Mar 31, 2022
Akikan is an anime about Juice cans fighting each other to decide what type of can is better, Aluminium or Steel. There are these cans called “Akikans” and when someone drinks from it, a juice can waifu pops out. I’ll explain it more later. So that's the kind of anime we're dealing with here.
Characters:
Our main character is Kakeru Daichi, which Wikpedia makes VERY clear that he is a virgin, too clear maybe. How do I describe him? At the start of the show, he buys a can of melon juice from a vending machine and it fails to give him his change and
...
2 minutes and 45 seconds into this anime, we have a guy blaming a faulty vending machine on his virginity. As you do.
Now, I’ve disliked a few characters in anime but I’ve never disliked someone more than Kakeru. His ego is way too high, everything good on the planet was caused by him and everyone must bow down to him. He’s always making lewd jokes that aren’t funny and are really necessary. They don’t add anything to the plot [There wasn’t much of a plot] and they can be painful at points.
Our next main character is Melon, she is one of these Akikans who appears out of the can Kakeru bought after he tries drinking it... Melon is your typical tsundere, she always gets into arguments with Kakuru.
The next character we need to mention is Najimi, a childhood friend of Kakaru and a student of whatever the name of the school is. She has a crush on Kakuru for some reason, she must see something in him I don’t.... She’s a nice character and I didn’t hate her or anything but, there were other characters which I liked more.
Najimi’s Akikan is Yell who I would say was my second favourite character. At the start, she seems kind of emotionless but as her relationship with Najimi develops, she becomes deeper and relatable.
Some grape girl, whatever her name was, is our next akikan and for most of the show, we hardly see her owner and up until she has some relevance to the plot, she was only comic relief.
There was also this girl who likes Najimi and always throws cards at people who annoy her, mainly Kakuru. I liked her but only because we had a common enemy. I think she was a witch or something but it’s really unclear whether or she actually is a witch?
Okay so talking about the actual show now.
Lewd jokes and fan service are common in this show, very common. It's a complete mess, so many scenes are ruined by them, yet it's incredibly childish as if the show was made for kids. No one who gets the kinda jokes in this show would enjoy its childness and anyone who enjoys its childness, is too young for some of its content. In fact, the first thing Kakuru said was a lewd joke.
Early on in the show, we are introduced to two members of the Ministry of the Economy. They tell Kakuru about the “Akikan Elect” and how they want to work out if steel or aluminium cans are better, probably better ways to work that out than making them fight each other but, this is an anime. These people break into Kakeru’s house in the most cartoonish way, by using a chainsaw to cut his door open.
The worst part of this show is that some of it is actually deep and heartfelt but everything eventually gets ruined by this anime’s inability to stay serious for long periods of time. At one point more than 3 minutes had passed and the show hadn’t been goofy yet and I actually counted how long it could stay serious for.
Some scenes are actually good however, the Akikans trying to figure out how the world works and having problems all of us have experienced and were done well.
A major theme of Akikan is loneliness and the show actually does a good job of exploring this. Melon and Yell both want to protect their owners and grow a strong emotional attachment to them. They feel lost without them and you can see the toll it does to their mental health. Some of the other characters sometimes feel lonely too but it wasn’t anything that I haven’t seen in another anime before.
The relationship between Melon and Kakeru was well developed as well , mainly on Melons end well, only on melons end, but it was good enough from melons perspective that it made up for kakurus poor character development. Melon looks up to Kakuru, that's very clear, the only problem I have with this is that Kakuru will find any chance to brag to Melon when he can.
In one episode, we hardly see Kakuru or Najimi, the episode mainly focuses on the Akikans and I have to say, It was my favourite episode, not dealing with all the annoying characters and just focusing on the ones I actually liked. Melon and Yell are mostly doing household chores and they do a really good job at making it not feel bland, the childishness of the show is a real advantage here and it pays off well.
The biggest problem with akikan is that nothing happens until episode 11, the second last episode.
The opening for this show, I skipped it every episode, it was extremely average. Half way through the show, they changed the theme song but, I shit you not, the exact same video, I guess they didn’t have the budget huh? The ending theme on the other hand, I don’t even remember what it sounded like, I guess it was average too since I skipped it all the time and can’t recall it.
Overall, the show was alright but there were so many things about it that I couldn’t get over which made it not up there with my other favourite anime
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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