Occultic;Nine Episode 10 Review: Another Girl, Another Planet

The hype has reached sky-high once again in Occultic;Nine’s latest episode! And the new revelations finally answered most of our questions. However, a bunch of other, smaller questions have popped up, as they always do in this series! Despite that, I hope our review will help clear some things up!

Japanese Original Episode Title: 本当のワタシ

Plot

What in the world is going on? I don’t understand anything at all!

Gamon said that in the episode, and it’s the exact words to describe everything that happened! Turns out, Ryo-tas isn’t exactly who we thought she was. Electromagnetic waves played a really huge part in her identity. This identity of hers also has something to do with the 264 people who died in Inokashira Lake. Apparently, they weren’t just random people picked out like in the lottery! Plus, someone’s dead body went missing at the end? What in the world, indeed!

Episode Highlights

Surely, I wasn’t the only one who wondered who the orange-haired girl with the blue silhouette in the ending song is. And now we finally got our answer: it was Aveline all along! Looking at her full name, Aveline Narusawa Tesla, clearly she may have been Nikola Tesla’s child from a Japanese woman. And as Ryo-tas’ real identity, she had actually been observing every incident, hiding behind an airheaded, ditzy personality. She was also the one behind Zonko, speaking to Gamon as electromagnetic waves picked up by his Skysensor. I was definitely wrong in my previous review then, where I said that Ryo-tas just seemed like a side character. She’s truly our main heroine! Looks like she even deliberately stuck by Gamon’s side as his minion because of his ‘special powers’, which she mentioned. We have yet to find out what those are, though!

Another crazy discovery about Ryo-tas, aside from the fact that she’s possessed by her 70-year old ancestor, is that she’s actually an incredibly rich kid! She’s the granddaughter of the head of a huge medical syndicate, who is also the Society’s Emperor! Last week, this Emperor was shown to be bedridden, and was in quite a terrible state from the looks of it. No wonder he could afford all those machines he’s depending on – he actually owns them!

Now, at first I thought Ryo-tas’ Poya-gun was just a really high-tech toy, but it’s actually a key item, along with the key she, as Zonko, told Gamon to take from Hashigami-sensei. However, if they’re important items to the New World System that her grandfather’s trying to develop, why would she take them and keep them hidden? Guess we’re still missing something in this part too.

I actually kinda forgot that the CODE Professor Hashigami left behind still had some parts that need to be deciphered, but because of Myu’s fortunetelling, Sarai was able to pick up how to do so! And they found out that all 264 victims in the mass suicide were linked by the same medical syndicate the Emperor is heading! Hospitals are naturally more likely to access people, so they got to figure out who’s compatible with the scandium. They might’ve possibly already injected the element to the victims too! Darn, these guys are good at executing their plans without anyone noticing!

It also seems like Aria’s brother has a link to this hospital-testing-scandium-compatibility plot. From what happened with Kusakabe, it’s like he’s also being possessed by Takaharu, just like how Aveline is possessing Ryo-tas. It needs further proof, but mostly everything leads to this theory.

Another shocker was when the taxi driver told Asuna that Cafè Blue Moon actually closed down 2 years ago, and that the actual manager is as old as the driver! So, who in the world is Izumin, and why is his cafè still running? It’s also probably worthy to note that the masked man making the ghosts disappear (and casually killing two bystanders), was wearing pink pants – the same shade of pink Izumin wears. Hmmm…

Last, but not the least, in the after-credits scene, Nishizono was suspiciously looking at a building under a rainstorm, and she has a shadow! You can see this clearly whenever lightning struck. Her body was also not in the coffin! Does this mean she’s somehow alive again?

Themes & Trivia

Hakke and I Ching : The hakke or fortune that Myu chants as she began her fortunetelling is actually what the Chinese bagua is called in Japanese. The bagua is a religious motif using the eight trigrams of the I Ching. The I Ching, also called Classic of Changes, is an ancient divination text which uses 64 hexagrams. Each hexagram is composed of six stacked horizontal lines, differing in line combinations (either solid or broken in the center). Since these diagrams are similar to the binary code system, it’s definitely possible that Hashigami-sensei used it for his CODE, albeit quite a pain to decipher. So kudos again to Sarai for figuring that out!

Comments

I’m just in awe at the amount of details in foreshadowing this show prepared! After watching this latest one, I found myself skimming through the previous episodes again, trying to figure out where the ‘Aveline Note’ was mentioned (Moritsuka asking Sarai in Episode 03), if they indeed mentioned the rest of the code being hard to decipher (they did), and how Gamon and Ryo-tas first met! I’m also just amazed on how they planned the ending song to be a huge hint at Aveline! This truly is such a well-crafted mystery series! A lot of people may not share my same sentiments, but I, for one, am loving this!

The art direction this time around was also swelling with symbolism! As soon as I saw the shot where Ryo-tas and Gamon were upside down, I immediately got the impression that things will never be the same again. Most of the angles and blockings throughout the episode were also unstable, probably like how most of our characters feel after knowing the new discoveries!

Transcending Time and Electromagnetism

I feel like we are so, so close to knowing all the answers! Most of the dots have already connected, but there are still some more that we don’t know where they’ll go yet! I am highly hoping that the last two episodes will give us the proper closure that we need, with no loose ends! What about you? Do you think we’ll get the conclusion that we need? Please leave your comments below and don’t forget to check the rest of our Fall 2016 episodic reviews!

NEXT TIME: We Want the Airwaves: 大いなる目的のためよ (Ooinaru Mokuteki no Tame yo)