1837: A Trip to Akihabara

I’ve had a copy of Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed loitering in my backlog pretty much ever since it released over here, but I’ve never gotten around to playing it until recently. I’m not sure what convinced me to give it a go, but I decided that it was time, so I booted it up the other day.

Akiba’s Trip is a game that proved to be notorious for two reasons: one, that supposedly, it was a game about beating up girls and pulling their clothes off; and two, it features the transphobic slur “trap” used for its intended purpose, i.e. to insult a transgender person.

Both of these things are accurate; however, as is usually the case with this sort of thing, the fact that they were focused on by loudmouthed critics almost to the exclusion of everything else about the game obscured the fact that the other 99% of Akiba’s Trip is a very interesting, ambitious experience indeed, and a game very much worth playing. Not to mention the fact that both of the heavily criticised elements can be fully justified through the game’s narrative context.

In Akiba’s Trip, you play you, assuming you’re a floppy-haired male anime protagonist. (After clearing the game once, you unlock the ability to play as other character models, so from that point onwards you can play as a lady if you so desire; canonically, however, the hero is male.) After answering a seriously sketchy-sounding job ad about taking part in a drug test in exchange for as many rare anime figures and other merchandise as you can handle, you find yourself turned into a Synthister, a man-made vampire with superhuman strength and the ability to absorb “life energy” from people around you. While Synthisters aren’t vulnerable to crosses and garlic like “real” vampires, they are still extremely sensitive to sunlight, however, with something of a propensity for exploding into a cloud of dust if too much of their bare skin is exposed to the elements.

I’m sure you see where this is going.

In short order, you’re rescued from your precarious situation by another Synthister called Shizuku, and you make your way back to your group of plucky gamer buddies who hang out in a cool bar run by an old dude everyone calls “Pops”. From here, you’re tasked with investigating the Synthister threat as well as helping out the locals of Akihabara, primarily by either finding things in the district or by beating up people until you can pull their trousers off: the game’s combat system is primarily about damaging clothing until it’s in a state where you can whip it off, rather than whittling down a more conventional health bar. In order to defeat most enemies, you need to remove their headgear along with their top and bottom clothing. Interestingly, in contrast to something like Senran Kagura, a game which also has a heavy emphasis on clothing damage, the “strip” mechanic in Akiba’s Trip is unsexualised; it’s simply part of combat, and is, frankly, hilarious. (Not only that, but you’ll find yourself stripping men as well as women; I believe my session earlier is the first time ever in gaming that I have defeated a man in full motorcycle leathers by diving head-first into his crotch, grabbing his helmet and flinging it away, then whipping his trousers off and tearing his jacket from his chest.)

Stripping aside, the big hook in Akiba’s Trip is that it features a lovingly detailed rendition of the real-world Akihabara district of Tokyo in Japan — a Mecca for otaku of all descriptions for sure. Featuring recreations of real-life shops, some excellently authentic-sounding ambient sound and a pleasingly diverse array of random people wandering the streets, it’s an enormously atmospheric game that it’s a pleasure to just wander around and explore — particularly when you start to notice interesting things happening without any intervention from you.

I was searching for some street thugs with Shizuku at one point, for example, and I decided to try and ask a suspicious-looking man in the street for directions. He responded that he “wasn’t into dudes” and refused to talk to me. As I pondered what to do next, he then started to hit on Shizuku, who stood there patiently while he said his piece and then, marvellously, wound up one hell of a punch and socked him right in the face, flattening him. He then ran away crying. It was a beautiful moment that just happened to occur due to me being in the right place at the right time.

If there’s one game that Akiba’s Trip reminds me of so far, it’s Yakuza. The lovingly crafted real-world environment; the blend of JRPG-style mechanics with action game brawling; the fact the game acknowledges the more unpleasant, seedier side of humanity without judgement. (The aforementioned “trap” comment, for example, comes in the context of a forum thread you read on your phone; said forum thread was clearly localised by someone who has spent a lot of time on real-world forums, since the text-based “dialogue” is some of the most convincing and realistic I’ve seen in an English localisation for a very long time — right down to the use, or lack thereof, of punctuation, and the way that anonymous people online are quite frequently complete shitheads to one another.) That and the endless stream of sidequests to complete that have nothing to do with the main story but provide a pleasing sense of “place” and “context” to the overall setting; the NPCs who are delighted to relieve you of your money through various scams; the strong characterisation.

I’ve only played a couple of hours so far, but already I like it a lot. I’m playing the Vita version, which has a few technological limitations, but is proving enjoyable regardless; I can imagine that the PlayStation 4 version would be a most enjoyable experience indeed, particularly with its additional features and enhancements.