The most ambitious and cleverly written series of the season with unique humor came from the dark corner of the 2022 Spring anime season. Nobody around me watched Miss Kuroitsu from the Monster Development Department, and the discussions were low and barely had. Right from the start I felt this was going to be my personal anime of the season and I was right for once.

Uniquely, the story revolves around the villains rather than the heroes. Agastia is a secret evil organization that specializes in creating monsters to take over the world. Because of the harsh and rather ridiculous corporate politics taking place behind the scenes, the monsters they create are often laughable and defective. Trying to make this realistic in a series is clever in that it becomes comically absurd. Even though they are evil, they have high morals when making decisions, because this series does not take itself seriously at all and makes fun of everything in it that it can. Off the clock, these are decent people. From absurdly long episode titles, awkward timing between scenes done on purpose, ridiculously cheese hero lines and moments, random jokes thrown all over the place, a giant cast of characters with many based on real life local heroes from Japan, an android with an absurdly overexaggerated robotic voice, it's impressive how creative this series is and how it all blends in.

My only real complaint is that the animation implodes and falls apart in the last two episodes. That doesn't take away the fact it had a great grand finale and more.

Agastia is going up against Blader, the comically overpowered hero that stands in their way. As schedules run tight, budgets run low, and bugs and glitches emerge during production, Miss Koroitsu tries her best to create the right monster to defeat him. At the same time, her attitude towards this makes it look as if she isn't very serious about it and failure feels like something she just gets used to. As a result, a wide cast of colorful monsters appear. My favorite is Cannon. A monster that during development had a fearsome giant design with all sorts of horrifying powers. However, after some help from the clumsy Leader with strict budget limitations taken into account, the final product ends up being a big goofy bird with a scouter and handgun. Just writing about this still makes me laugh.

This series treats it's characters well, and even minor characters come full circle and become relevant. As comical as this series is, and as huge as it's ocean of corny hero lines are, this can still feel inspirational with it's messages of defying evil, refusing to lose, and carrying out your destiny with an unshakable will. The cast's job of creating monsters can be difficult, lots of obstacles get in the way, and the amount of overtime can be exhausting, but they don't give up and keep going. Combined with this is a great soundtrack, one of my favorite ending sequences, and clever humor I cannot get enough of.

At first it seems Blader and Kuroitsu are just fighting a simple war. Then it's shown there is much more to them off the clock, as they are much closer than they think. This goes along with the ridiculous plot twists in this series that usually had me laughing.

Megistus is definitely my favorite character. He is the mind of the organization and chief strategist. His character is interesting in that despite the organization being evil, his code of conduct is very honorable, and his treatment of his subordinates is comically compassionate. He's serious, but feels as if he is just messing with everyone with the politics of his organization. It's funny to see him be the most professional of professional and ideal boss of an evil monster developing organization wanting to take over the world.

After a very satisfying ending, it surprised me that I was not even close to being the target audience for this, and missed a barrage of references. Still, I can't deny this one was special, and worth the watch.