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, 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 whoget 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.
That vampire is the perp as it turns out but not by choice. Someone from Theo’s past named Saejima 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 to prevent Anothers from seeing him. As it happens he’s more or less a psychopath with a special grudge against Theo, 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