Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.

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It has been entirely too long since I got weirdly, uncomfortably personal on this blog (a few months, at least), so let’s fix that.

I have been thinking about my own mortality a lot lately. I won’t go into why, but suffice to say this dwelling is neither wholly rational nor entirely unfounded. I mention my own recent fixation here to give some context for why I’m checking out Apocalypse Hotel, and why I was initially reluctant to check it out. Stories like this, stories of mankind’s extinction or departure and what we may leave behind in our wake, stories that inherently deal with loss and finality as themes, are incredibly aggravating when done poorly. I won’t name names, but there have been some unimpressive examples in recent years, and I have somewhat burned out on this genre of post-apocalyptic iyashikei as a result. (The less said about its mutant cousin, the isekai slow life genre, the better.) All this in mind, I planned to pass on Apocalypse Hotel. Surely it would not become one of the most instantly-beloved premieres of the season, right?

If that’s overselling it, it’s only just so. Within my circles at least, Apocalypse Hotel has become something of a surprise standout among the season’s premieres. Enough of one to cover it over GQuuuuuuX? I’m not sure about that, but the praise eventually got to me and I was inspired to give it a whirl. I’m glad I did, because this is a series that not only understands the fundamentals of its parent genre very well, it’s also a bit of casual leg-stretching for Cygames Pictures, who have established themselves as one of the more reliable studios around in recent years. (For reference, Apocalypse Hotel is a follow-on from last year’s Uma Musume film and Brave Bang Bravern. This year, they’re doing Cinderella Gray, also from this season, and an adaptation of acclaimed manga The Summer Hikaru Died in just a few months. Going back a bit farther, you might also know them from Princess Connect Re:Dive.)

As for the actual plot here, there honestly isn’t terribly much. We begin with a truly spine-chilling opening, in which an advertisement for the titular Ginza Hotel, then brand-new, is intercut with news reports of a deadly, plantborne virus that is rapidly rendering the Earth’s atmosphere hostile to human life. Just five years out from the COVID pandemic, this sort of imagery is still very pointed, and the uncomfortable contrast between the luxury of the hotel and the violence we see as the world becomes less and less habitable, culminating with a lucky few escaping to the stars in an “ark” (supposedly for just a few years while Earth’s ecosystem sorts itself out), is of course very intentional. It is equally so that most of the rest of the episode doesn’t directly deal with that discomfort. Instead, the series dances around it in a deliberate, careful way, only drawing attention to it directly at key moments.

Most of the episode is fairly comedic, in fact. We meet our cast of characters, a group of robots maintaining the Ginza Hotel. The most prominent of these, and the only one in the group that could conceivably pass as a human, is Yachiyo [Shirasu Saho], the “acting acting” head of reception and thus the one in charge of the hotel in a general sense. Yachiyo spends her days keeping her crew on-task as they make sure the hotel is kept clean and orderly, in preparation for humanity’s eventual return.

A return that, at this point, they have waited on for a hundred years and counting.

I don’t want to make Apocalypse Hotel seem darker than it actually is, because most of this episode genuinely is pretty upbeat. Gags like Yachiyo absolutely losing her cool because a single shampoo hat goes missing from one of the hotel’s bathrooms, or the bulky, extremely serious Doorman Robot [Touchi Hiroki] and his sheer dedication to his simple job of opening the front doors for any prospective guests, are a genuine delight.

Get Door Robo

Even the music is pretty upbeat while the crew go about their daily routine of keeping things clean and sparkling. But the undertone of massive loss is always there. Firstly from the simple fact that the thing they’re keeping so pristine is a giant hotel with nobody in it, and secondly from the more general post-apocalyptic trappings. A century is more than enough time for plants to have grown over much of the world outside the hotel, and these gorgeous wide shots instill a solid sense of longing and emptiness.

In other words, this show is quite clearly picking up the thread left by seminal works such as Yokohama Shopping Log. Being that good would be, frankly, too much to ask—Yokohama is arguably the definitive work of its genre—but that the two can even be in the same conversation is a good sign. There is one point in the episode in particular in which this influence is extremely evident, and that is when one “Driller Robot” does not report to the morning roll call at the hotel. Yachiyo goes out to find him, only to see that he’s been killed; massive metal spikes have been driven through him, and he’s completely motionless. Clearly saddened in a way she either can’t or won’t entirely express, Yachiyo solemnly places him on “indefinite leave,” and consigns him to a storeroom full of other similarly broken-down robots. An earlier gag draws attention to the fact that the Doorman no longer has any coolant in his systems, and one has to wonder how long it’ll be before he, too, joins that pile. We have already seen, via flashbacks, that Yachiyo’s crew used to be much larger.

Yachiyo’s behavior, as well, seems to indicate that she’s not as together as she’d like to put on. It’s mostly played as a joke here, but she has an angry outburst near the end of the episode, and she’s also been keeping detailed logs of operations every day since the hotel’s owner left. She tells herself that new guests will be coming soon, but it doesn’t really seem like she believes it.

Which makes the end of the episode all the more surprising. I can’t bring myself to spoil what, exactly, happens there, but I do think it points Apocalypse Hotel in an interesting direction going forward. Does all of this relate, that much, at the end of the day, to the fears I discussed opening this article? Eh, yes and no. Apocalypse Hotel is clearly a part of this cozy apocalypse genre—it’s right there in the name, after all—but it’s much more lighthearted, even whimsical, than I first assumed. Yet, that sense of loss and transience still very much does color everything about the series, and it’s difficult to say what it will end up leaning more into as it goes on. In other words, it’s hard make many long-term predictions. But, regardless of what happens on this particular after-the-end vacation, I’m planning on at least a short-term stay. Hopefully you are, too.

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