Reviews

Nov 1, 2010
'Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin' (Turn of the Century Occult Academy) is the third and final installment of 'Anime no Chikara' (Power of Anime) Project by TV Tokyo and Aniplex, following 'Sora no Oto' and 'Senkou no Night Raid'.

Story: 5/10
As the title suggests, the setting is in an Occult Academy in 1999, a school notorious for study of the pseudoscience. Series of paranormal incidents have been observed in the academy in recent months, including the one where the dean was killed. Soon after the dean's daughter returns, a psychokinetic 'time agent' descends from the sky, and together, the duo seeks Nostradamus' Key, which supposedly was the cause of the apocalypse as predicted in the prophecy.

The show started off very strong, quickly introducing the main characters, the premise, and the mission.

The story gets episodic after a while. It seems the producers are more interested in introducing occult trivia than actual development of the story.

The team encounter various paranormal events, so much at one point that it bothered me how they so conveniently and easily came across occult mysteries, which by definition should not be so easily found. To my surprise, all was explained by a dark magician as the culprit. At first, I was turned off by seemingly rushed sum up, but after a second thought, it was extremely appropriate since magic is the most well-known occult mystery.
There were still a whole bunch of plot holes though... why does Ramachandran-Fischer conjecture result in alien invasions anyway? Not to mention all the time travel paradoxes of the ending.


The story overall was nothing out of ordinary and sometimes even predictable, but the pacing was good enough to keep me interested throughout the series.

Character: 6/10
Maya is a tsundere, oh wait, that word didn't exist yet... she's just another girl who's not honest with her feelings. Toward both Fumiaki and the occult. Fumiaki on the other hand is a typical loser whose incompetence knows no limit, and easily gets carried away. In fact, he's practically Nobita from Doraemon series. Despite this, both characters come with a dark past that they eventually learn to overcome through their adventures.

All the side characters though, are grossly underused. We know absolutely nothing about their pasts, and their characters were flat to the end. Perhaps they gave the leading couple more screen time to develop, but I can't help but feel they existed simply to advance otherwise impossible plots.
JK pops up whenever someone goes missing and needs to be found. Smile just follows JK and beat the crap out of bad guys. Mikaze turned out to be a villain behind all the occult incidents around the academy, but it was never explained what she had to gain by letting aliens rule the world...


Animation: 7/10
Background art was extremely detailed, just like in 'Sora no Oto'. It was also noticeably lacking motion, but had far better texture and engaging.

Unlike 'Sora no Oto', character design this time was very original, with unique faces, hair, and signature stockings + heels, suits + ahoge, and accessories (dowsing rods, wrench, glasses/blindness etc) that made each character memorable.
Characters really lacked details, especially compared to the awesome backgrounds, but made up for it by incredibly realistic face/body expressions that seemed to flawlessly convey their state of mind.

Animation in general was decent, but occasional 3D-CG-assisted camera movement was absolute disaster.

Sound: 7/10
I really liked Mikaze's voice. It sounded like an ordinary cute girl voice, but there was a certain cold, eeriness in her speech that worked very well for her character. Rest of the cast was average.

BGM was nothing remarkable and sometimes even hard to notice. Although the sound effects were pretty good.

OP/ED were catchy songs, though ED animation was a head-scratcher... Mannequins? 3D-CG? Photoshopped picture?

Enjoyment: 8/10
The message of this show was great, that we should always keep an open mind, that we should stand on our own feet and walk our own path.
I feel this series would've been a huge success to younger audiences if they made skirts couple of inches longer, toned down Mikaze's seduction, and broadcast in daytime.

'Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin' is a horrible show if you watch it as an occult anime because it attempts to deal with too many occult mysteries in too few episodes and technically filled with flaws, but it's fascinating if you watch it as a fantasy/adventure anime. It's got dreams and shows the allurement of existence of the supernatural.

I dropped 'Senkou no Night Raid' after 2nd episode, but I think it's safe to say that 'Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin' is the best series in 'Anime no Chikara' Project, because well, it's the only one that shown me the power of anime.

"[The Occult] do no exist in reality... As long as you don't believe in them." Watch this series with an open mind.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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