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Occultic;Nine
Episodes 1-2

by Gabriella Ekens,

How would you rate episode 1 of
Occultic;Nine ?
Community score: 3.0

How would you rate episode 2 of
Occultic;Nine ?
Community score: 3.3

Occultic;Nine is based on a light novel written by the lead designer/producer of the Steins;Gate visual novel, Chiyomaru Shikura. While not considered a core entry in the franchise, it follows the general formula for the Science Adventure (aka semicolon) series: science fiction/fantasy adventure based on some pop science/supernatural idea starring nerds like you in a contemporary, urban setting. Chaos;HEAd had delusions, Steins;Gate had time travel, Robotics;Notes had robots, and now Occultic;Nine has pretty much every occult idea under the (midnight) sun.

This show's unique visual style is clearly inspired by turn-of-the-millennium reality-warping thrillers like Serial Experiments Lain, Boogiepop Phantom, and Texhnolyze. It has the same inky darkness and runny character animation, just spruced up with modern character design and directorial sensibilities. I can see why it's pulling from those shows – they're masterpieces of tone, specifically dread of the unknown, in a way that few reinventions of the genre have managed since. It's perfect for a show about the supernatural, specifically that sort of scary cult internet vibe that was big back in the earlier days of the web. Occultic;Nine achieves that tone somewhat (its poppy sensibilities and general hyperactivity undercut a more complete embrace), and it's enough to make me want to watch those shows again. Whatever else there is to say about Occultic;Nine, the show largely succeeds at its ambitious visual goals, thanks also to plenty of nice background art and animation.

Unfortunately, there are other things to say about Occultic;Nine, which is why I've been going on about the visuals rather than the story. That's because it's really hard to tell what's happening at any point in this show. It's honestly difficult to exaggerate how unintelligible it is on first viewing. It seems to be trying for a Ryogo Narita-esque “cast of dozens all acting in parallel” thing, but it makes the mistake of introducing all of those parallel strands at once without any obvious connecting tissue. At the same time, it's also aping Nisio Isin's style of strange digressions and rapid transitions, which makes it even more difficult to tell what's going on. Narita's shtick relies on the setting being established in-depth early on, and Isin's relies on rarely following more than one character at a time. It's no wonder that their haphazard combination results in gobbledygook.

Enough railing on about how bad the writing is – here's what I can make out about what's actually happening: about a month after the story begins, a bunch of corpses are dredged up in a lake. That's the cold open.

On February 22nd, we open on Yuta Gamon, a high schooler who runs a content-aggregating website focused on debunking the occult. He wants to get rich off ad revenue, but the site isn't popular enough, so he's looking for a story to put him on the map. His assistant is Ryoka Narusawa, a girl with freakishly huge breasts and, inexplicably, a functioning ray gun. At their café hangout, they watch a pseudoscientific occult talk show featuring a guy named Professor Hashigami, who has really nice hair. (Yes, this is relevant.) The show then segues into a series of character introductions that consist of different people watching the same program.

First, we cut to Hashigami's son, Sarai. He's a college freshman and a skeptic who does not like his father's business. He's approached by Ririka Nishizono, an ominous lady with big boobs. Cut to the next character, Toko Sumikaze. She's an occult reporter who's writing a story on Hashigami. We learn that a creepy old lady who may or may not be a ghost is taking the guy's housecalls. Cut back to the blogging duo. They change the channel to a special on Miyuu Aikawa, a fortune-telling high schooler who's just gotten her big break. Apparently, she goes to school with Yuta and Gamon.

Then, without any segue, we cut to Kurenaino Aria, a woman who runs a business performing black magic. She offers curses, but requires something personal from the mark so that her hexes will work. She gets an email from something calling themselves “Fukuzo Moguro,” requesting Hashigami's death. She then finds what appears to be Hashigami's scalp in her mailbox. She also talks to some sort of ghost/spirit/whatever, who she calls Mr. Devil, but the show identifies him as Kiryu Kusakabe. Okay.

(Take a deep breath folks, because we're only halfway through the first episode.)

Cut to a dumb scene about big boob girl's big boobs. Afterwards, Yuta scores a tête-à-tête with the psychic girl, Miyuu. Cut once again to another new character, Shun Moritsuka, some sort of kid detective investigating Hashigami. NOW BACK TO THE BLOGGERS AGAIN. They're talking to Miyuu, who joins the blog for some reason, then Yuta heads out to try and score a surprise interview with Professor Hashigami (at his office in the middle of the night – as far as I can tell, there's no explanation for Yuta's stupid timing). There, he finds the guy scalped and murdered. End of episode!

Did you catch all that? Alright, good, because we're charging right into the next one.

Fortuneteller Miyuu is broadcasting her show live on Nico Nico. Some freaky guy dials in to accuse her of being a fraud. She freaks out and flashes back to her mysterious tragic backstory, which seems to involve her dad. Cut to blogger Yuta, who's still at the scene of Hashigami's murder. He sees that Hashigami left a dying message in his blood, the word “code.” Via radio, his assistant Ryoka yells at him to pull out Hashigami's gold tooth. He does, revealing that it contains a key. (It also looks altogether too big for his jaw, mind you.) MEANWHILE, kid detective Shun realizes that this crime was predicted in a yaoi doujinshi written by the mysterious lady, Ririka. Understandably, the police don't listen to him, so he then calls someone on the phone to say a lot of mysterious stuff that implies he may be in on whatever's going on. Apparently, Hashigami's dying message refers to some important information, and kid detective fortunately erased the message before the cops could see it. Cut to Sarai griefing Miyuu on her fortune telling, but he shuts up fast when Miyuu predicts that he should try to contact his dad right now. (Because he was just murdered.) Cut again.

Now this is the part that I'm really having trouble following. Kid detective goes to visit the reporter lady, and somehow the conversation turns to the subject of a little girl who lived with her brother's corpse for a year. This is revealed to have been the black magic lady, and the ghost is her brother who performs black magic hits for her. They were commissioned to kill Hashigami, but they weren't the ones who actually killed him. Okay.

And at the end of this, fortune teller Miyuu's friend Chi was kidnapped, possibly by doujin-author Ririka. Okay.

If you're reading this without having watched the show, this is exactly how all of this information has been presented. I've also cut out a bunch of fanservice moments and irrelevant digressions. Cutting down all these cuts to the basic conceit, these nine characters (blogger, big titty assistant, skeptic son, mysterious boobs, reporter lady, urban witch, and her ghost friend) are all involved in Hashigami's occult murder somehow. Thus the title: Occultic;Nine.

There are a lot of little things to criticize here. Watching Occultic;Nine is a pretty annoying experience, with hardly a moment of silence allowed between the screechy attempts at “charming” banter. It's a “yay chuunibyou!” type of show, but in the lame way where it's up to the nerds to show up the cops with the power of doujinshi. Ryoka's insanely oversized porn boobs make me want to die. Still, these are all small potatoes in light of Occultic:Nine's colossal primary flaw: the story structure is terrible. That's not to be confused with the story itself – it's fine, or at least it has promise. I can see it working about as well as some of the better entries in the semicolon series or even The Garden of Sinners, which aims for a similar tone. The issue is all in the presentation, which renders this story nearly unintelligible.

It's an old storytelling truism that plot beats should be connected by the words “thus” or “but” instead of “and” or “then.” That's because the words "thus" and "but" create a sense of causality, a connective thread trailing forward that makes the story easy to follow. There is little sense of causality to Occultic;Nine's plotting, which amounts to a bucket of “ands” n' "thens" dumped across the screen. The show cuts to new characters at random, and then cuts away from them again without warning. On top of that, there are like five or six complex pseudoscientific concepts being floated as somehow relevant. For comparison's sake, Steins;Gate – itself a fairly complex show in terms of plotting – was based on just one. The result is total information overload for the audience. I'd like to say that the show improved over the course of these two episodes, but the back half of the second episode was the hardest to follow.

Beneath all of the structure problems, there's some incomprehensible character action that makes everything worse. (Seriously, why did Yuta try to visit the professor in the middle of the night? How did Ryoka know about the key?) I'll admit that this may not all be the show's fault – the subtitles can be misleading and confusing at points – but there's still way more incongruity than is reasonable. In terms of story construction, Occultic;Nine is so busted up that it repels most of its audience.

But I'm still here. I try to see the best in the shows that I write up, and I will admit that there is potential in Occultic;Nine. It succeeds at its intended aesthetic, and the basic narrative is not without promise. However, I won't deny that this assignment has been – and will likely continue to be – an uphill battle against this show's structure. I'll do my best to translate whatever is going on week to week, and I'll be the first to admit when (and if) it improves. But for now, buckle up – it's going to be a hell of a ride, probably not in the way the creators intended.

Grade: C

Occultic;Nine is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Gabriella Ekens studies film and literature at a US university. Follow her on twitter.


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