Literature / Occultic;Nine

3 Following

×

WHERE TO WATCH

SUBSCRIPTION

Crunchyroll

Stream

Crunchyroll Amazon Channel

Stream

Powered by JustWatch

Occultic;Nine (オカルティック・ナイン Okarutikku Nain) is a Japanese light novel series written by Chiyomaru Shikura, the creator of Steins;Gate, with illustrations by pako; the novels were published from 2014 to 2017 for three volumes, with the fourth being hinted at, but with no news since. The novels are licensed in English by both J-Novel Club (for the digital release) and Seven Seas Entertainment (for the physical release).

A manga, illustrated by Ganjii, began serialization in October 2015. An anime television series adaptation by A-1 Pictures aired in the Fall 2016 season for 12 episodes, beginning on 9 October.

The anime is licensed in America by Aniplex USA and in Australia by Madman Entertainment. Aniplex are releasing the series with an English dub by Bang Zoom! Entertainment in 2 Blu-ray sets, with Volume 1 releasing on September 26th and Volume 2 on December 26, 2017.

A visual novel adaptation for the PS4, Vita and Xbox One was released in Japan on November 9, 2017. A Nintendo Switch version containing the true ending and story revisions was in the works, but has since been canceled.

Previous entires in the SciADV Series exist as their fictional versions in this universe. Well, at least until Shikura suddenly went back on that claim.

Taking place in 2016 Kichijoji, a self-proclaimed "NEET god" Yuta Gamon tries to make money from an occult hoax-checking blog "Paranormal Science Kirikiri Basara", so he wouldn't have to work after school. After Urban Legends gather interest online, Yuta and other people start looking into them independently, with their investigations eventually converging on an occult-believing professor and a conspiracy behind other events.

Occultic;Nine contains examples of:

• Adaptational Context Change:
  • In the novel, everyone's introductions occur consequently over several days, with someone's actions affecting how do others get involved in the plot. The dates are relevant since Isayuki Hashigami was murdered somewhere between February 11th and 24th, implied to have been tortured to death shortly before Yuta finds him. The anime switches the order and uses Dr. Hashigami's live interview to show the early events happening seemingly at the same time.
  • Sarai's introduction in the anime is a later scene before meeting Ririka Nishizono, while Miyu warning Sarai about his father gets moved to a flashback. This skips a lot of scenes of him as a commenter at Kirikiri Basara. Then Miyu makes the TV debut, while in the novel her TV appearance is what caused Sarai to pick a fight with her live in the first place, where he hears the warning.
  • Aria's introduction is moved after Toko's, despite her involvement in earlier events. Kiryu's introduction is also merged with Aria's and he appears as a visible Astral Projection, despite the novel introducing him later and only as a Mysterious Disembodied Voice for a while.
  • In episode 6 Shun greets Kiryu before learning that he's dead, while in the novel it's a later scene.
• Adaptation Deviation:
  • In the novel, only the villains are aware about the nature of Dr. Hashigami's research, and Toko is surprised to hear about it. In the anime, she knows from the start it involves mental time displacement and tells that to Shun, while Sarai has heard about it directly in a flashback.
  • In the manga everyone sacrifices themselves to destroy the Odd Eye instead of just Yuta, since he gets unable to manifest the boot key, unlike in the anime.
• Adaptation Distillation:
  • The anime compresses almost the entirety of the first volume into the first episode, as it's mainly composed of character introductions, to get to the plot faster. The manga skips all of the introductions outside of Gamon's entirely before the drama-starter.
  • In the anime, Ryoka and Miyu go to Aria to curse Yuta seemingly for no reason. In the novel it happened in an earlier scene and by Yuta's request and Izumi's suggestion to see if the curse is real.
  • The anime skips Asuna's backstory and why is she on the case.
  • The Visual Novel adaptation tells the events from Yuta Gamon's perspective exclusively with some rewrites, missing a lot of information as the novel relies on the Rotating Protagonist format.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: In the visual novel, Yuta meets Ririka and Asuna in the prologue.
• Applied Phlebotinum: Scandium is a real element, but injecting yourself with it is apparently how you develop ghost powers.
• Armor-Piercing Question: When Ryoka asks Yuta if he can prove there isn't an "invisible enemy", he admits that with all the strange occurrences as of late, he should probably start being more open-minded.
• Artifact Title: With Asuna Kisaki becoming the tenth protagonist, the Occultic;Nine loses its meaning as a title. Subverted in the ending when the true meaning is explained as the cast having nine days to return to their bodies before getting dead for real, with only nine minutes passing in the new timeline.
• Back from the Dead: Due to time displacement, the cast can return to their bodies from 8 days ago while the Odd Eye is charging. But since empowered Yuta needs to destroy it after his personal time limit, he has to give up on his chance to get his body back.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: At the age of 13 Ria wishes her brother to never go to work. Next year she needed to be hospitalized and he passes away during the organ transplant.
• Bittersweet Ending: Yuta has destroyed the Odd Eye, ending MMG's plan for spiritual dystopia at the cost of own Astral Body. Everyone else got revived, while he still manages to admin his blog from the afterlife.
• Bland-Name Product:
  • Among the "RS4" and "3DB" ads, the cover for "Kumamono" looks similar to Danganronpa 1•2 Reload.
  • Toko's PIVA laptop has a similar logo to VAIO.
• Blatant Lies:
  • When deciphering the code, Yuta enthusiastically tries to ask others to do it, because he's too busy. Kasai can clearly tell he isn't.
  • Shun requests Aria's assistance with the Kotoribako case since House of Crimson is the first listed occult shop in the phone book. Aria tells him it's definitely not mentioned in a phone book, but he continues to interrogate her while smiling. A bit later, Aria says she doesn't know how a Kodoku works because she specializes in Western curses, to which Shun points out she shouldn't know that Kodoku isn't Western then.
• Chekhov's Gun: The key Yuta has been carrying with him turns out to be the boot key for the Odd Eye. Aveline has entrusted it to Dr. Hashigami, and it's now in Yuta's possession.
• Cliffhanger: Both the novel and the anime like to end episodes on some Wham Line, for example episode 8 ends with dead Chihiru allegedly sending Miyu a phone message.
• Coincidental Broadcast: Going over TV channels, Izumi stops at Hashigami's interview and Miyu's interview, both of which are plot-relevant.
• Cold Reading: Sarai's post debunking Fortune Telling explains that it's a scam where the medium has either researched the client beforehand or is asking leading questions. Miyu is a genuine psychic, however.
• Connected All Along: Koresuke Gamon was the host of the FM-KCZ station. After the radio started to offer religious advice, it grew into a group now known as the Eight Gods of Fortune society, who later got Koresuke killed. Yuta is offended to hear that not only his father was involved in something shady and never told anyone, but that he himself ended up related to the current events despite wanting to have a normal life.
• The Conspiracy: Musashino Medical Group is a front for the Bavarian Illuminati and has been manipulating the media to enforce the occult fad so their project would work more efficiently. The HD broadcasting is mentioned to have been pushed by the government so the radio waves used for mind control would be more available to use.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Some homeless man nicknamed "God" resides in the Inokashira Park and yells nonsense even when there's nobody to hear it, such as the park being haunted and Tesla's Wardenclyffe being used to control the Musashino's land, which was confirmed in the previous chapter.
• Cult: Eight Gods of Fortune is a private society that offers religious services, but are in fact used by the MMG for money laundering and as enforcers. It started as a therapy meeting under Koresuke Gamon, but after it got popular, MMG asked Izumi to kill him and take the position for their needs. Its name is derived from the Seven Gods of Fortune myth.
• Dark Lord on Life Support: Tokuo Narusawa is effectively comatose and commands Masashino Medical Group through a text to speech device, which is partially what the motive behind the Scandium Project is.
• Dead All Along: In volume 3, Yuta, Sarai and Toko are found listed amongst the mass-suicide victims of the 256 Incident, and everyone they have interacted with after February 29 are either as well or have a spiritual ability, with Miyu, Shun, Ririka, and Ria confirmed to be ghosts as well. One open problem with this revelation is that they can still interact with phones and computers, but it's later explained as them only imagining doing so while their Astral Bodies translate the radio signals.
• Deader than Dead: Eight Gods of Fortune go around acting like they exorcise ghosts, but in reality are destroying their Astral Bodies so they wouldn't be a nuisance to the plan. The cast also risk getting erased if they touch ritualistic equipment or run out of time limit.
• Deadly Euphemism: During a Musashino Medical Group meeting, it's mentioned that Aaron Russo has been "dealt with" for leaking info on RFID medical chips.
• Dead Man Writing: Sensing doom, Shun starts explaining his investigation progress outloud just in case Asuna would look at his possessions with her Psychometry.
• Design Student's Orgasm: The opening for the anime, with its flat colors, many textures, and use of a singular color accompanying black and white unshaded images.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: The flamboyant bartender has been the leader of the Society of Eight Gods of Fortune, and the one behind the murders of Yuta's and Sarai's fathers.
• Dying Clue: Dr. Hashigami writes "CODE" in own blood on the floor. The doujin having a similar scene catches Shun attention, and he also wipes the message from the scene in case it's of note to any villains.
• Evil All Along: Izumi turns out to be an assassin working for the MMG.
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: Odd Eye is a Tesla Wardenclyffe Tower built in Fuchu Air Base. If it activates, the entire nearby population gets trapped in the Spirit World for the MMG to control.
• Fan Community Nicknames: In-Universe Yuta calls his readers Basariters, while Miyu calls her viewers "little lost puppies".
• Finally Found the Body: Trying to interview Dr. Hashigami who hasn't been seen in public for about two weeks, Gamon enters his lab, plays with a ritualistic knife prop, then realizes it's covered with blood and Isayuki is lying dead on the floor with his scalp removed.
• Flash Forward: The very first scene introduces Inokashira Lake being discovered as a mass-suicide site, then switches to nearly a month prior. This later gets known as the Incident 256, due to the shocking amount of bodies discovered, and becomes central to the overarching plot.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In the first chapter Izumi tells Yuta that ghosts are real, which he dismisses, then Yuta comments that in horror stories people who say that die first. Yuta later ends up as a ghost himself, while Izumi knows a lot more than he lets on.
  • Plenty to the fact that most of the main cast are Dead All Along. When Miyu tries to find the victim of a One-Man Hide And Seek, she suddenly feels like drowning and sees visions of other corpses, and later hallucinates muddied water; A month before the current events Yuta had a dream about being surrounded by water, and he narrates the discovery scene in the anime as if he's present; Ririka's novel is called "The Water's Dark Bottom"; Toko has a red note in her book saying "bottom of the water, moonlight, many people" she only has a vague recollection of writing a month ago. In the anime particularly, they have no shadows.
  • The story about the mummy discovered in a sister's house turns out to be a real investigation of Seria Mina being suspected of stealing Takaharu Minase's corpse, the former of which is in fact Aria Kurenaino.
  • At one point Aria questions what would happen to her curse if the target is dead. As it turns out, Dr. Hashigami was already dead by the time she took the request.
  • The disappearance victims of previously discussed "Kokkuri-san" and "One-Man Hide-and-Seek" stories end up in the list of 256 Incident victims. It's implied MMG was intentionally spreading ghost stories to create confusion.
  • Early in the anime Shun asks Sarai about Aveline Note, which gets relevant only in the second half of the story. In the novel, it is hinted at in the aftermath of the third volume.
  • Kiryu's Mental Time Travel ends up what other characters are also capable of, but they need a strong energy source for it.
  • A couple of times Ryoka talks in deeper serious voice. It's because she's Sharing a Body with Aveline.
  • At one point Ryoka shows to have a lot more money than Yuta knows. With her grandfather being the head of the Musashino conglomerate, she's one of the richest people in Japan.
  • Kiryu turns out to really have a winged form like the devil from Yuta's dream, since ghosts can be anything, and this causes Yuta to learn to fly.
• Gainax Ending: The very last shot of the anime shows a door saying "Coldsleep room: Gamon Yuta", completely detached from the events up until then.
• Ghost Amnesia: Since 256 Incident victims were hypnotized into killing themselves, nobody remembers how they've died and they look exactly how they last remember themselves. When they see that something is different about their corpse, their appearance suddenly shifts accordingly.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Tokuo Narusawa is the current master of Bavarian Illuminati and the head of Musashino Medical Group, controlling Japanese medical field for decades. Takasu is developing the New World System on his orders, but Tokuo is essentially not involved in the plot.
• Haunted Technology: Yuta questions how he can hold his phone if he's dead. It's later implied to be a subconscious mental visualization and the cast are able to use the internet and make calls through the electromagnetic field directly.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Several cases in a row, Since the radiation from the Odd Eye tower allows sending Astral Bodies back to their time, the party of Yuta, Sarai, Miyu, Toko and Shun have the option to revive at the moment when they've drowned on February 29th and attempt to stop the MMG from there, though with greater difficulty due to losing all their ghost quirks, or they can raid the Odd Eye now at the price of getting Killed Off for Real. They all agree to stop MMG now while they can. Then, it turns out Yuta has lost the root key when he died, so Aveline volunteers to use herself as a substitute. Then Yuta awakens to extra power, so he decides to do something respectable for the city while everyone else are free to return. In the end, Aveline gets exorcised in a confrontation with Takasu, after which Yuta finishes the job and lives as a ghost permanently.
• How We Got Here: The prologue which describes the discovery of the lake burial site happens on March 1st. The story begins on February 11th.
• Hurricane of Puns: While discussing a Mummy in the mansion case, one of the commenters keeps making "wraps" and "mommy" jokes.
• Hypocrisy Callout: Yuta berates Myu's fans for jumping on the latest trend. Ryoka brings up that's exactly why he came to see Myu.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The novel's chapters are named "site N:" and from whose POV they're seen.
• The Internet Is for Porn: Yuta and Ryoka admit if the blog hosted ero content, they'd be getting a lot more revenue, but Yuta has faith in the occult content.
• Internet Jerk:
  • Kirikiri Basara's comments showcase how people are more open when they're anonymous, with most of them being nonsensical, insulting, or depraved.
  • An unnamed caller in Miyu's Fortune Teller stream asks where he'll be in 2026. She sees him to be working at the IT company, but he reveals to have a terminal cancer that will kill him in a year, and he only called to flame her online.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Yuta tells Asuna that he's not some kind of light novel hero because his father is important to the case, and he never liked the The Hero Is Dead trope. He ironically shares some other traits of a Stock Light-Novel Hero, being a snarky Jerk with a Heart of Gold who by luck gets a collection of "Basara Girls" and a supernatural ability nobody has. He also lampshades that a FBI schoolgirl in Japan is way too unrealistic.
• Logging onto the Fourth Wall: Despite Yuto promoting his blog on Twitter, the featured account isn't real, while the website got taken by the fan community.
• Love Confession: Near the end Aveline admits to love Yuta, and since she shares consciousness with Ryoka, it counts as hers as well.
• Marshmallow Hell: Yuta sometimes falls into Ryoka's giant boobs.
• Mass Hypnosis: MMG needed to quickly dispose 256 of their RFID chip test subjects, so Takasu makes them walk into Inokashra Lake one by one and drown, with the media beveling this is some weird mass-suicide.
• Mayan Doomsday: 2012 and related Maya rumors were the main source of readers for the Mumū magazines, until 2012 that is. After that they've switched to ghost stories.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Yuta, Sarai and Toko are listed as victims of the 256 Incident. Not wanting to accept that they may be Dead All Along, among the theories are ghosts having an electric field that allows physical interactions, or the rest of the town being a part of the larger conspiracy to avoid them. Nikola Tesla's research explains that consciousness can be left in the magnetic field, with a lot of Artistic License – Physics to justify ghost powers.
• Meta Sequel: Faris, along with the rest of Steins;Gate, are revealed to be anime characters in the Occultic;Nine timeline, with Shun noting so while visiting Akihabara. In the visual novel adaptation, Chaos;Child: Love Chu Chu!! and Steins;Gate: Regular Edition can be seen among Kirikiri Basara's ads.
• Mistaken for Insane: When Yuta tries to call Zonko through the Skysensor and there ends up no response, Izumi gives him free milk out of concern.
• Mistaken for Undead: Multiple characters see Sarai's mom, but because the stress caused her to age faster and she's roaming around the house in a white kimono, everyone mistakes her for a ghost.
• The Mole: Mumū's chief editor works for Eight Gods of Fortune and is the one who stole Dr. Hashigami's paper from his study. Toko being invisible makes it very convenient for her to hear the entire phone call.
• Mood Whiplash: The novel's opening monologue starts with a rant about how someone keeps throwing garbage into the Inokashira Lake, and on the last sentence clarifies that this time it's corpses.
• Motor Mouth: All the characters in fact speak faster than normal because the pacing of the anime itself is faster than normal, all thanks to being rather compressed.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The classic Steins;Gate phrase "El Psy Kongroo" is uttered by Moritsuka in Episode 7. He also says "I failed, I failed, I failed..." from Suzuha's note when referencing Time Travel.
  • The manga makes it more explicit that Bavarian Illuminati is a part of the Committee of 300, and Shun is also involved with them.
  • Musashino Medical Group conducting medical experiments in order to hijack public cognition and requiring "CODE" from subjects is the same as what NOZOMI Group did in Chaos;Head.
• Nightmare Sequence: After finding Dr. Hashigami body, Gamon has a dream where he stabbed it repeatedly to make a scoop out of it, with the Zonko doll accusing him. He then has another one where he imagines everyone looking at him and a demon chasing after him.
• Noodle Incident: In the anime Kiryu implies that he recognizes Izumi from somewhere. It's not elaborated, or if he may have referred to someone else in the room.
• Number of the Beast: Aria receives a request with a red pentagram and "〒666 Isayuki Hashigami". Her shop does sell a curse for 666000, and she receives a whole scalp of hair needed for the ritual.
• Oddball in the Series:
  • While all mainline entries were visual novels, Occultic;Nine is a light novel published in multiple parts, receiving a visual novel adaptation later that still doesn't cover the full story.
  • A noticeable evidence of the novel not initially planned to be a part of the Science Adventure Series, the themes of the entry lean more into the Supernatural Fiction. While other novels aren't strangers to paranormal activity, they were still within Science Fiction.
  • Occultic;Nine is set in an Alternate Continuity from the rest, while all others are Stealth Sequels of each other.
• Omega Ending: The visual novel lets Yuta react to specific pieces of dialogue in a mechanic called "Blogword Found, Memorize!!" ("Affi Trigger"), giving him a few options of what to add to Kirikiri Basara. This mainly affects which girl Yuta mainly hangs out with and the result of the confrontation with Izumi. Getting four of those unlocks the epilogue that follows the anime's final episode.
• The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: In the fifth chapter, several men gather in a poorly dimmed room for the Musashino Medical Group meeting. Then the former prime minister Hatoyama asks Takasu if this is some sort of cult, to which he replies while the atmosphere wasn't intentional, they are going to discuss a plot to control the public. The narrative switches to them periodically.
• OOC Is Serious Business: Yuta freaks out after witnessing a Ryoka whose personality was completely different from before, possessed by Aveline.
• Overused Running Gag: After Yuta and Shun make fun of Izumi's drink, Shun continues to make "barf" puns for every line of the dialogue even after moving onto the interrogation.
• Please Wake Up: In her diary Seria Mina writes about living with her brother for a year. Very early some messages already show hints of decomposing, meaning they were written after he was taken from the morgue and she has been delusional.
• Plot-Triggering Death: After an entire volume of showing what the characters are doing and how they connect, the story kickstarts with Gamon discovering Isayuki Hashigami's corpse in his lab, after which a voice from his radio orders him to find a key in Isayuki's fake tooth, then it cuts to a Cliffhanger.
• Police Are Useless: The police find 256 corpses in the lake, and seeing that none have external injuries, decide there's no crime for them to investigate. The internet naturally thinks this is some kind of cover-up. Both Shun and Asuna note that the Musashino police would rather wrap the cases as fast as possible than do any investigating.
• Power Gives You Wings: Since ghosts rely on own cognition, at the very end Kiryu tells Yuta that they could grow wings the entire time, which comes in handy when Yuta needs to reach the Odd Eye faster and grows a pair of angelic wings.
• Prolonged Prologue: The novel has to introduce 9 main characters plus tie them together, so it takes until near the end of the first volume to even get to the mystery aspect.
• Public Secret Message: Dr. Hashigami wrote the names of 256 victims in advance in a cipher code with the acoustic ceiling tiles, though it's of little use when the media announces the exact same list anyway after the victims are discovered. There's a second part of the code that in binary translates into the list of hospitals everyone was assigned to and their Scandium compatibility.
• Punched Across the Room: Supercharged Yuta punches Izumi in the face, which causes his mask to break and sends him unconscious into the wall.
• Real After All: During a talk show debate between Isayuki Hashigami and the host, an assistant Motomura starts Hearing Voices and actress Mako Utsumi suddenly starts foaming from the mouth and convulsing, before a squad of mikos scare the entity away. Turns out it's all part of the script, and Isayuki regretfully agreed to it to give his ghost theory some attention. Then after the show, Motomura as Not Herself attacks him.
• The Reveal:
  • The Zonko voice belongs to Aveline Narusawa Tesla, the illegitimate daughter Nicolas Tesla, who died in 1943 during the air raid of Tokyo. She's also Ryoka's ancestor and they have been Sharing a Body trying to sabotage MMG.
  • Blue Moon closed years ago. The goofy-looking bartender Izumi is actually the current leader of Eight Gods of Fortune society, is The Dragon for Takasu, and has assassinated Yuta's and Satai's fathers.
• Rotating Protagonist: Each chapter switches the POV and is written in first-person.
• Round Table Shot: In Episode 6 during a conversation between Shun and Aria, the camera rotates between them for quite a while.
• Running Gag:
  • Ryoka keeps saying "poor Sarai" when something goes wrong for him, something Gamon begins to lampshade.
  • Miyu keeps shutting down Gamon's offer for a swimsuit photoshoot.
  • Izumi tries making different cocktails, but everyone calls them different flavors of barf.
• Shout-Out:
  • One of the comments at "Solo Hide And Seek" article says "Snake, what's wrong? Snake? SNAAKKKKEEEE!". Yuta also imagines himself as Snake at one point.
  • Aria receives a request from Fukuzou Moguro. Despite not being versed in pop-culture, even she knows it's a fake name.
  • Moritsuka's online handle is Doumo, Zenigata desu. (どうも、銭形です。), meaning, "Hello, I'm Zenigata," in reference to Lupin's rival in Lupin III. People even think his clothes are a cosplay for the character, but he insists that's how he normally dresses, though he does admire the character.
  • When Shun brings up fortune telling, Sagami asks if he's talking about Cardfight!! Vanguard, since Shun is paying him with a Revenger card for information. During the story, Shun can be seen looking for more cards.
  • Miyu's friend Chizu names her parakeet after Dodo from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
  • Yuta compares Ririka's story about zombies climbing out of a lake to Cthulhu Mythos.
  • Shun ponders if the latest paranormal cases would surprise even Conan.
  • When stressed out in Sarai's house, Yuta starts counting prime numbers like certain "Jojo character".
  • Shun complains there aren't enough girls with brain and beauty in the real world like Fujiko.
  • Yuta calls Asuna a Anayami type because she's pale, stoic and mysterious.
  • When Asuna tells Yuta she works for the FBI, he tells he'd prefer to see Scully and Mulder instead.
  • In the anime Ririka tells the Albino Kid the story of Frankenstein.
• Slow-Motion Pass-By: Miyu and Ririka have a moment in the anime where the camera slows down as they pass each other.
• Spanner in the Works: By coincidence, Koresuke adding a Tesla Coil to catch more radio waves turns the Skysensor into a spiritual MacGuffin that lets Yuta undermine the entirety of MMG's plot.
• Spirit World: According to Nikola Tesla and Dr. Hashigami's paper, the world of the dead exists within the real world, but time for the dead stops, thus removing any practical applications. Musashino Medical Group aims to overcome this problem.
• Take That!: Yuta doesn't sugarcoat that the visitors from Twitter / X mostly give him trouble, and calls it a "home of the stupidest people on the internet".
• Title Drop: Done by Yuta in the final episode, referring to how many days they can remain as ghost after being dead and how many minutes will pass for them after Time Travel.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Almost the entirety of the named cast learn that they are victims in the Incident 256 mass-suicide and have never noticed until the police announces the names.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Yuta and Ryoka love Sutadon. Mainly because it's quite large and works out for Yuta's nonexistent budget.
• Trap Is the Only Option: Someone texts Miyu from Chizu's phone to come to a specific location. Naturally, the Albino Kid has the phone since he took it from Chizu.
• Trend Aesop: As Yuta becomes more aware that the occult fad is artificially manufactured, he comments that Japanese should stop jumping on whatever is trending and start thinking for themselves. Though Izumi brings up that Yuta himself blogs about whatever's popular for the sake of ad revenue.
• The Unsolved Mystery:
  • The true identity of Dr. Hashigami's killer is unclear. In the novel, Mrs. Motomura with a male voice intercepts him, while Dr. Matoba says himself that he killed him. In the anime, Kouhei Izumi claims to have killed him. Since they are part of the same organization and neither are shown explicitly, it's also possible it was a shared job.
  • Yuta is the only one who has his Psychometry scene blank. While there are potential reasons, neither are stated.
• You All Share My Story: In the beginning, the only characters who are connected are Yuta and Ryoka, while Sarai is just the top commenter in Yuta's blog and they don't know each other. The other characters are doing completely independent things related of the occult for which Kirikiri Basara happens to be a quick source of information, or are looking into Isayuki Hashigami who has connections to the most of the cast. By chapter 50 the cast have met most of each other in person and are working on the same case.
• You Killed My Father: Izumi the one who killed Yuta's father for getting in the way of turning the spiritual podcast into a money laundering pocket for the MMG. He also tortured Dr. Hashigami and put his hair into House Crimson to put the suspicion on Aria. He mocks both sons how their fathers were very brave.
• Wham Episode: Episode 6 reveals that most of the main cast were Dead All Along but were completely unaware of it.
• Wham Line: At the end of volume 2, Yuta finds his name in the public list of victims in the 256 Incident, with Zonko implying she knew it all along. Since Yuta has a physical body and has been talking to people, he dismisses it as an error, but even Sarai has doubts about it.
• Wham Shot: The Stinger for Episode 10 shows Ririka is missing from the morgue.