Apocalypse Hotel is delightful and charming

Apocalypse Hotel is a rather unique twist on the post-apocalyptic world.

What would Disney’s WALL-E be like if WALL-E could talk, was an android, and ran a hotel?

If you’ve ever asked yourself this question (and I know you have), Apocalypse Hotel has the answer.

Here at the AJnet Anime Club, we take pride in talking about lesser-known anime and turning readers on to series that they may otherwise have never heard of. Apocalypse Hotel definitely fits the criteria for “lesser-known”. It finished airing in June of 2025, and even has a score of 8.03 on MyAnimeList, but I haven’t heard anyone really talking about it.

If you’ve been sleeping on this series, then we’ve got your wakeup call right here.

I compared the series to the movie WALL-E, and while they do share some similarities, I guess that’s not really an accurate comparison, and might even sound off-putting to some of you.

Apocalypse Hotel is kind of like WALL-E, in the sense that the main character is a machine tasked with maintaining their environment while waiting for humanity to return after they left the planet.

Thankfully that’s where the similarities end. There’s no environmentalist message, humanity didn’t destroy the planet, and while the main character is a machine, she’s an android who, for all intents and purposes, functions like a regular human (albeit emotionally aloof).

The series takes place in the mid 22nd century, with an airborne virus forcing the human race to leave Earth for space a century before.

Humans have been gone for about a hundred years, but one hotel in Ginza is still standing, and still open for business.

The Gingarou Hotel, ran by an android named Yachiyo and fully staffed by robots, remains fully dedicated to providing its guests with the best experience. Even though they haven’t had a guest in over a century, Yachiyo makes sure the other robots keep up with their duties and responsibilities. As such, the Gingarou remains largely unscathed in an otherwise deteriorated Ginza that’s slowly being reclaimed by nature.

The hotel finally receives its first guest when an alien shows up. While there’s an obvious communication barrier, Yachiyo does her best as the acting general manager to ensure the alien has a good stay.

Soon more aliens begin showing up to use the hotel, including a family of “Tanukians”, a race of raccoon-like aliens who can shapeshift into humans. The Tanukians originally only plan to stay until they can fix their damaged ship, but decide that they like the Gingarou so much that they’d rather stay on Earth. They take jobs at the hotel, assisting Yachiyo in catering to the growing alien clientele (as it turns out, the first alien was a galactic hotel reviewer).

The series is listed as “post-apocalyptic”, but I don’t think that’s quite right. Apocalypse Hotel is post-apocalyptic because of its setting, but I personally think the story is more slice of life. The post-apocalyptic environment is definitely important to the story, but the stories themselves aren’t your typical post-apocalyptic fare. They’re not about survival (okay, there’s actually one or two episodes that kind of are), they’re about the characters and their own internal problems and interactions. In most post-apocalyptic shows, the characters are struggling to survive in a bleak and hostile world. In Apocalypse Hotel, the characters are surviving just fine (mostly because they’re robots), and their struggles are with either themselves or alien culture shock. It’s an interesting kind of mix that stops just short of subverting the genre.

A major story point is Yachiyo slowly beginning to accept the possibility that the humans she’s waiting for may never be coming back, and as a result slowly developing emotional capabilities. She goes through most of the stages of grief, at first denying that they won’t return, then gets angry that they haven’t come back yet. That anger turns to depression, and eventually Yachiyo works through it and accepts that the humans probably aren’t coming back. Instead of making the Gingarou the best hotel in the world, Yachiyo strives to make it the best hotel in the galaxy.

The alien designs aren’t really anything crazy or special, but the cultural clash between Yachiyo and the various aliens can be very funny at times. When the Tanukians first move into the hotel, they poop all over the place and essentially destroy the hotel like a pack of raccoons. At first Yachiyo tries to be tolerant, and the Tanukians keep saying that it’s their part of their culture. But eventually Yachiyo’s tolerance reaches its limit and she punches the father Tanukian in anger. The Tanukians realize that they have to make at least some attempt to adapt to the Gingarou’s rules, and not only clean the place up, but continue to work at the hotel and help maintain it. I’m not sure if this episode was meant to be some kind of political commentary on immigration, but it was still pretty funny.

Later in the series, Ponko, the Tanukian daughter, is getting married, but her grandmother dies right before the wedding. The Tanukians have the grandmother’s body standing up in her casket during the entire ceremony. Most series would have played this for laughs, but the entire thing is treated seriously, and the episode ends with the spirit of the grandmother watching from the sky. Every time I saw the dead grandmother standing up in the coffin behind Ponko and her husband I wanted to laugh, but the episode was just too emotional. I mean, I still laughed anyway, but I felt like a jerk doing it. How many anime could do something so absurd and successfully pass it off as a serious emotional moment?

And yes, the humans do come back. The way their return is handled is kind of clever, and not something you see done very often in science fiction. The gist of it is that, while the virus was rendered harmless thanks to a plant left behind by an alien guest, the humans have adapted to their new life on starships, and thus are allergic to Earth’s atmosphere. Is this scientifically accurate and realistic? Probably not. But it is creative. It’s not something you see every day in media. Given enough time away from Earth, it would make sense that humans would eventually adapt to other environments, maybe even at the cost of their ability to survive on Earth. It would probably take a lot longer than several hundred years, but I think it would eventually happen.

I have to give Apocalypse Hotel a 7/10. It’s a charming take on a post-apocalyptic world with characters that manage to be both sincere and absurd at the same time.

Angry_Jerk

Adam “The Angry Jerk” Baker is the CEO of The AJnet Organization and Editor-in-Chief of AJnet Magazine. A grizzled internet veteran of over 20 years, he writes about politics, culture, and whatever else manages to annoy him that day.

See author's posts