Miss Kuroitsu From the Monster Development Department

Episode 5

Special-effects superhero stylings are still very much a component of Miss Kuroitsu, but in recent episodes they seem to have taken more of a backseat role as silly set dressing. Instead, the show is able to use its deadpan-absurd approach to act as a kind of court jester for office culture. Previous weeks had already featured some surprisingly direct callouts of modern work culture and the capitalistic systems it's all in service of, and this week's episode dives even further into that, with virtually no appearances by Blader, few references at all to proper evil world-domination plans, and hardly any actual monster development. And the result, while still only 'funny' in a kind of situational way, does make for some of the more interesting viewing we've gotten from this show in a bit.

As usual, this episode of Kuroitsu is divided into two halves, with the first here being more of a light-hearted walk through one specific bit: Kuroitsu and Wolf needing to track down all of the various Agastia executives to get their stamps of approval on a form. It's got the series' knowing exaggeration of corporate culture down; sure, Agastia has been shown to be a nicer workplace for its employees than others (which will be an important detail later), but bureaucracy is still gonna bureaucracy. You thought it was a struggle trying to check in with your manager on something only to find out they were stuck on another call for who knows how long? Imagine how much harder things get when several of those bosses are eldritch horrors who only exist in the space between dimensions.

The base humor of the situation is able to carry the segment even as the jokes themselves turn out more uneven. Kuroitsu gets the better part, like happily engaging Jaguar in hand-to-hand combat for his stamp, while the shenanigans poor Wolf gets into are predictably less cheeky and fun. Granted, the 'joke' for both stamps we see him pursue is predicated on an anticlimax of relief: him expecting much more lewd, humiliating demands by the executives, only for the probing tentacle monster to subject him to an infuriatingly thorough questionnaire, or the seemingly-seductive sniper simply enjoying providing earnestly effective physical therapy to people. That last punch-line does almost end up kind of amazing, especially in the literal sense as he allows Wolf to punch him in retaliation for how creepy he initially came off. But too much of it still feels like it's playing off of gender-based discomfort for Wolf.

Fortunately, the core of this segment still gets at what works about Miss Kuroitsu's business riffs, wrapping on the acknowledgement that the grind and struggle never really end, even as the characters' efforts force some kind of change. Take it from me: going all-digital in regards to workplace paperwork takes a lot of its own training before things level out as efficiently as Corporate might want. Of course, as anyone else from that space could tell you, and as the show itself is happy to expound on next – it could always be worse. Black Lore was the rival organization to Agastia mentioned in last week's episode, and here they bring in some representatives from their own Monster Development Department to clash with Kuroitsu and the others, and to confirm that the 'Black' in their name also refers to what kind of company they are.

Given that all these rampant villain orgs throughout Japan are explicitly evil (look how many superheroes there are to oppose, it's a cottage industry) it definitely tracks that many of them would be less cordial in their treatment of their employees than Agastia. But this is a place where Miss Kuroitsu really puts its social satire elements to work, not just calling attention to the benefits that Agastia grants compared to Black Lore, but showing the rationalizations that people who work for such exploitative companies might run through even as they were being exploited. As the show narrates over Koharu's recitation of her company brainwashing, "Those who join a company right out of school frequently pretend not to see its faults". An amusing takeaway from the first episodes of this series was "I can't believe an actual evil organization is more considerate of its workers' rights than most real-world employers!", so now we have the counterexample of the tactics used by those real-world companies being showcased by otherwise-exaggerated cartoon villains.

That sharper social commentary is the most thoughtful part of this portion of the episode, as the rest of it effectively boils down to silly screaming matches between the involved characters. It is neat to finally get more background and characterization on lead scientist Hajime, finding out that not only is he really just a nice, decent dude to his former classmates and co-workers, he's also surprisingly hot under those VR goggles! No wonder they were happy to use him for tentacle-squeezing fanservice last week. We also get to see Black Lore's monster Elbucky, whom I like because she's an energetic tanned catgirl and I am predictable. She does also deploy another gag at Wolf's expense, but in this case it's on account of Elbucky's disposition for teasing easily-flustered boys. So at least Wolf's being humiliated on the basis of his actual gender identity this time. Progress?

To sum up, the overall humor for Miss Kuroitsu was about the same it's ever been here, but the episode is a step up by virtue of having a bit more to say about the work-culture side of its premise this time. It lets the show's creativity with its subject matter be used in more interesting ways, like how you can just tell the writer loved coming up with wild new monstrous Executives to use for more banal, incidental humor. There's definitely a very knowing sense to the jokes of the show and what they're about, meeting at the intersections of familiarity with office-work environments and knowledge of tokusatsu tropes. An episode like this one shows how it can be more effective as it pushes at those boundaries, and it just makes me hope it will cut loose even more moving forward.

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Miss Kuroitsu From the Monster Development Department is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Chris is a freelance writer who appreciates anime, action figures, and additional ancillary artistry. He can be found staying up way too late posting screencaps on his Twitter.