Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin

One of the biggest problems with anime is that all too often what you're watching just doesn't hit the mark. There are a number of shows that have been great conceptually, but when it comes to execution they simply do not fulfill their potential. This could be due to the oversimplification of the plot, an uninteresting storyline, dull or overly stereotypical characters, or even just pure laziness on the part of the writers (or something else entirely). Whatever the case may be, there are far too many anime out there that simply do not cut the mustard because they don't do enough with what they ... have.

And then there's the shows like Seikimatsu Occult Gakuen (End of Century Occult Academy).

Originally developed as part of Anime no Chikara, a project run by TV Tokyo's anime department in conjunction with Aniplex, Seikimatsu Occult Gakuen is the third release from that stable (the previous two being Sora no Woto and Senkou no Night Raid), and marks the full directorial debut of Itou Tomohiko.

Set in the fictional Waldstein Academy which sits atop Mount Minakami in Matsushiro, Nagano Prefecture, the story begins with Kumashiro Maya disembarking from the bullet train. She is the daughter of the academy's principal and founder Kumashiro Junichiro, and has returned to the city to attend the funeral of her estranged father. Along the way, her taxi driver tells her about some of the strange rumours surrounding the academy because of its focus on all things supernatural.

On the surface Sekimatsu Occult Academy has a fairly reasonable set up. The plot is, initially, pretty straight forward, and there even seems to be some signs of an intelligent story at certain points during the first episode. Unfortunately, all of that promise quickly goes out of the window during the rest of the series.

For some reason the writers thought there wouldn't be enough going on in an academy that focuses specifically on the supernatural, so they decided to add other things to it. In a sense, Occult Academy has pretty much everything in it that Suzumiya Haruhi wanted, from ghosts and witches, to time travellers and dimensional aliens.

The problem is, it's simply too much for the series to handle.

Occult Academy starts off reasonably well, but the rapid addition of so many threads to an already burgeoning plot ends up giving the series less focus, and it seems that this was simply too much for a rookie series director to handle. The numerous and disparate aspects of the story all begin to come together towards the end of the series though, but the story has an inherent predictability that seems to be an offshoot of adding too much.

In all honesty, if the series had added one or two more supernatural aspects, then it may very well have collapsed under its own weight. The plot has a certain fragility because of the amount of information in the anime, and this makes it difficult to take the story seriously (especially with those little comedy scenes thrown in for good measure). That said, some people may find the show enjoyable because of the oddness surrounding Maya and her crew.

Talking about odd, while the series looks pretty good overall, one can't help but wonder at some of the designs in the show. A-1 Pictures and Xebec have made Occult Academy look pretty good for the most part, but looks are only skin deep. The characters are designed reasonably well and have their own individual attributes, but there's a certain amount of stereotype at play in this department. The short haired girl is a jock, the glasses girl is a geek, etc, etc. It would be nice if the creators put more thought into the character design as personally I'd like to see some of those stereotypes finally put to rest. One other problem is the level of fanservice involved in the show as it really isn’t necessary, and it makes one wonder exactly who the target audience is supposed to be.

That said, the facial expressions are usually pretty well realised (althought it is sometimes difficult to tell if Maya is tense or constipated).

In addition to the design, the animation is of a pretty decent standard as well, except for certain occasions where the character movements seem ... odd. Thankfully these occasions are fairly few and far between, but they are noticeable when they occur. One also has to wonder if Maya likes the short dress she generally wears as she has one with exactly the same design during the flashbacks to her childhood.

Another aspect of the show that's odd is the acting. Hikasa Youko and Mizushima Takahiro are pretty good as Maya and Fumiaki (or Bunmei, whichever name you prefer to call him by), and the rest of the cast deliver some perfectly decent performances throughout. What's odd though, is that even with some decent acting the characters just don't seem to work. The audience is given nothing to sympathise or empathise with, and while some may believe this to be due to poor acting, in actuality its down to a poor script.

The sound quality is decent throughout the series, but one of the problems with Occult Academy is the music, or rather, the choreography. The tracks on offer are well chosen but there are several scenes where they just don't seem to mesh with the on screen action. In addition to this the OP, which is a fairly typical J-rock track called "Flying Humanoid" by Nakagawa Shouko, works well as an opening theme, but the opening sequence itself doesn't seem to work with the music. As for the ED, "Kimi ga Iru Basho" by Takagaki Ayahi is a decent enough song as well, but again the ending sequence makes no sense (unless images of a girl and boy lying in grass are your thing).

It's not that the music itself is bad, but rather its implementation is a bit strange.

As I mentioned before the acting is decent enough, but the characters lack any real depth for the entirety of the series. One of the biggest problems with Occult Academy is that there is simply too much going on at any one time, and because of this the characters seem like nothing more than by-products of the plot. The overly complicated storyline precludes any real growth or characterisation, especially for Maya and Fumiaki, and it's not until the final few episodes that they actually start to develop. Even then the storyline gets in the way, which is a shame as some of the characters, especially Fumiaki, had some very interesting histories which really warranted more of a look.

Sekimatsu Occult Gakuen is a decent enough series that toys with some interesting ideas, but doesn't really go any further than that. The problem is that the story is far too complicated for its own good, and because of this everything else in the show seems to have been thrown off course. It may have seemed like a good idea on paper, but like so many other things like that, the result is nothing more than a decent looking anime with no real substance.

That said, there are several interesting plot points that even I found distracting, but they're not enough to support the weight of an entire series and all its characters. Granted there may be viewers who don't mind that the plot seems to have been hammered together from one of Haruhi's delusions, but it just wasn't enough for me as there is little in the way of justification for anything that happens in Occult Academy.

It's a shame really, but the quality of releases from Anime no Chikara seems to be dropping by degrees, and Sora no Woto remains the best title from that stable so far.

You know when you have to find something and how it's the highest priority to do so? Well, Occult Academy for 13 episodes is looking for something, but it isn't the the highest priority. Time Traveler Fumiaki "Bunmei" and Prinicpal Kamashiro Maya are looking for the illusive "Nostradamus' Key" in order to prevent the world from ending in 1999.

Anime no Chikara is a project designed to create "original" anime series. Which, they have no problem in doing. The major fault of these series is that everything building up to the climax has little to nothing to do with the actual story. Taking example of Sora ... no Woto, in my opinion the best of Anime no Chikara's projects (not because it was K-ON! with guns). But it had this same ordeal, but the earlier episodes always had that looming threat of war just beyond the border. Most people we're too distracted by the cute. But Occult Academy suffers greatly from this problem.

The show isn't terrible, it's enjoyable. But other shows have done the occult idea better and have expanded upon what this show only touches. I know when people usually see my reviews the show is usually terrible. But this show also lacks some common sense in the way the story is played out.

Onto good points. The art of Occult Academy is something I love. It's this nice, crisp, refined style that is truly original. It truly matches every character's traits.

Which lead me into characters. The character traits are just kind of blasted at you the moment they come screen. Maya's character is the only character that truly jumps out at me when I think about Occult Academy, all the other characters are enjoyable, but I was kind of hoping for some more. Some characters are just kind of there for the ride and to fight things. Which is "all right", I suppose.

Music. Music is sometimes occult stuff and sometimes it's not. When it's not something chanting or something dark or spooky to get you into thinking "occult" you get this nice traditional folk to bring you away from everything occult. I couldn't handle this show if everything was occult. That's an overload.

There's some issues with how the story plays out though. There's that ten episodes of introduction and build-up and it's swiftly all explained in about five seconds? Oh. Kind of a bummer, I was hoping it had a greater purpose then just being an obstacle.

The biggest thing that will bother most is the search for the Key itself. Maya and Bunmei will purposefully hold off looking for it. Let's go over what the characters don't know. They don't know what the Key is. They don't know where the Key will be located. They don't know what will happen with the Key when they find it. They don't know any of this. Yet, they hold it off until a couple of weeks before the world ends. You can't just put that off to solve over things. I don't get it. They could've made this series one long adventure to finding the key. Instead you get this? It's kind of disappointing. The storytelling was alright, but it had so much potential.

Maya's spell book bothers me. In one episode, Bunmei says that she has her father's spell book on her person all the time. If that's the case, why doesn't she ever use it? It's a book full of spells and they use it twice. Her father left her the spell book to protect her from evil and to use against evil. The most she uses against evil is a crossbow and she doesn't use the spell book to figure anything out; or learn about her father. Just some important things that would've been better if used correctly. Maybe Maya was afraid of getting tongue tied in the middle of fighting. That would be embarrassing to the viewers.

Also, disregard for the fact that other humans might be in the same situation as Akari. They never look for anyone else that might've been captured. Just a "grab your friend and run" deal. It's sometimes obvious too, because there are bones and cocoons and stuff. Yeah, it's just something stupid, right?

If you like occult stuff, you should give this a try. It's a neat concept. It's just average.

About this show there are 2 things: 1. the main girl is hot (I love white one-piece) but 2. everything is RANDOM and UNIMPRESSIVE.

This show is a failed mix of supernatural, comedy, and slice of life, revolving an UN-CUTE (even though hot) girl Maya and a super-PATHETIC ex-esper time-traveling-by-force young man Bunmei (which literally means "modern") in their journey to search for the "Notradamus's key" to break the prophecy about the End Day in 2012 and solve the mystery behind the school principal's death.

The show is meant to explore occult mysteries which, in common knowledge, consist of objects, monsters, phenomena, and spells. A supporting character ... called Haruse develops an obsession of searching for occult things and she did nothing but spontaneously popping out and bringing up some random occult OBJECTs (e.g. OOPart) or phenomena (e.g. poltergeist) which had nothing to do with the story. So far unrelated MONSTERs appeared randomly without any reason. The only notable PHENOMENON in the storyline is 2012 apocalypse, which is alien invasion in this case. Finally, there was only one silly SPELL that turns the corpse into an undead. The spell book which Maya coincidentally discovered and inherited from her father was never used...

Story: 5
The foundation of the universe in this show is not consistent. Most objects and phenomena brought up by character Haruse are not real and based on her imagination and obsession, which implies that this universe is just a normal world where "occult" literally means "hidden secret." But then those MONSTERs just showed up like they should have always been there to show up...

Also, there is completely no flow because a lot of unnecessary details (some for comedic purpose) get in the way, e.g., vice-president's crust, Bunmei's affair with the landowner's daughter, Ami(Maya's close friend)'s dad's affection toward Maya and his silly occult prank.
Such slice of life scenes are too bleak and unnecessarily long.

Art: 8
Good anyway. Maya looks hot, white one-piece is hot...

Sound: 6
Voices and soundtrack score are good but the OP and ED are totally out of place with the show's content: OP is so-so and can be used for any anime. ED is a common piece about love while there's completely no romance in this show. I wouldn't regard Bunmei's affair with the landowner's daughter as a romance because when they were separated in a dark cave and even after the whole cave was detonated, he didn't give a darn about his girl and kept acting loony until he found her outside, mysteriously safe and sound.

Character: 6
No depth, little background. Main girl is uncute, main guy pathetic, the occult-obsessed Haruse shallow, and Ami the close friend unreasonable. Even the save-the-Earth committee in 2012 are a bunch of idiots because they picked Bunmei the beggar on the street to travel time and take on the mission of finding the "Notradamus's key."

Enjoyment: 6
Great disappointment.

Overall: 6
For one-time watching and cheap entertainment.

Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin was one of the very first animes I watched in 2011. How did I noticed it? I typed 'Yoko Hikasa' on Google and this title immediately attracted my attention. Normally anyone would expect an anime series with such a cool title to have a plot that also lives up to its name...

STORY:
... But no.

The one lesson I learnt after completing this anime series was 'do not judge a book by its cover'. You have your academy which focuses on teaching its students all about the occult rather than normal textbook knowledge, interesting setting. You have your tsundere heroin and time-travelling esper ... hero, a plus point. You have great setting-up, with a few hints here and there in the first few episodes that indicate this might turn out to be an awesome series.

But, no. The audience was treated to a hell load of fillers after the first few episodes. While the fillers themselves look good independently, once tied into the very few plot-related episodes, you get a fail anime series with lack of proper planning and bad pacing.

The one reason I hesitate to give the STORY part lower than 6 marks is because I enjoyed the many plot twists at the last episodes of the series. It was surprising that the writers could rush the final battle so 'well' despite terrible pacing throughout the show.

ART:
Now here's where Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin shines. The character designs looked good, and the animation throughout the run of the series were pretty smooth. Made me wonder how well the series would have done if they had devoted a bit more budget on hiring better writers and a bit less on the animation.

SOUND:
Ugh... no. Both the OP and ED are not something that I myself would look out for. Except for the first one, I basically skipped the OP and ED for every other episode. The soundtrack was also not memorable, something that you would not find in a thriller series like this.

Moving on to the voice acting, somehow I felt that there was a lack of personality injected into the characters. Even for our main protagonist, Maya, I just felt that she lacked the 'tsundere'-ness that she was supposed to have.

CHARACTER:
Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin had great backstories for the characters, but failed miserably at developing them well. Maya and Bunmei hardly had any growth throughout the series, but instead we have the side characters, those that appeared one-shot for the fillers, who received the most treatment. Even the last episode failed to provide for them any form of development.

OVERALL:
The series had such great potential, but just lacked a coherent plot, which would have been achieved if the writers had done proper planning. Hope that the writers would learn from their mistakes and do a better attempt at such genres next time.

I've finished watching a few animes in the last month and I must ask: What the hell is wrong with those script writers? It almost feels disrespectful towards the fans the way some endings are presented.

Among the over 150 animes I've watched the general feeling I got in 90% of the endings was "Lalala, it's so nice doing an anime! Oh, wait, we have to finish it! Just come up with anything and let's call it a day!"

Seriously! It's not that difficult doing an ending that goes along with the pace of the anime for pete's sake!

When it comes to Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin, it's ... not only the ending that makes no sense. Don't get the wrong idea, the anime is good, but they simply proposed on doing something, to completely forget it during the series and remebered to pick it up again on the ending in a completely nonsense way.

If this was simply an anime to tell the story of a group of teenagers facing supernatural occurrences it'd have been an amazing one. After all there wouldn't be any kind of commitment to a larger story.

And that's where Occult Academy went wrong. They offer you an interesting premise only to abandon it afterwards , and, even worse, to "suddenly" remember it on the very ending.

This mistake has been repeating itself in SO many animes that it's getting on my nerves. If you don't know how you want to end a story, don't even get started!:@

All that aside, this show can offer you an enjoyable ride if you're expecting little commitment to the plot. The side stories are very good. It's just the way they are told to be related to the larger story which is not very convincing.

The art is the best part on this animation. It's really beautiful and well done. It's noticeable that some effort was put on this area which helps making this anime bearable til the end.

The soundtrack on the other hand, has nothing special to it. Sometimes it felt kinda out of place, but nothing that would hinder the anime.

The characters were cliches overall. Very few development, except for Maya, your typical tsundere, but at least with an interesting background.

As I said before, it's an enjoyable ride if you focus on the side stories. After episode 11, however, I wouldn't even mind watching it. All I could get from episodes 11, 12 & 13 was a big WTF?

This is my first Review and I am following the rules! I hope it goes well.

I felt compelled to write this review on the Occult Academy because, I thought that this show would have great potential. I expected action, mystery, supernatural occurrences, a little romance and even a little history ... blah blah blah ... I was so sadly mistaken.

My expectations as previously mentioned were mixed in but diluted. I honestly think the writers took a safe route. I guess I just wanted more because the potential is truly there.

The one thing I did like about this series is the artwork. ... It was clean and had a pretty realistic feel.

Long story short... I felt that this probably could have been a multi-season series. The writers jammed way too much in and left out quite a bit for it to end the way it did. The ending by the way without giving it away was one of the worst. Who knew the key to the whole saga would be such a complex instrument? (insert sarcasm here) *sorry*

Lastly, I will leave you all with this. It might not be a greatest story ever but, I will recommend you watch it so we will all have something in common. There is a lot of great Anime out there but, eventually you will run across a story that trips you up. It wasn't the best and it wasn't exactly the worst.

Thanks for your time and thanks for reading!!

How do I put it???????????????Ok so I guess the author of this anime kinda likes to keeps the audience guessing pertaining to the plot of the story, at first you'd think the antagonist or should I say the Nostradamus Key would be Chihiro Kawashima, but it turns out that she's on Maya's side as a Mage or White Witch who was entrusted by Maya's father to protect her, you would also tend to think that a lot of conflict would happen in the school, turns out that it was Mikaze (Bummei's supposed crush) all along who is responsible for mayhem around town where ... the school is located. Also, you would tend to think that both Maya and his father were dead, again it all Chihiro's magic that deceives both friends and foe alike. So basically this anime really keeps your curiosity as to who really is the Nostradamus key is until in the end you find out that it was Bummei who all along is the Nostradamus Key and it was Maya's father whom unintentionally brought the Apocalypse to mankind, so for the story it really deserves an 8.

For art, I'm very disgusted with the illustrator's fashion sense, especially when it comes to Maya's outfit, now c'mon, Maya in a white dress wearing long socks and white shoes? man! That's a big fashion NO, NO. What about Fumiaki's (Bummei) olive green suit? let see, it doesn't show any authoritative figure in it as a teacher and it can also be classified as a fashion disaster especially when his trousers is too short and exposing his white socks that does not give any professionalism. As for the school uniform, I hate the way it's been drawn it makes the female student look dorky, but not for Maya who also wear a school uniform but with a different design that distinguish her from the rest of the students. As for the 2 witches at first they both look dorky only to be hot in their true form.

For the character, at first you'll think that Fumiaki (Bummei) is a useless chicken only to redeem himself in later episode, you'll also think that Maya hates all things that were supernatural but in later episodes she's seen helping a restless spirit who just wants a memorable Christmas and in the end she didn't close down her father's school, and she had a sotacon relationship with the younger Bummei.

Over all I think that it just fair to rate this anime a fair as in fair enough to be watched.

Occult Trivia: The Church of Satan was founded in April 30th 1966 in Walpurgisnacht, San Francisco California by Anton Szandor LaVey, he was also been seen with infamous criminal Charles Manson.

The plot is interesting but the storyline and flow of the story becomes less anticipating. It is interesting at first considering I’ve been in love with occult, supernatural, and mystery type of stories but as the story goes it becomes less and less interesting. There are several clichés in the storyline. The only exciting part is the ending. Though, I am amaze that there are several moments of laughter in the series despite the seriousness of the story. Plus, in the ending part the male lead uses a “SPOON” to defeat the enemies. It is just so hilarious. Despite everything else the main plot is ... still so original.

The characters are not that memorable. The female protagonist is typical “TSUNDERE” type who’s usually hostile towards others, not so honest about her feelings, and always mad type of character but later on softens and shows her warm side. The male lead is the typical weak guy who’s easily manipulated by a girl using her body which is what I hate the most among the type of characters. The only character that I like is Kozue with all her weird and hilarious moments.

Setting aside the storyline, the animation is nicely done. The landscape and visual effects are amazing.

There are lots of flaws but it was still entertaining enough.

Occult Academy is a show that ultimately doesn't work, but at the same time manages to be kind of fascinating in its failure. It's not down to any single factor why Occult Academy doesn't work, and it has its share of strengths, though to be fair there are plenty of weaknesses to pick on. However, the way all the pieces go together makes the show overall one I can't recommend.

With the exceptions of the two leads, the characters are essentially one note each... but they play their notes well enough that I don't really hold it against them. A season of anime ... doesn't have all the time in the world, and the secondary character tier in this one is big enough that trying to give them all independent growth arcs just would have made the whole thing muddy and drowned out the plot. It still would have been nice if we got a little more out of the friends themselves, or especially the Vice Principal character, but of the show's sins, this is really the least.

The leads are another story. Maya is one of the high points of the show. She has a very well-defined character and a strong arc. She's not amazing, though – many shows as have been saved by getting a truly jaw-dropping character or two, but Occult Academy is not among them. I dare say, despite being pretty good, she could have been a lot smarter in a stronger production. More on the vast depths of 'could have been' later. Bunmei, on the other hand, is one of the weakest parts of the show for most of its run. I get that he's kind of like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo, the random dude thrown into mysterious nonsense who is possibly rightly terrified of everything, but Shaggy (in most incarnations at least) may be a coward, but he's not a blowhard or otherwise unpleasant. Bunmei, straight out, doesn't come off as a very good person in the first half of the show. And even later, when he has one or two redeeming scenes to put him in a better place for the climax, he's still not very fun to watch.

I find myself somewhat disappointed as well that the show doesn't really look like anything. It's got a great theme for visual wonder – the Occult! This is begging for a lot of dark shadows and tricks of cinematography to create a pervasive mood in the scenes, and really bring out the mystery and fear. Or if you want to see things clearly, it practically demands some creative design for creatures and effects. Occult Academy never does any of this. The designs aren't utterly uncreative, but they don't have any touches to make them memorable or distinctive in any way. For a subject that should be trivial to make memorable, I think I'm pretty much going to forget all of it, and that's just sad. The overall style, too, isn't very distinct. Most of the scenes, this could be just about any show. Except where the characters slip off-model and end up not looking very good, there's nothing that would make this stand out from any other show with a more every-day sort of setting and theme. It doesn't leave a mark, doesn't make an impression, and a lot of the time doesn't really look good either.

With the sound, there's nothing wrong with it, but there's nothing right either. Everything is either bog standard or easily forgotten. The voice actors didn't fail to sell their characters, but didn't really leave an impression either.

Then we come to the biggest stumbling block, the story line. The plot of this show is all over the place. Few are the shows that can work in Aliens, Time Travelers, Psychic Powers, Ghosts, Cryptids, Demons... yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on, and it's painfully not consistent. And you might ask yourself “Why should it be? The theme here is 'the occult' not a subset of it!”. And you'd be right, but that doesn't mean it's good. And it kind of highlights what I think is behind most of the elements of Occult Academy that don't work.

Put simply, the creators behind Occult Academy had some ideas about what they wanted in their show, and what they wanted their show to be, and they went for all of those without taking a moment to understand what it would all mean for the big picture. For instance, the creators decided they wanted this to include everything and the kitchen sink – an approach that might have worked in an X-Files sort of “monster of the week” setup, but which doesn't pay off when there's a time limit and climax, and an overriding goal that our heroes should be paying attention to. And there's a moment, towards the end of the show, where we get the big “Future refused to change” moment. And it's a good moment, but it's not in a scenario where it really makes sense. The reveal of the villain is in a similar space: I get what they were going for, and why someone would have said in abstract “I want this to happen”, but there wasn't enough care taken to actually have the moment land; it was both too easy to guess because huge amounts of run time would have failed to be germane to anything otherwise, and impossible because there were no in-character hints or clues as to the outcome of the mystery. There's yet another scene in the final sequence, and it's supposed to be a touching scene, but it falls flat because the character involved never got enough earnest development, they were treated as a joke so when they try to get used for heavy drama it doesn't land. The climax as well is a good sequence, probably one of only two action sequences in the show (along with the fake-out climax) to be worth watching even if it still wasn't amazing in the pantheon of anime as a whole, but it happens so quickly that you can't really enjoy it. When a big, climactic fight comes out in a show like Shakugan no Shana, or even a generally weak show that knows a little better about what to do here like Star Driver, the show works to get you excited for the action, building up what's coming before actually delivering. Occult Academy just throws you what it has cold, because someone really wanted that moment, or that scene, or that theme, and didn't care how it went together.

As a result, the pacing of the show is terrible, even if the pacing of scenes or sometimes even episodes is good. How and when major parts of the show are addressed or, more often, not addressed is just plain wrong. Even if all the parts were good (and most are just serviceable, really) the result would still be bad just because of the incompetent assembly.

There is a part of me that wanted to like Occult Academy, and gave it more than a fair chance. I love the subject matter (though it doesn't go into it much after the very start). I like the fact that it's original, when so many shows are adaptions. But none of that saves it from a presentation that really needed a round or two of rewrites, at multiple stages in the creation process, before reaching the viewer at last. With more effort, it could have been a good show. But it needed to either be a kitchen sink affair with no harsh deadline or obvious end, or else it needed to tighten its focus and tie things into the main threat. It needed to either tell a better mystery with clues and suspense as well as an unsurprising surprise, or it needed to drop the forced twist and tell a more straightforward story. No show can be all things to all people, and, as a writer, if a scene or a moment or even a theme doesn't work, you cut it out for the good of the whole. Nobody went back and edited Occult Academy, and that is why it failed.


SCORE BREAKDOWN
Story: 3
Art: 5
Sound: 6
Character: 5
Enjoyment: 3
Total: 5 (4.4)

Final Verdict: Even for a real nut who'll get all the little references to occult phenomena, this show just isn't worth it. The good ideas that are in there needed to be in a production with a lot more polish, down to the basic level, in order to show any strength.

It is one of those situations where an anime with good artistic qualities SOMEHOW has absolutely horribly written story. Visuals are very nice, and character designs are interesting, plus there is nice music here and there. The story, however, has huge plot holes in it, ridiculous story turns, and characters, despite being nicely drawn, believe in completely nonsensical, unbelievable fashion. Detailed breakdown below.

Story: 2/10.

The anime really can't decide what it wants to be. It starts with an interesting premise, then forgets about it for several episodes, devolving into pretty much disconnected string of events, then near the end it freaks out, and makes absolutely insane ... nonsensical story turn that doesn't make sense. The anime also seriously has trouble deciding on magic level in the world, or power of "occult". In several episodes characters act in completely ridiculous/unbelievable fashion as well.

Art: 7/10.

Visuals are really nice. I really liked character designs and their art style. It is more realistic style with proportions that are closer to real life, and frankly, i'd love to see more anime drawn this way. There are few visually awesome scenes as well. If only story was as good as art in this anime.

Sound: 6/10;
There's a really nice tune corresponding to "Occult" that is occasionally played in background.

Character: 2/10:
Characters are very poorly portrayed. They can't be really called stereotypes, but they aren't believable. On occasion characters slip into some sort of comedic stereotypes, but this isn't really well done. When they snap out of stereotypical behavior, they don't really behave like real people, relationships between them develop in abrupt and unrealistic ways, and occasionally they have disturbingly low level of concern about their close friends/relatives/etc. Male lead is annoyingly spineless, and Female lead is pointlessly violent. However I liked character of Kuroki Ami and her family - those were more interesting than leading characters.

Enjoyment: 4/10.
Around 5th episode or so I realized that show makes less and less sense as it goes own, and it only went downhill from there. Didn't really enjoy it much, although I really liked the visuals, plus there was a visually awesome scene involving Kuroki Ami.

Overall: 5/10
Good art, nice music, horrible story. Might be worth checking out for visuals and nice character details, BUT the story is bad, doesn't make sense and generally is facepalm-inducing.