The Spring 2025 Anime Preview Guide

Apocalypse Hotel

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There is a solitary hotel in Tokyo's Ginza district. After society has collapsed, humanity has disappeared, and nature has begun to reclaim most of the land. Despite the lack of guests, Yachiyo is a hotel management robot who continues to manage the Ginzarō Hotel alongside other robots. Together, they continue to maintain the hotel while awaiting the return of its owners and guests.

Apocalypse Hotel is an original anime project by Cygames Pictures. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Tuesdays.

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Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

There's an ineffable air of sadness to Apocalypse Hotel that I, perhaps, should have been expecting given the title. Apocalypses are rarely joyous events, nor do they bode well for the hospitality industry as a whole. But I was still struck by the increasingly desperate air of the robots staffing the Gingarou Hotel as the episode went on. From the moment Doorman collapses from overheating, things start to feel a little bit bleak, going to the depths of Hotelier's despair when she completely loses it after the shampoo hat in one of the many unused bathrooms goes missing. Things have been building to her mental breakdown from the scene with Doorman (although there's an irable effort to play it off as funny), but the hat is the moment when she just…can't.

If you've ever felt badly for an unused or obsolete appliance, felt mournful over the hulk of a ship stranded on the shore slowly falling to pieces, or seen an old farming tool in an abandoned field and wondered what happened to strand it there, there's a good chance that this opening episode will make you a little sad. It's the same basic thing, except that Hotelier and her colleagues are more sentient than a hand-cranked apple corer. They being left behind when the humans fled the Earth. They believe that the humans will come back, rendering them useful again. And all of that begins to take a toll on Hotelier specifically, possibly because she's the last of the humanoid robots. She feels the weight of expectations beginning to crush her.

I don't think this is going to be a sad series, however. Everything is building up to her despair so that we can see her snap back to life when, at long last, a guest comes through the door…even if that guest isn't quite what she's been expecting. But the joy of having purpose again is enough, and the reveal of who's come to stay is also pretty funny. Although the episode shows hints of humor throughout, from Doorman's repeated collapsing to how Cleaners 1 and 2 bump into each other on purpose as they roam the halls, it's not until the plot is at its darkest that it fully embraces it. That's the sort of juxtaposition I probably should have expected, given how the opening goes between the soothing ad copy for a luxury hotel and the increasing “infortunium” pollution that drives humans either beneath the sea or into space.

All of this is to say that I don't think Apocalypse Hotel can be accurately judged by one episode. It's going to take another one or two to see where this is going and what its mood is going to be, and I think it'll be worth the old three-episode test. I'm intrigued, at any rate, and since that's what a first episode should do, I'd call this well played.