No. 6 Review — C-

No. 6 began quite promisingly, with Shion abetting a wounded fugitive on a stormy night in the dystopian city of No. 6. Shion is caught, and his family is placed in internal exile. Later, he witnesses some mysterious deaths by bees, and narrowly avoids death himself at the hands of the city. He escapes with the help of Nezumi, the boy he saved many years ago, and they begin living together in the slums outside the city.

Unfortunately, once they leave the city, everything goes downhill. Shion becomes a housewife, and they spend the next six episodes doing nothing in particular, hanging around in the slums. I guess you could claim that they’re “developing” the characters, but when both of the characters make me want to wring their necks, this isn’t really a positive thing. Shion has the emotional stability of a five year old girl, and both Shion and Nezumi are bishounen who act like they’re a seme and uke taken out of a yaoi doujinshi. Plus, the entire script reads like the lines from a bad play. I’ve been told this is part of the charm, but I don’t get it.

For this entire time, the creators more or less forget about the city of No. 6. Warning: Spoilers Ahead. They seem to realize this around episode 9, and send Shion and Nezumi to talk to the underground guru who tells them everything about the city in an extended monologue. It turns out there is a giant fairy rainbow bee who is possessing the girl who wants Shion’s sperm, who has been thrown into prison by No. 6. The city of No. 6 kills babies and old ladies, and has piles of dead bodies hidden beneath the floorboards. So Shion and Nezumi must defeat it. Then the final episode comes along and makes the rest of the series look like it made sense.

No. 6 follows in the lines of Fractale and [C] as bad noitaminA sci-fi shows. All three of them had their own flaws: Fractale had no idea what it wanted to do, [C] was utterly nonsensical, and No. 6 had two conflicting visions of where it wanted to go (as a romance and dystopian thriller) and ended up going nowhere at all.

  • Plot / Script – D – Overdramatic, reads like the script of a bad play, and they forget about the titular No. 6 for half the series.
  • Characters – C – Inconsistent and obnoxious, especially the leads.
  • Production – A – Bones does know how to make things look nice.
  • Overall – C-

Recommendations – Fractale, C (if you actually liked this), Shangri-La, Innocent Venus

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