Occultic; Nine Volume 2 Anime Review

After ending the first volume on such a high point I was really looking forward to the release of this second volume of Occultic;Nine because I was itching to find out where the story would lead to next. And while the concluding set of Occultic; Nine contains some great story and character moments it’s let down by some break neck pacing, a seemingly rushed ending and underdeveloped characters.

Now I don’t want that opening paragraph to seem too negative. Overall I did enjoy the most of the Occultic;Nine series. I just feel that if it had improved upon the points I mentioned it would have been more than just a ‘good’ anime series and could have stood alongside it’s sister series Steins;Gate as a great one. If the series had received a 24 episode run like Steins;Gate rather that 12 it would have resolved pretty much every issue I had with the show.

Volume 2 starts off with episode 7 of the series and contains the final 6 episodes. After the twist that was alluded to in episode 6 plays out, the whole series begins to make much more sense. As I mentioned in my review of volume 1, for much of that set I had no idea what was going on and had a hard time following what was happening for the first few episodes until things started to come together.

This seems to be a staple trope in quite a few of Chiyomaru Shikura’s work’s. Just like in the aforementioned Steins;Gate. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense and really come together until episode 13, half way through it’s series. The same can be said for Occultic;Nine with the big revelation occurring in episode 6 and 7 that helps cement to the viewer what type of show this is and what kinds of things to expect going forward.

One thing Occultic; Nine does incredibly well are plot twists. Across both volumes of the series there are numerous plot twists that occur in the small space of it’s 12 episodes. There is the one big one obviously that we find out about around the half way mark but even after that there are smaller scale moments that occur that added texture to the overall narrative and kept me invested in the show, wondering what would happen next. You’ll have to check out the series for yourself as this is a spoiler free review I won’t be talking in detail about the story and what these twists were.

Also mentioned in my review for volume one was how nice this show is on the eyes. The art style continues to impress and retains it’s quality for the whole season. The animation work for the series is also top notch, combining with it’s signature yellow tonal aesthetic to make the visuals one of the high points of the show. And that opening theme, it’s so catchy and animated so well. It’s joined the list of anime opening themes that I watch at the start of every episode and don’t skip.

And while there were plenty of things I loved about the show there are some pretty obvious flaws that need to be mentioned. As mentioned, first off is the pacing. This series really needed some more breathing room to tell it’s story. If it had been given another 12 episodes, hell even another 6 (even though that would result in an abnormal anime episode count) many of my issues with the series could have been minimised.

In just the final 4 episodes the government organisation that we knew was up to something based on the minor cutaway’s in the first set are brought to the forefront and seemingly shoehorned into being behind much more than we expected, one character we thought we knew is revealed to be more than they seem and are an integral part of the whole story and in the final episode a multi-person plot is cooked up to overrun the so called villains of the show, it’s executed and then soon after we’re presented with the final closing credits for the series.

The final few episodes seem so rushed that it’s hard to keep up with what is going on during a first viewing and it doesn’t help that the show involves so many ‘main’ characters that are all involved in the overall plot in some way during this arc.

Upon the conclusion of the show there are still numerous unanswered questions and plot threads that will seemingly remain unanswered unless they ever create an extension of this series or reboot it completely. Like what the hell was the point of the character Ririka Nishizono and what happened to her at the end of the show? This is just one of the handful of questions I had at the end that I don’t have answers for but really want to know.

And because things wrapped up so quickly there was little time spent on developing characters outside of the core 3 or 4 on a deep enough level to make the universe of Occultic; Nine feel full and alive. And because of this it made some of them feel like they had little to no impact of on the outcome of the story.

The home release Blu-Ray includes the final 6 episodes of the series across 2 discs in full HD and able to be watched dubbed in English or in Japanese with English subtitles. The special features on the set include clean versions of the (very cool) opening and ending themes and a trailer for the series itself. Which not only feels redundant because it’s a trailer for the set you’re already in possession of but because these are the exact same extra’s that were included with volume one.

Occultic;Nine is based on a series of light novels that have never reached a conclusion. The visual novel game of the same name was released after the anime series was made which could indicate why the ending of the anime went the way it did. The game hasn’t been confirmed for the west as yet but has been confirmed to be getting a ‘true ending’ update in a future patch. Fingers crossed this does get an English release because I did love the world that was established and am really interested in finding out the real conclusion for all the great things that were set up but didn’t pay off in the anime.

Final Thoughts

While I did spend a decent amount of this review focusing on the things they didn’t get right in the show I did actually really enjoy the series as a whole. It set up a great group of varied characters each with a back story and their own strengths and weaknesses and really nailed the unsettling horror vibe it was striving for as the undertone of the show. While I really would have loved the series to be 24 episodes rather than 12 to give it some breathing room and time to develop the characters and the ending better I was constantly engaged and invested with what we got. Occultic;Nine is a good series but with a few fixes it could have been a great one.

A Blu-Ray review copy was provided by Madman Entertainment for the purpose of this review.

If you want to see more content like this and never miss one of our frequent gaming and anime giveaways come and Follow Ani-Game on Twitter.