Norn9: Norn+Nonet – 02-06

Don’t worry guys, you make great background characters.

There’s exciting news in the otome game world, with Beastmaster and Prince being on Kickstarter for an English version! Apparently if it does well enough, they’ll look into a Vita version, so I hope they make it.

A lot has happened over the first half of the anime. Mostly character development, but there is a larger plot with the traitor, the Norn’s enemies, and the World. …Though the traitor part was kind of forgotten right after it happened. Mikoto searched more diligently in the game, but I guess the anime’s focus is more concerned with her relationship with Sakuya. Actually, aside from Mikoto’s searches and Nanami’s suspicions that it might be Akito, the traitor part was pretty much forgotten in the game as well in favour for developing character relationships (in the beginning at least). Though the anime still seems to be throwing in hints that not all is well with Mikoto’s kidnapping and such. Maybe they’ll start taking the traitor thing more seriously now. It’s definitely one of them too, since he was wearing the same uniform that they all do.

There’s the issue with Natsuhiko attacking occasionally too. Though his interests seem divided by preventing the Reset (which is yet to be explained properly) and stopping the older man and his future war. So from that and also him telling Mikoto that their powers aren’t what they think they are, he might not be such a bad guy after all. Of course, fighting fire with fire might not be such a good thing, but there don’t seem to be many good options for him considering what he’s fighting. Another plot development is the possibility that the World might not be the best organization. They don’t seem to be very involved in Toya’s group’s problems aside from telling them to deal with stuff themselves, and society seems to doubt them too. Though Mikoto doesn’t seem to have any doubts despite seeing the poster and none of the characters really seem too concerned.

Sorata was missing as a character in the plot for a while, and his presence is a mystery since he came from 2016. But they’ve pushed that aside for now. I guess it’s hard to develop everything at once with so much going on. At least they’ve shown his involvement with the mysterious girl and a few other plot things which will make his character’s presence here important later on. Explaining all of that can come later.

Considering that he’s on a ship with teenagers, you would think he would be a little more cautious about finding out the history of someone’s bed…

A lot of characters have also revealed their powers now. Koharu’s reveal came pretty early, but it’s obvious from the flashbacks that she has traumatic memories (or at least lonely ones) associated with them. However, her powers doesn’t seem to be such a bad thing for her. She was sad about burning the peach trees, but failed to realize that she also saved herself and everybody else. Itsuki’s dream powers played a pretty important role in moving everyone’s relationships along (plus they were good for fan service in regards to seeing everyone as fairy tale characters). Toya saw something in the past about Ron taking Kakeru’s earring (and not really anything to do with powers, but Ron seems to know stuff that the others don’t in regards to Kakeru). There are a lot of secrets still going around though.

And even after this, nobody seems to think that installing safety rails is a good idea.

As an interesting discovery, Akito was revealed to not have any powers at all. This makes his role on the ship seem more suspicious since he was also seen talking to the mysterious man and the whole point of the journey is to gather power users. Though he’s had plenty of times to kill Nanami (who could blow his cover of not having powers), and he’s even gone out of his way to save her, so he seems pretty harmless. He talks tough, but he’s actually a pretty nice guy underneath.

There’s the issue with Nanami taking away his precious thing as a child, which makes their relationship really interesting. Akito wants to hate Nanami (thus the “I don’t want to know anything more about you” line), but he realizes that he’s not the awful person he wants to think she is. Nanami’s self-sacrificing attitude seems to play a lot into Akito’s inner struggles since it’s probably pretty hard to hate someone who thinks she should be killed for what she did. But they seem to be working things out now. And maybe they’ve even progressed a little more past that, since they hugged. They’re practically married now.

As another plot development resulting from powers being explained, Mikoto’s cold attitude towards Sakuya has been explained. …It kind of made more sense in the game, since it was Mikoto keeping her distance both to figure out a way to save Sakuya and to not fall in love with him/be loved in return to prevent his vision from coming true. I’m not sure if the love part of this is true for the anime, since from the opening, I thought the anime was pairing her up with Natsuhiko (which still might happen). Plus there hasn’t been any definitive declaration of love or anything from either side, so they might be able to play the vision off as being caused by platonic love or something. …Though then again, Sakuya seemed a little conflicted when he saw Mikoto and Itsuki together and he didn’t want her to go off when he saw that vision of her and Natsuhiko. …Not to mention that pretty much everything that’s happened with Mikoto has been following what goes on in Sakuya’s route.

But maybe they’re doing this because Mikoto’s past with Sakuya plays a role in her personality now. She acts tough and independent because she wants to protect people, and trying to save Sakuya puts more pressure on her.

tfw you’ve been NTR’d by a peach tree

Finally, there’s the developments between Kakeru and Koharu. Anime Kakeru is less of a (well intentioned) bully towards Senri than in the game, but he still seems to be maintaining his mischievous side in playing with Koharu’s naivety. It’s nice that they’ve found each other on the Norn, since they both experienced loneliness as kids and can probably relate on some level due to that. Plus Koharu is such a nice girl all around, so she can interpret the reasons behind Kakeru’s seemingly less kind actions. …Though if it came to hitting on her, she was pretty clueless.

Though regarding Kakeru’s speech in the dream, other than being touchy about his earring, his talk of being ‘poison’ seems a little overdramatic. Maybe it refers to how he was orphaned at a young age and how he feels about that, but he doesn’t seem like that bad of a person even if he likes teasing others. Regardless though, Koharu accepts him for who he is, and that’s the important part. …Now to find out why his earring is so dangerous. (It’s interesting that Koharu gave it to him here, since doing that leads to a bad end in the game.)

They’re focusing on all three of the heroine’s stories at the same time, and it seems to be working really well. Rather than watching countless guys fawn over one girl, the focus on plot (or at least focusing on one route’s plot per heroine) is making the episodes pretty interesting. There’s a lot going on and that might make things hard to follow, but at least there’s something happening. Plus they don’t seem to have completely ditched the traitor thing (even if everybody seems to have forgotten) in favour for happy fun times on the ship, which keeps the tension up a bit.

Again, I’m rather pleased that the anime seems to be going for individual routes as opposed to trying to do everything at once. Akito and Nanami’s relationship at least was covered well because they did it over multiple episodes as opposed to shoving everything into one episode and moving on. As a result, some of the other characters are kind of underdeveloped like Senri, Heishi, Itsuki and etc. But the anime seems to be trying to include them with having them show up every once in a while.

I’m really enjoying this so far, since there’s a good balance between developing the characters and developing the plot. Though I think this particular formula works in this scenario because of the three heroines. The anime can switch to make things interesting, and how the story goes on at the same time for all of them.  Plus with the multiple points of view, it can reveal a bunch of things at different times about each character. It’s much more natural that way as opposed to having a singular heroine have a moment with every harem member in order to get his backstory, and then forgetting about him and moving on to the next guy. As for the future though, I’m really curious what they’re going to do with Natsuhiko and Mikoto since they’ve put so much emphasis on her and Sakuya. But there’s half a season left, so there’s still plenty of time to have some development with Natsuhiko.

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.