Mayonaka no Occult Koumuin has been one of the real hidden gems of 2019, a well-written and interesting mix of fantasy and police mystery.  Anime does seem to be overrun with that shows using that basic template at the moment and most get far more attention than Mayonaka, but few have as much to offer the genre in terms of wit and invention.  The manga is modestly popular in shoujo circles (though TBH the series doesn’t strike me as being especially shoujo), but the anime was a bit of a cipher in the Western fandom.

We’re fortunate to get three OVA episodes of Mayonaka on top of the 13-episode TV run.  “Hitoribocchi no Kyuuketsuki” is a two-part “unaired” story (indeed, the credits refer to it as Episode 14 and 15), and the forthcoming Fukurokouji to Ano Ko to Ore to a single.  I don’t know whether “Hitoribochhi” (anime just wants to keep tormenting me by using that word in titles) is original or from the manga, but it plays very much as if it were part of the TV rotation.  And that means a well-plotted and fascinating mystery with nice character elements to boot.

The subject this time around is vampires, after a corpse turns up in Shinjuku drained of all its blood with a neck wound only those with the sight can see without help.  Theo as it turns out is a vampire expert specifically, so the detectives assigned to the case  – from “Unit Zero“, the ones who get the cases that don’t make sense to muggles – turn to him for help.  Theo has already planned to drag Arata with him to Senda’s place for New Year’s because of an Another he’s been observing there for 15 years that he’s been dying to communicate with – and it turns out that Another is Japan’s last surviving vampire.

As is often does, Mayonaka puts an interesting practical spin on folkloric material.  Vampires exist in America (where their “numbers are controlled”) and Europe (where they’re “not as much of a problem as they once were”), but were almost wiped out in Japan – which Theo finds to be unjust and cruel.  He informs us that Japanese vampires only consume blood when it’s their mating season, because they’re an all-male species but drinking human blood makes some of them switch genders.  This, he posits, is the reason “his” vampire can’t be the perp in Tokyo – with no possibility of breeding, why would he be drinking blood in the first place?

That vampire (played by Paku Romi) is the perp as it turns out – but not by choice.  Someone from Theo’s past named Saejima (played by Tsuda Kenjirou) is using him as a means to strike out at Theo, who he apparently loathes for reasons that at first are not entirely clear.  As we’ve seen before in Mayonaka, when too many parties get involved things tend to get much messier between the humans and Anothers.  And in this case that means not just Unit Zero but a sort of Another hitman named Tamao, whose job it is to take out Anothers who are targeting humans.

There’s a lot of interesting background in this story – stuff like the special tattoo Saejima uses (turns out it’s a knock-off in his case) to prevent Anothers from seeing him.  As it happens he’s more or less a psychopath with a special grudge against Theo, who broke up his “research” (vivisecting Anothers for fun, basically) when they were students and used his family connections to get that research permanently erased.  And the unfortunate vampire, whose name is Sakura as it turns out, is just a pawn in Saejima’s revenge scheme.

All in all this would rank as one of Mayonaka’s better serials, I’d say.  The second episode especially is superb, full of the pathos that characterizes this sort of material at its best.  Unfortunately for Sakura once his blood lust is awakened it can only be sated by mating and giving birth – and though he turns female, that of course can now never happen.  The only solution is for Theo to kill Sakura, who the vampire has come to consider a friend despite never being able to speak to him.  The scene at Shinjuku Central Park is genuinely moving, as the two are finally able to communicate thanks to Arata, only to have the assassin fatally wound Sakura just as reason seems to be asserting itself at the expense of bloodlust.

One might say it’s a mercy that if nothing else, Saejima’s cruelty allowed Theo to be with Sakura in the end, and to carry out the vampire’s final wish – that their ashes be laid to rest under the cherry trees next to his friends near the “wandering house“.  As for Saejima, well, Karma is a bitch – quite literally in this case, as the Witch of the West makes her first appearance and makes sure Saejima gets exactly what’s coming to him.  It’s a very dark way to close the story, but Mayonaka has never been a series that suffers fools gladly – it’s sentimental, but at times with a heart of stone.  A damn good series, this, that deserves much more attention than it got.