Story:
Anime follows the story of Sion, who lives in a perfect, utopian society of city called No.6, and Nezumi, who falls the victim of authorities ruling mentioned town. Two boys join forces to discover the truth about about the city, as well as themselves.
As you can see, what we deal with is a dystopian society - perfect at first glimpse, but rotten at the core. On the other side we have people living ouside the city - animals spending their lives in the slums. At that point No. 6 breaks typical sci-fi convention - in films like Equilibrium or Book of Eli, those who oppose the system are good, almost bleached out guys. In No.6, it's the choice between being happy, but manipulated, or constantly in danger, but free.
Sion and Nezumi spend their days in the latter part of the world. Surrounded by violence, rape and filth the're getting more and more drawn to each other.
This way we got to the strongest part of the show - character developemet. Both boys are sensitive and inteligent, as a contrast to a harsh world surrounding them. Still, it's not flat. Nezumi, natural-born badass, likes poetry (if you like finding tropes in anime, you'll be in heaven). Sion, a full-heart pacifist and humanist can punch a guy in the face. Besides, Nezumi confronting Sion is a big clash of ideologies. It's really great to watch as they try to explain each other their point of view, and how the other one reacts. Both of them, treir relationship, how certain things slowly change their personality, is a piece of well done, deep character developement.
Not to mention solid, interesting bacground characters.
Art, Sound and Setting
There is not much of "music" in No. 6. Soundtracks played in background are not someting that touch your heart and makes you think "I love that track! Need to hear it more!" but they create the atmosphere nicely. However, I have to mention beautiful elegies sung by several characters. Quality of art in the show is good, there are scenes with bad animation, but sudden drop of quality between highly appealing scenes is something common in recent anime's. The overal look of characters is nice to watch, and bg are rich.
As or the setting, some scenes, like dialouges, ale played flawless, which is great for a series full of it, but other scenes seem to be a little bit too rushed (especially most lyrical ones). I think that is beacuse the series is too short, and director still tried to make it a little bit more metaphisical.
No. 6 was great, touching story to watch. It gets strange at the end, but still I highly reccomend to watch it.
