Streaming: Crunchyroll
Episodes: 12
Source: Manga
Episode Summary: The Secret Society Agastia is one of several evil organizations operating throughout Japan. Many of the other groups have recently met their demise when pit against local heroes, and Agastia needs to come up with some winning monster design to help quell their own heroic interloper, Divine Swordsman Blader. Enter Miss Kuroitsu, a researcher in Agastia’s Monster Development Department, with her group’s latest extremely well-thought-out and absolutely not last-minute monster design.
In reality, Miss Kuroitsu and the Doctor she works alongside are constantly operating at a budgetary and energy deficit, crunching to put together monster proposals that are subsequently picked apart by the other members of Agastia. Their most recent project, a lupine creature called Wolf Bete, seems to have been created within the relative luxury of plenty of development time until Agastia’s leader, Akashic, demands a much cuter design at the eleventh hour. This causes some… conflicts between Wolf Bete’s mind and body, but this new design may turn out to be an advantage against the sexually-inexperienced Divine Swordsman Blader.
Impressions: Over the course of the pandemic, one activity that’s provided me with some fun now and then is playing Jackbox games with my friends. For those who aren’t familiar, these are packs of party games that can be played either in person or online using a computer, tablet, or smartphone. I’ve participated in several game nights over Discord, and these party games are always a favorite. One game in a more recent party pack is called “Talking Points,” where players are forced to come up with a corporate-style presentation based on subject matter and stock images picked out by other players. It’s a lot of fun, especially if you’re experienced in the fine art of bullshitting your way through the sort of presentations in question. The opening segment of this episode of Miss Kuroitsu from the Monster Development Department provided me with some fond memories of playing this game, and my affection only grew from there.
One anime series that I’m sad has never had a release in the US is Astro Fighter Sunred. The series is a parody of tokusatsu entertainment, and stars a semi-retired masked hero and a group of mostly very incompetent baddies. The show gains most of its humor through defying expectations; Sunred is a bit of an asshole and Vamp, the leader of the local evil organization, is extremely nice and has the air of a stay-at-home spouse with very developed domestic skills. Miss Kuroitsu, while different in its details, is similar in the way that it twists the viewer’s expectations of the established tokusatsu character dynamics. After their failed presentation, one would expect Megistus, a threatening member of Agastia’s upper echelon, to take out his wrath on the Doctor and Miss Kuroitsu in a violent way. Instead, he scolds them for not requesting extra time to prepare their proposal and not taking adequate breaks. Akashic is extremely non-threatening as an evil leader, seemingly focused more intensely on a monster’s aesthetic cuteness rather than its effectiveness at world domination. The episode does a lot to cultivate viewer affection toward these ineffectual dummies, and I enjoyed that a lot.
Comedy is a tough genre, and I spend a lot of time thinking about what makes comedy successful in my eyes. My favorite anime comedy is Nichijou, and while some of its success really boils down to comedic timing that’s helped along by truly excellent animation, another big factor is simply that the characters, with all their flaws, are likeable and that their personalities weigh a lot into the various gags – especially in the second half of the series. One episode into Miss Kuroitsu, it’s difficult to make many judgments on what the overall tone may end up being like. But the episode does a really good job of demonstrating how the central characters we’ve been introduced to thus far are likeable people with particular personal situations and personalities, and I did laugh out loud a few times, so it must already be doing something right.
Pros: This show clearly has some affection toward tokusatsu series and their various tropes, which provides some fun window dressing to the episode. During the credits, it introduces some of the hero characters who were briefly featured throughout the episode, claiming that they’re real-life heroes. I unfortunately don’t have a ton of experience with the genre, so I’m not sure whether these are actual characters from TV series, or amateurs who enjoy dressing up in costume, but I thought it was a nice touch to include live-action photos of them all.
Cons: Visually this episode is just very basic and uninteresting. Scene layouts are uninspired at best, and the character animation is clunky. I think a lot can be accomplished in anime comedies without much animation, so this is by no means a statement meant to condemn the show for these flaws. But high-quality visuals can really add to the experience of visual humor, so the mostly mediocre execution here is a bit disappointing.
I think it’s also worth mentioning that Wolf Bete is a monster developed with a “male brain” whose body is converted to that of a cute woman at a late stage, and the mis-match between their two aspects is treated as a joke. This… is pretty distasteful as a source of humor; at the very least it reads as ignorant of the realities of gender expression in our world.
Content Warnings: Nudity/Fanservice (humorously censored but fairly frequent in the second half of the episode). Gender dysphoria as a source of comedy. Comedic violence.
Would I Watch More? – This premiere episode was a pleasant surprise for me, and I think I’ll watch more. At the very least, I’d like to see for myself whether or not some of the more frustrating gags even out over time.
One reply on “Winter 2022 First Impressions – Miss Kuroitsu from the Monster Development Department”
This show has been my absolute favorite of the season so far. I wasn’t sold by this premier, but I fell for it pretty hard based on a couple of excellent sight gags in episode 2.
The heroes featured are like city mascots. They’re folk who are paid by the city to act out this persona at events. My understanding is that some of them do in fact wander around “off the clock” so to speak in the uniform, but they do things like promote when a new business opens, put on skits at a festivals etc.
I also have mixed feelings about Wolf Bete’s portrayal. I do appreciate that despite being in a female body no one questions that he is male. It’s pretty far from my own experience of gender and philosophy/religiosity, but I do feel like a trans person who could “meet their maker” might reasonably have similar complaints. For me it’s sort of an issue of who is telling the joke and the fact that he is strongly sexualized by the folks in the show. Even with the same character design, if people treated him in less leery ways I’d probably be more okay with it. This has dropped off, but moreso because he just isn’t onscreen as much in subsequent episodes so far.