The suspect placement of that semicolon tells me that Occultic;Nine is created by the chap who is behind Steins;Gate. To be exact, this anime is based on the light novels written by Chiyomaru Shikura. Unlike the titles that make up the Science Adventure series, Occultic;Nine focuses on the paranormal. This adaptation spans across a dozen episodes, but due to licensor demands Manga Entertainment is releasing the show across two six-episode collections. Ouch! Slowly but surely we are regressing back to the bad old days, when box sets were a rarity and most anime DVDs would contain a mere three episodes.
OVERVIEW
Yūta Gamon is a teenage blogger who operates a website that specializes in the supernatural. Motivated by the promised riches of ad revenue, he spends his days linking to articles that talk about the occult. Ha, good luck with making cash online. My blog has been around for five years and to date has yet to generate a single penny! Anyways… Yūta gets embroiled in a murder mystery when he stumbles across the corpse of Professor Hashigami, an esteemed researcher who abandoned science in favour of studying unexplained phenomena. The only clues found at the crime scene are the word CODE (scribbled in blood) and a key lodged inside the professor’s jaw.
Despite not attracting much website traffic, Yūta’s blog has a knack for catching the attention of oddballs. Over the course of these six episodes Yūta ends up interacting with a streamer who is famous for fortune telling, a youngster who cosplays as a gumshoe and an author of Yaoi comics. The zaniest person in Yūta’s life is his sidekick Ryoka Narusawa. She is hyperactive and prone to zapping her chum with a Taser that resembles a ray gun. I suppose that she keeps an electric deterrent at hand to keep perverts at bay, as she has a ginormous pair of breasts. Even by anime standards, Ryoka’s knockers are unrealistically proportioned.
VERDICT
My rating for Occultic;Nine (Volume One) is a two out of five. At the show’s midway point I find myself completely disinterested in the story. That by itself wouldn’t be a deal breaker, if the characters were good at least. Steins;Gate for example managed to hold my attention, during its slow paced opener, because the antics of Okabe’s group were amusing to watch. None of Occultic;Nine’s cast makes an impression though. Characters like reporter Tōko Sumikaze and son of the deceased Sarai Hashigami lack personality. On the other end of the scale we have people who are annoyingly eccentric – the breast example in that category being Ryoka.
Perhaps the series can redeem itself in the next volume. I am sceptical though, as the script is juggling way too many subplots with just six episodes remaining. Apart from the murder mentioned earlier there is a mass suicide to investigate, a girl who is haunted by a ghost and a clandestine organization who appear to be engaged in nefarious activities. Will I stick around to find out how it all ends? The answer to that question is (Occultic) Nein. That’s the problem with splitting a series in twain Manga Entertainment. If the first half doesn’t impress don’t expect viewers to remain for the conclusion.
i thought it was an interesting anime with a lot of problems. i cant really remember the ending and that might be saying something there.
For me the finale will have to be spectacular to salvage this anime. The fact that the ending isn’t memorable worries me. I like some of the show’s occult elements, but the characters haven’t won me over and I don’t like how the story kicks jumping all over the place.
This is one of my favorite in Fall 2016 although I’ve forgotten it about this. But, I remember there is one character that I forgot his name say some dialogue as Steins;Gate. Is there any connection between Steins;Gate and this light novel or anime? Same as ChäoS;HEAd, Steins;Gate, Robotics;Notes, and ChäoS;Child.
I know the Science Adventure shows have references that loosely tie them together. From what I have seen the only connection between Occultic;Nine and Steins;Gate is that they share the same author. Perhaps a more observant reader can chime in with a comment.
I’ve known a few people who were excited for this after watching Stens;Gate, but that gave up pretty quickly because it didn’t hold their attention near enough. So far, no one has managed to convince that it’s worth checking out just yet.
Thus far this show has been a disappointment. I have previously enjoyed the Steins;Gate and Robotic;Notes anime along with the Chaos;Child visual novel. Heck, even Chaos;Head was better than this series.
I must admit, Steins;Gate is still the only one I’ve seen. It was the only one where the story leapt out at me and made me want to check it out. How does Robotic;Notes compare?
Some people didn’t like Robotic;Notes, but I did. The characters are a likable bunch. It’s about a club that is trying to build a giant robot. Much like Steins;Gate, during the process they stumble upon a conspiracy.
So, it’s Steins;Gate but with mechanical instead of time travel?
Considering how good Steins;Gate is, this is disappointing to hear. Then again I’ve heard that the Chaos;Head anime was hot garbage so perhaps this is a source material to adapation problem. Was this originally a visual novel?
As for making money on online content, the real goldmine now seems to be edited Youtube videos with a lot of jump cuts or Twitch streaming. Nobody wants to read anymore.
I thought Chaos;Head started okay, but got very silly towards the end. Twelve episodes is a tad short, so perhaps this series has just been adapted poorly. I believe this is based off two light novels, although an Occultic;Nine visual novel does exist.
Years ago YouTube was a great making of making a modest income. I think that the ad revenue has dried up though so only the biggest channels make any money now. Twitch seems profitable, but so many people do it that it’s tough to get noticed/build a fanbase.
Hang in there! Occultic;Nine is a slow burner, I enjoyed
how all the threads came together for the reveals later.
Hopefully the pay off at the end will be worth it. For review purposes I may finish off the series, when volume two comes to the UK. Not sure when that is though.
The full series is available to stream for free over at Anime Streams
http://www.animestreams.net/watch-occulticnine-full-episodes-online/
Where;would;you;get;that;idea;that;Stein’s;Gate;author;was;involved. It’s;totally;normal.
It’s a good thing a lot of Aniplex releases are available for streaming, as other areas outside of Japan wouldn’t pay those kind of prices that they want.
All these semicolons make the Word grammar checker freak out!
Yeah, it would be best to watch this series online. I guess Aniplex accountants have determined that the few hardcore fans who buy all the volumes generate more profit than many people buying one box set. Shame. I never purchased Kill La Kill because it got chopped up into so many DVDs.
I knew the lure of Ryoka’s giant boobs would be too much for you to resist! 😛
Just to reiterate, you can’t blame Manga about the releasing pattern – they did say that had it been down to them they would have released this in one set but you know, Aniplex….
I like well endowed ladies, but Ryoka is so out of proportion that she isn’t attractive. Aniplex’s business strategy makes my blood boil. They pretty much take advantage of how passionate some fans are when it comes to collecting DVDs.
Told you Ryoka’s boobs were gross! 😛
Looking at the plot, it makes me wonder how the story is taken forward, I might view it just to see. I felt that personally when you said you’re yet to make money from your blog, I’m patiently waiting for the day that I make money from mine.
To be fair I haven’t monetized the blog at all. I don’t think there is any point unless a site is getting tons of hits on a daily basis. Barring something major I think we will have a long wait before the time we can retire off our blog earnings 🙂
This may sound lame but it was hard for me to get into in episode 1 from how fast they were talking. Then crunchyroll took down episode 2 for awhile and I just never went back.
If you struggle with fast paced chatter you may want to avoid Monogatari (although it is a good series). That show floods the screen with more subtitles than you can read.
It drives me nuts when I can’t see the anime and read ha…
I liked the animation in this series but lost interest after the second episode.
Yeah, it does some interesting things visually. Shame that the story isn’t that interesting.
Wooo a paranormal blogger, I like the sound of that. Too bad, it was disappointing. 🙂
Hope the second half is a lot better 😀
A paranormal blog could be interesting to read. I haven’t stumbled upon one on WordPress yet, although to be fair I mostly just search for anime and game stuff. Fingers crossed that this show’s finale makes up for the weak start.
I remember those days, when Anime DVDs were released a drip at a time. I still have a shelf half full of Yu Yu Hakusho DVDs because they came out back in the day. I’m glad we’ve moved past that era.
Except, apparently we haven’t.
I feel your pain as I own Full Metal Alchemist and the FMA: Brotherhood all in separate volumes. For the sake of storage space I much prefer box sets. Let’s hope we don’t revert to the days when Gantz only had two episodes per DVD!
Definitely sounds like a unique anime but not all that interesting like you mentioned. I guess it will all depend on how much I like the characters which could be enough in he long run I guess. A shame about the 6 episode sets though, that sounds like a total scam
In my opinion a short series like this should come out in one set. Alas the license rights holder demanded that it be released this way. In Japan I hear that anime gets chopped up into many DVDs. With that in mind I guess they fear consumers importing Western editions, which contain more episodes.