Mayonaka no Occult Koumuin is, for all its humble production values and under the radar stature, a really fascinating piece of work.  I don’t know if it means anything but I have been seeing rather prominent displays of the manga at the bookshops – perhaps this series isn’t completely anonymous here in Japan, but it’s certainly not hogging the spotlight.  As a story it sits solidly within a manga and anime tradition thematically, but it puts a distinctive spin on those themes in a way that’s really effective.

As this series has progressed it’s started to put me in mind of American Gods (a great book and pretty good TV series) just a bit, for the way it takes the old Gods and places them squarely in the new world.  As with Gaiman’s classic, Mayonaka doesn’t play favorites with culture – everybody’s belief system seems to have an equally valid seat at the table.  And while the Japanese Shinto traditions have certainly made their appearance, if anything Mayonaka seems more focused on Western mythology than Eastern.  And it goes right to the heart of Judeo-Christian storytelling this week.

We finally have a name for Huehuecóyotl’s “nasty demon” – it’s Azazel (Tachibana Shinnosuke).  And he, of course, is one of the big boys in Old Testament mythology – one of the leaders among the fallen angels, the one on whom “all sins must be laid”, the akuma who was cursed for falling in love with a human woman.  We already pretty much know what he’s been up to – trying to reconstruct said woman out of various mix-and-match female body parts.  But we get a lot more grisly detail about that process this week.

For Seo, I think the biggest source of anger here isn’t that Kyouichi dragged Arata into his own problems (though he is pissed about that) but that Kyouichi didn’t trust him with the truth.  That said, he’s literally willing to go to Hell and back to try and resolve this – and that’s what it’s going to take.  At some point it becomes more interesting for Kohaku to take Arata and his friends there than to keep warning him not to go, and he’s suitably impressed with Seo’s detective work manages to trace Azazel back to his portal to Hell via the black sand he leaves behind on his visits to the mortal realm.

This is full-on Hell – Escher, Cerberus, the whole shebang.  This remains something of a lark for Coyote, and he does enjoy seeing the boys try and avoid being devoured by Cerberus and his sweet tooth(s).  But in the end he refuses to let the hellhound have his meal, because Arata is “mine” in his words.  That means the boys – and we – get a front-row seat of Azazel putting the finishing touches on his perfect woman.  And what a debacle it is – like Buffy, this poor girl just wanted to stay dead, but Azazel keeps dragging her back and stuffing her into bodies that aren’t hers.  It’s no wonder that feels disgusting.

Truthfully, this is highly disturbing and really well brought off.  Once again we see the disconnect between immortals and humans – Azazel has no conception (or concern) that he’s actually causing unimaginable suffering to the woman he claims to love.  And for Kohaku and another akuma (perhaps Lucifer?) this is a fascinating science experiment, no more.  Seo has to remind Kyouichi that they didn’t come to Hell to take on the devil himself – they came to rescue his sister and Izumi and get the hell (sorry) out.

It’s a happy ending for the Sakaki siblings, no doubt, and I would have said so even if Onee-chan had stayed blind.  But there’s a cost for that happiness, and that’s Azazel being left to start the cycle all over again – which means a new round of suffering both for the human girls he kidnaps to make another vessel and for the tortured soul he keeps in a cage and stuffs into new meatsacks every time he finishes putting one together.  The sense here is that the struggle between Anothers and humans will go on forever – not out of antipathy, but simply because they can never truly understand each other.  And that seems to sum up what Mayonaka no Occult Koumuin pretty concisely and accurately.