Alien 9

Soon after entering middle school, Yuri Otani is coerced into joining the "Alien Party," a single-minded group with one goal: capture any alien attempting to enter school grounds. Terrified of aliens her entire life, Otani is anything but thrilled, and to make matters worse, her kit includes a "Borg"—an alien-like creature tasked with ensuring her safety. Despite this, she finds solace in her two partners: the independent and reliable Kumi Kawamura, and the smart and energetic Kasumi Tomine.

As the Alien Party works to fend off extraterrestrial threats, will their roller blades and lacrosse sticks be enough to overcome the dire challenges ahead, or will they succumb to fear and suffer the grim consequences of defeat?

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Otani, Yuri Main

Ihata, Juri Japanese

Kawamura, Kumi Main

Shimizu, Kaori Japanese

Tomine, Kasumi Main

Shitaya, Noriko Japanese

Borg Main

Nakao, Ryusei Japanese

Hisakawa, Megumi Main

Hisakawa, Aya Japanese

Knife, Yellow Supporting

Ishida, Akira Japanese

Otani, Satoko Supporting

Katou, Yuuko Japanese

Hironaka, Tomoya Supporting

Sakuma, Rei Japanese

Namiki, Manabu Supporting

Suzuki, Kazuhito Japanese

Tamaki, Miyu Supporting

Nakayama, Sara Japanese

Matsukura, Yuuji Producer

Oosawa, Nobuhiro Producer

Tanaka, Shigehiro Producer

Irie, Yasuhiro Director, Episode Director, Storyboard, Animation Director, Character Design

Reviews

Aug 25, 2024

Teramol

Recommended

Alien 9 mixes the mundane with a creepy, psychological horror twist. The short, 4 episode OVA series follows three young school girls who are tasked to join an exclusive club for capturing alien lifeforms invading planet Earth. Armed with zero knowledge, rollerblades, lacrosse sticks and their very own body juice sucking alien buddies, the girls are thrown into a cruel new life.

On top of the aforementioned line, even the viewer is mostly clueless regarding lore and background info. Almost nothing is explained and the viewer is supposed to come up with conclusions themselves, which will certainly divide enjoyment among viewers. Personally I found the series ... handling the mystery in an interest piquing way.

The characters are a mixed bag. We have the crybaby Yuri who is clearly ill-suited for the job, the level-headed and reasonable Kumi and the bratty yet hyped for her new job Kasumi. Despite Yuri's constant crying being fairly annoying, I still appreciated the characters feeling flawed in a realistic way.

However the series isn't without issues at all. The biggest problem is that it's way too short. We barely established anything by the time it's all over already. And to make things worse, it ends on a huge cliff hanger which basically demands you to check out the source material if you want any kind of closure.

Although the short runtime did probably help in one side of the series, the art and animation. Despite being over two decades old, it still looks great and has some really impressive, fluid animation mixed in the action scenes. Even the small use of CGI doesn't feel jarring and actually adds to the eeriness of the alien lifeforms.

Overall I still enjoyed the series. I just really wish it was longer because it could have been amazing. As is, two hours just flew by watching the whole thing. Recommended for anyone not bothered by a sudden stop and wanting an interesting horror experience.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Jun 5, 2023

BurningCarnation

Mixed Feelings

Alien 9 is about three girls beating up aliens. One of them hates the job, one of them does it because the other option was worse, and one of them is raring to go. There's a copious amount of gore, blood, and mental breakdowns. So yeah, this show is not all sunshine and lollipops.

From the first scene, Yuri (the first girl I talked about) will whine about not wanting to be the one designated to beat up aliens in her class. In the next scene she will complain and whine to her best friend about how she's unqualified for the job, and that she doesn't ... want to do it. If you ever think she'll stop moaning and whining and suddenly start heroically busting out the moves to beat up aliens in a badass manner, I'm here to tell you that Alien 9 is not that kind of show. Yuri will not suddenly become a badass: instead, the proceeding scenes will also include her sniveling, bawling, and feebly whimpering yet again about how she REALLY doesn't want to beat up aliens. Did I tell you that Yuri receives the most screentime of the three girls, so you'll see her going through that same pattern about 4 times in every episode? If you don't want to see that, then stay the hell away from Alien 9.

Now, if you managed to get beyond that initial barrier, you'll find that Yuri's constant whimpering and crying, while aggravating to listen to, is not only justified, but the circumstances that led up to that point are worth a deeper look into.

The point is that Yuri is too young and immature to decide things for herself. Constantly crying and whimpering is not how you solve problems, and it is especially not how an adult should act if they want to be treated like one. Her constant whimpering, her inability to speak her mind, and her extreme dependency on Kumi all hint towards her relative emotional immaturity. Out of the main cast, Yuri is the furthest from being a responsible adult, and thus she is treated like an incapable child. She doesn't get to call the shots, her parents and teachers do, because she's such a kid.

Said emotional immaturity and inability to control her fear is why Yuri is the target of the most gory and violent scenes throughout the show. The sheer fear she feels toward the aliens is fueled by her instinctive repulsion towards them for how absolutely disgusting they are. How they lick her back for nutrients, how she constantly gets soaked in alien blood, how she's constantly being threatened to become Swiss cheese by the invading aliens. The scaredy-cat is the best target for pranks and horror shows, since they're assured to give the most reactive responses. Was there any other reason Luigi got a horror game for himself, but not Mario?

While I did mention horror, Alien 9's aliens honestly aren't that scary, and look more like badly drawn versions of Digimon. The Borgs look like a very wrinkly Patamon with CG wings, and the invading aliens attack with tacky black and white CG drills and tendrils, like they're out of a PS1 game. Hell, everything looks cutesy. The girls don't have noses and gigantic eyes. Everything is painted in slightly flushed out, but still bright, colors. Anything that emphasizes horror loves to operate in the dark, but Alien 9 has the girls fighting aliens in broad daylight. It's less scary and more uncomfortable. The horror aspect is only truly emphasized when Yuri faces the aliens, and when the show depicts how raw the terror she feels can be.

All that I've mentioned above is in the first two episodes, and I've only talked about them so extensively because they're the more interesting part of the show. The next two episodes go into the other two girls, and due to the divided screentime the show does not have enough time to cover them both: frankly speaking however, there's not much to talk about when one of the girls' biggest defining trait--nay, quirk--is saying "Nya!" every one of four lines like she's some kind of Pokémon. The last two episodes don't go anywhere.

We have some dream sequences, and some more scenes of the girls cowering in fear, and then the show just...ends. It ends while hinting at a potential episode 5 that never came to pass. Wouldn't you know it, Alien 9 is yet another member of the 'read the manga for the rest' crowd of anime. For what it's worth, the manga ended and also got a sequel called Alien 9: Emulators, so if you love these 4 episodes and want more there's plenty of stuff to read to satiate yourself.

Unfortunately, unlike the manga, Alien 9 the anime is incomplete and inconclusive, and was given far too little time to even begin to explore its own themes and characters, let alone familiarize them to the audience. The subpar production value and the lack of elaboration on its own world and internal logic will further detract many people. If you don't know what you're getting into, the chances are that you'll be disappointed. If you're into uncomfortable mindfucks, then maybe this is the show for you.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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Sep 8, 2024

congogrindcore

Not Recommended

I personally, and I believe most folks coming across this today, first discovered this show as a comparison to Madoka Magica, which happens to be one of my favourite anime. Looking a bit more upon it, I saw tags on anidb such as "Rotten World", "Deconstruction", "Tone Changes", "Gore", "Horror", and "Angst". That was enough to get me hooked.

Alas, this anime was not what I was advertised. Which would be fine if the plot was decent, but it's not.
If I had to keep this short and simple, I would say that Alien 9 has a lot of ideas that could've been great but execute them ... extremely awkwardly, resulting in a frustrating viewing experience and overall a pretty bad end product.

Ootani Yuri is a terrible protagonist and extremely annoying. All she does is cry, and not much else. I don't want to hear a single soul shit talk Ikari Shinji again. Now, I do understand that this is likely how an actual 10 year old would react when placed in this situation, and you do feel really bad for her, but she doesn't learn a single thing at the end of the story and doesn't change at all from the same character she was at the beginning. I don't think this is a bad idea in concept - humans are flawed and some don't learn from their mistakes. But I'm not sure if that's the angle Tomizawa Hitoshi was purposefully aiming for, and I am reluctant to believe that it is as it's unconfirmed and if I believe something based on my gut I might as well project literally anything into this show. And even if it was intentional, it didn't work and Yuri fucking sucks.

Secondly, too much goes unexplained, in a bad way. I love open-ended and confusing media, but certain basic concepts that should be set up to have a believable world are tossed aside, and I personally was unable to suspend my disbelief. Why can only these little girls fight the aliens? Who the fuck knows, it's certainly not something they bother to explain. Why are kids going to school a day after this big frog-whale thing landed on it? Do the parents give a single shit about their children, not to mention the parents of the girls in the Alien Party? The ending is also fucking atrocious. I can't describe it in any other way than it just "happening".
It might be a result of this show getting discontinued, and the manga might answer these questions, but judging the anime on its own, it ends up being almost schizophrenic (and not in a good way) and extremely unsatisfying. I wonder if this would've been any better if it had a regular, 12-13 episode runtime. No point in engaging in hypotheticals, though.

That being said, I did like certain aspects of the show. I enjoyed the contrast between the simple Tsukumizu-ish cutesy wide girls and the oddly realistic and detailed, almost biopunk design of the (big) aliens, especially the big eggplant-looking thing they look into. The OST was good and the animation surprisingly fluid. The one thing I can praise the plot for is that the ambiguity of the teachers and their intentions was pretty good, but I'm not sure if that was done on purpose.

I give this a not recommended because almost everything it tries to do ends up failing, and it's not even a so bad it's good show like High School DxD. But if you, like myself, is a weirdo who enjoys seeing anime girls undergoing psychological torture, and are a few drinks in, you might have a laugh.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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Really short anime series to watch (less than 12ep)

by lainnvx

27 Entries · 4 Restacks

Visually unique and underrated gems.

by boguda

37 Entries · 80 Restacks

3-9 episodes

by spuq

50 Entries · 73 Restacks

	Poll: Alien Nine Episode 4 Discussion ( 1 2 ) heartpatterned - Aug 2, 2009	66 replies	by Araxz »» Oct 27, 5:27 AM
	Poll: Alien Nine Episode 2 Discussion Ston3_FreeN7 - Sep 18, 2009	39 replies	by AngelFlash »» Sep 24, 1:44 PM
	Poll: Alien Nine Episode 1 Discussion Ston3_FreeN7 - Sep 18, 2009	42 replies	by bushman66 »» Jul 28, 11:03 AM
	Poll: Alien Nine Episode 3 Discussion Ston3_FreeN7 - Sep 18, 2009	24 replies	by Ronninn »» Jun 19, 6:17 AM
	Is it faithful to the manga? Marfusa - Apr 16, 2019	3 replies	by Damega621 »» May 31, 2021 9:54 AM