A Show I Love (And Hate) | Apocalypse Hotel First Reaction?

[00:01] everything, man, do I have a show for you. Its premise great, its animation great, its characters, great, its vibes, great. Its shampoo hats gone.

[00:15] Shampoo hats gone. series based on absolutely nothing. My favorite kind of anime. It was created

[00:29] in part by Cyber Agent and Syame Pictures, however, which I mean was a a tiny red flag at the very start because I thought that could mean that this was all like an elaborate setup for some kind of gotcha game or similar. I mean,

[00:43] look, Umamus has a series airing at the exact same time from them. It's a reasonable worry. But no, by the time that the final episode aired, there was no sign of a game tie-in. A manga tie-in, sure, but that's fine. Although

[01:00] that said, I'll be honest. When I finished this one, I would have loved a gotacha game about running a hotel in an apocalyptic wasteland. What's wrong with me? Now, you may ask, since I mentioned it, Tristan, why is

[01:13] this video labeled as a first reaction when the series has finished airing and you've already admitted to watching the whole thing? Shouldn't it be a full review? Uh,

[01:30] Hotel, an upper class looking building and accommodations located in Ginsa, Japan. Renowned not for just their service, but more specifically the service provided by the hotel's state-of-the-art AI androids and robots.

[01:44] Cut to a massive biological virus that has wrecked the planet, causing all humans to either die or abandon Earth for the stars. But since the hotel is for the stars. But since the hotel is run by robots, they just keep working

[01:58] even though there are no hotel guests waiting patiently for the day even centuries later when humanity might return. That's a rather dark start, ain't it? Like we begin 100 years after humanity has bailed on the planet and

[02:13] there was only one humanoid android left running the place and she keeps a very tight ship. Despite having no guests for the last century, she still maintains the entire hotel, making sure that anything and everything is still up to

[02:27] the standards set by their creators. But eventually, guests arrive. Not humanity, but aliens. At first, our robotic manager, Yachio, has to accommodate a

[02:39] weird spongy alien who she can't communicate with properly cuz, you know, he doesn't speak Japanese or English or anything from Earth. But not too long after that, a whole family of Tanukis move in for a hundred years or so. Yeah,

[02:53] construct here. Don't worry about it. The Tanukis, for some reason, follow all of the the Earth historical magical abilities that the legendary species is

[03:05] known for. They have the ability to take humanlike forms. And after a period of time where the robots and the tanukis need to adapt to one another, Yachio even takes on one of the young Tanukis, Panco, as a member of the hotel staff

[03:18] with the intention to better provide the hotel with its ability to help with other extraterrestrial guests. Over the course of the show's like 12 episode run, we take a deep dive into one of the many tenants that were given to the

[03:31] hotel staff as like words to live by. statements that describe how the service of this hotel should be and then try to reconcile that with how the hotel now needs to adapt and survive. The hotel needs food, so hey, let's go fishing for

[03:46] fish and also deal with alien sandworms that are totally not a Dune reference. Other aliens have shown up and want alcohol. Shame that all the Tanuki's Guess we're going to have to build our own distillery. That'll only take what,

[04:01] 15 years? No problem. Time is just a narrative construct here. Don't worry about it. Hey, Yachio's been operational for like 600 years or something. She deserves a day off. What does she do on her day off? Her whole razon dedra is to

[04:14] just manage this hotel. So, that's something worth exploring. Hey, we should launch a satellite into orbit to better direct interstellar traffic to our planet. Also, while we're at it, why not add a giant kinetic bombardment

[04:27] cannon to it for Earth's defense? No problems with that, right? Not like it'll cause another time skip. Oh, wait. It will. Well, time is just a narrative construct here. Don't worry about it. So, with each episode, we have a

[04:41] challenge laid out to us, and we get to see how the robotic Yachio and the energetic Panco deal with all of these situations. And to be perfectly honest, situations. And to be perfectly honest, it is brilliant every single time, even

[04:54] all the way up to the end. So, I'm going to bring up like one of my favorite that the ending is paramount. And without spoiling anything, because I really don't want to ruin this series anymore than I already have, the series

[05:07] does end on a very good note, a surprisingly good note. It doesn't end with like total finality or anything. There is technically room for a sequel in there somewhere, but also it does have a level of finality to it that I

[05:20] feel like we've been missing from so many other shows. But it's also why I many other shows. But it's also why I just love original anime like this, right? It's not bound by any kind of previous material that is still ongoing.

[05:34] It doesn't need to leave things more open-ended because there's more manga out there or more light novel chapters to adapt. It doesn't leave us with this slightly bitter feeling because there is more out there, because there could be

[05:47] further adaptations. And it doesn't make us feel even worse because uh an English adaptation or anything. The jerks, I'm not bitter or anything towards other shows. It's fine. Apocalypse Hotel is a wonderful bottle

[06:03] of a series that starts off great, continues great, and ends great, even continues great, and ends great, even without the shower hats. It is without a doubt my favorite original anime of the season. probably my favorite original

[06:17] anime in quite a while. And if it wasn't for the fact that it's airing in the same season as Ann Shirley, it would be my favorite anime of this season. I my favorite anime of this season. I loved watching this show so much.

[06:32] also passionately rant about the one thing that I hate about it. Because yeah, okay, despite being one of my favorite shows of this past season, it is not without its flaws. I could point out minor ones, but for me, and

[06:45] admittedly this is probably just a me problem, uh I despise time skips with the burning passion of a thousand sons. I hate it when narratives skip over

[06:58] when we have to reorient ourselves within a narrative because so much time has passed. I hate taking a shortcut through time with the knowledge that the characters we have come to know and love have had to take the long way around and

[07:12] we can't join them on that journey. So time being a narrative construct is great and all, but honestly the amount of loosey gooseiness that this show has with the passage of time is one of the few things I've had a very hard time

[07:26] letting go of over the course of watching this show. Like, hey, we start off the series and it's been 100 years since humanity has left. Cool. Fine. flashbacks to how large the staff was back in the day. But, you know, after

[07:40] 100 years, we only have a handful of robots and one android that is still operational. And that's rough, but it's also cool, and I'm okay with that. It makes sense that in an apocalypse, the staff would be unable to keep all of

[07:52] themselves operational when the backbone of society has been wiped away and all produced anymore. They don't have human mechanics and technicians keeping them up to date and repaired. The state of the hotel makes sense to me after 100

[08:09] years. But then the show, the whole series proceeds to take place over the series proceeds to take place over the next 500 years. And at no point do we lose or gain any further robots or androids due to the passage of time. I'm

[08:23] not buying that. I mean, they end up getting a super mechanic to join their getting a super mechanic to join their staff, who apparently maybe is the reason why Yachio is even maintained for as long as she has been. And eventually,

[08:35] the hotel does get intergalactic visitors. So, are you telling me that at no point during this hotel's half a millennia of existence that someone just didn't think to themselves, hey, maybe we should think about getting, I don't

[08:49] know, supplies from other planets and civilizations? Surely, someone out there either has or could make replacement parts that they need at the hotel, especially when you could provide countless damaged ones for reference

[09:02] that could then be combined into a solid hole. No one thinks to do this. It all started with that whiskey episode. That damned whiskey episode. The whole gang We mentioned this earlier, right? They do this so that they can replenish the

[09:16] hotel's alcohol stock. Okay, fair enough. Great idea. It is legitimately a good episode, but then at the very end, they make an off-handed joke and say, "Yeah, this whiskey we have here, it's been aged 15 years."

[09:31] What? Oh, yeah. 15 years have passed. Didn't you know the Tanukis are just very longived? And that's why none of them look like they've aged a day. So, everyone still looks the same and the status quo remains, but magically we're

[09:45] 15 years in the future now. [Music] That's a narrative can of worms you've opened up there, haven't you? Like, so many stakes in any normal narrative only exist because the passage of time is

[10:00] unbendable. Time always passes. People always die and people are always born. Everyone is limited by how much time something can take. You can have longived characters and you can have them interact and be changed or not

[10:14] changed by the ever moving world around them. But when all of your characters are immune to the passage of time, when 100 years can pass and it still looks like only a single day has, that's a problem. Because now in your narrative,

[10:32] anything that can be solved by time should now just be solved by time. And that's boring. Our characters are now not restricted by how long something would take to do. Oh, it would take me years to learn how to do this. 50 years

[10:48] have just passed and now we can solve the problem just like that. It feels lazy. Sure, it is nice to see Pongo go from being a child to then being an adult and having children of her own, though for some reason she kept her

[11:02] appearance as childlike for a few hundred years, but then there was a very specific 20-year gap where she just doubled in size for reasons. I mean, she is a Tanuki, so if if you wanted to explain it like she kept the childlike

[11:15] appearance on purpose for the hotel's sake and then just decided to discard it later when it was more appropriate, sure. But they didn't explain it that way. I am literally just speculating this. It was nice to see that change in

[11:29] reinforce to me that we didn't need to have this story take place over 500 years. We didn't need to say that for 100 years the Tanuki family were just freeloaders at the hotel for no reason. Like just because. It feels like a

[11:43] narrative handwave to add stakes while not realizing that it removes more narrative stakes than it actually adds. That's like the only thing stopping me from personally lauding this show as truly excellent, like goated excellent.

[11:59] I know that others won't agree. I absolutely am being nitpicky to heck here, but I have a very long beef with time travel stories that involve going the long way around and not having character growth appropriate for beings

[12:14] who can live or have lived that long. 100 years could pass and Panco could barely have changed. 500 years did pass and her whole family, barring her brother, who also aged a bit. Besides them, no one else barely changed. Like,

[12:29] sure, Yachio, our main protagonist, is an android. She has programming. It would make sense for her not to develop at the same rate as an organic being, but the Tanukis have no excuse. We didn't need to time jump like that. You

[12:44] could have crushed all of this down into like even just 150 years of of time span instead of several hundred and very little narrative would have to have been changed. It would have been fine. But they didn't do that and it bothers me.

[12:58] It vexes me. I am terribly vexed. I mean, yes, in a world with aliens, spacew worms, and actual tanukis, I'm flipping pots over characters not apparently that's the most unrealistic

[13:12] thing I have a problem with. But I can't stop my stupid meat brain from being bothered by it. When any problem can be solved by just waiting. Well, that's boring because from the audience's perspective, we just get told, "Here,

[13:26] just have your 15-year aged whiskey that we just cooked up in a montage despite should have happened in the interim during that time skip." I hate time

[13:38] skips and I hate that it's making me both think less and speak less about both think less and speak less about this series that is otherwise great more than great. It is fantastic. I still highly recommend it. It's just

[13:51] highly recommend it. It's just frustrating because this one tiny to many others insignificant thing is stopping me from considering this series to be an alltimer, from usurping other things that exist within my top 10 anime

[14:05] of all time, right? And that is just disappointing. A very special thank you to our patrons who support the channel and allow rant videos like these to be produced. A very

[14:19] specifically special thank you to our patrons Rifen Bonapart, Omar Showman, Ross Emerson, Hector Monttoor, Aiden Cityo, and Blue Baron 15. Cuz I can't thank you guys enough. But until next time, watch more anime and stay frosty.