YMMV / Akudama Drive

• Abandon Shipping: Once it's revealed that Cutthroat's crush on Swindler was not out of genuine affection, but rather being The Only One Allowed to Defeat You, many shippers of the two decided to abandon shipping the pair, especially after the ensuing chase where Cutthroat scares the daylight out of Swindler while she kills Cutthroat at the end of it.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: A lot of fans who are very attached to Cutthroat despite the events that took place in Episode 9 like to make different headcanons about his general character, what made him the way he is, and the reason for his attachment to Swindler.
• Awesome Art: Everything about the cyberpunk scenery and aesthetics are simply gorgeous. The vibrant use of colors in the signs, buildings and rooms are pleasing to the eye (which is helped by Studio Bihou and Asahi Production both being involved like they were with the Attack on Titan and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure adaptations). Not to mention that the choreography of the physical fight scenes are very well done and animated.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • While Swindler is a fairly likable main character, a lot of the things she does points to her being incredibly naive and it causes a lot of initial viewers to be annoyed with her goody two shoes attitude. There is also the fact that she was willing to protect Brother and Sister with her life despite hardly knowing much about them, causing fans to get further annoyed with her.
  • Brother and Sister. They were human experiments for immortality and while that garnered them some sympathy, other viewers thought the information came out of left field and found that they couldn't get attached enough to the pair of siblings to care in comparison to the seven main characters.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • After all the cruel deeds, selfish acts and senseless killings, fans were more than delighted when Cutthroat and Doctor were brutally killed by the very people, Swindler and Hoodlum, respectively, they antagonized throughout the series.
  • After subjecting the people of Kansai to their Police Brutality, it's immensely satisfying for the citizens to revolt against the Executioners in the end.
• Complete Monster: In a Crapsack World filled with violent criminals and corrupt cops, the following stand far above in terms of their sheer vileness:
  • Doctor makes a habit of finding people who need medical aid and brutally dissecting them alive, killing any civilians around the area who bother her during her work. Upon being hired for a heist job, Doctor sabotages the stitches of her injured teammate Brawler so that his wound would reopen, causing Brawler to die from blood loss just because he was immune to her drugs. Doctor later sells out the team to the Executioners in order to have her status as an Akudama cleared. Despite having a clean slate, Doctor wastes no time in continuing her criminal ways, slaughtering a group of lab workers so that she can analyze the blood of the immortal Brother and Sister. She later forces Hoodlum to aid her in her goal to kidnap and dissect the two children so that she can discover how to have full control over death.
  • Cutthroat is an eccentric Serial Killer who beheaded over 1,000 victims. After being rescued from his execution by the team, Cutthroat develops an obsession with Swindler, acting as her bodyguard solely so that he can kill her for himself later on. After the team gets split up, Cutthroat heads towards the Kansai region to find Swindler, killing every person he comes across along the way. Upon reaching Kansai, Cutthroat invades the Executioners' headquarters and slaughters hundreds of workers to form a pile of their corpses to greet Swindler with. When he chases her down to a storage closet, Cutthroat attempts to slowly strangle her to death, taking glee at her agony.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: The ending is presented as optimistic because Brother and Sister have been saved from being sacrificed to Kanto and have found a place to live peacefully and the people of Kansai have risen up to destroy their corrupt government. But that leaves out the facts that every main character is dead, a large part of Kansai is now ruins and the city is effectively lawless and doomed to collapse thanks to the people and Courier taking out the police and an EMP courtesy of Hacker knocking out all power, the millions of human minds stored in Kanto are doomed to a slow death with nothing to prevent it or the Supercomputer potentially expanding its reach outside of Kanto, and it's never even shown if the sanctuary Brother and Sister were trying to reach was even real or if there was anyone there at all.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • The Akudama are the Villain Protagonists of the series and by far the most popular characters if only because of how badass they are, with Courier being a Badass Biker, Brawler being a Blood Knight that's also humorous and Hacker being a tech-savvy Teen Genius. Also Cutthroat and Doctor have their fans who Love to Hate them, especially Doctor, who is the Ms. Fanservice of the series. Even Hoodlum has his moments of badass especially after killing Doctor, while Swindler becomes this via Character Development.
  • The Executioners are this due to having awesome designs and Laser Blades while being effective antagonists to the Akudama.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: A lot of fans much prefer Cutthroat to be paired with Swindler because of how unique their dynamic is, that is until Episode 9 came in and almost everyone abandoned the ship. This would be in comparison to the male/female lead pairing of Courier/Swindler, since a lot of fans find them to be very stereotypical. Ironically, a lot of those fans began to jump to this ship after the series had ended due to the few moments they shared in the last couple episodes.
• Heartwarming Moments: Hoodlum and Brawler's friendship.
• Ho Yay: Hoodlum x Brawler is very popular thanks to the fun dynamic between the two men.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Swindler is shipped with almost anyone by default of being the protagonist, most notably with Courier and Cutthroat. However, this doesn’t stop her from getting shipped with Hacker since it’s shown that he does have a soft spot for her. Weirdly enough, some fans also like her with Doctor, possibly due to the strong sexual vibes they give off.
• Magnificent Bastard: In this Crapsack World filled with violent criminals, these three manage to survive through their brilliance and charm:
  • Swindler starts off as "Ordinary Person" who becomes ruthless and cunning upon joining a team of Akudama. Swindler helps them rescue the immortal children, Brother and Sister, from Shinkansen and escort them to Kansai, before escaping with Sister after Doctor sells them out to the Executioners. Swindler then changes her appearance and incites chaos within Kansai by spouting claims of leading an Akudama army to it easier for her and Sister to escape, unconcerned if her manipulations lead to wide scale panic, death and destruction. Swindler would resort to murder those who would harm her and Sister, including group of criminals and Cutthroat whom she lures to a trap and convinces Hoodlum to turn against Doctor resulting in their deaths. Arriving in Kanto, Swindler convinces Hacker to rescue the children before goading the Executions into killing her, using the program Hacker gave her to edit the footage of her death resulting in the people of Kansai revolting against their society and allowing Courier to escape with the children.
  • Courier is a serious and highly efficient Akudama who delivers goods to whoever should enlist him. Priding himself on never letting a client down, he is enlisted to rescue Cutthroat from his execution, and then to steal cargo from the revered Shinkansen. Armed with his tricked-out motorcycle, his gun and his pragmatic wits, he helps the group achieve their objective. When Doctor turns traitor, Courier fulfils Brother's last request for him to deliver his lucky charm to Sister, saving Swindler in the process and tagging along with her as a getaway driver after being swayed by her resolve. At the very end, Courier uses the chaos created by Swindler and Hacker, destroying the Kansai Radio Tower to escort Brother and Sister to their destination and fighting through an army of Executioners in the process. When he realises he doesn't have much time left, he drops them off close to their destination and fights off the remaining pursuing drones, taking the last one out right before it can reach the siblings. Declaring this "Perfect", he succumbs to his wounds, accepting his death with a smile.
  • Hacker is a brilliant, thrill-seeking Akudama wanted for hacking into countless government and private banks in Kansai. Hired to rescue the mass murderer, Cutthroat, from death row, he, alongside several others are tasked with stealing cargo from the highly secured Shinkansen, with Hacker using his skills to fend off any opposition and get them to their destination. Once there, Hacker parts with the group to leave for Kanto, having already figured out how to remove the bomb collar that kept him under control. Arriving in Kanto and learning of its true nature, Hacker uses his genius to retain free will where he then frees Swindler and Courier from its hold before helping them rescue Brother and Sister. Dying in the process Hacker accepts his death, content to have found his most fun challenge, and gives Swindler a program that would be used to broadcast Swindler's death to the public resulting in mass riots and an eventual blackout, while allowing Courier to escape with the children.
• Moral Event Horizon: In Episode 10, Boss gives the order to recognize any rioting citizen as an Akudama. This would allow her Executioners to eradicate any citizen without hesitation in the hopes of restoring order. It gets far worse from there.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: There's been something of a conflict between Courier x Swindler and Swindler x Cutthroat shippers on Twitter. Fans of the latter are heavily detracting ever since the events of Episode 9.
• Tear Jerker: The deaths of Brawler, Hoodlum, Hacker, Swindler and Courier for the following reasons:
  • Brawler dies after he and Master perform a Mutual Kill. However, Doctor later reveals that she orchestrated his death when she deliberately did a poor job with his stitches, which resulted in him bleeding out.
  • Hoodlum dies after Doctor reveals the truth about Brawler's death and how she manipulated him.
  • Hacker sacrifices himself to rescue Brother and Sister from the Kanto supercomputer.
  • Swindler dies when she sacrifices herself to expose how corrupt the Executioners are in order to ensure that Brother and Sister escape safely.
  • Courier dies after a grueling battle in order to ensure that Brother and Sister reach their destination.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The series goes farther than Akame ga Kill! when it comes to the body count. Most viewers are here for the cool art style and shipping between Swindler and Courier (and the villainous counterpart Doctor and Cutthroat). It's hard to care about the whole premise: a cyberpunk world with Grey-and-Gray Morality (or Black-and-Gray Morality) where both the Executioners and Akudama are equally horrible. The Executioners are already corrupted since the crime rate has skyrocketed, while the Akudama (except Swindler) are ambiguously good at best and outright irredeemable at worst.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: The takoyaki vendor in the first episode. While she acts very volatile and it's baffling that she doesn't have a card reader in this day and age, her response to the soon-to-be Swindler refusing to pay her with the money Courier dropped is actually fairly reasonable. While Swindler did say she would pay her back later, and considering her personality she probably would have, there was literally no way to guarantee that she would, making it understandably come off as Swindler trying to cheat the vendor and make off with a free meal. And even worse, the reason Swindler didn't simply pay up was because she wanted to return a measly 500 yen coin to a guy who literally stated that he didn't want it anymore, making it hard to not be on the vendor's side.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Swindler. While her situation of being dragged into a massive heist and being labeled as an Akudama is a huge load of bad luck and sympathetic as a result, as both Courier and later Hacker pointed out, she could've easily gotten out of her situation had she just simply paid her 500 yen for her takoyaki with a coin Courier dropped from the very first episode. It gets harder to feel sympathy for her later in the series when she essentially sacrificed a load of innocent people living in Kansai to the Executioners by having them riot like crazy to the point that the latter practically forced the New Police Chief to label them all as criminals to calm the riots and protests down, which costed them their good will and trust of the city while ruining the lives of plenty of innocents in the process, all for the sake of saving two children. And then she incites the people to riot again in the final episode.
  • The citizens that the Kansai police designated as criminals and gunned down are portrayed as innocent victims of Police Brutality, and their deaths give the people of Kansai a reason to rebel against the government in the final episode. However, those citizens weren't exactly peaceful protesters; they were a violent mob of rioters who had already killed several people in the streets. The reason the police gunned them all down is because they were on the verge of beating down the doors to police HQ and would have probably killed the people inside based on their past behavior. It's very difficult to see them as the victims of government abuse instead of a group of violent lunatics who met a predictably violent end.
• Woolseyism: In the original Japanese version, Doctor constantly calls Brawler, the only dark-skinned character in the main cast, a "dreadlocked gorilla", an insult historically used to demean dark-skinned people. The English dub would address this issue by having her refer to him as a "dreadlocked oaf" instead.