Mythological beasts reduced to broke, messy versions of themselves, stumbling through the modern world like has-beens who can't accept the demotion. The comedy lives in that specific shame: creatures of legend now dealing with rent, bad jobs, and the fact that nobody believes in them anymore. By season five, you're not watching a fantasy show anymore, you're watching old friends try to convince themselves that their glory days mean something, one failed scheme and one cheap bottle of liquor at a time. The show never punches down at them for it. That's what keeps you coming back.

Fabulous Beasts 5 is the fifth season of the ONA comedy, running for 12 episodes and mixing fantasy with slice-of-life humor. The franchise is built around creatures of myth whose former grandeur has faded as science has advanced. In the series' setup, Sibuxiang is ordered down to the mortal world to aid other mythological animals who have fallen on hard times among humans. There he runs into his former colleague Pixiu, his drinking companion Tuye, and the gold and silver Jue brothers, who have been demoted to the human realm.