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Occultic;Nine
Wasted Potential
Series in a Sentence
The world of Yuuta Gamon, a blogger that runs the website “Kiri Kiri Basara,” and eight other individuals is thrust into chaos after a mass drowning incident occurs in Japan.
What I liked
From a production standpoint, this series was amazing. The opening by Ito Kanako felt at home with the Science Adventure Series openings despite the series not being an official entry, the ending by Asaka had the perfect amount of punch and interplay with the credits and episode previews, and the animation and character design (for the most part) were all top notch. To top it off, the voice acting was great, with character voices matching how I thought they should sound just by seeing designs, and the dialogue was fast-paced, witty, and engaging.
What I Didn’t Like
Man, this story was hard to follow and nonsensical, more so than other series that have tried to play out a similar plot. If you’ve seen Steins;Gate or played the games, this series is written by the creator of that series which gave me hope going in. A 12-episode run, though, made it nearly impossible to set up the level of twists and turns that the show ultimately tried to deliver. Also a result of the short run was a lack of major character development in most of the nine main cast while any development that did happen was immensely forced. Other gripes include certain character designs being extremely exaggerated (you’ll know when you see if you watch this), an uneven pacing, and an incomplete feeling ending. Ultimately, the show’s short run forced its hand, making it introduce twists into its already nonsensical plot without any proper setup while blazing through the smallest of character developments in only a select few characters. Should you choose to watch this, questions will remain unanswered, characters will feel like wastes of space, twists will feel unheralded, and the pacing and plot will leave you wondering what's even going on.
Overall Feelings
Going into Occultic;Nine in the beginning (I watched it on a weekly basis), I had the highest of hopes. Even after the first couple of episodes I maintained that it had the potential to be just as good as Steins;Gate (which is one of my favorite anime series). My expectations were betrayed, though, by an off-the-wall story that tried too hard to force a Steins;Gate-esque twist in too short of a time with characters I couldn’t fully care about. Occultic;Nine had everything going for it: Animation was clean, the music was top-notch, and the writing was well done despite being hampered by a more than lackluster story. To have a successful series in my opinion, everything has to work in the context of the story that is trying to be told and, unfortunately, the story here wasn’t a great one. It hurts me to say, because I wanted to love this series, but I can’t recommend it in really any situation. Even though it is short, there are just too many good series out there that can fill your time in a more meaningful way. No matter how good the individual pieces of something are, unless they work together as a whole they still only amount to a pile of junk.