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 :)
