Crunchyroll’s Anime Awards are upon us. And before you open up a tab, voting is closed (womp womp). While its nominees for Anime of the Year are packed with straight heaters, with the likes of The Apothecary Diaries, Dan Da Dan, Gachiakuta, My Hero Academia, The Summer Hikaru Died, and Takopi’s Original Sin jockeying for the big one, fans have already dubbed another anime, Apocalypse Hotel, as its unofficial ruler. And honestly, it’s hard to argue otherwise.
It’s the year 2157, and humanity has either been wiped out by a deadly disease or has fled Earth to outer space. Left on the rock we call home is a troupe of robots in a swanky Tokyo hotel given a directive to continue operations as normal until the day humans return to earth. Leading the automatons is Yachiyo, the “acting acting” robot manager of the establishment who runs the crew like the navy, making sure everything is neat and tidy despite there never being a single visitor for centuries.
That is until the hotel starts getting visitors from beyond the stars, leading to centuries-spanning misadventures wherein Yachiyo and crew with impressively long shelf lives grow, change, and evolve, extending their set of hotelier commandments to otherworldly visitors while patiently awaiting the day for humans to return, even if it takes half a millennium.
Going off its title alone, one might walk into CygamesPictures’ spring anime thinking they’re in for the inverse of Studio Rikka’s equally excellent (and criminally slept-on) sci-fi slice-of-life series, Time Of Eve. And sure enough, beneath its charming opening theme and rambunctiously colorful ensemble of characters, there are heady themes touching on the absurdity of maintaining normalcy in a world that no longer supports it, capitalism outliving humanity, and survival as emotional labor to chew on.
But where Apocalypse Hotel truly shines as a diamond in an otherwise lustrous season is that it’s an anime that contains multitudes. To further illustrate that point, I went about making one of those “What I Watched/What I Expected” mood board memes to hammer down the disparate tones the show has. Feast your eyes.
One moment, Apocalypse Hotel is a murder mystery ripped straight out of HBO’s The White Lotus; the next, it’s an all-out One Punch Man-meets Project-A-Ko-style space brawl that feels like it could crack your screen in half. I was laughing my ass off at its kitschy gags—especially the subtle Neon Genesis Evangelion riffs in the score whenever the crew launched into some harebrained techno-scheme to improve the hotel’s amenities, whether it included atmospheric ads or starting their own malt-liquor distillery.
Likewise, the show had me swallowing tears. Between all the humor, Apocalypse Hotel is rich with emotionally sharp portraits of resilience and the indomitable spirit to persevere. Mind you, this is a show where only three of its automatons can speak, two of them being humanoid, and the rest are Roombas and buckets that do cute beep-boops that still get their points across.
And this sincerity sneaks up on you, especially when its ensemble includes the madcap likes of tanuki aliens as mainstay cast members throughout its 12 episodes, which are neatly titled with the hotel’s 12 commandments of servitude:
- A true hotel is always storied
- Tradition evolves with innovation and experimentation
- A smile is the ultimate ambiance
- Food and etiquette are mainstays of culture
- Provide hospitality in limited time
- Our only vice is service
- Bow down deep but always aim high
- Discipline with a fist, reconcile with a high five
- Bookmark today’s page in our guests’ lives
- Clean sheets symbolize pure hearts
- Wag your tail, but never wag your shift
- Aim to be the number one hotel in the galaxy
I’m especially partial to episodes four, six, and 10. Yet despite its seemingly desperate tone, Apocalypse Hotel never feels out of sorts. It’s wild, it’s ambitious, it’s heartbreakingly human (despite its premise), and it’s so confident in its own chaos that you can’t help but love it more with every passing episode.
It takes real guts for an anime to make its penultimate episode nearly wordless, carried entirely by ambiance and artistry, and Apocalypse Hotel absolutely nails it with an episode so emotionally precise it’ll leave you rattled. Which is saying something when you realize the anime has been quietly doing so the entire time you’ve been watching new ridiculous scenarios play out inside its hotel lobby.
That being said, it’s not as if Apocalypse Hotel hasn’t gone by unnoticed during the Anime Awards. In fact, it’s in the running for best original anime against Moonrise, Zenshu, Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX, Lazarus, and Digimon Beatbreak. But keeping it a buck—and I say this as someone who literally sits on the judging panel—fans aren’t being hyperbolic. Apocalypse Hotel is truly special. It’s a rare series that makes you laugh, cry, and leaves you stunned that something this weird, heartfelt, and wildly ambitious even exists. Awards be damned, Apocalypse Hotel is a singular experience, and we’re lucky to have the pleasure of watching it.
Apocalypse Hotel is streaming on Crunchyroll.
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