Let me set the stage for you a little bit. You discover this basically unheard-of anime, barely any favorites, Akikan (or Empty Can). Pretty old, manga adaptation. You read the synopsis: Soda cans that transform into human women. It’s a captivating premise – Very weird and offbeat, certifiably 'Japanese' in the way people stereotype bizarre aspects of this culture. You can imagine how equating women to soda cans– Empty soda cans, literal trash, is critical of what many many manga, anime, light novels already do, but in a way that’s more obvious. What could it choose to do with this setup? What kind of story does it want to tell with this unique idea? A piece on how love is fleeting and expires quickly? Something feminist? A meta-commentary? You hear what some of the EDs sound like – Melancholic, almost in a way that explores a postmodern vision of love and relationships. They’re explorative of different genres, evoking the different kinds of people one may meet in life, how being exposed to them just teaches you about these different aspects of the world, and how personalities reflect that. You watch the show and it has absolutely none of that.

Akikan is a harem rom-com which stars a perverted high schooler who likes telling jokes, his tsundere servant girlfriend, his childhood friend who is in love with him for any reason other than his personality, and a homophobic stereotype main villain. That’s not a very attractive introduction, but fret not – It gets worse!

We begin Akikan meeting Kakeru, the aforementioned perverted protagonist. He’s hated by his classmates for… being sex-pesty and generally unlikeable. Okay, that’s not very appealing as a character, and his jokes aren’t very funny to the audience either. Ideally, a character like this should be charming, or at least a little funny, but Kakeru is unfortunately neither. You think to yourself, surely the crux of the show is how he grows as a person, but that simply isn’t the case. He remains completely static. It doesn’t help that every character in this show is attached to him for any reason except liking him on a fundamental level. His soda-turned girlfriend inexplicably feels indebted to him, his childhood friend wants to pay him back for what’s essentially a favor, the homophobic villain likes him because it’s a joke the show plays… but I’m getting ahead of myself. A protagonist you can’t get behind is obviously a bad start.

The show gets its main love interest when Kakeru buys a can of melon soda from a vending machine on the way home from school – Lo-and-behold, the can transforms into an attractive anime woman! She’s embarrassed at first because putting lips on a can to drink from it is equivalent to kissing on the lips, and some slapstick shenanigans ensue. Ah, but wait – Kakeru actually collects soda cans as a hobby. A twist! He values limited-edition cans enough to keep some in a display case in his room. How unique! What does the show decide to do with this…?

Basically nothing. You’d expect maybe that one of his other cans would turn into a girl, too? But no. It’s barely mentioned after episode 1, even. Here’s a character development shortcut if you want to make them seem more interesting: Have a character ‘collect’ something. This is hardly a character trait, but you never have to act on it or bring it up ever again. It’s a shortcut.

Anyway, this is how we meet our first love interest: Melon – Named as such because she’s transformed from a Melon-flavored Soda can. Fair enough, I guess. She’s very typical tsundere-slapstick anime girl, the kind of trope that goes back decades. She’s got a fairly nice design, yellow hair, green dress, some spherical hair clip things that fizz. Soda can girls – Or as they’re called in the show, Akikan (Hey, that’s the show name!), have some properties that separate them from normal humans. Firstly, they’re spiritually bonded to their owner. Whoever drank out of them first is their owner, and they all stay attached to them. Secondly, they don’t need normal sustenance to survive, and only need to cannibalize the same type of beverage they typify – If they run out of their original liquid, they’ll die. In other words, they just need to be refilled. Third, they have special attacks. Melon can shoot carbonated beams and form magical, melon-shaped barriers. Finally, they can all transform back into their can form and telepathically communicate with whoever their owner is.

After their meeting we’re introduced to the main antagonist, Hidehiko Otoya. He’s one of my biggest problems with the show. He’s some kind of bureaucrat who’s overextending his reach to research these Akikan girls, always accompanied by his secretary, Airin Kizaki. Also, he is an outdated and offensive homophobic stereotype. And the show just keeps. over. handing. It. It plays all the tropes you could imagine: Creeping on the mc guy, creeping on his other male friends, generally being out of pocket, lacy underwear, a bit of gender nonconformity, all of it. Yes, it was a different time, but retrospect can’t change the enjoyment you have with something now. Because, frankly – It is pretty disgusting to watch! The show obviously wants you to see it that way, but that doesn’t make it any less unpleasant. And, well, it’s just an awful stereotype. Offensive and harmful in every sense, it’s not even funny. Seriously just one of my main issues with the series is this guy, it makes me feel awful seeing it on screen.

Anyway, we learn about an ‘Akikan elect,’ which involves other Akikans meeting and fighting to see who’s stronger. From here, there’s a bit of focus on Kakeru’s friend, Najimi. She’s a soft-spoken girl with a wealthy upbringing, and she’s still got a little crush going on. She buys an energy drink from a vending machine one day and boom – It’s yet another Akikan. From a Yell! sports drink can brings Yell, a loyal, old-fashioned kind of girl who fights with a summoned energy sword.

That’s another facet of Akikans that is important, the kind of drink they spawn from influences their personality. The energy drink made for refreshing athletes, personified as Yell, is more honorable, sort of like Saber from Fate/stay night. Another Akikan we meet later on spawns from grape juice, and since she’s a drink made for kids, she’s a kid herself, who likes to get into shenanigans. She turns into kind of a minor antagonist for the show, but mainly in a, ‘characters want to stay clear of this annoying kid’ kind of way.

From there, the show kind of mellows out – There’s typical romcom shenanigans, beach episode, misunderstandings, fights that break out over earning Kakeru’s heart. I was a little tapped out in the middle of the show with how cliche it was, just going through the romcom motions. I remember near the beginning of the series when they decide Melon should start attending school to blend in as a normal human, there’s a little scuffle over how Melon can’t eat normal food, but she has to hide that fact to conceal that she lives by consuming melon soda. It’s notable because, well, that’s maybe the least interesting conflict you could possibly have with these characters.

And that’s kind of the nail in the coffin for this show – It’s not original. From my little summary, try to tell me the difference between an Akikan and, say, an alien from outer space that’s superpowered and can only eat cookies. There… kind of isn’t one. Their status as soda cans is the concept behind the show, yet it feels like the show never plays to this strength. You could stand-in Akikans for just about any other kind of secret identity type of super-powered girl, be it aliens, or saiyans, or whatever. They don’t feel like they’re soda cans, is my point. The death knell is Kakeru’s soda can collection. It’s never brought up past the first episode, so what’s the point? You see a collection like that and your mind starts to think of all the possibilities – Maybe he already owns several Akikans? He’d want to keep Melon in her can form? But, nope. You can say it shows he values cans more than the average person, but I hope he would – This one turns into a girl!! Anyone would be stupid if their empty soda can turned into a girl and they still threw it away! It’s a given she’d be more important, it’s not a matter of collecting them or not!

You could do just about anything else with the concept of soda cans that turn into girls, and the show just feels so stagnant. Harem of girls interested in one guy is a very uninteresting concept, especially with character tropes that were prevalent even far before the anime aired. If I had seen more of the classics I’d be able to pinpoint their inspirations, but even I can tell how cliched some of these are. Japan famously has the funniest soda mascot in the world with Pepsiman, a kind of aluminum alien who fixes every issue with Pepsi, and the best Akikan can do is girls with a soda lazer. Take a little inspiration! Like… from the concept alone I would assume this show involves collecting a bunch of different-flavored girls like they’re pokemon. Maybe it’s less progressive than how the show already is, but… Well, it’s not very good at juggling its already small cast as-is. A show with a regressive concept doesn’t necessarily have to endorse whatever it puts on display (Granted, Akikan as it is can hardly be considered progressive, anyway), but that’s far more nuanced than Akikan can really accomplish. Even the vending machine angle has been done better – Japan has some of the most complex vending machine mechanics on the planet, ranging from emergency services, unique product lineups. Reborn as a Vending Machine does something more original with this prompt, even if it largely devolves into vending machine trivia.

On the production side, there are some slightly interesting things of note, I guess. Akikan was animated by Brain’s Base in 2009. They haven’t been relevant lately outside of some later Golden Kamuy seasons, but they used to put out some notable things back in the day. In ye olden days, they did a few mecha shows. Akikan in particular was coming off the heels of Baccano the year before, and led right into Mawaru Penguindrum the year after – Two shows that are much better than Akikan! Our main character Kakeru was voiced by Jun Fukuyama, the same voice actor as Lelouch. This is pretty funny to me for a couple of reasons; He’s hardly known for any voice acting roles outside of Lelouch so the few he does do are even funnier. Plus, both roles actually sound quite different. If I wasn’t aware of it, I would never have made the connection. Something also pretty interesting is that this was actually one of Aoi Yuki’s first voice acting roles, as the grape juice Akikan. She was pretty on-point, but I was a little surprised to see it. Then again, this was only two years before Madoka, nothing too crazy. It’s also a little interesting to see Aki Hata was on for songwriting. She’s all over the place, but I know her mainly for her work on Love Live.

I enjoyed very little of my time with Akikan, but it’s interesting to see it as a bit of a stepping stone for some different parties. The music is very nice though, as I mentioned earlier – On a technical level, Akikan is fine, maybe even above average. The opening has some nice animation, fights are about okay. EDs are all very nice, 12 different songs in all, my favorite aspect of the show was looking forward to the kind of song I’ll be hearing at the end of an episode. Character designs are decent, something I also mentioned earlier, each Akikan in particular stands out as well representative of their respective beverage. It’s simply the contents of each episode that I loathe – I’ve been holding off saying it because of the obvious pun, but Akikan is garbage. It’s trashy romance shlock, not worth your time. I guess you could say it has little nutritional value, for the soda joke. Recommend a hard skip for this show.

Oh, but the OVA is alright. Anime girls in an onsen doing yuribait stuff? That’s the kind of shlock that I can get behind.