism. The police lost control of the situation when their bureaucrat who declared people Akudama shot himself. It was democracy who put him in that position and the police never overstepped the authority given to them. It was only perceived that it was which set the people on yet another lawless rampage.
Oh, is that what happened or what you wanted to happen? |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4138 |
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Did they take power or were they given it? I rate the police here higher on the scale of Fascism to Democracy than the cops in the world of Judge Dredd and people love Judge Dredd for some reason. He's Judge, Jury and Executioner, Executioners are... wait, which one again? They're not Judge and they're not Jury... I forgot. They're just one of them though. Jury is public opinion, Judge is Democratically elected or appointed. Honestly, it serves the masses right for being entertained by the people called Akudama at the start of the series. |
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