Occultic;Nine Volume 2
Released By: Manga Entertainment
Rating: 15
Running Time: 138 Mins
Audio: English and Japanese DD 2.0 with English subs
Due Out: 2/07/2018
Reviewed By: Sandra Scholes
If you thought the previous volume was strange, this second volume feels even more so with Yuta investigating the Inokashira Lake incident. He and his friends of the Occultic;Nine discover people with the same names had drowned there, leaving Yuta and his friends feeling a sense of unease about how their lives are going.
Only Sarai was not mentioned as his name isn't as common as his friends would have him believe. With all that has happened so far, Yuta and his friends come to the conclusion that they are a part of a conspiracy without them even knowing it until the very last minute. There are a few clues as to who might be involved in it; Ririka drew a BL doujinshi that Investigator Moritsuka read and thought had prophecies of what would happen, Sarai's father Professor Hashigami was murdered in suspicious circumstances to get information from him, but why we never find out and Yuta still hasn't mentioned the fact he pulled out the Professor's gold tooth!
Akuna Kisikaki is taken on as an FBI investigator who due to her psychometric talents is more useful than she knows. Her coworkers view her ability with doubt until she touches them and reveals their innermost feelings. Something else she touches is the very doujinshi Ririka left behind and though touching it tells her coworkers what happened to the last person who touched it. The doujinshi, called A Dark Winter's Bottom is as prophetic as they thought and ends up a piece of evidence that predicts all the events leading up to the deaths. A card of the doujinshi is also a clue that could be essential to solving the professor's murder and the deaths of the 256 people in the lake.
In the first volume there is a young boy who keeps showing up at times to creep out certain characters, but until now, no one had any idea who he was explaining that he has a rich father who had him injected with a serum that would keep him alive even after death, but this serum also had a double purpose, he would be able to live in both realities, the real and astral world. Yuta's friends also find out that Moritsuka was looking into two other organisations, The Society of Eight Gods of Fortune and a certain radio station Yuta's father worked for.
What follows is even scarier than I could envisage. Yuta's father is discovered to be a member of The Society of Eight Gods of Fortune, but what is it and why could it be linked to the Inokashira Lake incident; could the 256 be part of a cruel experiment and what part to Yuta and his friends have to play in all of this? I like how the story evolved after the first volume and how the characters fitted into the story. Without rushing and trying to cram too much information into this two disc set, Occultic;Nine's finale works out just fine with Yuta and his friends finding how they came to be alive one minute and dead the next and whether certain characters are who they seem to be. I for one found the reveal at the end mind-blowing, and in a rare way made me want to go back to watching it again. I have only ever done this with one other anime; Shiki.
Bonus Material: Textless Opening, Textless Ending and Trailer.
Summary: Like Stein's;Gate before, I found this an engaging murder mystery with more than enough of the occult to go round.
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