Occultic;Nine Hides the Truth in Plain Sight

Occultic;Nine is an anime I could talk about endlessly. For its tenth anniversary today, I wanted to highlight some of my favorite instances of foreshadowing in the show. They’re a nice example of its exquisite directing. Now…

Open your eyes

This post has heavy spoilers for the whole Occultic;Nine anime

In the third episode, Site 03, we’re introduced to Aria’s backstory as Ria Minase, the girl who lived a year together with her brother’s corpse. Through her perspective, the show establishes a subtle hint for the audience: her dead brother, who only she still perceives as being alive, casts no shadow and doesn’t reflect in the glass. He also has a small modulation effect applied to his voice, similar to Kusakabe’s at the start but not as strong.

At the end of this episode, the 256 Incident happens. Most of the main characters drown and become ghosts while staying none the wiser. The same modulation is then subtly applied to their voice. The “no shadow and no reflection” rule becomes a factor to differentiate between ghosts and living people for the rest of the show.

Site 04 begins with Sumikaze walking into Mumu’s office as they’re watching the news report on the incident. Although nobody is able to notice her presence, the scene is expertly written to disguise that fact to her and the viewer. Here, we get an exclusive hint that she’s a ghost: when she very deliberately stops at the glass door to adjust her hair, we don’t see her reflection. Cue the opening.

Sixteen minutes into the episode, Sumikaze is the subject of another very interesting, well animated hint. While talking to Myu-pom, her coffee cup can’t cast a shadow on her, only her own hand casts a shadow on herself.

This episode also gives us Kusakabe’s backstory. We can see at 10:45 that he doesn’t have a shadow while having his out of body experience, but the students walking by him do.

The show makes sure that ghosts don’t cast a shadow on the ground, so you can use that to figure out who is alive or dead, even though it’s often pretty subtle. In the left shot below (Site 04 – 8:50), Master Izumin is casting a shadow on the cushions while Gamotan and Myu-pom aren’t. In the shot next to it (Site 06 – 8:40), Ryo-tas is the only one casting a shadow on the shrine’s floor.

Talk about putting the “shadow” back in “foreshadow”.

By the time Site 07 aired, I was already aware of the shadows, but the mechanics of being a ghost were still unclear to me. When Gamotan finds a lost train pass, shouts out the girl’s name, and she responds, I didn’t immediately assume she was also a ghost. It was only when Sarai posited that she might’ve not been alive either that I decided to go back and check.

Sure enough, in that scene, she and Gamotan were the only people in the street without shadows. It’s very evident, too!

There’s a flashback in Site 08, at 7:50, that blatantly transitions from little Gamotan, as a kid with a reflection, to present-day ghost Gamotan standing in the same spot, without one.

This is well after he’s confirmed dead, but it’s still cool attention to detail. It’s actually neat how this whole scene is directed around reflections. Most of the flashback is framed around little Gamotan’s reflection. In the present, when Asunyan meets Gamotan’s ghost, she first appears reflected on the window.

Perhaps my favorite moment when noticing the shadows enhanced my experience was in Site 10’s post-credits scene. Nishizono Ririka is walking about in a thunderstorm, when lightning strikes and you can very clearly see her shadow.

But wait, what? Isn’t she dead? Why does she have a shadow now? That’s when we cut to the morgue and the camera starts very slowly tracking towards her empty coffin.

Absolute chills!

There’s a lot more foreshadowing to notice in the anime. For example, most of Ryo-tas’ scenes hint at who she is. However, I wanted to focus on the shadows and reflections today, since they’re a detail I’ve always loved.

Here’s two last tidbits, though. In the first scene of the anime, when all the bodies get pulled from the lake, you can see the corpses of most of the main cast. These same shots appear again at the end of Site 03 and at the start of Site 04.