Occultic;Nine

FireEmblemIke24★ 7

TLDR: Skip to final paragraph. Water’s bottom, many people, drowning, giant cow-tits…transmission died. Clearing out the elephant in the room. Nikola Tesla never had an illegitimate child as he was a virgin who devoted his love towards a peculiar pidgin. What if I told you he did father a child, and this child capable of being a poltergeist, has managed to possess someone all this time. Occultic;Nine is a show that explores the occult and probes into the spirit realm. The series scrutinises paranormal activities and tries to rationalise it in a scientific manner, hence tries to inform us that anything can be disproven my science.Occultic;Nine had one of the worst opening episodes that I’ve experienced in a long time. The pacing was frenetic in the sense that it was uncontrolled and hard to follow. How on earth do you adapt a whole light novel volume into a single episode? The standard is usually 4 episodes per volume but this series is purposely shooting itself in the leg by having the nerve to do this. This series is a combination of the Tatami Galaxy and Durarara at its finest. The lightspeed dialogue combined with a relatively large cast has conceived a child in the form of Occultic;Nine. The child inherited some of the undesirable genes and turned out inferior to its parents. I’ll explain why. The plot is pretty much focused on the detection of ghosts, material or not. Material ghosts are detectible with the latter being unrecognisable. Gamon Yuuta, our high school NEET runs a blog dedicated on the occult, only to find himself caught up in a crime scene. The murder of professor Hashigami, a leading researcher in the occult field, causes panic for our distressed main character who flees from the scene to avoid getting prosecuted. Good move there as Japan’s judicial system is seriously flawed. The murder wasn’t the main incident of the show. An intentional mass suicide of 256 people in Inokashira lake sets the precedent for what entails later. The discovery of the corpses in the morgue reveals a shocking truth. The concept of being alive while looking at your own corpse seems alien to most folk. This sounds contradictory but bear with me as the show does explain the circumstances later down the road. The situation is that some of our main cast are alive without feeling dead, the idea of being conscious after parting with the material body can only be explained through science. Now talking about the main cast, the series does switch around from person to person giving different perspectives. Our main character Gamon Yuuta is being instructed by a voice from a radio. This reliance on a tool indicates that he can’t get things done properly. I compare it to stabilisers on a bike, which is what this character is going through. He doesn’t have any independence and his actions are limited. Narusawa Ryouka known as Ryo-tas by Gamon is a person whose physical traits defies the laws of motion. Her breasts are so unsightly, that every time she makes an appearance which is usually accompanied by a silly dance. She is literally known as the big-boobed girl who serves no purpose until later on where her character becomes the focus and not her melons. Hashigami Sarai is the son of the murdered researcher and just like his father exhibits an extreme amount of intelligence which is not normal for his age. The knowledgeable Sarai is able to deduce problems and other riddles in the blink of an eye, which to me is just incredible. Geniuses exist but even then, he struggles on some occasions making it somewhat realistic. Aikawa Miyuu is a high schooler who is extremely skilled in fortune telling. She has built up a reputation due to the fact of making correct predictions. She is a character for the audience to relate to as she doesn’t comprehend scientific jargon just like myself. Her quirk is surprisingly useful when it comes to putting the pieces together. These four characters are the most important to the series with others such as Minase Ria getting their own screen time but aren’t worth talking about. The show is produced by A-1 animation, which in recent times has gotten quite some stick for churning out series like the Asterix War. The art style is a breath of fresh air with the character designs being relatively unique. The only downside is Ryo-tas whose has been fetishized with enormous breasts. No fricking way is it breast hypertrophy. The animation as expected from this studio is relatively good with most scenes being aesthetically pleasing and generally fluid. It would be a stain on the studio’s portfolio if it did have poor animation but I’m glad it met my expectations. The sound is amazing and is composed by Yokoyama Masaru (Your Lie in April, Plastic Memories) with it just adding to my immersion to certain scenes. The mix of electronic and contemporary rock music through auto-tuned measures immediately catches my attention by sending a statement. The use of casual jazz music in the downbeat scenes is a good indicator for the tone shifts. Lastly, the music is great at setting up a creepy atmosphere with extensive use of fading in/out and selective piano compositions. The music used generally follows a certain tempo to match the timing of certain segments, this is useful for scene transitioning and makes for some good cinematography. TLDR- The first episodes annoyed me initially but this show manages to redeem itself as it goes on. The mystery regarding the incidents are cleared up in a way you wouldn’t expect. The plot twists cannot be understated with it being interlinked with events. They may not all have a direct relation but by following the lines you gradually see the bigger picture. I would definitely recommend this series for those willing to give it a few episodes. In food terms this is slow cooking, which is higher praised than the generic fast food shit.

dramathicc★ 8

SPOILERS AHEAD! Well, well... Here we are at the end of the Fall season; hyped animes, some satisfying, some disappointing ones keep ending one by one. From the creator of Steins;Gate, director of Your Lie in April and well-known studio A-1 Pictures, Occultic;Nine can be placed in all these categories. I am really confused and have really messy opinions about this anime so I hope I can explain them properly. Genres: Mystery, Sci-Fi, Supernatural, Thriller Pros: -Unique style of pacing -Really interesting story-Mysterious ambience -Somehow loveable characters -Music and art -Good use of science materials Cons: -Extremely fast talkings and pacing -Not enough screentime and developments for characters -Plotholes Story: 8/10 Occultic Nine's story is like a puzzle. First, you have puzzle pieces and a few places to put them but the rest of it is dark and empty like space. You understand nothing don't know what to do, but when you put one piece to its place, then you achieve to unlock other places. So more you understand something, there comes more to understand. In the first episode, first of all the anime introduces (well, not really) us the characters and tons of pointless talkings. And at the end of the episode real story starts off with a crime mystery. First the pacing seems really fast but when you get into the story and get used to the style of anime it feels more acceptable. The actual problem of pacing and talkings are being too fast is not like ''Oh I can't understand anything'', the problem is watchers live too much emotional and situational changes in a very little amount of time. You don't have time to laugh, upset, stress, surprise or even think about anything. But this is why I said ''unique style of pacing''. After sometime you start loving it, how all those things happen in one episode. Until the last 2 episodes, it was okay but I wish it was 3 episodes, not 2. So that we can understand the story better, feel all the emotions and maybe they can cover the plotholes. Talking about plotholes, they're not killing the story. First ''mutual recognition''. I was just thinking about how can it possible that Yuta has the key, they answered it with ''mutual recognition''. It was an impressive and somehow logical answer to me, but when he get back the key and come back after Ryo-tas kissed him, it lost its magic and caused plenty of question marks. It really should have had a better explanation. The second one is Nishizono Ririka. What do we know about her? Almost nothing. How can she know and draw all the things? Why and how did she disappear at the end? These are probably the biggest questions of the story. If it was 3 episodes, maybe they could explain her too. Last thing I want to say about the story, is really impressive. It tries to handle occultic science, supernatural powers (like Myu-pom's vision) and time travelling. It has a mysterious ambience from beginning to the end and did a great job answering the questions (except the ones I told) by using scince. It has cliffhangers, and a really important plot twist that changed the story's course. But if you watch the first episode properly, there's a chance of predict that plottwist (except the one about Ryo-tas) Art: 9/10 I am really affected by the art, especially using of light and shadings. It makes you live all that dark, bloody and scary moments. Sound: 10/10 Soundtracks are amazing and thrilling. The opening and ending are awesome, too. (I won't write so much things about art and sound since they're mostly subjective and don't know what to write about them.) Characters: 8/10 The characters are so diffrent each other. They're all special, generally energic and intelligent. Anime told us most of their backstories but still characters did not have enough screentime and because of that their developments are not completed either. Since the pacing is too fast and anime focuses on the story this was a possible situation. Gamotan, Ryo-tas, Myu-pom and Sarai's developments were kinda ok but others (Again, especially Nishizono Ririka) are not. Enjoyment: 9/10 We can say that most of the people didn't like at least the first episodes of the anime by looking at the score (it fell to even 6.59), but I enjoyed it from beginning to the end. Ryo-tas' breasts are bigger than Everest, they're talking too fast so it's hard to catch, pacing is too fast, characters are a little bit childish, first episode is really messy (even that nothing happened)... These are acceptable reasons why people hated it but still I found it enjoyable. So here is my thoughts about O;N, had a lot of potentials and used most of them. As I said, it would be better if it was longer, even 1 more episode. I hope you liked the anime and my review :)