ThatAnimeSnob

Akudama Drive is something that, up until the midpoint, is nothing more than mindless action and a pretty looking steampunk setting. As someone who is sick and tired of highschools and pretentious themes about supposed deep characters, I was fully into it. There is no depth to the cast to the point they don’t even have actual names, and the plot is a very straightforward heist mission. It was of the same vein as Black Lagoon and Hellsing Ultimate. You just shut off your brain and you enjoy the mix of rule of cool and comedy based on misunderstandings.

Then the second half began and said, yeah, enough with that, time to add nonstop twists, revelations, and drama. Usually that spells doom for a show, since the transition from what it began as to something different can be alienating. In this case it worked in its favor because the bar was low to begin with and by adding extra stuff without losing the previous ones it became something more instead of something entirely different. Meaning, it didn’t lose the rule of cool and comedy bits, it added more stuff atop of that without bloating the whole… because there wasn’t much to bloat; it was a simple mindless action show.

So yeah, the premise is about a bunch of mass-murdering psychopaths forming a team against their will (although it doesn’t matter since they would do it anyways, just for the fun or the money). They are then tasked to steal the cargo of a super secure train with one of them being a typical girl who through a series of very convenient and unlucky circumstances ends up having to constantly lie as means to not be killed, like pretty much any other civilian who is standing in their way. Did I mention they are mass-murdering psychopaths? Life has no value to them. So, the seven of them use their hax abilities and one-note character traits for steamrolling or bullshiting everything in their way until they get to the cargo, midpoint through the series. And then the real fun begins, as they lose their plot armor and reveal different aspects of themselves, which were unseen up until then. In storytelling we call that fleshing out. We definitely do not call it character development, because adding more stuff is not development. From that point onward the setting and the character relations become far more multilayered and fun to follow, while still being the dumb action flick it began as.

And no, I am not saying that made the show amazing, since it is still quite silly to the most part. There are still lots of elements that can make the show unlikable.
-The fight scenes never follow the laws for physics. You will see a spiderman motorcycle that flies around however it suits the plot, and since it’s supposed to be technology instead of magic, it can be quite jarring.
-The characters never get any actual names. They are just a character class. It was stupid in Goblin Slayer, it’s stupid here as well.
-As much as I liked the world building and the twists, the pacing is too fast to let you delve into them for long. Everything comes and goes too fast for having any impact other than the viewer learning about more stuff.
-The logic that the population of the city is following is all over the place. First they revolt but stop once most of the protesters are killed. And then they revolt even more when a single civilian gets killed.
-And we never learn why those puppet thingies were occasionally trying to reveal the truth although they were supporting the establishment.

So yeah, the best for enjoying the show is to never take it seriously. It is a dumb rule of cool anime that gets more mysterious and dramatic as it goes on. It’s not A tier material, but it certainly achieves more than most hyped up mediocrities and for that reason it ended up being my personal most enjoyable anime of 2020.