Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
Rai3_3
The first three episodes are bearable as a typical shonen action anime, complete with all the cliché archetypes. The storyline might remind you of older anime like Psycho-Pass or Cowboy Bebop, but not in a good way. It feels like ChatGPT spat out a script and something had to be made from it, with those mentioned anime used like a filter over a bland photo to somehow compensate for the anime's tastelessness.
After the seventh episode, I couldn't bear the boredom this gave me. A boring action anime—how bad can you make it that I started yawning in between? I had to skip to the finale, and it turns out I never really missed anything.
ZERO CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
ZERO STORYLINE
CLICHÉ CHARACTERS
(It makes me want to vomit thinking someone recommended this as the best to me.)
Read at the sourceSukamii
For lack of a better simile, Akudama drive is like eating rock candy- at first seeming incredibly interesting, an interesting appearance with an enticing texture, it tastes sweet but isn't much more. Like liquid sugar, Akudama Drive doesn't really make for much more than a temporary sugar rush.
Like flashes of lightning, the series always presents something that is enticing, ideas that come off as interesting, characters that you *could* grow attached to- but they exist within their boxes of tropes and don't become more than characters on the screen. For their initial presentations, most of the characters exist as incredibly edgy and egotistical characters that I could easily become interested in as the story unfolds (barring Doctor, as I dislike near everything about her character, excep…
Read at the sourceRebelPanda
Akudama Drive is pure madness. It has all the action-packed mayhem of a 1980s B-movie, taken to ludicrous extremes with orgasmic animation and insane characters. It uses the classic cyberpunk aesthetic to tell a story saturated with razor-sharp social criticism and vibrant neon lights.
This anime is a combination of Blade Runner and Psycho-Pass, lovingly brought to life by Kodaka, the creator of Danganronpa. It shouldn't work, but it does.
And it's god damn amazing.
The story follows an ordinary person, a girl mistakenly labeled as an Akudama; One of the most dangerous and highly skilled criminals in the city of Kansai. She becomes known as "Swindler" for being falsely accused of a petty thief. Along with six other Akudama, she must evade the militarized police pursuing them. If they ma…
Read at the sourceCleansedSpace
Short review here:
Let me tell you what's wrong with this anime first;
*First of all, we don't know why some characters have special powers.
*The powers don't really make sense. For ex; the guy with the motorcycle has laser beams, jumps with the motorcycle, can resist bombs like it is not much deal, etc... And there is much more to it.
*We don't get to know who are the faces commanding the special forces
*Not even the main characters know exactly what they want to accomplish.
*The end is open. (There are more things but I'll end it here).
If they put together this anime and cut corners to create a movie, it would've been cool for a movie night, but for a tv show is a headache!
Great animation but this is fked up...
4/10
Read at the sourceThatAnimeSnobRE
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 thi…
Read at the sourceJAXARE
So this is my very first review on MAL and I've decided to start with AKUDAMA DRIVE because of how disappointed I was with this show. I heard lots of praise coming from people online about this show and my interest was already peaked when I saw the visuals for it so I decided to give it a try. Now with that said ill get right into it.
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CONTAIN SPOILERS
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"so many questions with so little answers", That is the driving point of AKUDAMA DRIVE, from immortal children created as vessels for a shapeshifting quantum computer to a naïve "do-the-right thing" MC wrapped up in criminal business, were taken down a rabbit hole that seems to lead to nowhere fast. the story starts somewhat interesting with establishing the world and a couple of the characters but around the 6th episode…
Read at the sourceRegit_Jo
That was 4 hours of my life I will never get back.
If you're looking for a story that makes you think or makes you care, you've come to the wrong place. There is no thinking or feeling in Akudama Drive. There is no interesting mystery or compelling narrative. There is nothing dramatic or interesting. The only reason to watch Akuduma Drive is if you're trying to look and pretty colors and lights, and the fight scene that happens once an episode.
The art and sound are pretty good, there were some solid transitions and cool fight scenes with a decent amount of Sakuga. Sadly the Cyberpunk aesthetic is thrown to the wayside in most episodes, which take place in extremely dull settings.
The characters are uninteresting. It hurts when all of your characters' personalities are centered around…
Read at the sourcegoldeagle1123
The show is nothing but a vapid, hollow exercise in "the protagonists always win with convoluted dues ex machina plot devices!" while expecting you to sympathize with mass murdering criminal protagonists, and is utterly uninteresting or moving to that end. There are spoilers in this review.
Akudama Drive has every hallmark of a bad action anime. Boring one-dimensional characters without any development. Characters who act utterly illogically and downright stupidly for the sake of the plot. Copious amounts of killing and gore to give the false impression of "maturity" or being "cool". A world in and of itself that feels very not fleshed out and is just contrived to fit whatever the plot needs. Deus ex machina out the wazoo in basically every episode. Etc. Sprinkle the comically overused tr…
Read at the sourceLeynaSept
It's weird, I was planning to drop the series around the middle. Not because it's bad I just wasn't impressed with the writing at the time
I recommend not being influenced by the bad reviews too much, this is one of the shows that can really linger and settle deep within you, it could also not but the chance that it does is worth the take. I'm glad I gave it a chance to watch til the end, no matter what flaws I may find it was 100%+ worth it that I went through this journey.
With being a story with only one season, it was fairly well-paced. A satisfying ending. A story can be mediocre but if the ending is brilliant you betcha I'll rate it high. Endings are one of the most important factors in stories for me, you have better make me feel like I watched something that was worth it.
But…
Read at the sourceZedlin
(Pontenial miniature spoilers, read at your own risk.)
What’s this? A good original anime with godtier animation and action? Akudama Drive is an anime that gets progressively better each episode. Having character growth, and losing main characters as well. It’s hard to fully emphasize the grand epicness of what makes Akudama Drive work. The show is the essence of badass. Set in a cybernetic technological utopia at least at a glance- but underneath is a unforgiving criminal underbelly where fugitives thrive. These Akudama are legendary criminals where the bounties are more than exuberant because of how feared they are. Akudama Drive is a freight train barreling full throttle, and I’m all for it. It’s too overboard with its overly high stakes action to not at least grin once. It’s one of th…
Read at the sourcefast2611
Its late and im definetly not composed enough to write a well thought out review.
But I NEED to praise this show, NOW.
Story:____9
Art:______10
Sound:___ 8
Character:_9
Enjoyment:10
Overall :__ 10
Everthing bejond here will be kinda spoilery due to
blabla bla bla
bla
you gone? good.
The incredible twists the story takes. There is no reason to spoil any in particular but they are so increbile that I woudnt wanna tell anybody it happens.
There are Cool af , iconic characters, sakrua magic everywhere. well thought out dialouge, dynamic action scenes meaningful sacrifces and an end shot that made me cry a bit
Yee sorry I know this is a mess but I just needed to thanks
Read at the sourcekakk
* I will avoid as many spoilers as possible *
Story 8/10
Like many others have said there wasn't much backstory so the main story of the anime wasn't super developed, however I still think its really enjoyable, the lack of backstory doesn't bother me too much, so if you don't mind that then I think you'll like the story. It mainly follows the same kinda premise throughout the show, a few twists and turns occur but in the end its still the same goal, but never the less still enjoyable.
art 10/10
I really enjoyed the art and the character designs, especially the cyberpunk like setting. The art in the last episode especially, when courier is fighting and the very end where the two are walking together (sorry im trying to keep it vague haha)
character 9/10
I enjoyed the characters and the…
Read at the sourceSeptember
[Warning: As I've watched all 12 episodes, I will review the story spanning across all episodes, too. Therefore, there will be spoilers in this review.]
I'll admit: I went into Akudama Drive with... well, not exactly low expectations, but they weren't high. That being said, I'm very glad I watched it all the way through now that it's over. Wow, what a series. It was full of action from start to finish and none of it was unnecessary. I'm one of those people who isn't exactly drawn to action series first thing since I'd rather look for a good story, animation and characters. Thankfully, in my opinion, Akudama Drive has all of these.
I have to highlight the character development of the last two standing Akudama, Courier and Swindler. Though she started out as an ordinary person, Swindler ha…
Read at the sourcePinopano
at first ep i thought the MC (ordinary person says on the character list) was a cretin for not paying dat 500, but at end turns out im the cretin for watching thru this garbage. jokes on me ig.
akudama drive prolly has the biggest budget among this season, cuz of dat becomes the biggest let down of the season.
very first ep, the production team shows us how much money they got for this show, the animation, vfx, sound design all great, but clearly dats where all the money went, so they left wit 500yen for the character design and the screenplay, and they used all dat 500yen on character, leaves no budget for the screenplay, so wat did the screen writer do, copy n paste hollywood film into each ep (legit wat they did, even says in each ep title), but wit the character u find outside McD…
Read at the sourceMalivello
This is not your typical anime, it is something different.
It may had a slow start, honestly I didn't expect much from it, but it turn into a really interesting anime at the end.
I liked the idea of the akudama system and the license to kill that the executioners had and the way they exploit it in the end I commend them for that, and the fact that we don't know the names of the characters without loosing any content is somewhat funny. The poor swindler got here life f***ed up to the point of no return knew that she can't go back and chose the best choice at the end, the way every akudama's character was written and the choices that they made because of there personality was very cool this was a really interesting anime overall.
This line will CONTAIN SPOIILERS ( I have some mixed feelin…
Read at the sourceCodeBlazeFate
Story time.
Redline, 2009. Takeshi Koike and his team spent 7 arduous years at Studio Madhouse to produce one of the most adrenaline-fueled, well-animated films in all of anime. It bombed hard to the point where almost no film production has gone down this path since. It may go down as a cult classic a decade later, but at the turn of the decade, it was a miserable flop.
Keijo, 2016. Hideya Takahashi noticed a ridiculous sports manga about bodacious babes bumping boobs and buts off of water balconies. He and his team at Xebec took that fun action comedy romp and made it one of the biggest meme titles of 2016. It doesn’t quite get the respect it deserves, and the production values aren’t that great for TV anime standards, but it is a noteworthy title.
Finally, Akudama Drive, 2020. Tomohi…
Read at the sourceSunlitSonata
When you’ve been in the anime community for long enough, you’ve likely noted the recurrent presence of “edgy anime.” Taking advantage of anime having less restrictions than western animation, there are a couple givens with these shows; a focus on dark lighting with the color red, loads of gratuitous sex/violence, characters constantly mugging the camera for their craziest face, trying desperately to suggest characters have depth by adding a surplus of angst and for bonus points, massive tonal swerves from gritty violent action to happy wacky comedy. All with a lack of tact and putting this shock value before the characters and the message. You’ve probably seen at least one show that’s fallen into some of these traps: Elfen Lied, Gantz, Deadman Wonderland, Another, Mirai Nikki, Akame ga Kil…
Read at the sourceLordSozin
Akudama Drive and Great Pretender were the only two anime that stood out to me in the year 2020, and both of them were originals. While the two weren’t adapted from particular source material, such as manga, light novel, or webtoon’s manhwa, they were still able to cater to an audience, respectively. Great Pretender, by WIT Studio, was a Japanese crime comedy anime, and Akudama Drive, by Studio Pierrot, is a Japanese Cyberpunk inspired anime. The most prominent and well-known series such as Ghost in the Shell, Serial Experiments Lain, and the critically acclaimed 1988 film Akria for those who’re unfamiliar with this sub-genre. If you’re a fan of any of those series, this show is worth the investment.
The story follows a group of criminals, generalized by the name of Akudama, as they were…
Read at the sourcedebochca
Akudama Drive is a dystopian anime that, at simple site, is a bunch of edgy characters with a simple story with a lot of blood and chaos on it. And that concept is pretty close to what it is yet, at the same time, it’s a little bit more than that. I wouldn’t call it “a hidden gem” because is not hidden and less is a gem, but certainly an interesting anime to take account.
You are told a story in an original way (I mean, what can be better than having puppets as narrators) about the current state of the city in Akudama Drive and how a war turned it into what they show. Kansai and Kanto are the main cities here. Kanto is the one that won the war, and Kansai is where the story takes place. Kansai responds to Kanto and obeys it, and the difference between both of them is the level of life. Fo…
Read at the sourceSingleH
Episode one of Akudama Drive is all gas, no brakes. Four badass edgelords who are aimlessly wreaking havoc upon the most over-the-top cyberpunk setting imaginable are offered a ludicrous amount of money to rescue a fifth badass edgelord who is scheduled for execution, and the madness and violence which ensues throughout the course of the first episode is the result of this bounty which they were all happy to compete for, but after having razed the world before them to complete their task, they’re met with a talking cat who has the very man they saved snap collar bombs around their necks and the necks of two other nobodies who just happened to get caught up in the chaos, and the episode then swiftly ends without having explained any of its craziness, of which there was plenty. Episode two,…
Read at the source