As LA said at the start of this review, it looks like a reverse harem but is really 3 love stories in reality. The 3 love stories vary depending on your anime stereotypes and some are either too cliched or underdeveloped in many ways. Let's look at LA's favourite character Mikoto Kuga voiced by ''Ayahi Takagaki'' relationship with Sakuya Nijou voiced by ''Mitsuki Saiga'', as Sakuya has a "protector" status on Mikoto and they are actually childhood friends, however as much as this anime plays around with this kind of relationship, it's cliched and repetitive especially on Sakuya's part of being overly protective, thus Mikoto was LA's favourite character as she had the voice of reason and leadership in the Norn ship.
The next relationship is probably the most level-headed developed one, Nanami Shiranui voiced by ''Asami Seto'' and Akito Shukuri voiced by ''Noria Sugiyama'' as they at first were polar opposites but their development seems the most functional and less annoying by the end of it, not to mention making Akito a straight up tsundere with Nanami being the deadpan is somewhat a nice relationship dynamic.
Finally the MOST annoying an done of the core focus of this anime relationship of Koharu voiced by ''Ayumi Fujimura'' and Kakeru Yuiga voiced by ''Yuki Kaji'' as Koharu has "female protagonist in an anime otome game adaptation syndrome" along with her incessant dialogue of having "Kakeru" was rather annoying, yes this relationship develops immensely but all the way through it's cheesy and annoying throughout, we see these three relationship throughout the bulk of anime and considering there were only one of the three relationships LA liked, this could end badly if not for the B plot coming in making this anime a little bit tolerable. Ohh before LA forgets, the rest of the 6 guys in the main cast are nothing but support characters or a "plot catalyst".
The B plot answers what LA questioned about these characters and the floating world of Norn LA was saying earlier and that was a least tolerable due to how these relationships work into this B plot, however with the one core exception being Koharu and Kakeru's annoying puppy-love relationship driving the entire B Plot along. The B Plot by all means helped the plot but it came rather late.
This anime has terrible pacing issues, as much as they do character development for these relationships which is a plus, it's excruciatingly slow for the first half of the series with most of the cast members loafing around until a plotline demands that certain characters do certain things and once the B plot picks up, they RUSH it to no end as well as rush 2 relationships plotlines and put the major focus on Kakeru and Koharu's relationship which once again annoyed LA.
The animation by Kinema Citrus is actually very decent, crisp character designs to heck beautiful background work, even some of the battles and short-winded as they are does look decent on the eyes with the bigger battle set pieces for LA seeing that Kinema Citrus didn't slack.
The ending well LA will keep it short, it ended almost abruptly TOO well, like EVERY PLOTLINE was resolved too perfectly.
Norn9: Norn+Nonet DOES have potential as 3 loves stories, however is bogged down by terrible pacing issues, doing multiple plotlines at the same time, half the cast that were nothing but support characters and just bringing in filler episodes where it REALLY wasn't needed for any, heck LA will say as annoying as Kakeru and Koharu's relationship is, it was plot-driven and tied into the B Plot so that least was enough for LA to carry on watching it, but with all the faults LA said it's "tolerable" at best, it could have some sense of structure if the plot and characters were just THIS bloated with ideas.
"Keep it simple" could have easily made this anime better. This anime isn't an outright clusterfuck of rushed ideas, it was definitely close to it, however if it wasn't for some semblance of focus from the B Plot and some characters/character relationship LA liked throughout this anime, it could have been much worse.
