Review of Akikan!
Overview: People complain about Hollywood being uncreative and making far too many reboots and ripoffs, but Japan is often no better in this regard. If an anime is highly successful, you can almost guarantee there will be a new ripoff series created to suck up some of that money. If the ripoff is successful, a ripoff of the ripoff will be made and so on until the quality degenerates SO far and becomes so low that not even the stupidest of otaku will buy it. In the early 2000s there was a highly successful anime called Rozen Maiden about a hikikomori (extreme social phobia) who ownsa magical doll that comes to life. The doll must then battle other living dolls until only 1 is left. A ripoff was then created called Kampfer about special fighters who each owned a special magical doll and each had to fight each other to the death because the poorly written plot demands it. Then came an anime that is so bad it makes Kampfer look like GOD in comparison! That anime is the dreaded Akikan!
Akikan probably holds the record for the stupidest plot of any anime I have ever seen. A lonely loser drinks a can of juice, only for the empty can to suddenly become a hot babe for no reason. It is explained that scientists want to figure out which metal is best to use in cans, so they somehow magically created special cans that transform into sentient beings and must fight each other to the death in order to find out which metal is most effective. I dated a chemical engineer in college and I minored in chemistry, so I am quite familiar with laboratory tests used to determine the effectiveness of different alloys and compounds. Some of these tests include: melting point, density, the Rockwell Scale of indentation hardness, etc. You want to know what wouldn't be an effective test? Turning the fucking metals into sentient beings and making them fight pokemon style!!! Our empty can girl is named Melon because she was a can of watermelon soda. She has the ability to fight using melons. I'm dead fucking serious! The sublime idiocy of this show simply can't be overstated. The MC is one of the least likeable harem leads in anime history! Every character in this show is the most shallow, 1 dimensional archetype imaginable. It is as if this was made to spoof the magical girl genre, but this isn't actually a parody or a spoof. Akikan attempts to have the worst plot possibly ever written by man and tries to basically play it straight with forced comedy and echii thrown in.
The art in Akikan is actually fairly decent because this steaming pile of SHIT actually had a budget. Want to know how I know it had a budget? The MC is voiced by the same Japanese voice actor as Lelouche in Code Geass! How the hell desperate for money was that guy in order to voice act for Akikan. Lending your voice to Akikan is one very small step above sucking dicks in a backalley for crack money.
Whenever you hear someone say the latest echii anime or magical girl anime is the worst ever, sit that person down and make them watch Akikan! You thought Absolute Duo was bad? HAHAHA NO!!! Absolute Duo is Nobel Prize in literature worthy compared to the sheer filth that is Akikan! Dante is going to have to create a new circle of Hell for the production staff of this series and whoever the hell greenlit this project!