Akiba Lost Review – PC

Akiba Lost walks a delicate line between a conspiracy thriller and an absurdist comedy focused on otaku culture. The result is a visual novel that makes one wish it had focused on its strongest part.

It isn’t hard to be charmed by what Akiba Lost markets itself as. At first glance, it looks like a thriller set in the subculture hub Akihabara. For any fan of anime or video games, this sounds like a home run. It’s also made in a style eerily similar to the critically acclaimed 428: Shibuya Scramble. It has the same storytelling style with seven protagonists to follow. This time, the thread connecting them is the development of a new game, Akiba Lost, in which six of the protagonists play young women who share their profession. The seventh main character is the producer, who makes the game as a last resort to solve the mystery of the six missing girls, as his sister was among those kidnapped.

It mixes an interesting case of young girls disappearing 13 years ago with phenomenal comedic skits that play heavily on otaku culture. On paper, that sounds promising, but the two elements often clash like oil and water.

It can feel like tonal whiplash to go from someone uncovering a conspiracy involving human trafficking to an otaku praying at his homemade shrine for a video game to be repaired. Both scenes are exceptionally written on their own, but when one directly follows the other, the shift feels wrong.

This issue runs through the entire game, and sadly, the comedy often outshines the mystery. The comedic supporting cast is far more enjoyable to follow than the oftentimes quite shallow main characters. For a game that gets small, odd details painfully correct in the supporting cast, it has a lot of hiccups with the main cast. The example that feels the most out of place is how the idol of the group so openly talks about having sugar daddies during a signing event. That is the sort of topic that is a death sentence for an idol, so it makes absolutely zero sense for her to bring it up.

The humorous supporting cast, which is mostly very well written, isn’t free of odd writing choices either. The otaku photographer Koemanda, who is generally the most likeable person, has a sad curse hanging over his writing. Every time he does something awesome in the story, the writers feel compelled to make a joke about how overweight he is. They mention how he defeated 50 delinquents on his own? Well, that obviously has to be followed by a tip-box explaining that they just so happened to block the way to the restaurant he wanted to eat at before it closed.

However, hiccups aside, the comedic supporting cast truly shines. They always step up in each situation and become more than their stereotypes. Koemanda genuinely cares about Akihabara and the people who inhabit it, and the lively idol-producer Iwabe, stuck in the past, can get serious and father-like when the situation calls for it, while also being willing to use modern marketing methods when the opportunity knocks.

Most of the tonal whiplash could have been avoided if Akiba Lost let the player read the story however they wanted. However, having to follow the structure of 428 so closely means the game is full of FREEZE moments where the player is forced to read other stories and find purple words in the text to proceed, which forces many of the odd stylistic shifts.

It makes sense to prevent players from reading important plot points before they’re meant to, and at the start of the game, this is the case. However, later on, the FREEZE mechanic is used far too much, even when it doesn’t make sense. To make matters worse, the feature that fast-forwards previously read text jumps over the keywords needed to proceed, making them a hassle to find.

The absolutely weakest point of Akiba Lost is the finale, though. Without spoiling any plot points, the last section of Akiba Lost feels like an episode of The Jerry Springer Show, with strange revelations that make no sense. Suddenly, the mystery part of the game starts breaking every rule of the genre by relying on a deus ex machina factory to manufacture a particular ending. It feels insulting to anyone invested in the mystery side of this mystery-comedy visual novel.

It makes one wish Akiba Lost focused more on being a pure comedy, rather than trying to be a great comedy game mixed with a poorly executed conspiracy thriller. It feels as though the game makes a lot of compromises to be more “marketable”. After all, what is more marketable: a mystery novel about idols and maids, or slapstick comedy about otakus and culture producers stuck in the past? However, in this case the latter shines brighter but gets far less screen time than the other.