Considering where I was with it going in, last week’e episode of Apocalypse Hotel amounted to a pretty massive stumble. Coming on the heels of one of the best episodes of any show this year, I had visions of masterpiece dancing in my head. But to be blunt, that ep had major problems. In addition to being generally kind of dumb – including in depicting a dumb idea as not dumb – it came off as pretty ugly. It was hard to read what happened as anything but a sort of tacit endorsement of the xenophobic politicians in Japan demanding a the abandonment of the country’s pacifist constitution.
That came especially as a shock because it appears to completely contradict the messaging of the first six episodes. That seemed unabashedly inclusive and a plea for understanding of differences. So I thought the whole Ponko thing – basically depicting her as one of those politicians (if you know you know) was satirizing them. But then it basically went to “She’s right, you know?” I don’t know any other interpretation of the last ten minutes of that episode. I don’t know any other logical reason why Yachiyo would have gone along with her. All in all, it was an unpleasant shock to the system.
As such, I went into this episode on tenterhooks. When that sort of thing happens, there are absolutely no guarantees the show will ever get it back. It requires both a recovery in terms of content, and a reserve of goodwill which I can’t be sure I have. And to again be frank, I don’t feel any better about things after this week’s ep. If there was any element of Episode 7’s ugliness that was a feint, we see no evidence of it here. Ponko is happily managing the hotel in Yachiyo’s absence (and presumed demise). In fact she’s built a missile into the roof, which she fires off at an unidentified object entering orbit, having no idea whether it’s hostile or a threat.
S0 yeah, I hate Ponko now. Maybe it’s a miracle that I liked her as long as I did, but no one was pulling harder for a random nudel attack than me. OK, so Ponko has made the Gingarou more successful (the advertising satellite was actually an OK idea) – they even have a few guests. And Ponko has grown up, which suggests she was maintaining that chibi form for aesthetic purposes only. But she’s kind of a sociopath now, and there’s not even any sign of her family (was that supposed to be Fuguri? She was acting like it was her boyfriend). Naturally Yachiyo is the object she fired the missile at (which is why we don’t fire missiles at unidentified targets, especially when our hotel depends 100% on extraterrestrial guests).
After that, none of it really worked for me. Yachiyo winds up getting grafted onto a tank because her body is destroyed (Ponko can apparently build satellites and RFGs – and mobile suits FFS – but not fix a robot body). She grates on all the changes Ponko has made and goes crazy, turning into a RPG-firing biker chick. There’s an entirely unconvincing and unsatisfying reconciliation between Ponko and Yachiyo, which finds the latter coming back to the hotel and restoring the removed shampoo hats. And absolutely no acknowledgement from anyone that mistakes have been made here, or indeed that they’re capable of learning from them (I mean, Ponko’s right – fixing the shampoo makes more sense than dorky shower hats).
I don’t want to harp on it, but I do say repeatedly that the writer is the most important person on an original series, and I did note that Murakoshi Shigeru never having stuck the landing on one was by biggest worry with Apocalypse Hotel. I’m not ready to say this series simply got Peter Principle’d, but it’s a total mess at the moment. It’s contradicting itself and what we see playing out has lost its internal consistency. As random and outrageous as its twists were, there was still a consistency of vision and perspective keeping things on-track. That’s in tatters now, and it seems very unlikely it can be pieced back together in any meaningful way. Which is a pretty big fucking shame, because I loved the hell out of this series and I really hoped it could close the deal.
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