Akikan! — Would You Like Something To Drink?

At this point, I’m not sure what kind of anime this is trying to be.  It’s like a mashup of many anime genres at once.  At first, it starts out like it’s going to be an ecchi, then it turns into a battle anime, then it goes back to being an ecchi before it suddenly veers towards being a (lame attempt at a) comedy.  The last two episodes turn into an action anime, and it’s at that point that I began to wonder if the writers were trying to write the next Excel Saga, considering the Excel Saga anime also ended with a sequence of action episodes.

Akikan! starts out with a sixteen year old failure in life who happens to collect empty drink cans.  I guess he thinks they’ll be worth something someday.  They’re probably worth more than his worthless life, right now.  Anyway, he buys a soda can on his way home from school and before drinking it, he goes to take a shower.  As soon as he’s out, he strikes a dramatic pose, bemoans his fate as a sixteen year old male who has never been on a date, and brings the can to his lips.  All while wearing nothing but a towel.  Next thing he knows, he’s kissing a girl instead of drinking a soda, and it’s apparently a dream come true.  If your dream is to meet a pretty girl while nearly naked, who thinks of you as her owner.

After being beat up many times by the suddenly human soda can, Kakeru (the sixteen year old failure) gets a visit from a mysterious man who seems a little too fond of him.  There’s a pointless scene where he shows interest in the can and then for no real reason, he and his assistant vacate the premises and Kakeru is once again alone with his can.

I wish I could say the anime gets better.  Fortunately, my wish is granted… for a little while.  Despite the rampant sexual antics of Kakeru in the first episode, his behaviour is toned down somewhat in the next few episodes, which focus on an on-going plot arc where Melon (Kakeru’s unimaginatively named soda can girl) is supposed to fight other cans whom happen to be made of a different material in order to prove which is better, aluminum cans or steel cans.  This is the idea behind the Akikan Elect, to see which of the two is the best for holding drinks in, based on the battle prowess of the girls.  Although the plot advances quickly in the first half of the series and at one point you’re certain there’ll be an epic battle which will determine once and for all which type of can is the better one, the three main soda can girls are suddenly forced into an uneasy truce and the plot finds itself derailed and completely forgotten by episode seven.  The episode brings back Kakeru’s obsession with sex and features a scene where he is called upon by the teacher (who just happens to be the assistant to the man who visited him in the first episode) to solve a trigonometry problem.  Instead of solving the problem, he takes over the classroom and proceeds to sexually harass the teacher making lewd comment after lewd comment with the full support of his classmates until class is over.  The next few episodes also fail to advance the plot, and it gets to the point where two of the cans become somewhat civil to each other and spy on their owners.

Then, just when you think the series is going to end on a low note, the writers seemed to realize that they had a plot going and so they bring in an enemy for the cans to fight.  All three of the main cans work together to defeat the newcomer and it makes you wonder why the Akikan Elect subplot even existed in the first place, since the writers abandoned it as soon as they could, then tried to weakly tie it into the newcomer’s story.

Fortunately for the last couple episodes, the animation improved quite a bit compared to what was presented earlier in the series, and it was clear that they were trying to end on a high note.  But there’s a cheesy scene in the final episode where the power of love saves the three can girls from the evil can girl, who was absorbing all the cans she could find.  Then the three girls choose to fight together even though they’d not done so at all in the series, and proceed to invent a Triple Tech that manages to defeat the evil can girl, despite having already said to her that mixing drinks makes them undrinkable.  Apparently it’s drinkable if you’re a protagonist drink.

There is a lot of potential to Akikan!.  It could be a magical girl anime if they let it be one.  Melon would have to come up with more varied attacks, though.  Her cry of “Melo-Melo-Melon!” would get annoying if you had to hear it week after week after week.  Budoko seems to have many powers, although most of them aren’t very effective and can easily be blocked or deflected.  And Yell’s Isometric Sword seems to be all she needs, for it has many varied usages.  It can slice open enemies just as easily as it slices vegetables and clips stamps from snack bags.  And when the evil can girl reveals her collection of powers, she shows that she has dozens of cans and their powers in her possession.  There is the potential for a much wider cast with more varied powers if the show gets renewed for another series.

I can’t tell whether the series is trying to poke fun at anything or not.  Najimi, for instance, gets drunk from soda.  At first glance, she seems like a victim of the Frothy Mugs Of Water trope until it’s realized that she’s drunk from soda in the original Japanese version.  Either this is a character quirk that only the Japanese could come up with, or they’re poking fun at the censorship that many anime shows and video games were subjected to in order to make them family friendly.

Another thing the show does is remix the ending theme with each episode.  I don’t know if this is done for comedic effect or not.

This show has polarized anime fans in the same way that Final Fantasy XIII polarized video gamers.  You’ll either like Akikan! a lot or you’ll hate it with a vengeance.  Thing is, it’s not a bad series.  It’s not a very good one either, though I can’t say it’s the definite worst.  I can’t really recommend this to anyone unless you’re willing to lose a few brain cells while watching it.  Even then, watch the first six episodes, then skip ahead to the last two.  There’s a reason that many fan subbing teams dropped the show after episode seven was aired and refused to work on the rest.