Anime / Akiba Maid War

Another day, another chance to go moe moe kyun / I come to the pigsty for my moe moe kyun

"The very first day living my dream of being a maid... and I'm ready to quit!"

— Nagomi Wahira

Akiba Maid War (Akiba Meido Sensō) is an original Black Comedy anime produced by P. A. Works. The anime aired from October 7 to December 23, 2022 for 12 episodes.

Set in the otaku mecca of Akihabara, in the year 1999. A happy-go-lucky 17-year old girl named Nagomi Wahira steps out of the train station, eager to start her new job at one of the many Maid Cafes that cover the neighborhood. Despite the shoddy interior of the pigsty-themed Ton Tokoton (Oinky Doink Cafe/The Pig Hut) and being paired with a gruff rookie maid about twice her age, Nagomi hopes her enthusiasm for the job will help her deal with the rougher parts while she learns how to properly serve customers and be a good maid.

However, Nagomi's first day on the job isn't over when her manager tasks her with delivering a letter to another Maid Cafe in the area, and that's when the veil quickly falls from Nagomi's eyes. Suddenly, she finds herself trapped in a job that's as brutal and cutthroat as any criminal organization, with different Maid Cafes fighting for turf, money, and power throughout Akihabara. Rooming with another Maid who has no qualms about murdering anyone who threatens her, and working under a manager who seems permanently in debt to a higher-level consortium, Nagomi just hopes to survive long enough to see to her next paycheck. And when the sudden return of a notorious criminal sparks a gang war between two of Akiba's most powerful maid cafe groups, Nagomi and her coworkers must band together to survive as Ton Tokoton is inevitably caught in the crossfire.

Could be viewed as a Dark Parody of P. A. Works' usually fluffy and friendly "Girls Working" shows (Shirobako, Sakura Quest, and The Aquatope on White Sand)

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Tropes

• Accent Adaptation:
  • The adult teddy bear maid is given a British accent in the English dub.
  • The kangaroo maid is given an Australian accent in the English dub.
• Anachronism Stew: Maid cafes in Akihabara were first established in 2001, but this show's entire premise involves them being entrenched at least fifteen years prior — and some episodes claim they date back to the Meiji era. 2001 would be just a little after Nagomi ends the Maid Wars, however.
• Animal-Eared Headband: Since many of the Cosplay Cafes are animal-themed, they typically wear fake animal ears along with their maid outfits. The main characters, being from the pig-themed Ton Tokoton cafe, wear fake pig ears.
• Animal Motifs
  • Maid cafes under Creatureland are themed after animals, such as Ton Tokoton being themed after pigs.
    • In the case of our heroines, this is more fitting than you might think. Pigs are normally regarded as ridiculous, filthy animals, but they're also dangerous even when domesticated, which fits with the girls of Ton Tokoton wasting a surprising number of rival maids despite coming from a third-rate maid cafe.
  • This is not limited to Creatureland-owned cafes as Wuv-Wuv Moonbeam, a maid cafe under rival faction Maidalien, is themed after rabbits.
• Anyone Can Die: Given that the show is about maid cafe mafia outfits and the gang wars that erupt between them, it's safe to say that any characters, major or minor, are welcome to die here. Even the Ton Tokoton girls aren't safe.
• Asshole Victim: Typically every villain in each episode does or says things that clearly marks them as a bad guy, so no one really bats an eye when they inevitably get killed, whether by one of the main characters, or in some cases, a rival group they pissed off earlier in the episode. They also often have a mean look on their face that makes their comeuppance even more deserving, such as the Sheep Maid head who killed other maids for the crime of having the same birthday as her. Or Nagi, who set everything in motion in the first place by having Michiyo killed.
• Attention Whore: The villain of episode 5 is a maid who has killed every maid who shares her birthday so she won't have to share the limelight during her party, which is a problem since Ranko has the same birthday.
• Baseball Episode: Episode 8 has Ton Tokoton take on former Maidaliens in a baseball game. Nagomi insists on playing fair, in spite of all out hatred from the Maidaliens.
• Bathos: God, there is so much of it. While the presentation leans towards being an extremely deadpan Black Comedy, the emotional beats are played so straight that you could make a case for it being a straight crime drama with an incredibly absurd premise.
• Battle of the Still Frames: Used in a couple of the fight scenes, often to speed up the combat and show other more dramatically important scenes, such as in episode 5 when Ton Tokoton attacks the Sheep Maid cafe, or in episode 7 where several of the fight sequences show a still frame of one of the Ton Tokoton maids successfully defeating Manami's maids.
• Berserk Button: The main characters in general do not take kindly to their cafe being insulted, or if any of them gets insulted by someone outside their group. The head maid for the Sheep Maid cafe insults Ranko in episode 5. She's immediately shot in the gut by Yumechi, who up till this point wasn't known for her violence.
• Betrayal by Inaction: Manami's call for reinforcements after her attack on Ton Tokoton is met with this, where she is told not to expect any help, and should die due to her mistreatment of the other Madealien head maids and Ugaki, her boss whom Manami liked to insult and bully.
• Bittersweet Ending: The maid wars in Akihabara and Nagi's reign of terror are over; but several characters both major and minor have died to get there, Ranko in particular dying without ever having achieved her dream or making peace with her past after having already been thoroughly defeated and humiliated by Nagi, and Nagomi is confined to a wheelchair (which has the sticker badges of the other five remaining members on it, including the panda) after Nagi shoots her repeatedly. But despite that, she continues being a maid even in her thirties.
• Black Comedy: The show is filled with violence, but nearly all instances of it are treated comedically, such as when Ranko is gunning down a rival maid group and swinging her pistols as though she was waving around glowsticks that fans usually do at an idol concert, which is frequently interspersed with scenes of Yumechi dancing and singing a cutesy J-Pop song.
• Blood-Splattered Innocents: After Ranko begins the slaughter of the bunny-girl maids, Nagomi spends most of the scene in utter shock and covered in blood, unable even to stand.
• Boom, Headshot!:
  • Ranko's usual go-to when it comes to taking out enemies.
  • This is also how Dateno takes out the head of the toy company in Episode 3. It's implied she did the same to one or more of his associates during their shootout.
  • After shooting Nagomi repeatedly in the abdomen, Nagi goes out this way by the same maid that not only murdered Ranko, but Nagi had let live despite the other maids wanting to kill her as punishment. Only for Okachimachi to take it a step further and hurl a bamboo stick directly into her chest.
• Bystander Syndrome: After Ranko gets stabbed at the end of episode 11, Nagomi desperately begs for someone in the crowd to call an ambulance. Unfortunately all of them are likely too shocked to do anything but stare at her, and it's likely that wouldn't have helped anyway, because Ranko dies a few moments later and the maid responsible was armed and would have attacked anyone trying to help out or apprehend her had she not slipped away as quickly as she entered. When Nagomi gets beaten up by several other maids in the finale, not only does the crowd that witnesses this barely react outside of some confused looks, but outright leave in annoyance.
• Central Theme: Karma. Even in the lawless world of Akihabara, what goes around comes around. Nerula snitching to Ton Tokoton backfires fatally, the Debt Collector's repeated failures to collect Ton Tokoton's payment ultimately costs him his life, Ranko couldn't escape the consequences of wiping out Wuv Wuv Moonbeam, and despite her best efforts, Nagi ultimately answers for all her crimes and then some.
• Characters Dropping Like Flies: Every episode has at least one death in it. The first episode is particularly egregious as Ranko ends up killing off practically all of the Wuv Wuv Moonbeam cafe maids to protect herself and Nagomi, as well as establish that characters get killed off regularly, and often in comical fashion. It crosses over to Anyone Can Die territory as not only do one-off characters like Dateno, Kaoruko or the maid casino employees bite it, but so do supporting and main characters like Nerula, Manami, the Debt Collector, Ranko, General, and Nagi.
• Charge-into-Combat Cut: Used during episode 5, when Zoya, Yumechi, and Shiipon attack the Sheep Maid cafe. Instead of showing any fighting, the scene immediately cuts to Nagomi having a hallucination while drowning in tomato juice and before getting rescued by the three ladies.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The assassin who kills Ranko in Episode 11 appears to be the pink-haired maid who cut her pigtail off in the Wuv-Wuv Moonbeam in episode 1. She confirms this in the finale after being captured by Nagi's underlings, who want to execute her for the crime until Nagi talks them out of it. She ends up being the one to help orchestrate Nagi's death by firing a bullet into her head, with Okachimachi ultimately taking care of the rest.
• Cliffhanger: The penultimate episode ends with Ranko getting stabbed In the Back and going unresponsive as Nagomi desperately tries to help her.
• Company Cross References: The Stinger at the end of the final episode, flashing forward to 2018, features a very prominent billboard advertising Uma Musume, another anime handled by P. A. Works.
• Cosplay Café: A matter of course with the Maid Cafés. Our heroines work at a pig-themed café, and we've also seen rabbit, sheep, and alien themes. However, in this series, maid cafes are really fronts for various Yakuza factions and are constantly engaged in bloody turf wars with each other.
• Death by Origin Story: The first minute of the anime has Ranko's boss murdered in front of her by a rival maid. A death orchestrated by Nagi, who had planned to off the killer in the process.
• Darker and Edgier: Combined with Bloodier and Gorier, this title is P. A. Works' most violent work to date, with characters openly getting shot and killed, and bleeding like a stuck pig with startling regularity.
• Distant Finale: The final epilogue has a Time Skip of 19 years, from 1999 to 2018.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune:
  • The opening theme is sung by the entire staff of the Ton Tokoton (including Zoya before she joins as a worker).
  • The ending theme is performed by Rina Sato in-character as Ranko. In the finale, it's sung instead by Reina Kondo in-character as Nagomi.
• Double-Meaning Title: The "Maid" in the title references both the fact that it's literal cafe maids participating in wanton slaughter, and is a pun; the characters that make it up (冥途,meido) refers to Japan's underground crime culture.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Nagomi struggles through bloody gang wars she never wanted to be part of, personally watches two of her closest friends die, and ends up a paraplegic, but all she ever wanted was to be a cute maid, and by surviving all the bloodshed she gets to do exactly that in the epilogue, presiding over a revitalized Ton Tokoton in the process.
• First Day from Hell: Not only does Nagomi have her illusions of the glamour of maid cafes shattered, she gets to watch her co-worker massacre a rival cafe.
• Foreshadowing: The ending to the baseball episode proves to be a smaller scale version of the ending of the show as a whole. Nagomi's commitment to peace wins over her rival maids, though several maids suffer brutal deaths in the process. The episode also shows that even to the Akiba maids, who should know better than anyone that appearances can be deceiving, mascots are Beneath Suspicion (foreshadowing Okachimachi being much more than they seem).
• Frame-Up:
  • Akiba Fluffy n' Sweet Club's manager Dateno Taira attempts to do this to Ranko after killing the lead toy executive in Episode 3, as a means to get her killed off by her preferred maid boxer Zoya. It almost works, but Ranko leaves a note on Taira’s door that mentions what really happened, and that other executives see, leading to a shootout that claims the lives of both sides.
  • This is ultimately how Ranko wound up in jail after the death of her former boss Michiyo in Episode 10. Nagi having ordered the hit and planned to kill off the maid who did it, shifting the blame all on Ranko in the process. When the maid, revealed to be Ton Tokoton's panda mascot, tells Ranko this, she is furious.
• Heel–Face Turn: Nagomi and the rest of Ton Tokoton manage to convince most of the maids into ceasing the violence going on in Akihabara. All except for Nagi, who just riddles Nagomi with bullets.
• High-Pressure Blood: Several injuries characters receive are often spurting blood afterwards. Nagomi hilariously gets sprayed several times after Ranko shoots a rival head maid. It even stops momentarily only to then spray on her again.
• Hitman with a Heart: Episode 10 focuses on one under Nagi's employment, Suehiro, who ends up falling in love with Ranko, his next victim. He ends up breaking off from Nagi to confess his love to Ranko when Okachimachi shoots him to get her own revenge against him, unaware of his recent change of heart.
• Homage: The series overall is a big one to Japanese "pink films" and Yakuza dramas.
  • Episode 3 contains multiple references to Tomorrow's Joe, from the Manager wearing an eyepatch to the Pastel Chalked Freeze Frames during Ranko's counterpunch.
  • Episode 4 adds references to A Dog of Flanders with Manager and Panda out on the streets.
  • Befitting the company's nature, two of Maidalien's cafes reference other Sci-Fi franchises involving alien invaders — Wuv-Luv Moonbeam's name is one to Muv-Luv; while Invader Café Destron's name features a more overt reference to the Japanese name of the Decepticons, the main villains of the Transformers franchise. In Episode 7, Ugaki namechecks Stargate when talking about the merger with Creatureland, and Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory when delivering a Pre-Asskicking One-Liner towards Manami before killing her.
• Hostage Situation: More than a few times, the maids have shown that they don't care that one of their own has been captured by Ton Tokoton, opting to kill both the hostage and her takers at the same time. This is more prominent in Episode 11, as Nagi is content to have her entire cafe die as hostages if it means Ton Tokoton is killed with them. She ends up pulling one of her own against Ranko using Nagomi as the victim, coming close to slashing the latter's throat if Ranko doesn't back down.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Several maids die in this fashion, getting stabbed by someone, often in the back. Ranko dies in this fashion via a Back Stab at the end of episode 11. With Nagi following suit the episode after that by the same person she tried to kill 14 years earlier.
• Incompetence, Inc.: Ton Tokoton is regularly depicted as a very poor-quality joint, thanks to regular mismanagement, frequently-poor service, and a tendency to get involved in absurd schemes. This even extends to its theme.
• Indecisive Parody: Because of the inherent silliness of having cute girls in frilly maid outfits play out common yakuza and crime-drama tropes, the show never really settles on whether it wants to send up those tropes or just play them straight in a more "girly" fashion; the first episode ends with a maid being forced to cut off one of her Girlish Pigtails, which she treats with all the same seriousness as a yakuza henchman being forced to cut off one of his fingers, before the rest of her cafe is killed by Ranko shooting them all while posing in time to a sugary-sweet song, and yet Nagomi spends much of the next episode suffering PTSD over it. Even when the show starts taking things more seriously later on, it's usually tempered by a joke, e.g. Ranko's funeral where her coworkers mourn while onlookers complain that a picture of her from the baseball game a few episodes prior was the only photo they could get of her.
• Irony: The Sole Survivor of Wuv-Wuv Moonbeam's destruction is easily the only Creatureland thug with legitimate grievances against Ton Tokoton, and is the also the one to save Ton Tokoton in the finale by killing Nagi.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Played with in Okachimachi's backstory: outside of nearly being killed to cover up Nagi's hand in orchestrating Lady Michiyo's murder, she's managed to escape all consequences for 14 years thanks to hiding in an unsuspecting panda suit. It also does help that she feels an immense amount of guilt for her actions and became The Atoner for Ranko. She is also completely willing to let Ranko kill her as she know she deserves it, but Ranko forgives her instead.
  • The maid who kills Ranko in Episode 11 manages to slip away before anyone can apprehend her. When she is captured by the maids working under Nagi immediately after, Nagi lets her go despite suggestions to drown her in the bay, which backfires when she is killed by that same maid in the end for shooting Nagomi. It is also played with in that she didn't kill Ranko for shits and giggles, but to avenge her own cafe, which Ranko wiped out in the first episode. She also shot Nagi after witnessing her senselessly shoot Nagomi, despite going there to kill Ton Tokoton herself, suggesting that Nagomi's song made her have a Heel Realization.
• Karmic Death: With the notable exception of General, every major death in the series is ultimately the end result of the character's own actions and their consequences. Nerula ratting out Manami's plan to go to war with Creatureland to Nagomi gets her killed by Manami in retaliation. Manami's open contempt and disrespect towards Maidalien's leadership and going behind their backs to pursue her own agenda ultimately gets her declared a liability that is summarily disposed of. The Debt Collector's repeated failures to keep Ton Tokoton in line ends up getting him executed by Nagi after his final failure costs her a major victory. Ranko's opening massacre of Wuv-Luv Moonbeam ultimately earns her a knife in the back from the cafe's last surviving maid. Finally, Nagi's senseless sadism, casual cruelty to her underlings, and her tendency to respond to any inconvenience to her with violence becomes her undoing when one of her own minions finally has enough of her mistreatment and shoots her, allowing Okachimachi, whose life Nagi had destroyed 14 years earlier, to finish her off.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • While it is undeniably tragic for the viewers and for Nagomi, Ranko's death by assassin isn't exactly uncalled for; the axlotl maid that kills her has hair similar to the pink haired bunny maid from the first episode, effectively making Ranko's slaughter of the joint that maid's own version of the incident that killed Ranko's mentor. The Cycle of Revenge continues.
  • Nagi letting the Chuki-Chuki Tsuki Chan maid live ultimately comes back to bite her after she shoots Nagomi, with the maid who killed Ranko now doing the same to her. This is then followed up by Okachimachi throwing a bamboo spear through her chest.
• Ninja Maid:
  • Behind the scenes, maids are shown to be Crazy-Prepared and aggressive to the point of wiping each other off the map. It's been compared to the Yakuza for those in the know.
  • Nagomi becomes a literal one in Episode 7, joining a ninjitsu-themed cafe after the death of Nerula. She later uses her newly-acquired abilities and weapons to save her friends from being killed by Manami.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Manager usually has this when the enforcer shows up, or she senses she's in trouble for something. In episode 5, she gets a severe case of this when she finds out Ton Tokoton killed everyone at the Sheep Maid cafe in order to get their recent cash intake, due to both cafes being under Creatureland's employ. Not helped at all by none of the maids explaining why they did it in the first place.
  • Minori Sano has this reaction after the girls revert back to their normal selves despite having whipped them into shape a few days earlier. She realizes that she'd be killed by the Creatureland CEO for failing to change their behavior at the cafe.

• Perpetual Poverty: No matter what happens, Ton Tokoton is always stuck owing more money to both Creatureland and any other debt collector they take money from than they had before. Not even a figurine they sell off in Episode 3 manages to make a dent, only pulling in enough so that neither Yasuko or Shiipon get their organs removed. In episode 5, they manage to get enough money to pay off a good chunk, if not all, of the debt, but now have a new issue — Having to explain to Creatureland why they killed off another affiliated cafe in order to get the money. This all changes after the cafe wins the Lady Omoe, with Creatureland now hellbent on eliminating them completely.
• Pun-Based Title: The "Maid" in the title in Japanese has the kanji for "underworld", which is pronounced the same as the word "maid" ("meido"), referencing how the maids of the show are involved in shady and dangerous businesses.
• Police Are Useless: For the most part, the police seem unaware of the behind-the-scenes goings-on of the cafes and their true nature. The one officer that encounters Minami over the threats of killing Ton Tokoton in an attempt to start a full-on war against Creatureland is easily fooled by Manami's Obfuscating Stupidity and is bribed into helping Maidalien out, despite the fact Manami was just released from jail. The only police officer shown that seems to do anything with a positive outcome is one in a flashback to 1985 who happens to walk in on Okachimachi being strangled by Suehiro, and even then when the episode in question focuses on his interactions with Ranko, we're given no hints that he was actually arrested. It's later implied that he managed to also get away and live until Okachimachi takes him out herself.
• The Remnant: After Maidalien is absorbed into Creatureland Group, a group of maids loyal to the now late Manami become this.
• Revenge Before Reason: When the other cafes start attacking Ton Tokoton during the Lady Omae competition in Episode 9, they come close to forgetting that Nagi's cafe is supposed to win and nearly do so themselves while trying to kill Ton Tokoton in the process, despite likely knowing they would be killed for not letting the Lion cafe win, as happens to the Debt Collector.
• Running Gag:
  • Anytime the Debt Collector is in the same room as Yasuko, expect to see him subject her to a bizarre punishment in some darkly comedic fashion.
  • Someone getting shot out of nowhere in a Black Comedy Burst seems to happen Once per Episode. Bonus points if it's in the head.
  • Every Villain of the Week voiced by a famous voice actor is going to die at some point in the episode. The show's official Twitter account even posts a short "death comment" by the VA next to the picture of their dead character some days after their respective episode airs.
• Serious Business:
  • The maid cafe Nagomi and Ranko visit during Episode 1 shows one of the maids there being forced to cut off one of her pigtails in a similar manner to the standard yakuza punishment of being forced to cut off one's own finger. When she can't go through with it and the manager chops it off for her, she's a sobbing wreck afterwards.
  • Zoya considers cuteness to be this, as a trait that people are born with and that she was tragically born without. This puts her at odds with Ranko in her introductory episode, since Ranko believes that anybody can be "cute" as long as they themselves consider themselves "cute".
  • Kaoruko of the Sheep Maid cafe takes her birthday deathly seriously, intending to drown Ranko in tomato juice for the "crime" of having a birthday on the same day as hers, so that nobody will clash with her own birthday celebration. She's also implied to do the same to other maids for the same reason.
  • In general, being a maid in Akiba is this as every maid cafe is run like a yakuza group. Only those in the know actually realize what's going on in broad strokes, with the general populace and law enforcement mostly unaware until Manami frames Destron's manager for Nerula's murder in episode 6. Any remaining illusion is shattered completely in Episode 11 when a maid stabs Ranko in the back in front of a crowd of people, unable to do anything but watch in horror as this happens. After which everyone in the area just wants the maid cafes to be done with and start deliberately ignoring the problem.
• Signs of Disrepair: The neon sign inside Fluffy n' Sweet Club spells Akiba Fight Club.
• Slow Clap: The Creatureland maids, with the exception of Nagi, do this after hearing Nagomi's song. Which convinces them to stop the fighting and mob activities. Nagi responds to this by shooting the manager of her own cafe before riddling Nagomi with bullets.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Who kills the most major characters in the series? That one maid from Wuv-Wuv Moonbeam who got one of her pigtails chopped off, who ends up stabbing Ranko out of vengeance for her fallen sisters and shooting Nagi in the head after Nagomi wins over her and the rest of the other maids with her climactic performance.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: The scene where Ranko brutally guns down the army of maids from Wuv-Wuv Moonbeam is interspersed with Yumechi singing a cheerful, poppy idol song for the customers at Ton Tokoton. This is played for very dark laughs, as Ranko's gunshots are timed to the song's beat and her Gun Kata incorporates typical idol fan dance moves.
• Spanner in the Works: In episode 9, Oinky Donk doesn't get the message that Lion is predetermined to win and goes all out to win the Omae Maid Climb.
• Spoiler Opening: Averted. Zoya is specifically, if crudely, censored out of the opening of the first three episodes to keep her Sixth Ranger status a secret.
• Status Quo Is God: The crew of Ton Tokoton often tries to gamble for money to repay a debt they owe. But it never works in their favor, and any money they make will inevitably be lost. Conversely, if they made a bad gamble, usually whoever they owed money or organs to ends up getting killed or paid off, thus conveniently erasing the debt they accrued for that episode. The ongoing debts to Creatureland still standing, only made worse now that they killed a fellow Creatureland's cafe and Nagi has effectively told the cafe to die as an "apology" to Maidalien. Then later decides to do the deed herself.
• Surprise Party: In Episode 5, the Ton Tokoton's staff scoffs at the idea of celebrating Ranko's birthday when they have been saving money to celebrate with a cake by the end of the day.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The Manager somehow acquires a bazooka to blow up the wooden carving the girls worked on during their week of Training from Hell. Shiipon obliterates the wooden carving with it.
• The Siege: Episodes 7 and 11 feature one, where the Ton Tokoton maids find themselves stuck in a fight as numerous maids from rival cafes try to take them down, first in their own cafe, and later in the Dazzlion cafe. In both instances, Ton Tokoton's attempts to take hostages from their enemies are met with indifference, with their opponents merely taking the hostage out instead.
• Throwing the Fight:
  • In episode 3, Ranko is coerced into losing her fight against Zoya in the underground boxing ring. However, she cannot hold back her strength and wins the fight instead.
  • For the Omae Maid Climb in episode 9, every participating group is given "guidelines" to follow to put up a show before deliberately allowing Lion to win the race. Ton Tokoton misses the memo and things go awry. It then leads to some of the other cafes nearly forgetting this and trying to win instead just to spite Ton Tokoton when they join as they weren't even on the bracket.
• Time Skip: The prologue takes place 14 years before the actual start of the show. The Stinger epilogue takes place 18 years after the events of the series, showing that Nagomi survived her wounds from Nagi and is still working at Ton Tokoton despite her now being stuck in a wheelchair.
• Training from Hell: The girls undergo this in episode 4. It's implied that every other cafe also underwent this same training as there were several drill masters being lectured by the Creatureland CEO.
• 20 Minutes into the Past: Aired in 2022 but is set entirely in the past, primarily 1999 with a prologue in 1985 and an epilogue in 2018.
• Undignified Death: The show has an interesting example that has less to do with how the death occurs and more to do with whom it happens to. Ranko, the Deuteragonist who firmly established herself as one of the biggest badasses on the show, doesn't die in a climactic fight scene where she takes a major villain or an army of goons down with her, but instead gets stabbed in the back by a background character who was previously used for a quick gag. To top it all off, this happens almost immediately after she utterly failed to defeat Nagi and was forced to humiliate herself to convince her to spare her friends, and she looks absolutely distraught in her final moments. If anything, this just makes the death even sadder than it would have been.
• The Unfavorite:
  • Ton Tokoton, even among the already seedy and hostile environment maid cafes are. Creatureland's debt collector often uses the cafe's notoriety as fodder for the other cafes to rag on or abuse The Manager.
  • The managers of two other similarly despised Cafes are made examples of by Nagi, with one getting killed for embezzlement and the other offering to take the heat for the murder to avoid being killed herself.
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: There has been Yakuza involvement in and shakedowns of maid cafes in the past, though nowhere near the extent shown in the show.
• Violence is the Only Option: The maid cafes operate on this behind the scenes, making sure to keep up the Masquerade among the general populace.
• Wham Episode:
  • Episode 6 features the first death in the show that's unambiguously not Played for Laughs. The death of Nerula shows that a big war is about to start between two rival maid factions in Akiba, on a scale much larger than the conflicts in previous episodes.
  • Episode 7: The good news? Manami is defeated and war between Creatureland and Maidalien is averted. The bad news? Nagi has officially had enough of Ton Tokoton's antics and has decided to take steps to 'remove' them.
  • Episode 9: Ton Tokoton has moved to the top of the chain of Creatureland, the Debt Collector is killed for his failure to prevent this, and Nagi is now preparing to kill the cafe herself due to humiliating her and her cafe during the festival.
  • Episode 10: Okachimachi tells Ranko that she is the maid who killed Ranko's mentor Michiyo, and that Nagi hired her to do it. Ranko chooses not to take revenge for it, figuring Michiyo wouldn't want her to do so, and is ready to leave the life of a maid behind to run away with Suehiro, but never gets the chance because Okachimachi, assuming Suehiro is simply trying to get Ranko to let her guard down, murders him before they can meet again.
  • Episode 11: Nagi disowns Ton Tokoton and openly orders their death, and is only stopped by Ranko pleading her to back down from it. Then, before Ton Tokoton really has the chance to relax, Ranko is stabbed in broad daylight by what appears to be a survivor of Wuv-Wuv Moonbeam and bleeds out in seconds, effectively decimating any remaining doubts among the public about the Maids and their violent tactics.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The epilogue definitely shows that Ton Tokoton has been revitalized in the 19 years after Nagi's death, and that Nagomi still happily works there as a maid. However, the fates of her surviving coworkers are left unanswered.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?:
  • During the prologue, after Ranko's boss gets shot dead by a rival maid, neither she or Nagi think to retaliate against their boss's killer. Likewise said murderer doesn't think to Leave No Witnesses, enabling Ranko to eventually join Ton Tokoton and Nagi to become the head of Creatureland 14 years later. It's later revealed she was nearly killed after serving her purpose and only escaped when a cop noticed, only to then don the Okachimachi guise in order to hide from her assailants. Likewise, Nagi does nothing about it because she orchestrated both the hit and the elimination of the maid who did it.
  • This bites Nagi in the ass when she lets Ranko's assassin free despite the worriment of the other maids, who wanted to drown her for doing so. Said assassin shoots Nagi in the head after she cripples Nagomi. Nagi barely gets a chance to process this before Okachimachi delivers the final blow.
• World of Action Girls: With the exception of Nagomi and possibly Yasuko, all of the main characters are very able to fight as needed, especially Ranko and Zoya. Eventually subverted with Nagomi becoming a ninja who only fights when she can't avoid it, and Yasuko is shown to be able to wield a gun when under attack.
• Yakuza: Maid cafes are simply fronts to entire Yakuza rings, and aren't afraid to do the dirty work against the opposition in order to keep up appearances to most of the public. After Ranko's murder, said public is both scared and annoyed by this turf war and pray that it ends.
• You Can Always Tell a Liar: Subverted in Episode 2. It appears that Yumechi has discovered her opponent's tell of adjusting her glasses every time she gets dealt a good hand and that this is evidence that she and the dealer are in cahoots. As she didn't touch her glasses at the end of the river, Yumechi believed her eight-high full house would be good enough to win. However, her opponent reveals her own hand to be a nine-high full house, losing Yumechi the game. The Ton Tokoton girls decide to just shoot their way out.
• You Can Run, but You Can't Hide: Implied in Episode 6 when Shiipon suggests taking the 5 million Yen they got from murdering Sheep Maid and running. Yasuko quickly shoots it down, saying that Creatureland would simply just find them regardless if they moved to another region or fled overseas. This also implies they caught up to Sano when she tried to pull this at the end of Episode 4.
• You Have Failed Me:
  • The big boss of the Creatureland group, Nagi, calls forth three of the managers at a meeting during episode 4. As she describes what each manager called is good for, she immediately shoots the second one in her back, citing that despite making lots of money, she was also embezzling it. The third manager asks to take the fall for this murder and disappears offscreen with the pistol used.
  • She later chews out Yasuko for Ton Tokoton's actions in Episode 5 and tells her to "apologize" to the rival organization Maidalien for Ranko's massacre of Wuv-Wuv Moonbeam, fully intending both her and the maids under her management to be killed in the process as punishment.
  • Manami chews out the rest of Maidalien for going soft against Creatureland when she gets out of jail and reinstates herself as the boss. She's only slightly more merciful than Nagi in that she doesn't automatically kill any of them right away.
  • Nagi is furious at Ton Tokoton winning the Omae Maid Climb over her own Lions maid cafe, and kills the Debt Collector in her rage.

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