Occult Academy - Episode 3

With a somewhat uneasy truce forged between Maya and Fumiaki (and lets face it, it's hard to forge anything other than an uneasy truce when the other party keeps throwing things at you), it seems that there are already important happenings to be investigated in town, with rumours of a Tengu supposedly running riot via a spate of kidnappings.

Despite Maya's alleged hatred of the occult, she deems it necessary to investigate in case this is somehow tied in to Nostradamus' prophecies, alien invasions and the like, and thus orders Fumiaki to do his thing and investigate what is actually going on, Tengu or otherwise.


The trouble is, it seems that our Bunmei is having a rather tough time keeping his mind on the job, whether it's down to the lure of Chihiro's bosom, homesickness, a good curry or, more importantly, a good woman. In fact, it's the aforementioned curry which leads to the aforementioned woman; a girl named Mikaze who seems a little too good to be true - She's beautiful, she's cute, she's friendly, she says all the right things and (most importantly for me) she drives a brand new Porsche with the control of an old pro. Fumiaki certainly can't resist Mikaze's offer to show him around town, and so he effectively derelicts his duty, leaving Maya to do a little Tengu hunting of her own - A state of affairs which looks set to land her in a tight spot.

Ironically, you almost get the feeling that Fumiaki isn't the only one to forget about the Tengu problem, as you get the feeling that this instalment of Occult Academy has either forgotten or doesn't care about it too much either, instead making the most of the opportunities Fumiaki presents when it comes to injecting some humour into proceedings. To be fair though, this actually works pretty well - Although this episode isn't the height of hilarity it did get a fair few laughs out of me, and I can only hope that there's a little more hidden depth to this episode than first meets the eye; certainly, it's hard to believe that a waitress can afford a new Porsche. In a way, I'm actually pleased to see this series not taking itself too seriously, as I think it would have been the death of it - This bring and breezy demeanour which barely seems to care about its only major plot points is rather endearing in a series about the occult, and although it still runs the risk of becoming tiring I have to hold my hand up and admit that I still enjoyed this episode all things considered.