Akihabara@DEEP 3 - Capture the Cosplay Peeping Tom
After a sad start to this episode, Akira uses her winnings from the cage match to rent a small office space in Akihabara. She convinces the team to start a business. Page gets the idea to have the Akihabara@DEEP company act as “troubleshooters”. They’ll help solve any problems they may have in Akihabara. Yui had told them that the reason why she helped others was that “In the process of saving others, we save ourselves“. With everyone on board with the idea, Akira, Box, Daruma, and Taiko head out to hand out flyers to advertise the company. Akira is the only one handing out flyers because any male that passes by the group ignores the guys. That is until a girl asks for a flyer from Box.
As they hand out flyers, Page (as the head of the outfit) gets called to Akanechin, the maid cafe that Akira worked at. Akira quit because she considers working @DEEP as full-time job. The owner of Akanechin is distraught that Akira, the popular waitress, quit the cafe and blames Page. The other waitresses and customers hear her and distract her as the customers threaten to never come back. Page starts to escape, only to be spotted. Everyone in the cafe, the owner, customers and waitresses chase after Page who runs back to the new office. Standing outside the office is the girl who asked for the flyer from Box. Her friend is trying to convince her not to go in. As they’re talking, Page and the Akanechin mob sweep them into the office.
Once everyone is inside the office, the cafe owner begs Akira to come back to the cafe. Some of the customers also plead with her. Akira finally agrees to come back and work one day a week. Once everyone is satisfied, the leave except for the two girls. The team listens to the girls story. The first girl, much to Daruma’s delight is Katsurai Mami, a famous cosplayer. Her friend and cosplayer partner, Satsuki explains that there are spy cam videos being circulated around the Internet and on DVDs of cosplay girls taken as they change their clothes. These happen to coincide with cosplay events that Katsurai appears at. While Satsuki has appeared in them, Katsurai hasn’t. However, the videos are being distributed in way that makes it seem that Katsurai is behind it all. Page realizes that the way the films are being distributed isn’t for profit, but to ruin Katsurai’s reputation.
After watching several of the videos, Taiko with his acute sense of hearing recognizes three distinct voices of people who never show up on the videos. Everyone decides to pull a sting operation and capture the three people in order to find out if they are the ones selling the voyeur videos. The team convinces Katsurai to appear at an upcoming cosplay event where they go undercover to and eventually find the three people. While at the cosplay event, Akira becomes a hit as she’s dressed up in a Lum from Urusei Yatsura. The team sadly discovers no evidence pointing to any of their original suspects. Dejected at first, the team eventually discovers who the person behind the videos is.
As the show goes on, I’m enjoying it more and more. There’s a fun spirit to the show and the actors seem to portray their characters in an honest fashion.
