Arata Miyako is a new government worker assigned to the Shinjuku Ward Office’s “Nighttime Regional Relations” department. Each of Tokyo’s 23 wards has one such department, which were established to solve paranormal and occult-related events. Arata can understand non-human speech that no one else understands, and he encounters a yōkai (supernatural entity) at Shinjuku Gyoen park that calls him Abe no Seimei — the name of a historical Japanese occultist and diviner. – ANN
Streaming: Crunchyroll
Episodes: 12
Source: Manga
Episode Summary: Arata Miyako begins his job without a clear image of what it might entail, but he soon realizes that he wasn’t hired to perform typical government work; the Office of Nighttime Relations is focused on maintaining the order of Tokyo’s many residents – including those of the supernatural variety. Arata begins his evening unaware of fairies and tengu, but soon realizes that the nighttime world is filled with those supernatural creatures, and many others.
The team has been summoned to the park in order to research some odd disturbances, and what they discover is that the tengu and angels are at odds over something. Arata happens to find out the source of the conflict – an angel and tengu have fallen in love, and neither of their families is happy about it. Arata learns this because he seems to have the rare ability to understand non-human language, though it takes some convincing for his colleagues to believe it. Arata is able to help the two groups reach a truce, though no sooner have they flown off into the night sky then he’s approached by an old tengu who calls him by an unfamiliar name.
Impressions: I’d overlooked this series while preparing for the current anime season. Though I’m a fan of supernatural stories, especially if they involve the sometimes-complicated relations between humans and their fantastical neighbors (think Natsume’s Book of Friends, or Mononoke for example), for some reason I lacked awareness of this series prior to the onset of the Spring anime season. Oddly enough, that sensation of being out-of-the-loop fits this opening episode fairly well; while it’s got some interesting pieces and seems like the type of anime that I ought to really enjoy, it seems like some bits of it are missing (or at least somewhat amiss).
As always, one thing that I really appreciate in this series (and in others) is the fact that the characters all appear to be adults. While I feel like adult characters have seen a bit more representation in anime as of late, as an adult myself it’s always nice to see some aspects of my own life reflected in the things I enjoy watching. I can’t say that I’ve personally had a lot of experience interacting with angels or demons… but anime can’t get everything right all the time, I suppose. This episode does lay bare one of the challenges that come along with utilizing older characters, however. This series maintains something of an “anime” aesthetic (which probably sounds silly) but what I mean by that is that it relies on a lot of character tropes that come to mind when one thinks of anime, including some that are typically confined to more comedic, “zany” series. Theo in particular is sort of a youthful, standoffish hot-head type, and thus doesn’t read much as an adult professional. If the series is meant to cultivate a sense of seriousness, I find that characters yelling at one-another in goofy overblown ways or bickering endlessly tends to detract from that impression.
This episode also hits on one of my major pet peeves in anime, with which many of my long-time readers will be familiar. An annoying trend I notice is that in workplace-based series, protagonists often embark on a new job without knowing anything about that job’s specific requirements, even the most basic ones. There are always things that differ from workplace to workplace – office culture, reporting structures, specific tasks – but it should be a given that new hires are at least familiar with the essential functions of a company once they accept a job there. And yet, Arata arrives on the first evening of his new job with zero inkling about its true nature. While this is convenient in that it provides the opportunity to fill the audience in on the basics, it’s also distracting in the way that it doesn’t reflect how life actually works. In this series we’re dealing with an entity that oversees supernatural happenings in the city, so obviously that’s not information that should be on posters advertising the job opening, but one would assume there’d be a pre-briefing before a new hire’s first day in the workplace. Maybe just a “hey, we’re going to be working with fairies – maybe prepare yourself for that.”
Still, as I said, this Men In Black scenario does serve the purpose of bringing the audience into the story, so in that sense I can kind of forgive it for being a bit wonky. In general, I feel like this is something that anime storytelling in general suffers from; its tried-and-true methods of conveying information so often stray more toward “tell” rather than “show,” and as a Western viewer I’m forced to confront my own cultural storytelling preferences. Much like character archetypes providing easily-identifiable base-line info about characters that can then be expanded upon later, I suppose info-dumps, used judiciously, can allow storytellers to get to more interesting subjects more quickly. It’s mildly frustrating but one of those things that comes with the territory.
This first episode reads to me as anime “junk food.” I don’t mean that as an insult; for me, “junk food” has its problems (in this case, blunt-force storytelling and a silly scenario) but hits the spot nonetheless. I like series about adults having adventures, their “serious” lives of employment coupled with some decidedly less mundane fictional elements. It reminds me that taking responsibility and living one’s life doesn’t exclude the possibility of magic or adventure. I think this series might be a lot of fun, but it’s definitely not at the top of my watch-list. It’s missing some of the elements of mystery that feel compelling to me, since it seems prone to laying all the information out from the get-go.
Pros: A series about adults having adventures, awesome! Seems like the fun kind of “junk food” entertainment.
Cons: Sometimes the characters don’t behave like adults. The idea that individuals enter into employment knowing nothing about what they’re doing is bothersome.
Grade: B-