Midnight Occult Civil Servants Review Episodes 5 + 6

The supernatural mystery grows.

occult6f — I have to give Arata credit here for a very appropriate reaction.

Episode 5

Not sure how I feel about the Another of the week being Pandora. Not to mention, it was pretty obvious from her first appearance where they were going with it so the reveal of her name toward the end of the episode didn’t meet with quite the ‘ooh’ moment I think they were going for given Arata’s reaction.

Still, the set-up here is nice for a case-of-the-week kind of story with an urban legend about an elevator to a parallel world. I do feel they probably should have done more investigation to determine if anyone was missing prior to actually looking into supernatural origins but we’ll just go with it. The basic flow of this episode was fine as they introduced the problem, the investigators looked around, and then Arata and Sakaki trigger a condition and get taken in the elevator to another dimension.

The dimension itself is at first kind of awe inspiring and I can imagine if I’d ever gotten out of an elevator into such a place it would be shocking. But, it quickly becomes kind of dull. And as Arata and the Another prattle on making very little ground as mostly we’re just getting another emphasis of the fact that despite being able to understand their words, Arata really doesn’t get Another’s, nor does he really make much effort beyond asking her to stop what she’s doing. It isn’t as though he proposes an alternative or discusses why what she is doing might be a problem, merely insists it is.

This is where a stronger lead character, or at least a more interesting one, would come in handy because an actual debate about the morality here might have lead to an interesting exchange. Instead, while this all works, it remains decidedly average in execution and content.

Ultimately, this episode seems to serve little purpose other than adding a minor bit of backstory to one character and while it was enjoyable enough there was so much more potential here than it actually delivered on.

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Episode 6

With twelve episodes in this season (at least as far as MAL is concerned) we’ve hit the halfway point and I’m actually feeling optimistic about this series. Episode 6 brings together so many elements from the previous episodes to set up a new challenge for Arata and the team to deal with and it just did it in such an effortless manner.

This episode we learn that one of the girls they rescued previously in the zombie like episode has woken up and so Arata and Kyoichi go to interview her. So far so ordinary with them revisiting a victim now that she’s woken up. However we learn quickly that she wasn’t a recent kidnapping and despite looking like a teenager she should be well and truly older. We also learn a few details about her abduction, most notably the black sand, and then learn that she’s lost her ability to sing.

None of this is all that odd given some of the things we’ve seen from the Another’s and yet it means something to Kyoichi. Tragic back story time as the older member of the team fills Arata in on the his sister’s abduction when he was younger giving him a personal investment in the current situation.

While the civil servants are doing their thing though, Huehuecoyotl is busy setting up more mischief and we see that he ends up directing the kidnapper toward Arata’s friend, I’m assuming just for his own amusement.

Honestly, while the visuals remain pretty unimpressive and the animation is ordinary at best, I’m enjoying the way this story is rolling out and episode 6 has really managed to catch my attention and it feels like all of these characters have finally settled into their roles and now they can just get on with things rather than feeling forever like we’re getting introduced to stuff. It is a comfortable place to be in the mid-season and hopefully this means Midnight Occult Civil Servants will be able to pull together an interesting second half.