English Dub Season Review: Midnight Occult Civil Servants Season One
Your local government agency, now with monsters.
Our Take:
I would never call this show substantial, but it is pretty fun. I am a giant mythology buff, and seeing mythological figures in the modern day is always a thrill for me– this is what makes me a fan of Fate, for example. Miyako’s life is filled with this, in fact, he can’t get away from it. There’s an endless amount of Anothers out there, and having the Ears of Sand, he’s the only one equipped to understand them. His coworkers are a little worried about him and how he’s overwhelmed by increasingly dangerous Anothers, and frankly, he’s not having the best time himself. He’s being followed around by a nekomata and the god of disaster, and it’s overwhelming. At the same time, he is starting to sympathize with the Anothers, and realize that they’re not just monsters.
Miyako feels a lot of unease towards the Anothers, basically monsters, at first. He sees their mentalities as foreign, and is very reluctant to engage with them. However, thanks to the Ears of Sand, he can hear them, understand them, and slowly comes to realize that they’re pretty similar to humans after all. His growing sympathy, especially when contrasted to others who don’t have the same sympathy, is one of the high points of the show. It’s interesting to see how Miyako and his philosophy grows, and starts to affect the people around him.
If there are any criticisms I have of the show, it’s of two things: Miyako himself and Compared to similar shows like Natsume’s Book of Friends, this is lacking a little. Miyako’s hesitation at first isn’t completely unwarranted, because he is in an awkward position. Him being unsure of what to do is a perfectly understandable thing to feel, but it ends up with him feeling positive towards the Anothers. It takes time to change opinions on serious things, of course, but in this case, it feels like it’s a foregone conclusion that comes too late. Before his grand realization, Miyako remains passive, too passive. He can translate for the Anothers, but they are completely foreign to him. He seems to want to stay out of it, which is a fine mentality to have, except that he is never really shown changing his mind. Following the Azazel encounter, he seems to make a complete 180, despite never having any hints that he felt such a way during the encounter itself. It uses the series climax for Miyako to finally have a revelation, and while it makes logical sense, this won’t do in a one-cour season. It’s something that comes too rushed, too late.
The animation is decidedly not impressive. It’s not terrible, and it’s never easy to make an anime. There isn’t a lot of action, so getting away with still shots and not a lot of detail in keyframes isn’t the worst thing. Still, it’s very easy to tell that this series doesn’t have a very high budget. That is definitely a turn-off for some people, and even though it’s understandable considering the state of the industry, there’s no questioning that this will come as a detriment to many people.
To be fair, this is a fun series. I personally love shows about modern mythology, and this is no exception to that. While it doesn’t go into extreme detail, what they show about how the Anothers and humans share and intrude on the same spaces together is really interesting to see play out. The fact that the job of keeping track of them is treated as a secret but at the same time incredibly mundane feel exactly how things would run in a government agency. Miyako’s coworkers all jive with him, and them all trying to figure out the identities of many Anothers directly parallels the audience’s journey, so we sympathize with them.
There are a lot of questions left unanswered by the end, and unfortunately, I don’t think we’re going to get the answers to many of them. The manga is still ongoing, so surely any burning questions will be answered there, but I doubt that this anime is going to get another season. It’s just very mid-tier overall, and I can’t see the Blu-ray/DVD sales warranting the studio to want to revisit it. For the anime-only people like myself, we likely won’t get any answers to things like why Seimei wanted to be a bridge in the first place, the future of the feuds between the internal divisions, or even some continuation of what happens to those affected by the Anothers. We may never get those answers, but in the meantime, what we have isn’t too bad.
