Summer 2018 First Impressions – Muhyo & Roji’s Bureau of Supernatural Investigation

Muhyo and Roji are masters of magical law and solve many cases having to do with ghosts, monsters, and all things supernatural. – ANN

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: 12

Source: Manga

Episode Summary: Muhyo, a diminutive child-like individual, and Roji, his put-upon assistant, work in supernatural law. Muhyo is a famous executor who punishes spirits for encroaching on the lives of human beings, his looks and foul temperament belying a savvy expertise. Roji is an apprentice hoping to learn the trade from the very best. One afternoon a young student named Rie approaches the professionals to seek help. There’s a ghost haunting one of the platforms at the local train station, and Rie believes herself to be responsible for its existence. She was very close with her friend Taeko since they were both outsiders at school. When Rie joined the volleyball team she began to disconnect from Taeko, and their last meeting ended when Taeko fell backwards onto the tracks and was killed. Now her ghost is unable to let go of the human world and has been grabbing other passengers by the ankles, searching for Rie. Muhyo agrees to take the case. After nightfall, the three travel to the train platform and wait out the ghost, which doesn’t take very long. As suspected, the creature is an amalgamation of many ghostly grudges with Taeko’s death being the catalyzing factor that’s drawn them together. Muhyo calls upon Hades himself to capture the monster and draw it to Hell. It’s only Rie’s insistence on holding Taeko’s hand that allows Taeko passage into a kinder afterlife. With Taeko now at peace, Rie can live her life normally again.

Impressions: Well, I thought I was finished with first-run Summer anime, but I should have remembered that there are always series that fall through the cracks (not including the few that were snagged by Netflix and will become available… sometime). For whatever reason, Muhyo & Roji’s Bureau of Supernatural Investigation got its start about a month later than many of its seasonal cohorts, to very little fanfare. I happened to notice the show was available when scrolling through Crunchyroll’s simulcasts, appropriately because I wanted to make sure I hadn’t missed anything (I guess my system works!). In any case, now I feel like I can properly close off the season, assuming there are no other tricksy anime surprises later on.

My impressions of this show are that it’s fairly entertaining but otherwise unremarkable. There’s a throwaway term I use for some anime series that I think are pretty typical; not bad, not great, possibly kind of trope-y based on their genre – I like to say that they’re very “anime” (and the quotes are very necessary). Considering that all the series I review here are anime, I’m sure this term seems meaningless to most of you. What I mean when I use it to describe certain series is that they remind me of what anime felt like when I was starting to really get interested in the medium and started to see patterns crop up in what I was watching. Often anime will blend humorous moments with more serious ones, or insist-upon slapstick elements when they don’t feel appropriate to the story being told. There are some typical kinds of gags that appear frequently, like characters whose temperaments or desires run contrary to their appearance, or who have strange hobbies or perv on other characters. Often times characters yell a lot, which is something that I assume is supposed to be funny on its own but usually isn’t. I’m hoping this elaborates on what I’m trying to describe. This first episode really exemplifies a lot of these particular “anime” traits.

Muhyo and Roji are definitely an odd couple, partners who balance out each-other’s quirks. Muhyo is the registered professional, someone with an incredible amount of knowledge regarding spiritual law and how to enforce it. He’s also prone to bouts of immaturity and would rather read manga or sleep than do his job. Roji is the more mature of the two, a worrier who’s apprenticing with his master while also doing what he can to keep his master’s habits under control. Together they form an effective unit, but their relationship rings hollow to me. Part of the issue is that there’s no context to their partnership; they aren’t characters who I feel would have met on their own and formed a working unit, but the series provides no more than the most basic information about who they are and why they work together. I assume there’s more to it and that a future episode might expand on these important details, but as it stands they seem to just tolerate one another. While I feel like this is supposed to be humorous, I just found it awkward and off-putting.

I can also already see a pattern forming that I’m not a fan of. I might normally have missed this since I normally don’t pay too much attention to what’s going on in an anime’s opening animation beyond how weird/funny it is (I use entertaining OPs and EDs for a game I run at a local convention) or how much I like the music, but there’s a split second gag where a male character grabs at a female character’s chest, and she deals with it through physical punishment. This is another “anime” moment I could do without, and it sets kind of a bad precedent towards the girl characters in the series that I feel is carried through into the episode itself. In the simplest terms, this episode deals with a friendship between two girls that goes wrong. The story begins in a decent place – two loners who don’t have much in common with their classmates bond over their shared awkwardness and become friends. Their friendship is incredibly intense to the point that it’s interpreted (negatively) as a romance by some other students. As Rie branches out and finds camaraderie within a sports club, Taeko’s friendship almost instantly turns ridiculously jealous and possessive and she meets a tragic end because of it.

There is a lot to unpack from this scenario, including both the negativity towards the possible homosexuality of the two girls and, by extension, the “tragic gay” ending to their story. I also feel like there’s a general disdain for girls and their relationships that’s manifested in this episode; though Muhyo and Roji are neutral parties and treat the situation as a spiritual matter, the general “feeling” I got from the episode was something along the lines of “well, of course it ended up this way.” I can’t pinpoint that to any one factor; it’s more of a gut feeling, so take it as you will. I would be curious to see if this is just an isolated issue with this episode, or if this atmosphere carries through to future ones.

Honestly, though, despite the glaring issues I do really like these kind of “monster-of-the-week” creepy stories. Tales of vengeful spirits arising from the follies of humanity are often among some of my favorites; I think I just enjoy experiencing humanity’s darker aspects through stories that are clearly fictional, because it’s a safe way to ponder the moral ambiguity we face on a regular basis. I also think it’s the right time of year for this, since Halloween is just around the corner (well, in like two-and-a-half months). This isn’t a great first episode and its shounen-tinged humor content doesn’t do it any favors, but with some sharper focus and toned-down character antics, I think it could be fairly entertaining.

Pros: Simple and straightforward. Feels like a darker, quirkier version of “spirit-of-the-week” shows like Natsume’s Book of Friends. Explores darkness of human nature in a “safe” way.

Cons: The slapstick humor and character dynamics aren’t executed well. There’s some boob-grabbing in the OP and general issues with female characters. Tragic gay death.

Grade: C+