(L) Akudama Drive

[Stark700]

A new original TV anime from Danganronpa’s Kazutaka Kodaka and Rui Komatsuzaki, titled “Akudama Drive,” has been announced for July 2020.

Plot Summary

“Long ago, war broke out between Kanto and Kansai & the world was divided. At the end of the war, Kansai became a dependent state of Kanto. However, Kansai’s politics and police power declined and crimes became. rampant.The criminals are called “Akudama”.

Staff

Original Story: Kazutaka Kodaka
Original Character Design: Rui Komatsuzaki
Director: Tomohisa Taguchi
Series Organizer: Norimitsu Kaihou
Chara Design: Cindy H. Yamauchi
Music: Aida Shigekazu
Production: Studio Pierrot

Source

https://moetron.net/post/61246580587...m-danganronpas

[Cosmic Eagle]

Cast news:

https://twitter.com/akudamadrive/sta...90593237037057

lmao, protag is called ippanjin......Obviously going to be anything but that

[Cosmic Eagle]

https://akudama-drive.com/character/ippanjin.html

Character profiles

[Stark700]

Postponed to October 2020

https://akudama-drive.com/news/index00170000.html

[MisaoFan]

New info: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/new...-debut/.163880

[grecefar]

This was fun, pretty much suicide squad, there is female mc that it was funny how she manage to fool the other but not fan of her following cats like a child...

[stray]

City design was pretty amazing... very Blade Runner or Akira (up to and including blatant Kaneda slide reference). Otherwise it really reminded me of Borderlands.

Somehow I kind of expect there's going to be a lot of censored gore especially without the hot pink Danganronpa blood this time around. Might have to watch it again on Blu-ray.

[serenade_beta]

Spoiler for ep1:

Only managed to get half-way, but I can tell this is some Danga Ronpa-type of thing, just not in school.
Unlike just an average anime that you can watch and forget, this was so loud and screaming of its "uniqueness", dang. Not in a good way, really. Hmm, there aren't really that many anime today, but what to do...

[Frontier]

It's kind of surreal hearing Megumi Ogata playing a woman for once .

[MisaoFan]

Spoiler for Episode 1:

Being from the same creative team as Dangan Ronpa, I spent watching the entire first episode with fairly similar vibes but with a different genre and set of themes; if anything it certainly reminded me of Hamatora for a bit. Although the characters aren't named, one can tell by what kind of jobs they have but goddamn their sentence years are extremely high with Cutthroat being the worst offender, whose sentence length is near thousand. The premiere spends a good time establishing the main cast, who apparently plays the role of misunderstood (?) action villains who are fighting against injustice for yet no clear reason we're given so far. Later on, a talking black cat get introduced and I'm sure the writer will explain what she is like.

Swindler in particular looks like your average college girl but my mental instincts told me that she's anything but that. There's a bunch of Akudamas that show up each other at once without knowing why and I'm guessing it's just some chance meeting. The general story behind this episode feels like I'm watching a finale, except wrapped up as a premiere instead.

The biggest draw about the anime so far is that the production values look very very impressive even by Pierrot's standards. The visuals looks sleek and neatly designed and the partly jazz-sounding music matches the tone well, and so far what I got from the first impression is that it's going to be a dark action comedy about Akudamas who may not get well because of their personalities that are deemed unfit for each other but are working together towards an avenging goal against some authoritarian police state that badly mistreat them.

[Dop]

Whoa, now that was trying so so very hard to be 'cool' I think it came out the other side. I bailed after a while because it was too tryhard.

[Kanon]

This definitely had that Danganronpa vibe. The episode tried very hard to be cool indeed, to me it was just so ridiculous that it actually did turn out to be cool, you know what I mean? I can see why it wouldn't work on others though. Given the team, this won't be the meat of the show though. Plenty of mysteries and killings to look forward to.

[Mad Pierrot]

I've never seen something so overthetop since the first episode of Kekkai Sensen although that series was more comedy-like. Also the censorship sure was obvious but yeah... maybe too gruesome for the timeslot. Can't tell what will be the modus operandi of the series but I like most of these voice actors so I guess I'll give it a chance

[Master_Yoma]

Well an interesting first episode with the whole cyberpunk city and a girl who gets tricked by cats

Wow getting around on zeppelins

[Mad Pierrot]

Just found an interview with the team that makes a lot of sense. They were influenced by Tarantino's films, Blade Runner among other works.

https://www.animatetimes.com/news/de...?id=1583977278

[Cosmic Eagle]

Shadowrun x Dangan Ronpa lol


Also very disappointed the Doctor did not actually cure the heart attack guy. Would be far more impressive gag-wise if she actually did

[Mad Pierrot]

Cover of the first Bluray

Also, judging by the site, this series might be a single cour.

There is a manga too but I don't know if it was delayed alongside the anime due to covid

[LG-MAX 2.o]

This episode 2 was much better than the first. And we also had violent scenes that were not censored.
But I am concerned about the budget for this anime. There were several good action sequences.

[EroKing]

The second episode was even more nuts, I loved it.

[MisaoFan]

Spoiler for Episode 2:

This is so much better than last time words cannot explicitly express why I'm getting so excited about the anime. First starting with the cast, each character has its fair share of screentime and dialogue which is defined in its personality and how he/she handles what kind of situation he/she is put on, the only flaw is that Courier doesn't have it enough and he's quite mysterious. Cutthroat unsurprisingly turns to be trigger-happy and he gets excited over anything that has to do with blood. I can't find any favorite among the Akudamas since it's too early, but I like Swindler and Hoodlum is pretty funny, his interactions with Brawler are endearing.

I wasn't expecting the black cat to be a robotic creation, he's the one who reiterates that the Akudamas have their collars tightened so that they have to listen to his orders and the first mission he assign to them is hijacking the cargo in a Shinkansen through infodump but before they might really set up a plan they already introduced the villains known as the "Executioners": they dress like Imperial Japanese soldiers and are a part of a secret police force that controls Japan's judicial system with iron fist. The fights are competent in choreography and animation, and I think the staff at Pierrot is doing a good job conveying the overall atmosphere. I also liked the short edutainment sequence early on trying to teach us what happened to the great war between Kanto and Kansai that was broadcast on television.

I'm actually looking forward to see the Akudamas' pasts piece by piece and how they tie to the overall grand scheme.