What the city of No. 6 really needs is some pest control.
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Atsuko Asano/Hinoki Kino
Translation/Adaptation: Jonathan Tarbox/Arashi Productions
What They Say
With Rat critically injured protecting him, Shion finally returns to NO. 6. But what he finds there is not the tranquil utopia he left behind, but a city in the grip of panic and chaos. As the “holy city” collapses in on itself, Shion and Rat put the future of humanity—and their future together—on the line in the shocking final volume of NO. 6!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Whenever a story in the anime/manga industry wants to include a homosexual couple, that homosexual love becomes the spotlight of the work itself. The organization and art style of the characters on the front packaging often make that clear enough from early on: “These two men/these two women are (or are going to end up) together. Read me!” Like it or not, anime/manga—and especially those works within the Boys’ Love genre—emerge out of a set of predictable formulas. Not all strongly BL-centric works are bad, and this centrality in fact has its advantages, but more often it leads to an uncomfortable objectification of homosexuality itself.
Why do I blather on about this? “No. 6” has a gay male relationship, and maybe that can be deduced from its packaging, but the relationship feels like only a part of a much wider story. To my astonishment, the relationship remains that way until the end: very much physically shown yet never swallowing up the entire plot. I find this kind of main conflict with “romance on the side” refreshing, and other anime/manga works, including those featuring heterosexual couples, could stand to adopt this model more often as well.
Let’s get to the summary of the content itself: Shion and Rat escape the Correctional Facility after destroying it, although in the act of escaping Rat has received life-threatening injuries. After Dogkeeper and Rikiga meet up with them, the four make a daring pass through a flaming gate to a clinic. The doctor there patches Rat up while Shion starts to read through the data on No. 6 contained in the flashdrive Rou gave him. Meanwhile, the city is going haywire with the number of deaths caused by the parasite wasps: revolution spills over into the streets and Moondrop sends the military out to pacify the citizens. A band of soldiers breaks into the clinic and guns down the workers there: it turns out the doctor was part of the revolutionary movement lead by Yoming. Rat springs into consciousness (rather conveniently and miraculously, it feels like), and after the soldiers leave, Shion explains the cause of the parasite wasps. Elyurias, the “sovereign” of the eradicated forest people, is in fact a type of earth god seeking vengeance on the humans of No. 6 for their blatant destruction. How does the Correctional Facility and Safu’s fusion with a mother computer tie into this? Honestly, I’m not sure: the manga attempts to explain it, but that explanation is confusing—and convoluted at best. Since the destruction of the Correctional Facility essentially breaks the upper echelon’s involvement in Elyurias, the main conflict shifts into stopping Elyurias from killing everyone. Fortunately, the data on Rou’s flashdrive says how: a member of the forest people must sing a song to pacify her. Rat, being the last of his people, has the ability to do so.
With that figured out, our four heroes head to Moondrop. At the top of the building, Rat sings to Elyurias, and Shion in turn persuades her to give humans another chance. Elyurias is pacified, and the parasite wasps disappear. The end of the manga sees Rat giving a tearful goodbye to Shion so that the former can wander the world, as he feels he has no home to return to. Unfortunately, Shion must stay to help repair No. 6. Rat, of course, promises to see Shion again someday.
While a lot seems to still happen in volume 9, by this point, the story has already moved past its climax. As such, the events that transpire in this finale serve as parts of a necessary resolution, but I wasn’t captivated. The stakes no longer feel as high, and when Shion and Rat leave together to confront Elyurias, I had already sensed that the story had wrapped up—perhaps too neatly, too. Still, the pacing of “No. 6” throughout its entirety has made this slow, exposition-bogged conclusion almost a necessity: after all, at the beginning of volume 9 I still didn’t have the answers to many of the setting’s important questions. So could the creators have constructed this final volume in any other way? I’m not sure.
As much as I have already harped on it, I want to return to the subject of Shion and Rat’s romantic relationship. Their bittersweet parting, complete with a goodbye kiss and a promise to return, puts a nice, definitive seal on their relationship. I do like that the two part: it feels like a realistic move, in that Shion and Rat act as foils to each other. On one hand this makes their ability to get along all the more persuasive, but on the other hand, they have significantly different personal goals that push them in opposite directions. Despite their natural affinity for the other, however, the two seem to have a romantic component of their relationship forced on them by the creator. This final volume flashes back to Shion and Rat’s first meeting as children for the billionth time, and the characters treat this memory as some kind of “love at first sight” fateful encounter. The encounter does alter each character’s life trajectory from then on, but I definitely don’t buy the sheer emotional investment Shion and Rat put into this moment. In that way, their romance as a whole comes across as largely orchestrated, and when I think a little more deeply about why they’re together, I honestly cannot come up with a good reason. That, in itself, is a sign of problematic writing.
I am conflicted by “No. 6.” I love the kind of psychological, weird science fiction plot it uses, and I loved the promise of terror it showed from the get-go. I even saw moments of this psychological terror realized (Shion and Rat climbing a pile of corpses to escape an otherwise gruesome fate, for instance). But at the same time, “No. 6” never truly realized its promises: Shion remained largely unaffected by the terrors, and if his character experienced any development from them, it comes across as unconvincing. What the series lacks in any connection I can establish to the characters, it somewhat makes up for in entertainment. For the most part I enjoyed “No. 6” because I wanted to know where such an interesting plot would go next. In this, the manga adaptation has one up on the anime, as the manga follows the original plot of the light novels more closely. I’m all for open interpretation, but the anime really botched up its plot in its deviations from the source material, while the manga moves through a sequence of events that makes much more sense to me.
In Summary
I would say “No. 6” could serve as a very tame introduction to someone interested in and yet inexperienced in the Japanese Boys’ Love genre, but beyond that, fans of dark science fiction would find some entertainment value here. From the final volume itself, don’t expect too much pizazz: the major pulse-pumping events already happened in the previous two volumes, and this final one only manages to resolve some hanging plot threads. Is it the perfect conclusion? No. Does it succeed in answering the basic questions it needs to? Yes.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: A-
Text/Translation Grade: A
Overall Series Score: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Kodansha
Release Date: October 21, 2014
MSRP: $10.99
