Apocalypse Hotel
Apocalypse Hotel is an original Japanese anime television series produced by CyberAgent and animated by CygamesPictures. The series aired from April to June 2025.
Plot
In the year 2057, an unknown aerial contagion dubbed "infortunium pollution" begins to spread around Earth, rendering the air unbreathable to primate-based species, including humans. With no way to cure or counter the infortunium pollution, humanity has no choice but to flee to space, leaving the planet completely abandoned. A century later, the only sign of civilization left is the Gingarou Hotel in Ginza, which is kept operational by what remains of the autonomous robot staff led by the gynoid concierge Yachiyo. As the staff wait patiently for humanity to return, they are caught off guard when their first guest to arrive in a century turns out to be an extraterrestrial visitor.Later a family of tanuki aliens visit the hotel after fleeing their home planet due to a war. This family end up living on Earth in their converted space ship, and one of the tanuki, Ponko, becomes an employee at the hotel. The tanuki have long lifespans, and together with Yachiyo, they work together to improve the hotel and attract more alien visitors over the course of several centuries, but still waiting for humanity's return. These improvements including building a hot spring spa, constructing a distillery to make their own whisky, and promoting the hotel by launching adverts in space.
Eventually, a human named Tomari Iori visits Earth, having been raised on a spaceship. She and the hotel staff discover that the infortunium pollution is no longer deadly to humans, thanks to a special plant left at the hotel by the first extraterrestrial visitor. However, humans have been in space for so long that their bodies now have an allergy to Earth's atmosphere, and thus can only visit the planet for short periods of time. Tomari leaves Earth, promising to Yachiyo that more humans will come and visit in time, leading to Yachiyo and her staff to continue running the hotel after Tomari leaves.
Characters
;Yachiyo;Ponko
;Doorman Robot
;Environment Checker Robot
;The Owner
;Bumbuku
;Mami
;Fuguri
;Mujina
;Ponstin
;Tamako
;Gentle Alien
;Aggressive Alien
;Tamako Iori
;Flycatcher Robot
;Cleaner Robot A
;Cleaner Robot B
;Cook Robot
;Bartender Robot
;Gardener Robot
;Porter Robot
;Maintenance Robot
;Driller Robot
;Nudel
;Harmaggeddon
;Dr. Becrux, Captain Avior, and Mighty Cuff
;Sneakity Sneak
;Squirtity Squirt
Production
In 2020, Nabuhiro Takenaka, president of CygamesPictures, approached screenwriter Shigeru Murakoshi and told him that he wanted to make an anime about "an extraterrestrial life form coming to a hotel run by robots on an Earth where humanity has disappeared". Murakoshi wrote an initial script based on this concept and came up with events that he thought would be interesting. He consulted with Sotaro Wada, who oversaw each episode script, and director Kana Shundo to receive their ideas and opinions. Shundo joined the project because of the concept and the original character designs by Izumi Takemoto. After reading a summary of the 12 episodes, he thought that the story was well-written and interesting. Shundo considered the character designs "nostalgic but not outdated".Takenaka was involved in the anime's production from the early stages and became production manager. He gave suggestions about the beginning and end of the story and came up with random ideas in scenario meetings. Takenaka described his own role as a "jokester". Although the story takes place in a post-apocalyptic fiction|post-apocalyptic] world, Takenaka aimed to create an entertaining anime and wanted it to be interpreted by viewers as both sad and funny. In the early stages of production, Yachiyo was originally designed as an "emotionless" robot character who "made calm decisions". However, after researching advances in artificial intelligence and robots, the production team decided to make her thought patterns more human-like. Takenaka suggested adding "an unknown expansion function" to the character to make her more appealing. Shundo tried to envision Yachiyo not as a "moe character" but as a "working woman".
Some scenes and characters were inspired by other popular films. The space scene in episode 7 was influenced by Gravity, Ponko's armored suit in episode 8 was inspired by Aliens, the scene in episode 10 where a door is broken with an axe references The Shining, and the corpse-hiding subplot in the same episode draws from The Trouble with Harry. Environment Checker Robot was created based on inspiration from TARS in Interstellar.
The reason Ginza was chosen as the location for the Gingarou Hotel is that the area has traditions dating back to the Edo period, reflects Western cultural influences, and is located near Tokyo Bay. Thus, the production team also wanted to depict that, after the apocalypse, the sea level had risen. When they first created the story's scenario, a clock tower was considered as the hotel's location. For the "Ginza-ness," a symbolic building of Ginza was chosen as the hotel building, and the front of the Kabuki-za Theater was chosen as the hotel's onsen. The Ginza Wako department store was used as a model for the hotel.