I love Japanese video games. I love them because some of them are off the wall crazy. Some of these crazy games include Cho Aniki, Gitaroo Man, Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan... all crazy Japanese games I've played and enjoyed.  However, the top prize of craziness goes to Akiba's Trip: Undead & Undressed. Akiba's Trip is officially the craziest video game I have ever played.

Akiba's Trip: Undead & Undressed is an action game with RPG elements and an...”interesting” premise. You are an otaku living in Akihabara, the geek mecca of the world, who has been fooled into being a guinea pig for a sinister organization all because you wanted to score some rare figurines. After being rescued by a mysterious girl named Shizuku, you find out that you've become a Synthister, a race of supernatural beings who feed off the life energy of humans and are bent on taking over Akihabara! Thankfully, the Synthisters have a major weakness: they dissolve when their naked skin gets hit by sunlight. It's up to you and the Akiba Freedom Fighters to rip evil to shreds (quite literally) and save your hometown!

There's a lot of sights and sounds in virtual Akihabara. I've never been there, but I've been told that the Akihabara depicted in Akiba's Trip is almost accurate to the real thing. With all the people, shops and advertisements, I'm inclined to believe it. I've criticized the use of advertising in video games before, but in this case it fits. There are advertisements for both imaginary and real products and each of the loading screens displays ads for real Akiba businesses and real video games like Conception II, Mind≒Zer0, and Disgaea 4. NPCs are either shopping, working, sightseeing, photographing street models or sharing your fights on social media with their smartphones. Speaking of smartphones, yours acts as the game's menu. You can customize its wallpaper, check your email and keep up with quests, and you even check threads on “Pitter”, a social media app that is less like Twitter and more like a textboard forum. All of this makes the experience in Akiba's Trip really, really immersive.

There is a reason why the game’s logo is stylized as “AKIBA'STRIP”. Much of the game centers on defeating Synthisters. In order to defeat them, you and your partner must detect them out in the open using an app that exposes them via your smartphone’s camera. After you confront a Synthister, you fight them with a makeshift weapon (e.g. guitars, laptops, boxing gloves, stop signs and even döner kebabs!) until their clothes become less durable from the damage. After their threads have been weakened, you aim for the head, upper body or lower body and start playing tug of war with their clothes until you've successfully manage to STRIP them down to their skivvies. However, since you are also a Synthister, you have to keep your own clothing secure unless you wish to burn up and die. As you play, your stripping skills improve and you'll be able to keep stripped clothing as trophies rather than rip them up completely. If you want to add some flair to your stripping technique, fight in the Battle Arena to win money, experience and a new style of strip fu. These techniques don't make you stronger but it is cool watching your character pants someone JoJo-style.

Akiba's Trip may be a fun trip but it ain't a smooth one. The combat is novel but it gets annoying with the occasional camera and framerate issues. The framerate also takes a hit when there is a lot of action present. Despite being set in a large city, the map of Akiba is sectioned off into key districts, which does kill the scope. However, the biggest issue are the loading times. Whenever you leave a zone, the game takes a considerable amount of time to load before arriving at the next zone. At least there's the fast travel option in the map, which lets you warp to any part of the map you have been to. This feature comes in handy and will save you some time, letting you suffer through one loading screen instead of five. It’s also a short game, but Akiba’s Trip has some replay value, with side-missions, five ending routes and a New Game + mode.

I’ll admit that Akiba's Trip isn’t a game for everyone. The concept of stripping people naked in broad daylight is sure to alienate some folks and all of the esoteric Japanese nerd references and Internet lingo will turn even more folks away. For what it's worth, Akiba's Trip is a lot more silly than gross. The best way to describe Akiba’s Trip is River City Ransom but nerdier and pervier.

Otaku are often misunderstood and are considered weird by the general public and I expect the general public to feel the same way about Akiba's Trip: Undead & Undressed. However, I personally found Akiba's Trip fun and while it's got its problems, I loved the fact that it doesn't take anything seriously. What is serious, however, is the developers' passion. Acquire has really done their homework with portraying Akihabara as realistic as possible and as always XSEED has put in a lot of hard work and TLC into the localization. While Akiba's Trip isn't quite a masterpiece, It is the craziest game I've ever played. And it's also the closest thing to experiencing a trip to Akihabara without having to purchase a plane ticket. And by the way, when you're in the Radio Kaikan area, watch out for those pesky artliens.

Akiba's Trip: Undead & Undressed is available for the PS3 and Vita with a PS4 release coming later this year.

Hint: If you need to upgrade your gear, visit your adorable little sister behind the bar at MOGRA and ask her to synthesize your surplus weapons and clothing into something stronger. Keep in mind that she charges 1000 yen for each item, so use high durability items to strengthen your gear and sell off the flimsier stuff for cash.

by ray n. (@themistern)