Occultic;Nine – 01 (First Impressions)

The Gist: We are introduced to nine strange individuals linked in some fashion by the occult affiliate blog of high school student Gamon Yuuta, whose operation is staffed by his platonic friend Narusaka Ryouka and fortune-telling idol Aikawa Miyuu. His research leads to him finding a scalped corpse in the office of “paranormal scientist” Prof. Hashigami.

Why You Should Watch: Whatever else you want to say about O9, it looks the business, with richly detailed, lived-in locales and retro-ish character animation a la Gundam Recon in G. The color palette is diverse and the soundtrack is above average.

Why You Shouldn’t Watch: This is going to be a longer list, unfortunately. O9 just didn’t…click for me. It could be the pace: there is a lot going on in the early going and with nine main characters to quickly introduce and a ton of extraneous conversation, I found it hard to keep up or care. And it doesn’t really matter how good a show looks or sounds if you can’t find a way in.

I wasn’t clear on why Yuuta’s buddy Ryo-tas has such a ridiculously large bust, or why the two of them, and the guy who runs their hangout, were trying so very hard to be weird and kooky. Oigakkosan brought this up with Drifters, but I think it’s even more of a problem here: idiosyncrasy is a delicate tool, and it’s used more as a sledgehammer than a scalpel here.

The rapid-fire banter, inner monologue, and flashes of people’s names all contributed to an over-caffeinated presentation lacking any kind of anchoring element. Everyone is talking about the “Occult”, but only in the most general terms. Kamisama no Memo-cho, Occult Academy, even Persona all featured far stronger opening salvos.

And more than half of the titular nine characters left no impression on me whatsoever, though they’ll surely play larger roles later. The one who left the strongest – Gamon Yuuta – left a negative one; he’s just plain not a likable protagonist. It’s just that with all the shows already out, O9 didn’t quite do enough to make me want to stick around for later.