Let’s Get To Work
Mayonaka no Occult Koumin
Part two of the story in the stadium and we see Arata using the connections he’s made to clean up the mess made by city hall. Midnight Occult Civil Servants is definitely laying it on thick with their messaging about governing bodies having a human only focus and trampling nature in the process to the detriment of human lives however with gods and Anothers in the mix it all kind of works.
Despite Arata’s general ‘good guy’ status, there are serious questions being raised about his team leader. Despite the dire situation he still wasn’t willing to actually help out with the scene until he was given full control over the situation and who knows what else he managed to negotiate. He certainly looks out for his own interests even in the midst of an emergency.
However, Arata reconnecting with the Another’s he helped early on in this series and calling on assistance to clean up the mess was actually pretty neat. Prior to now we’ve moved from character to character and it has been difficult to really see if any kind of relationship was established by their actions or if they were just passing by. While the Another’s don’t exactly leap at the chance to help humans, they do see the sense in helping Arata in return for his earlier assistance and the promise of potential future assistance.
I’d like to say that they did a pretty good job of making the silk spinning scene exactly what it needed to be. It gave us a sense that some of the barriers between Anothers and humans were coming down and a small measure of camaraderie over a joint venture was formed even if humans were still very wary of the Another’s. They also gave us enough sense of beauty and other-worldliness to make it just fit appropriately.
There’s another episode to go and I’m curious how they will wrap this one for the season. I actually wouldn’t mind another season. While this one is hardly going to top the season, it has been consistent viewing and reasonable low-key entertainment and it will be a shame to see it go.
Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James
- Midnight Occult Civil Servants Series Review
- Midnight Occult Civil Servants Episodes 1 + 2
- Midnight Occult Civil Servants Episodes 3 + 4
- Midnight Occult Civil Servants Episodes 5 + 6
- Midnight Occult Civil Servants Episode 7
- Midnight Occult Civil Servants Episode 8
- Midnight Occult Civil Servants Episode 9
- Midnight Occult Civil Servants Episode 10
- Midnight Occult Civil Servants Episode 11
- Midnight Occult Civil Servants Episode 12
- Midnight Occult Civil Servants Episodes 14 + 15
- Images from: Mayonaka no Occult Koumuin. Dir. T Watanabe. Lidenfilms. 2019.
“there are serious questions being raised about his team leader. Despite the dire situation he still wasn’t willing to actually help out with the scene until he was given full control over the situation and who knows what else he managed to negotiate. He certainly looks out for his own interests even in the midst of an emergency.”
You might be right! But I saw the scene in a little different light.
I’ve been in situations like that before. My team got called in to fix something borked by another team. Thing was — just like in this case — I knew that if our recovery would in any way make the other team look bad, they’d sabotage us. The only way to reasonably accept responsibility for fixing the problem was to get the authority at the same time.
And sometimes, that means playing hardball.
It’s hard to know if that was the case here. I guess I should say that’s a net positive, because it means the characters are complex enough that there’s room for conjecture and debate. I like that in a show!
That character in particular is still quite ambiguous as to what his overall objective is. I mean, we could just put it down to the nature of his job, but it just felt like he was holding out for his own reasons which really wasted time that could have been spent fixing the problem. It’s like if your kitchen was on fire and instead of putting it out the fire department wanted to renegotiate their rate of pay with the council before they hopped into action.