First Impression – Norn9: Norn + Nonet

Young adults unsupervised in a flying ship. What could go wrong?

I’ve been putting off playing the epilogue to Norn9, but I’m definitely excited for the anime. …And even if the story goes off the rails in the future, at least everything looks pretty.

Otoge rule #17: A large portion of women are incapable of walking without incident.

Maybe the synopsis I wrote for the Metanorn season catalogue was a little misleading. …Especially since a rather important character who the synopsis was written around is missing from this episode completely. Sorata’s absence here isn’t a huge problem though for the plot. The prologue of the game was his perspective before the player got to chose between the heroines, but as long as he shows up sometime soon, I don’t think it changes very much. There is a part where he acts like an alibi for Mikoto, but as long as no one accuses her of anything, that part doesn’t need to be in the anime. Plus from the preview for episode 2, it looks like he’ll be in the next episode all ready to interact with Yanagi Nagi’s character.

But I guess from taking out Sorata for now, it’s removes some of the mystery of why more things have Taisho Era level technology, but then there’s a flying spherical ship that comes with it’s own climate control. Also, it’s probably best to establish how life on the ship works (and why the people aboard are gathered) instead of throwing everything in one episode. Instead, there was an introduction of Koharu, which was pretty important.

This episode, we had Koharu meeting new people with powers on a huge, fancy flying ship. …And man, I’m impressed with how big and elaborate the ship is. In the game, there’s a complaint that there aren’t enough ‘rooms’ (more like houses) for everyone, but I find it hard to believe that they had space issues from how big the place seemed. But anyways, there are many mysteries this episode. Like what The World wants, what Koharu’s power is and why she seems sad about it (or what anyone’s power is really), and what that explosion was. I suppose they explained what The World wants, with the world peace thing, but that doesn’t explain the ship or why the characters have powers in the first place.

I feel like a huge downfall of anime that are adapted from otome games is that too often they focus on giving all of the male characters equal time with the heroine, so that it feels like the episodes are just wasted on making whoever the guy of the week is look appealing while completely neglecting the plot. It’s also frustrating when after all of the drama is done, the heroine never seems to end up with anyone (though that’s  probably due to pressure from the fangirls if their favourite character isn’t the one). However, maybe it will be different in Norn9? The game seemed to really push the ‘official’ couples in the game being Koharu and Kakeru, Nanami and Akito, and Mikoto and Natsuhiko. The anime seems to be going along this in the OP, so maybe we’ll get an otome game adaptation that actually has a conclusive pairing (or in this case, a few of them).

Another thing that will be nice about this adaptation is having heroines with actual personalities instead of being self insert characters. Maybe they’ll tone this down a bit (or maybe not, since Mikoto’s introduction was basically her nagging everyone), but as of this episode, everyone’s personality seems to be intact. I wonder how they’ll depict Nanami though, since most of her character was portrayed through her inner thoughts as opposed to her actions. Maybe they’ll just keep her the silent type and leave her thoughts up to interpretation.

I also think they changed Koharu’s backstory a bit, since I thought her parents abandoned her or something due to her power. Or at the very least, I remember in Senri’s route, there was a mention about how Koharu didn’t even know what being around people was like when she first came on the ship since she was deprived of it for most of her life, so when she finally became close to people (or Senri in general since it was his route) she didn’t know how to deal with not wanting to be apart from someone.

…Actually, with her being separated from her parents, it makes her forgetting her name seem a little less believable maybe, since she didn’t seem that young when it happened. But oh well, this probably makes her less empty as a person (making her fitting in to the ship seem more natural) while still explaining why she’s so eager to make friends with everyone since she was still alone for a long time. This added plot detail doesn’t change a whole lot about her character. Plus this is a good explanation as to why she didn’t have parents to tell her not to follow strange men around when the ship came along.

So far so good! They’ve changed a few story details, but it’s probably best to get only a bit of exposition per episode, since Norn9 is pretty character driven. Plus I think with this adaptation, it’s best to not copy the game word for word, since there’s so much going on and in each route is rather different, so that would be hard to turn into a coherent anime. The soundtrack is the exact same as the game’s as far as I noticed, but I loved the soundtrack so that’s fine by me. Also, the ship! I can’t get over how elaborate and nicely designed it is. Someone put a lot of effort into planning how it all looked and worked. I hope it shows more of the ship as the episodes go by.

About Karakuri

University student and the one at Metanorn who's known for wearing glasses. Likes blood, insanity and plot twists, but also plays otome games and adores cute romance anime. It balances out... somehow.