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Akiba'S Trip The Animation
Episode 9

by Paul Jensen,

How would you rate episode 9 of
Akiba's Trip: The Animation ?
Community score: 4.3

What do you do when you can't defeat the bad guy in an actual fight? You challenge him to a card battle, of course! Trading card games are the center of attention in this episode of Akiba's Trip, with a particular focus on their ubiquitous anime tie-ins. Tamotsu gets into the “Battle Creatures” game after finding one rare card in a giant box of booster packs, but his quest to build the perfect deck is put on hold by the appearance of another Bugged One. In order to save Akihabara's vigilante groups from being broken up, Tamotsu must defeat an evil CEO in a winner-take-all card battle.

This episode builds on the narrative formula that worked last week: use a bare-bones story premise to set up an obvious genre parody. Most of the jokes aren't so much about card games themselves as they are about the TV shows that seemingly pop up every season to promote them. From the visual style to the common plot points, an impressive number of genre tropes come up in the space of twenty minutes. Characters' appearances change dramatically when it's time to duel, Tamotsu and his opponent both use silly wrist accessories to draw their cards, and victory comes from believing in one's deck and getting the right card at the last minute.

This isn't exactly the hardest genre to poke fun at, but Akiba's Trip does a good job all the same. It goes just far enough overboard to be funny, and most of the humor is rooted in a solid understanding of how these shows work. The characters' decks match their personalities, with Tamotsu sending his army of otaku creatures to fight his opponents' wealthy playboys and groupies. There's also a funny, if overused, running joke where the visuals revert to the two guys sitting at an ordinary card table whenever Mayo interrupts the game to ask a mood-killing question. Having been both a player and a spectator in real-life card games, most of the momentum shifts in the battle felt familiar to me, even though they were exaggerated for comedic effect. Anyone who's played with a counterspell deck in Magic: The Gathering will recognize the “I disable the effect that disables the effect” jokes immediately.

While I enjoyed the card battle parody more than I expected to, the narrative frame around it is pretty clunky. It feels a little too long to be so underdeveloped, almost as if the premise of otaku friends feuding over pretty girls would have worked better as a separate episode. This seems to be an ongoing challenge for Akiba's Trip; at some point, it needs to find a more efficient way to set up each week's subculture showdown. While it's not a deal-breaking issue, it tends to take up screen time that could've been put to better use expanding on the show's strong points.

Even so, Akiba's Trip feels like it's moving in the right direction. This episode carries the positive momentum from last week and continues to refine the “resolve conflicts through otaku humor” formula. It's still light on dramatic content and narrative cohesion, but a strong sense of self-deprecating humor can make up for a lot. As long as the series continues to stick to its strengths, it should be able to make its mid-season slump a thing of the past.

Rating: B+

Akiba'S Trip The Animation is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.


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