Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re taking a trip downtown to the Gingarou Hotel, where I’m told the accommodations are lavish and the shampoo hats are in abundant supply. Yep, it’s time for a fresh episode of Apocalypse Hotel, wherein we will rage at the dying of the light by providing top-notch service for our theoretical clientele.

Apocalypse Hotel’s first episode did a fine job of balancing its unique combination of fatalism and whimsy, echoing the post-apocalyptic embers of shows like Girls’ Last Tour and Kemurikusa. As our own world lurches towards climate disaster, global conflict, or worse, it is oddly reassuring to imagine how life will continue beyond us, and what strange creatures might find comfort in the bones of our once-proud society. You might think post-apocalyptic media nihilistic, but I tend to find it the opposite; stripped of the artifice of civilization, such stories often zero in on precisely what makes us human, the dignity, compassion, and determination that can survive even in the harshest of climates. Let’s see how our staff put their best feet forward today!

Episode 2

We begin where we left off, with our hostess greeting their first guest in ages, a presumably plant-based organism in the vague shape of a large green man

Nice dance for our OP, though the song feels a bit low energy for the effect they’re seeking

“Tradition Evolves With Innovation And Experimentation.” Another of their hotel’s fundamental commandments, one that puts a somewhat hopeful spin on the necessity of adjusting their service methods for this post-human clientele

Their new guest does indeed have a language, but it’s not within our hostess Yachiyo’s database. Nice digital overlay for her language search; this show is establishing a solid visual contrast between its soft, somewhat nostalgic character designs and digital flourishes, which is itself is a common aesthetic of these sorts of “event vacation” hotels

They eventually arrive at some sort of agreement via a vague game of charades, though it seems unclear if our guest has any idea what Yachiyo actually means

“Please state your name verbally.” Hard to imagine these two will actually arrive at a common language, particularly when it comes to “payment for services rendered”

His sole form of physical communication appears to be through straightening objects around him, whether it’s Yachiyo’s hand gestures or his own tentacle hat

Yachiyo’s a real trooper, though. She graciously interprets this creature placing his own room key on her head as a request to be led to his room

Her recommendation of the hotel’s restaurant services offers a somewhat bleak joke, in that “locally sourced ingredients” will shift from a cosmopolitan luxury to a necessity once international trade breaks down

As a creature composed entirely of morphing noodles, the animators are clearly having fun with this guest’s character acting

Yachiyo is thrilled to learn this guest is as excited about shampoo hats as she is

“Do extraterrestrials even count as guests?” A key question for this narrative’s already tenuous premise

The other robots are thrilled to learn extraterrestrials count as guests. A beat that points to the real issue here – whatever our nature, we need to feel like our existence means something, like our efforts will in some way make tomorrow brighter than yesterday. Even if it’s diverging from their original purpose, servicing extraterrestrials gives this hotel and its employees a reason to wake up, go to work, and fundamentally feel like they matter in some way. Not many people can find motivation without purpose

Our alien guest appears to consume food by tossing it into his anemone-like head tentacles

He spends his days harvesting some plants, planting others, and dripping poison into pools of water. Busy guy

Yachiyo employs that classic “two held branches and a branch headband” disguise for spying on him. I wonder what originated that particular gag?

On the third day of his stay, a short black robot with a serious attitude arrives, played by the unmistakable Shinichiro Miki. Miki’s two modes are generally “hyperactive lunatic” (James from Pokemon) or “gravel-voiced badass” (Kaiki from Monogatari), and it seems clear he’s leaning towards the first for this role

Yachiyo has shifted from getting individual buckets of water for Doorman Robot to just spritzing him with an adjacent water bottle. Traditions really do evolve with innovation

Apparently the new robot is the “Environment Checker Robot.” Quite impressed with how they convey a sense of him swirling his non-existent coat with this spinning introduction, and also how they actually squash his CG wheels to accentuate the motion

He was one of a fleet of robots designed to check the environment’s suitability for human life. However, now he is the last of his kind, a fleeting reminder of hope for a vanished past

He tracked their guest to this hotel, and of course immediately thinks only of destroying him. A remnant of the human ego, their lasting presumption that this planet will always be theirs, a fantasy that the hotel employees have already had to discard

“Whatever his objective, he is still a guest of this hotel!” Our best hope for the future might be that our robot children only inherit the better parts of our nature

Their guest seems to be generally set off by loud noises or bright lights, entering a panicked or defensive posture whenever either presents itself

“What are you keeping this up for? There isn’t a single human left around.” The Environmental Checker Robot serves as a sharp contrast to Yachiyo, maintaining a love of violence but no hope for the future

Of course, he has a reason for his cynicism – he’s actually been sending reports to the absent humans, and hasn’t received a response in decades. Granted, considering humanity left over a century ago, that’s actually a pretty good hit rate

Love this little helper bot blasting the environmental checker for sending Yachiyo into despair. Much of this show’s humor is a little loud for me, but some of the small beats get me

Her despair certainly seems warranted, though. Unless they can find some new source of satisfaction in continuing their duties, they are essentially just playing pretend, dusting and keeping the lights on for a clientele that will never return

Diving into the pool to rescue her seemingly drowning guest, Yachiyo is called back to a memory shared with the hotel’s original manager, as the two prepared tea together in a traditional ceremony

She’d apparently just failed in some hotel task, resulting in a dressing-down so severe she asked to be terminated

“When it comes to humans and robots coexisting, calculating the probabilities isn’t the way to go. You consider the possibilities.” A mantra that obviously applies to Yachiyo’s own current struggles. Coexistence is never the easy route, but so long as it remains within the realm of possibility, it is always worth seeking

“According to my calculations, our hotel stood a zero percent possibility of survival without a shampoo hat. But our alien guest didn’t need a shampoo hat at all.” What’s more, by inviting possibilities over probabilities, you often find yourself discovering new truths that your original calculations would have missed, based as they are on your own limited perspective

“Instead of the probability your wish won’t be granted, believe in the possibility of it coming true.”

Thus they are united by the universal binding potential of the tea ceremony, after which he offers a gift of a strange green plant

As expected, our guest doesn’t understand money. Fortunately, in the post-apocalypse, you can just sort of pick it up off the floor

And Done

Well, that was certainly charming. I wouldn’t say enough of this show is working for me to really inspire a connection – this episode felt much less sharp than the first in terms of meaningfully engaging with apocalyptic themes, and the humor that replaced it just felt kinda loud and one-note. Nonetheless, it’s still a novel and neatly executed premise with generally inviting art design, even if it’s more of a farce than an emotional drama. Not precisely my scene, but that’s not really a fault of the show itself; I’m just not much of a comedy guy, and tend to like my comedy-adjacent stories with more emotional bite to them. That said, Apocalypse Hotel is clearly episodic enough to facilitate a variety of distinct tones; if this is the show at its silliest, perhaps there’s still something for me here.

This article was made possible by reader support. Thank you all for all that you do.