Apocalypse Hotel made the bumpy road of its creation into a virtue, by confidently mixing different styles, viewpoints, and moods accumulated during its lengthy production process. The result is a capital o Original anime that can excel at anything between outrageous comedy and contemplative nostalgia.
Various lineages run through Apocalypse Hotel, some more broadly known than others. Different styles and the hands of their representative artists, companies with their own ways of doing things, and even individuals who are nowhere to be seen in the finished product yet still made a lasting impact. Coordinating a successful original anime is complicated, so you’d ideally wish for a stable project where everything remains clear from the beginning to the end. While ApoHotel’s team had no shortage of members with sharp ideas and the willingness to stick with them, its creation was a bumpy road with some sharp turns. It certainly wasn’t the easiest path to success, and yet, it feels somehow appropriate for a series that’s all about mixing recognizable elements into an exciting, fresh cocktail–something the story echoes thematically.
The thread that most viewers would pull if they were asked why ApoHotel is the way it is would be the company behind its production: Cygames. In particular, they would likely associate the fact that it’s an original anime with some truly unique ideas with Cygames’ tradition of planning outrageous concepts like Bravern, Akiba Maid War, or Zombie Land Saga. Although it’s not quite the same as those, we can’t forget that much of their brand is built around Uma Musume to begin with; a franchise so successful that you can forget the premise of “real racing horse souls transmigrate into a universe where they’re humanoid girls and the most important thing in society” is kind of wild. There is a good reason why the idea of an original Cygames anime evokes an image of eccentric fun in people’s minds.
In this case, you wouldn’t be wrong in assuming that their tendencies shaped ApoHotel’s funky spirit. It’s inarguable that one of the ideologues behind the show as we know it is CygamesPictures’ president Nobuhiro Takenaka. And yet, it’s also true that he wasn’t even meant to participate in this project. As he mentioned in an interview for ITmedia NEWS, the project was initially a joint venture between another producer within Cygames and studio Liden CEO Tetsuro Satomi. After all, it was his studio that was due to animate the series. By the time Takenaka joined, there was already concept art as well as a general idea of what they wanted to do. It was a pitch reminiscent of Fujiko Fujio’s 21 Emon—which already presented the idea of a futuristic hotel with robots and aliens—and some sort of post-apocalyptic setting. In his interview for Apocalypse Hotel Visual Works, Takenaka adds that Satomi had brought up the likes of Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou and WALL-E as references for the world.
It’s worth noting that, at this point, it was planned for ApoHotel to be a purely comedic, wacky slapstick. However, since the project wasn’t advancing smoothly, Satomi told Takenaka that it was fine to tinker with it as much as he saw fit… as long as the design work didn’t go to waste. Given the opportunity to make an original anime, Takenaka saw it fit to broaden the scope some more. The producer reached out to series composer Shigeru Murakoshi around 2020, at which point they started reimagining the entire project. While you might assume that it was a professional writer like Murakoshi who came up with most ideas, Takenaka is credited with many key concepts from the series. It was him who pitched the idea of keeping a low number of characters who could speak human languages to maintain a sense of loneliness, to give the robotic protagonist an unknown expansion function that’d help her grow from the seemingly rational robot we see at the beginning to her more human-like, chaotic behavior as events develop.
Even the exact ending scenario is something that the producer had been particular about since the beginning of the project, as was mentioned in an ANN interview featuring the core members of ApoHotel’s team. Takenaka wanted to create something fun despite the inherent tragedy in a post-apocalyptic story, where joy and sadness overlap in a way that allows either resonate with special strength for different people. Although he has obligations as a producer for a large company, he has opened up about how impulsive-driven his pitches are; to put it simply, they’re ideas that would interest him if he were a viewer. His nonchalant proposals were fleshed out by Murakoshi, who relished the opportunity to write something so unique. Chatting with Net Lab alongside the producer, he explained that they didn’t purposefully switch genres with every episode, but rather got there by pivoting from the idea of stories set in a hotel. Both the flow and amusing whiplash between certain episodes, again, was an organic outcome rather than something they’d planned.
While the ideas began to flow, the anime industry hit a virus-shaped wall. The pandemic had catastrophic effects on the industry, and unstable studios like Liden simply couldn’t find a way to get schedules to work. This threatened the project’s existence, and since he’d grown attached to it, Takenaka requested to transfer its production to his own CygamesPictures turf. Even though we’ve noted that projects like this fit the parent company’s brand, the truth is that he was faced with criticism by a Cygames board of directors that wasn’t fond of investing in such an odd idea. And so, the producer did what every smart child does: he took the issue to mom. Or rather, the business equivalent of it, which is escalating the situation to the next parent company. There, he found an ally in CyberAgent’s Manami Kabashima. While she also saw the financial risk, she shares Takenaka’s belief that it’s original works that give pedigree to a production company, so she backed the project.
As we said at the beginning, the Cygames side of the story is only one of many. You may have noticed that there was an important element that preceded Takenaka’s arrival: a certain someone’s original designs. That person happens to be illustrator and mangaka Izumi Takemoto, whose participation dates back to earlier in 2020. His name has been cited by all the aforementioned producers as the most recurring aspect in the positive critical reception of the series within Japan. Takenaka goes as far as saying that he was key in assembling the team to begin with; veterans were delighted about the rare opportunity to draw Takemoto’s characters, while younger artists were drawn to someone whose style felt nostalgic but in no way outdated. During the gradual leadership change process from Liden’s Satomi to Takenaka, meddling with Takemoto’s work had always been the red line you should never cross.
This might be surprising to overseas viewers, as Takemoto’s name is not particularly well-known outside the country. His achievements within manga span a multitude of genres in a way few artists have achieved, but localization efforts have been spotty at best. In the early 90s, he was involved with wildly ahead-of-their-time projects like Yumimi Mix (an adventure game presented in the form of a very thoroughly illustrated digital comic) that are only reaching English-speaking people now, through fan translations. Even his massive influence on creators who are more widely celebrated like Touhou’s ZUN is at best mentioned as an anecdote, then forgotten. But don’t get it wrong: Takemoto’s appeal, with his round forms and compact silhouettes, is universal and timeless. You may not have had any idea who he was, but chances are that you found ApoHotel’s main characters to have a memorable look despite their simplicity.
Even beyond the visual appeal, Takemoto is the type of artist to approach the design process in a whimsical yet thoughtful way; even more so with a premise like this, as a known sci-fi geek. Interviews like the one for Animate Times make it clear that his approach to character design isn’t merely about giving an appearance to the cast, but rather imagining how each design element may be influenced by the universe they exist in. Of course, this doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about the visual aspect: in the show’s Blu-ray booklets, he specifies that he first begins drawing freely, then adjusts his work so that you can feel that relationship with the setting. Within Visual Works, he describes this as a process akin to a conversation with the worldbuilding itself. Early on, there was no reason settled on for the disappearance of humanity, so what could it have been? How would that affect the character concepts? He believes that, even in cases where the team moved on to different ideas than what he presented, having more specificity early on is something that spurred their imagination.
You may have noticed that we’ve yet to mention a figure that would normally be very prominent in the production of an anime, moreso for an original title. Yes, we’ve yet to talk about the director. This isn’t because they weren’t important or did a poor job, but rather because they arrived later than you might imagine. While ApoHotel is Kana Shundo’s debut as series directorSeries Director: (監督, kantoku): The person in charge of the entire production, both as a creative decision-maker and final supervisor. They outrank the rest of the staff and ultimately have the last word. Series with different levels of directors do exist however – Chief Director, Assistant Director, Series Episode Director, all sorts of non-standard roles. The hierarchy in those instances is a case by case scenario., she was brought over when the outline for every episode had already been settled on. In an extensive feature for the series published in Animage August 2025, Takenaka admits that he reached out to her because they really needed a female perspective. Even though they had gone forward with a (robot) woman as the protagonist—Takemoto had sketched male versions as well—the team was the equivalent of a group of unruly high school boys. To balance that, he sought someone who could offer a different mindset, but who’d also already be acquainted with the type of humor they envisioned for the series. Shundo, who had been the assistant series directorSeries Director: (監督, kantoku): The person in charge of the entire production, both as a creative decision-maker and final supervisor. They outrank the rest of the staff and ultimately have the last word. Series with different levels of directors do exist however – Chief Director, Assistant Director, Series Episode Director, all sorts of non-standard roles. The hierarchy in those instances is a case by case scenario. in the first season of Priconne, appeared to be the right person for the job.
If you’re acquainted with Shundo’s career, that situation might feel nostalgic. After all, she began her career at studio Gainax (already a point of contact with irreverent humor) in the late 00s, where she met a small group of like-minded animators with whom she became very tight. The Chuo Line Anime Sisters (Mai Yoneyama, Hiromi Taniguchi, Natsuki Yokoyama, and Shundo herself) were trendy women interested in fashion. Which is to say: hardly the norm at a place like Gainax, where the leading voices were almost entirely rowdy guys. As a bit of an exception, being of similar ages and sharing interests, this group became so close that they still work together all the time—save for Yonema, now a celebrity who has transcended regular industry positions.
Nowadays, a few Chuo Sisters tend to be stationed around studio NUT, which mixes ex-Madhouse and ex-Gainax bloodlines. When Taniguchi debuted as original character designer with the wonderful NegaPosi Angler (2024), Yokoyama was there to help her despite a packed schedule. Now that Shundo has become a series directorSeries Director: (監督, kantoku): The person in charge of the entire production, both as a creative decision-maker and final supervisor. They outrank the rest of the staff and ultimately have the last word. Series with different levels of directors do exist however – Chief Director, Assistant Director, Series Episode Director, all sorts of non-standard roles. The hierarchy in those instances is a case by case scenario., it’s once again Yokoyama who has been entrusted with the animation designs and chief supervision; no Taniguchi this time around, but she made sure to publicly support her friends still. Regardless, the Shundo appointment couldn’t have been any more fitting.
Although she joined at a late stage for a director, Shundo was instructed to approach all writing as if nothing had been finalized. Despite having permission to change anything as she saw fit, though, her mindset was more about enhancing the ideas that were already on the table. Takenaka describes her role as increasing the level of detail so that viewers can more easily buy into the world, also crediting her for the depiction of the protagonist. Sure, they’d always known that they wanted to create a series starring a humanoid robot concierge, which had been given flesh through Takemoto’s imagination. However, the way Yachiyo moves, her facial expressions, and the mannerisms that can swing from overly serious to an excited child are something that Shundo carefully developed herself.
Another aspect that Shundo is credited with is the type of narrative and structural changes that may not seem like much on paper, but that bring everything together much more tightly as you experience the show. The first episode of ApoHotel establishes the basics about the story; we follow robotic concierge Yachiyo as she continues to take care of a fancy (yet increasingly wearier) hotel in a post-apocalyptic Earth with no humans left. The team’s goal was never to spell out the specifics about the sci-fi mechanics of the story, preferring mystique and allusion to long-winded answers. Shundo respected that spirit, but added just enough specificity to enhance the series’ themes. For example, she decided that the catastrophe should be triggered by a virus rather than an alternative like a natural disaster, as a way to maintain an appealing contrast in the setting. Ginza had been chosen as a location for the story over other options like Ito Onsen or even England because it embodies the coexistence of tradition and cutting-edge developments. Had the planet been physically wrecked, then, you’d diminish the remnants of human culture that give so much flavor to the series.
For an even clearer example, she came up with an unplanned intro scene that gets across many of the show’s ideas in an immediately engaging way. ApoHotel begins with a classic promotional video that tells you the many attractive points of Gingarou Hotel, a luxurious establishment that appears to have state-of-the-art facilities. Eventually, that idyllic sight begins to cut to as much of a backstory as we’ll ever see; the first reports about an unknown virus, humanity’s attempts to adapt to it without disrupting their normalcy, and chaos as they attempt to flee a planet they can no longer breathe in. There’s a quick punch in the contrast between the material luxury that’s being advertised and the images of the catastrophe we know happened not much later.
ApoHotel doesn’t hold back when judging humanity’s excesses. In a later episode, as Yachiyo traverses a very peaceful world, the one thing to shatter the pleasant silence is the audiovisual noise of a pachinko machine that somehow survived. In the series’ imagination, humans didn’t stop being the way they are, even as their world crumbled down. Sometimes, you’ll see details like the fact that humans tried to create high fashion out of the need to wear helmets to avoid death. Petty, materialistic, outright silly. But also, human and lasting. There are still remnants of everything they did; physical ones, but also intangible things, like the hotel owner’s goofy easter eggs that constantly nudge Yachiyo to grow beyond the rigidity of her programming.
Apart from storyboarding and directing the sequence, Shundo is also responsible for the entire concept behind the opening. She had always envisioned the idea of Yachiyo dancing alone for a performance that would normally involve multiple people, alluding to the fact that the hotel owner and humanity as a whole left her behind. There is deliberate solitude in there, and the song request to Aiko was made accordingly, but also joy in the way everyone ends up joining her.
Multiple reasons prevent the series from coming across as too dark, despite the tragedy inherent in the premise. One is that it’s simply that comedy permeates ApoHotel on multiple levels. Sometimes, it’s already present in the premise of an episode. We’re talking about a show with, for one, a scenario inspired by Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry that underlines the gap between our morals and the common sense the hotel’s inhabitants have developed. From a kaiju setting that still allows all sorts of fun stylistic changes to space criminals demanding the attention of not-copyright-infringing heroes, sometimes the joke is as loud as Yachiyo’s extreme reactions. The protagonist herself is humorous on subtler levels, like the gradual corruption of her robotic logic you witness across the entire show; while part of her will always be wired to be a stickler for the rules, the way she conveniently twists them becomes funnier the more chaotic the hotel grows. Even the animation is quite amusing, and not just when it’s doing something outrageous (which it does, often). ApoHotel is the type of series that understands the fun in giving quite human acting patterns to robots… and then suddenly having them move in distinctly machine-like ways.
When it comes to ApoHotel’s most impactful sources of light, though, look no further than a very literal one: the colorful post-apocalypse, as painted by art directorArt Director (美術監督, bijutsu kantoku): The person in charge of the background art for the series. They draw many artboards that once approved by the series director serve as reference for the backgrounds throughout the series. Coordination within the art department is a must – setting and color designers must work together to craft a coherent world. Kouhei Honda. As he revealed to Animage, they reached out to him around 2023, when the production was shifting into full gear. At the time, he was actually appointed as the art directorArt Director (美術監督, bijutsu kantoku): The person in charge of the background art for the series. They draw many artboards that once approved by the series director serve as reference for the backgrounds throughout the series. Coordination within the art department is a must – setting and color designers must work together to craft a coherent world. for the Witch Hat Atelier TV adaptation that has yet to materialize. His plans changed when he was informed that a request had reached Kusanagi, the studio he works with, requesting specifically his work. Given that had never occurred before, Honda changed his plans and accepted this job.
As it turns out, his work in Akiba Maid War had caught Shundo’s attention. And so, given Takenaka’s involvement with that series, she asked him to reach out to Honda. The art directorArt Director (美術監督, bijutsu kantoku): The person in charge of the background art for the series. They draw many artboards that once approved by the series director serve as reference for the backgrounds throughout the series. Coordination within the art department is a must – setting and color designers must work together to craft a coherent world. was quickly on the same page as Shundo; he also read ApoHotel as a rather pop series, so his interpretation of this vacated Earth would not appear ravaged by riots and disaster, but rather beautifully overgrown. Colors that are associated with nature as we know it are peppered with some alien shades, embodying the inevitable change that echoes through the whole show, then bathed in gentle lights. On the other hand, he also made sure not to overdo it with intense colors either—setting a particularly important episode that happens in the fall season closer to the hues we might see in a cold, solemn November, rather than the intense reds that precede it. The show’s entire attitude is embodied by its soothing, historied, wistful yet fun backgrounds. It’s a beautiful anime with just as precious a worldview.
That attitude is embodied not just by quite literal background elements, but of course by the narrative itself. The first notable event after the introductory episode is the arrival of an alien, the first guest in a hotel that wasn’t exactly seeing business after humans fled the planet. Yachiyo doesn’t hesitate to Air Bud their way in, because even though pets aren’t allowed, no rule says that extraterrestrial beings can’t be customers. Their complete inability to communicate with a creature who speaks, eats, breathes, and likely thinks entirely differently than they do stresses out a robot who seeks perfect satisfaction from every guest. It’s only when she remembers the words of the missing owner, a believer in the possibility of coexistence even if probability argues against it, that she succeeds at forging an inexplicable bond.
Leaving just a little gift behind, the guest leaves. Fortunately (sometimes) for the hotel’s business, they’re just one of many individuals to show up at Yachiyo’s doors; sorry, at Doorman Robot’s doors. A group of space tanuki refugees, civilization-threatening boxers, and enough colorful blobs of goo to paint multiple rainbows. In their own way, they all change the hotel, sometimes even the planet itself. This arrival of more and more unique creatures successfully detaches the story from anthropocentric storytelling, especially when it comes to time itself. Decades, sometimes centuries pass off-screen, in the blink of an eye. And yet, time matters—just in a different scale than we’re used to.
It’s common for stories featuring non-human characters to contrast our mortality with, for example, the eternal life of an elf. What ApoHotel decides to do instead is observe the transient nature of things with a smile on its face, fueled by the belief that there will always be something growing afterwards. In its world, humanity hasn’t simply disappeared and been replaced by something else that will remain eternal. The good and bad of people have left their legacy on the planet, which is now occupied by creatures who have their own lifespans and will eventually perish as well. Sure, robots may not have the same concept of death, but we gradually see them disappear across the show due to accidents and faulty parts. The tanuki certainly live for way longer than humans did, but we still see a child grow into a capable adult, a grandmother eventually passing away. Few moments embody this mindset better than that death overlapping with a wedding, sparking a ridiculous ceremony that celebrates life from beginning to end. After all, the latter is merely another beginning.
Every now and then, that ambitious attempt to combine different moods can misfire. The episodes that tackle particularly complex topics are more prone to generate that friction, not only through tonal whiplash but by simply rushing forward to the next idea without neatly wrapping up the previous thought. Look, for example, at the mini-arc comprised by episodes #07-08. The former begins in a fascinating way: a sharp portrayal of the rhetoric behind military expansion movements, with blatant mirrors to modern Japanese politics and the attempts to amend the constitution. Whether deliberately or through a brilliant accident, using a literal refugee family to spread that propaganda puts the spotlight on a residual but very damaging type of racism. While the show doesn’t validate those stances at all, as they’re the reason many things begin to go wrong, its propulsive rhythm immediately sends it across 10 different moods and potentially interesting topics, without necessarily giving them closure.
Is that much of an issue, though? I would argue that, with ApoHotel’s magnetic confidence and jaw-dropping execution, the downsides are a fair price to pay. The conclusion to the arc, directed by Jun Fujiwara—definitely not a persona of Gen Kondou—presents Yachiyo with a tough pill to swallow. Even she, competent robot that she is, stands no chance against the unstoppable forces of time and change. Her very human reaction leading to a humorous redesign could fall flat in a lesser show, but there’s no drop of irony in ApoHotel’s bloodstream; yes, the protagonist becoming a chimera of punk and tank is ridiculous, but there’s no mockery of her feelings when it matters most. And why not use that design to come up with an incredible action setpiece, which wouldn’t have been possible with her normal body? There are no rules that can stop this show.
It’s understandable that some viewers wanted ApoHotel to be more focused, but I find it admirable that the series can try so many different things and still be exceptionally good at specific registers. YKK had been brought up as a reference point in its very inception, and you can certainly feel that influence in Chengzhi Liao’s episode #11. After so many hectic episodes, Yachiyo is finally forced to take a day off, leading to a mostly silent episode where she walks across the remnants of the human race. This coincides with her realization that she’ll break if she doesn’t find replacement parks quickly, giving an air of solemnity to her quiet adventure. In the end, as it tends to happen within this story, it’s only thanks to the community she has been slowly building that a temporary solution is found. ApoHotel is, after all, the story of a robot so welcoming that she inadvertently turns the entire planet into a hotel where others feel comfortable.
There is an anecdote that resonated with art directorArt Director (美術監督, bijutsu kantoku): The person in charge of the background art for the series. They draw many artboards that once approved by the series director serve as reference for the backgrounds throughout the series. Coordination within the art department is a must – setting and color designers must work together to craft a coherent world. Honda enough that he has revealed it to multiple outlets, like the Animage feature on the series and his interview in Apocalypse Hotel Visual Works. Barely a few minutes into the first episode of the series, we see Yachiyo fetching water from the river. One of the images that stands out the most is a broken tree where white flowers have bloomed—the type of beauty born after destruction that feels so characteristic of Apocalypse Hotel. In truth, those flowers weren’t part of the design sheets. Honda simply decided to add them on the spot, as he painted the backgrounds for that scene. It seemed as if everyone else on the team had simply rolled with it, not paying attention to his choice.
Now, we jump forward to the finale. All of a sudden, after an impossible amount of time has passed, a descendant of humanity returns to the planet to check its condition. To everyone’s very emphatic surprise, its atmosphere is no longer poisonous to humans. Once again, it’s the actions others have taken in the past that started a positive domino effect; namely, it was the mysterious gift left behind by Yachiyo’s first guest, as that alien algae filtered the virus out of existence. In ApoHotel form, however, it turns out that humans have spent so much time away from Earth (and presumably sealed in pristine spaceships) that they’ve become allergic to the planet’s environment. This is a funny punchline, but also a way to reinforce the show’s belief in the inevitability of change. Earth may no longer be deadly to humans, but they’d need so many antihistamine meds to return that they’re better off staying away and perhaps just paying an occasional visit.
Because of that, many cuts in the finale emphasize something that the show as a whole has already been doing: the gradual shifts in the environment. Plenty of shots rely on similar framing to what we’ve seen before, using the updated background paintings to demonstrate even the quietest, slowest forms of change. One of the adjustments to the scenery to show that profound passage of time just so happens to be the flowers that Honda once independently decided to paint, which have grown more majestic than ever after all this time. This resonated very strongly with the art directorArt Director (美術監督, bijutsu kantoku): The person in charge of the background art for the series. They draw many artboards that once approved by the series director serve as reference for the backgrounds throughout the series. Coordination within the art department is a must – setting and color designers must work together to craft a coherent world.; forget not correcting the detail that he had added without asking, Shundo and the rest of the team had accepted it, made it part of the world, and gave it more meaning than he could have imagined.
Situations like that ended up being symbolic of Apocalypse Hotel. It’s not ideal to have your original anime plans bounce all over the place, changing hands and teams entirely in the process. To the staff’s credit, that’s not something they did on purpose, just like how they didn’t engineer a global pandemic to set the situation further off track. And yet, they made the best out of those circumstances. Just like within a story where diverse individuals come and go but always leave some sort of legacy, this beautifully weird project retained many fingerprints. Liden may not have animated it, but their president’s emphasis on Takemoto’s design work endured. The original designer himself was only intermittently connected to the animation production team, yet he remained such an influence on their vision that it doesn’t feel out of place to see him still officially drawing official spinoff comics.
With a balance of acceptance and imagination, this crew was able to take in all sorts of styles and ideas, reformulating them into an anime like you’ve never seen before. If you haven’t watched the show yet, please book your stay at the Gingarou Hotel. I can vouch for their staff, even the tanuki fellows. Some of them, anyway.
Support us on Patreon to help us reach our new goal to sustain the animation archive at Sakugabooru, SakugaSakuga (作画): Technically drawing pictures but more specifically animation. Western fans have long since appropriated the word to refer to instances of particularly good animation, in the same way that a subset of Japanese fans do. Pretty integral to our sites’ brand. Video on Youtube, as well as this SakugaSakuga (作画): Technically drawing pictures but more specifically animation. Western fans have long since appropriated the word to refer to instances of particularly good animation, in the same way that a subset of Japanese fans do. Pretty integral to our sites’ brand. Blog. Thanks to everyone who’s helped out so far!
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