Gachiakuta

Episode 11

Sometimes, it all comes down to execution. “Amo's Hospitality” is an episode that could have so easily fallen apart. It mostly consists of characters standing around in a single room and expositing at each other; the newest villain, Amo, is a Half-Naked Anime Scene Girl™ type who is so #Damaged that she speaks in the 3rd person and alternates between a cutesy-poo persona and the typical crazy girl shtick; and plot-wise, the entire episode revolves around getting back to the cliffhanger from the first episode, meaning that the story only advances by maybe five minutes of in-universe time by the time credits roll. On paper, “Amo's Hospitality” just shouldn't work. In practice, though? It's easily my favorite episode of Gachiakuta yet.

Like I said, it all comes down to execution. Every facet of this episode's writing and production just clicks with me in such a way that it takes all of those hypothetical negatives I listed and spins them into solid gold anime entertainment. Let's start with the setup of the episode. I've seen so many mediocre episodes of anime that consist of nothing but lazy exposition, but “Amo's Hospitality” uses the talky standoff that Amo and the Cleaners wind up in to generate some genuinely thrilling tension. I love that the crew realizes that Amo is cracked basically right away, and once her scent-manipulating powers reveal themselves and begin screwing with everyone's brains, the fun comes from seeing who breaks down under Amo's control first, and how. Delmon is an easy pick to basically act as an exemplar of Amo's abilities; she twists people's memories of love and passion and redirects them towards her in order to gain new “fans” that will fight on her behalf. What's much more compelling is how Rudo ends up falling victim almost immediately after, but I'll get back to that in a moment.

Before I do, I want to take a moment to acknowledge how well Amo works as a new antagonist, despite everything working against her. This is partially due simply to Gachiakuta's strong sense of style and characterization. The legitimate fury and sadness underpinning all of Amo's actions make her feel more nuanced than the straight bonkers masochist that Jabber proved to be. I also can't give enough kudos to both of Amo's actresses, Kana Hanazawa and Celeste Perez. In both Japanese and English, Amo's performance manages to walk that razor thin balance of sounding legitemately delicate and broken before flipping to sounding legitemately unhinged. We've seen plenty of characters like this before, but they so often end up reading as lame pastiches of other, better performances. Here, Amo holds her own as a brand new character with a lot of baggage and a lot of dangerous power hiding in those stanky-ass boots of hers. A force to be reckoned with, indeed.

Back to Rudo, though. My favorite aspect of this entre episode is how every element of the production comes back to the root of Gachiakuta's success: Emotion. From the beginning, Taku Iwasaki's discordant and eerie score underlines the tension and the pathos at the heart of Amo's powers, and this reaches a crescendo when her mind-warping scents bring Rudo back to the day that Chiwa threw him away like trash the moment that the chips were down. Again, this could have so easily become a cringey, borderline misogynist screed against the women who did our hero dirty and made him into the #Damaged boy that he is (we get at least three or four of those shows crawling out of the woodwork every year, these days). Instead, Gachiakuta takes care to root Rudo's emotions in the pain he has suffered from simply not understanding why anyone throws the things they love away. There's a small but powerful moment that comes when Amo is starting to really cut loose where Rudo can't do anything but stand there, shocked and confused, wondering what he did wrong to cause another battle to break out.

Linking that instinctual fear to the heartbreaking rejection that Chiwa represents is a very smart move, because it makes the betrayal less about a personal, potentially gendered connection to a specific romantic interest and more about the callous and cruel nature of society that Rudo just cannot understand. When you combine all of this with the excellent, moody insert track that paints Amo like a monster straight out of a Silent Hill nightmare, and you have an episode that very effectively demonstrates just how dangerous this freaky little gal really is. She doesn't just brainwash people. She makes them feel a love from their own memories and then cranks the dial up to eleven, even if those warm memories have been made twisted and painful because of how messy life is when you're not playing sleepover with your victims and trying to talk hot goss about everyone's crushes. Poor Rudo never stood a chance. He's barely even had the chance to learn what hot goss even is. A slumber party in Amo's Tower of Terror is going to eat this kid alive.

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Gachiakuta is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on BlueSky, his blog, and his podcast.

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