No.6 is an anime, with some light yaoi elements. It's about a dystopian society in the near future. It also has some supernatural elements.
That's pretty much all I know about No.6, because the rest of the plot makes no fucking sense. Having just watched the entire 11 episode series in one sitting, I can tell you what happens in it. I can't tell you why or how one thing causes the next to happen. Nor can I tell you what the motivations of most of the characters were, or what they actually thought about each other.
Before I get into proper reviewy stuff, a few notes. I watched a rather strange sub of the series, meaning some characters names were changed. In particular, I know that the character who goes by the name of Nezumi was called Rat in the sub, and the character who is usually called Dog Keeper was instead Dogloan. I'll be referring to these characters by the name that was in the sub I watched, because I'm too lazy to adapt to other people.
No.6 follows the life of main character Shion in the titular city No.6. As it starts, he's a child prodigy enrolled in a very advanced program where children of age 12 appear to learn the equivalent of several university-level degrees at school, along with his childhood friend Safu. One night, a boy calling himself Rat sneaks into his house, who was recently on the news as an escaped convict. Despite this, Shion gives Rat food and shelter, and doesn't report him to the police. They, however, magically know that this has happened (how they do this is never explained), and take away his child prodigy privilege, instead demoting him to working as a park guardian.
Four years later, he comes across two mysterious deaths where victims appear to rapidly shrivel into old age and die in seconds, which appears to be caused by bees nesting in their necks (because of course it is). The police again magically catch wind of this and begin to march him off to a "correctional facility" as a murder suspect before he is rescued by Rat and taken to outside the city walls, where a cut-throat society of people who aren't in No.6 (why are these people not in No.6? It's made clear that escapees like Rat and Shion are extremely rare. As per usual, never explained) has formed.
These first few episodes are what I found to be the strongest part of the series. Society within No.6 is portrayed very well: It feels appropriately utopian, yet there's a lot of things that are subtly disturbing. As events evolve, it becomes more and more clear that No.6 isn't as good a place as it seems, culminating in Shion being taken in. I really like the relationships he's shown to be in at this point, as well. His relationship with Safu feels very genuine and warm, as does the relationship with his mother. Safu's an entertaining character, being quite weird in an endearing way.
However, once Shion's taken out of the city, a lot of this stops. The focus switches to his relationship with Rat. The main problem is that Rat is a character that I have particular trouble liking, especially early on. He's constantly angry for no appropriate reason, and belittles Shion without break for not knowing things about this society that had been HIDDEN FROM HIM FOR 16 YEARS. As though this didn't make him irritating enough, he's gleeful about the idea of thousands of innocents inside No.6 dying to the evil bees because of a personal vendetta he has against the city's government.
The secondary characters fare a bit better. Dogloan doesn't really get much to do, but is shown to be a lot more of an interesting character than Rat. She's (or he? It's intentionally kept ambiguous) snarky and selfish, but also shows huge amounts of loyalty and a surprising amount of frailty later on in the story. The character of Rikiga works well as comic relief, and also has a few moments of surprising emotional weight.
The main issue here is the plot, which, as I oh-so-subtly implied, is downright incomprehensible. It's not like I didn't know what was happening, or why, at any given time. The problem is that the chain of cause and effect didn't seem to follow the laws of logic. I'm talking "I have a tube of Pringles, therefore Bohemian Rhapsody will blare at full volume out of my nostrils" levels of nonsensical. I understand that the second event is supposed to be caused by the first, but there doesn't seem to be a logical way of getting from one to the other. The same is true for a lot of character motivations, especially with Dogloan and Rat, who seem to have set their goals to be produced by a random number generator. Every half episode.
Admittedly, the motivation problem settles down during the final few episodes, where Rat is suddenly in love with Shion for no apparent reason. Shion wants to rescue Safu, who for some unexplained reason is a perfect genetic McGuffin for the Big Evil Experiment that the government of No.6 is running, and Rat is now OK with doing whatever Shion wants because THE POWER OF LOVE I guess.
The best part of the series post leaving No.6 is the finale, which has some decent (if not at all visually impressive) action and a few touching character moments. It's still riddled with nothing making any sense, but by this point we've been with the characters enough to feel for them when this stuff goes down. There's even a fairly powerful moment with Rat, banking on the one thing that seems to be stable about him at this point: His out-of-nowhere love of Shion.
Two final mentions are the visuals and the sound. The visuals are actually extremely impressive, reminding me a lot of Sword Art Online in their crispness and even style. They're similar enough to make me wonder whether some of the same people worked on these two projects. This is extreme praise: I believe SAO to be the best-looking animated series I've seen. The design is also actually surprisingly great inside No.6, where it does a great job of portraying the utopian society fuelled by ignorance of the atrocities being committed that No.6 is revealed to be. Outside it's a bit less interesting, though still fairly charming in its own way. The sound is really impressive: The soundtrack is subtle, but effective, and the original voice-acting actually conveys a lot more emotion than I'm used to for anime voice-acting.
Character and World Building: 7.5/10
Some really great examples of both in the first few episodes: the city of No.6 is really well conveyed, and I really liked the portrayal of Shion's relationships. In particular, his relationship with Safu feels extremely believable. However, it gets a lot less impressive later on, and, as I said, characters tend to not really have a consistent goal or even personality. There's a few interesting characters on the sidelines, like Dogloan or Rikiga, but the absolute failure to make Rat likeable or interesting in any way hugely undercuts that.
Story: 2/10
Jesus fucking Christ it's awful. It makes next to zero sense most of the time, and the stuff I did understand mainly consisted of overused plot beats. It's saved from the shameful 1 rating by the slight sense of momentum it manages to build up in the very last episode, and the pretty good pacing that episodes one and two have.
Visuals: 5/5
It does really look gorgeous. They did everything about as well as they could, and the interior of No.6 is particularly well done, managing to convey that "utopia with a dark secret" feel very well.
Sound: 4.5/5
As well as looking great, it sounds great. The only real issue I have is the god-awful opening and ending themes, which detract the .5 that's been lost from the perfect score.
Enjoyment: 5/10
There's a few things here to really like, but I spent most of my time either too bamboozled by the nonsense the plot was throwing at me or annoyed at Rat to really be able to enjoy it. If only we'd gotten more time to develop No.6 before jumping into the action the series may have been a bit more enjoyable (Maybe use those 2 episodes that the series fall short of the traditional 13t).
Overall: (7.5+2+5+4.5+5)/40
24/40
Simplifies to 6/10
It's not awful by any means, but there's just enough here to justify a recommendation. The visuals and audio are outstanding, but these are minor things that aren't as important as the things it gets wrong. I just wish the series had stayed with the tone it took during the first few episodes: It was a lot more effective and, most importantly, it mostly made sense. In a way, No.6 is the opposite case to Sword Art Online. Where SAO's many small flaws were covered up by a really well-made core, No.6's solid base idea is completely obstructed by its two colossal mistakes: Nonsensical story, and how awful Rat is.
That's pretty much all I know about No.6, because the rest of the plot makes no fucking sense. Having just watched the entire 11 episode series in one sitting, I can tell you what happens in it. I can't tell you why or how one thing causes the next to happen. Nor can I tell you what the motivations of most of the characters were, or what they actually thought about each other.
Before I get into proper reviewy stuff, a few notes. I watched a rather strange sub of the series, meaning some characters names were changed. In particular, I know that the character who goes by the name of Nezumi was called Rat in the sub, and the character who is usually called Dog Keeper was instead Dogloan. I'll be referring to these characters by the name that was in the sub I watched, because I'm too lazy to adapt to other people.
No.6 follows the life of main character Shion in the titular city No.6. As it starts, he's a child prodigy enrolled in a very advanced program where children of age 12 appear to learn the equivalent of several university-level degrees at school, along with his childhood friend Safu. One night, a boy calling himself Rat sneaks into his house, who was recently on the news as an escaped convict. Despite this, Shion gives Rat food and shelter, and doesn't report him to the police. They, however, magically know that this has happened (how they do this is never explained), and take away his child prodigy privilege, instead demoting him to working as a park guardian.
Four years later, he comes across two mysterious deaths where victims appear to rapidly shrivel into old age and die in seconds, which appears to be caused by bees nesting in their necks (because of course it is). The police again magically catch wind of this and begin to march him off to a "correctional facility" as a murder suspect before he is rescued by Rat and taken to outside the city walls, where a cut-throat society of people who aren't in No.6 (why are these people not in No.6? It's made clear that escapees like Rat and Shion are extremely rare. As per usual, never explained) has formed.
These first few episodes are what I found to be the strongest part of the series. Society within No.6 is portrayed very well: It feels appropriately utopian, yet there's a lot of things that are subtly disturbing. As events evolve, it becomes more and more clear that No.6 isn't as good a place as it seems, culminating in Shion being taken in. I really like the relationships he's shown to be in at this point, as well. His relationship with Safu feels very genuine and warm, as does the relationship with his mother. Safu's an entertaining character, being quite weird in an endearing way.
However, once Shion's taken out of the city, a lot of this stops. The focus switches to his relationship with Rat. The main problem is that Rat is a character that I have particular trouble liking, especially early on. He's constantly angry for no appropriate reason, and belittles Shion without break for not knowing things about this society that had been HIDDEN FROM HIM FOR 16 YEARS. As though this didn't make him irritating enough, he's gleeful about the idea of thousands of innocents inside No.6 dying to the evil bees because of a personal vendetta he has against the city's government.
The secondary characters fare a bit better. Dogloan doesn't really get much to do, but is shown to be a lot more of an interesting character than Rat. She's (or he? It's intentionally kept ambiguous) snarky and selfish, but also shows huge amounts of loyalty and a surprising amount of frailty later on in the story. The character of Rikiga works well as comic relief, and also has a few moments of surprising emotional weight.
The main issue here is the plot, which, as I oh-so-subtly implied, is downright incomprehensible. It's not like I didn't know what was happening, or why, at any given time. The problem is that the chain of cause and effect didn't seem to follow the laws of logic. I'm talking "I have a tube of Pringles, therefore Bohemian Rhapsody will blare at full volume out of my nostrils" levels of nonsensical. I understand that the second event is supposed to be caused by the first, but there doesn't seem to be a logical way of getting from one to the other. The same is true for a lot of character motivations, especially with Dogloan and Rat, who seem to have set their goals to be produced by a random number generator. Every half episode.
Admittedly, the motivation problem settles down during the final few episodes, where Rat is suddenly in love with Shion for no apparent reason. Shion wants to rescue Safu, who for some unexplained reason is a perfect genetic McGuffin for the Big Evil Experiment that the government of No.6 is running, and Rat is now OK with doing whatever Shion wants because THE POWER OF LOVE I guess.
The best part of the series post leaving No.6 is the finale, which has some decent (if not at all visually impressive) action and a few touching character moments. It's still riddled with nothing making any sense, but by this point we've been with the characters enough to feel for them when this stuff goes down. There's even a fairly powerful moment with Rat, banking on the one thing that seems to be stable about him at this point: His out-of-nowhere love of Shion.
Two final mentions are the visuals and the sound. The visuals are actually extremely impressive, reminding me a lot of Sword Art Online in their crispness and even style. They're similar enough to make me wonder whether some of the same people worked on these two projects. This is extreme praise: I believe SAO to be the best-looking animated series I've seen. The design is also actually surprisingly great inside No.6, where it does a great job of portraying the utopian society fuelled by ignorance of the atrocities being committed that No.6 is revealed to be. Outside it's a bit less interesting, though still fairly charming in its own way. The sound is really impressive: The soundtrack is subtle, but effective, and the original voice-acting actually conveys a lot more emotion than I'm used to for anime voice-acting.
Character and World Building: 7.5/10
Some really great examples of both in the first few episodes: the city of No.6 is really well conveyed, and I really liked the portrayal of Shion's relationships. In particular, his relationship with Safu feels extremely believable. However, it gets a lot less impressive later on, and, as I said, characters tend to not really have a consistent goal or even personality. There's a few interesting characters on the sidelines, like Dogloan or Rikiga, but the absolute failure to make Rat likeable or interesting in any way hugely undercuts that.
Story: 2/10
Jesus fucking Christ it's awful. It makes next to zero sense most of the time, and the stuff I did understand mainly consisted of overused plot beats. It's saved from the shameful 1 rating by the slight sense of momentum it manages to build up in the very last episode, and the pretty good pacing that episodes one and two have.
Visuals: 5/5
It does really look gorgeous. They did everything about as well as they could, and the interior of No.6 is particularly well done, managing to convey that "utopia with a dark secret" feel very well.
Sound: 4.5/5
As well as looking great, it sounds great. The only real issue I have is the god-awful opening and ending themes, which detract the .5 that's been lost from the perfect score.
Enjoyment: 5/10
There's a few things here to really like, but I spent most of my time either too bamboozled by the nonsense the plot was throwing at me or annoyed at Rat to really be able to enjoy it. If only we'd gotten more time to develop No.6 before jumping into the action the series may have been a bit more enjoyable (Maybe use those 2 episodes that the series fall short of the traditional 13t).
Overall: (7.5+2+5+4.5+5)/40
24/40
Simplifies to 6/10
It's not awful by any means, but there's just enough here to justify a recommendation. The visuals and audio are outstanding, but these are minor things that aren't as important as the things it gets wrong. I just wish the series had stayed with the tone it took during the first few episodes: It was a lot more effective and, most importantly, it mostly made sense. In a way, No.6 is the opposite case to Sword Art Online. Where SAO's many small flaws were covered up by a really well-made core, No.6's solid base idea is completely obstructed by its two colossal mistakes: Nonsensical story, and how awful Rat is.
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