Occultic;Nine is an interesting little mystery story that is unfortunately dragged down by horrendous characters and a pretentious, grating style that intrudes on nearly every scene. Among the 9 title characters, only about 3 of them are tolerable (the black magic girl, the fortune teller and the journalist). The main character Yuta, Ryotas, and the detective are about as aggressively off-putting as you can make characters that are ostensibly supposed to be likeable. It was a chore at times to keep up with this series because I disliked the characters and was not invested in their struggles.
The real detriment to this series though is in this awful attempt at making the show quirky by dramatically speeding up the dialogue and using a very distinctive visual style. The dialogue will make your head spin and there is so much exposition delivered at lightning speed that it's virtually impossible to retain all the information they throw at you. To make matters worse, the complex plot involving time travel and spirit realms and things of that sort really needs clarity when it's delivering lore to the viewer and the speed-talking makes it difficult to follow once things ramp up in the last few episodes. They absolutely went for style over substance here, and not in a way that makes the series more enjoyable to watch.
That being said, the central mystery was engaging and I definitely did not see the midseries plot twist coming. I think this could have been a good series with some tweaks to the characters and a director that would just make a normal series instead of trying to show off how stylistically unique they can be. There are a few things I would criticize here as well though. I thought the pacing could have been better, as it was a slow burn most of the time but then the ending was rushed and confusing. There are a few dead ends where you get to the end of the series and look back and you're like "why exactly did we spend all this time on this side story when it didn't mean anything in the end?" The entire story of Chi and the kotoribako is like that. Lastly, the series tracks which day it is on a regular basis and it's unclear why until the very last episode. Some sort of signal to the audience as to why it's important to keep track of that, amidst all the other things you need to keep track of, would have been much appreciated.
Overall, it's a good story let down by bad characters and some unfortunate directorial choices. A few tweaks could have made this a fun mystery series, but sadly you can't wish away the flaws and I can't recommend it even for mystery lovers given how much I disliked the characters. One final thing to note is that the OP is quite good and worth checking out even without watching the series.
