Miss Kuroitsu From the Monster Development Department

Episode 7

It's that obligatory question for a workplace comedy to answer: what do these characters do when they're not at work? And so this week's Miss Kuroitsu From the Monster Development Department sends its cast out for drinks, and then catches up afterwards for their day off. It's a staple setup that fits with the office-show vibes, and given the outlandish supervillain framing of the series, should have made for an engagingly absurd time. I enjoy it enough in 'real' toku shows when we get to see the bad guys just hanging out, so combine that with Miss Kuroitsu's irreverent comedy stylings and potential for some kind of meta-commentary, and this should be an easy win, right? Well, not so much, as the show's regular uneven approach leads to some missteps on this particular plot path.

Seeing the Monster Development Team go out for a drinking party is an appealing move for these kinds of character-driven shenanigans, and immediately there's already a funny wrench thrown into the proceedings by having Adamant and Camula tag along. Kuroitsu and the others made sure audiences understand how having your boss along for this kind of excursion might get awkward, but if you've ever been in this kind of situation yourself, you already know it. It also aligns with some of the show's usual commentary on Japanese workplace culture, and how the expected etiquette of these excursions fits with factors of the manager/employee relationship. Turns out Camula's actually pretty desperate to connect with the rank-and-file Agastia employees, and looks to leverage less-moderated alcohol consumption to facilitate that.

The idea that even a slight letting down of guards can lead to raucous behavior between co-workers is immediately communicated by the breakdown around the table, but it also can feel as overwhelming for the audience as it is for some of the characters. It's perhaps too easy to sympathize with Cannon's anxiety as all the socially-inebriated monsters start shouting over each other. Part of the driving gag here is getting to see just what kind of drunks the various characters turn out to be, but in practice it's not terribly revealing of any potential avenues for long-term complications or growth. The different ways everyone ends up yelling around the table are kind of funny, but in the end it's still just everyone yelling around the table.

That does lead directly into the next part of the episode though, as Wolf ends up crashing at Kuroitsu's place, which results in them spending their day off together. Given Wolf's crush on Kuroitsu becoming apparent last episode and the rapport the characters have shared previously, I actually had high hopes for this bit, but in practice, it's a bit of a let-down as well. A primary factor in that is, once again, the writing's framing of Wolf's gender struggles. Look, I don't want to be a broken record on this; I promise I'm as tired of slogging through this bit in the show as you probably are of me criticizing it. But the issue reaches a new level of unpleasant here in that Kuroitsu herself, who had previously always come off as the most supportive and respectful of Wolf, ends up fueling his dysphoria for the sake of more jokes. I guess this is a case where the writing simply really thinks this is funny, so with only Kuroitsu around it has to be her to coerce Wolf into a dress and insinuate some incorrect pronouns for him. But like Cannon's sensory overload in the preceding part, it comes off as mostly just uncomfortable for the sake of itself, and at odds with what was appealing about these characters' dynamic in the first place.

The worst part is that Wolf's gender dysphoria wouldn't even really need to be acknowledged to make the other jokes in this part work. His struggles here are otherwise framed around worrying that Kuroitsu doesn't see him as an equal, potential romantic partner, instead coming off like a younger relative. So that leads to actually fun gags about Wolf getting ready to show off by protecting Kuroitsu from some creepers, only for her to reveal that she's as adept a fighter as any of the monsters she makes (in what's got to be the most nicely animated sequence this show has yet had). Similarly, the final punchline of this segment is Wolf realizing how 'complicated' his feelings for Kuroitsu must actually be given her positioning as his parental creator. Stuff like that, or Kuroitsu's revelation of workaholic tendencies leading to her fantasizing about turning random citizens into Kamen Rider-style modified humans, works as the kind of slightly dark, subversive humor I think the show wants to go for. Proving that it could do that sort of thing without constantly also mining the trans character's discomfort for supposed laughs only reinforces that perhaps it should do that.

At least this one caps it off solidly with a pivot to Mizuki and Matsuyama, the for-hire henchman duo. This gives us some fun meta-humor in the idea of these kinds of mooks wanting to actually score a win against their assigned hero, even though their whole job is to lose. It did have me looking a little askance at things at first, as the girls' shit-talking of this week's local hero guest star Dharuriser seemed a little mean-spirited for a real person they got to cameo on the show. But Dharuriser gets the last laugh in anyway, showing off his inspiring determination in a way that also demonstrates how, from the point of view of those hapless combatants, those momentous scenes of a hero always getting back up no matter what might be just a bit disheartening to their work ethic. At least the pay's apparently pretty good. Overall, this was a real uneven episode of Miss Kuroitsu. I really wanted to like it just on the strength of its concepts, but comedy is all about the execution, and that just wasn't entirely there this week.

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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.