Visual Novel / 9-nine- Series

The town of Shiromitsukawa, Artifacts, and Users.^{The characters} Clockwise from top left: Kujou Miyako, Niimi Sora, Yuuki Noa, and Kousaka Haruka

9-nine- is an episodic Visual Novel series composed of 4 episodes (9-nine- Kokonotsu Kokonoka Kokonoiro, 9-nine- Sorairo Sorauta Soranooto, 9-nine- Haruiro Harukoi Harunokaze, and 9-nine- Yukiiro Yukihana Yukinoato) where the direction of the story changes based on which heroine the protagonist gets more involved with. Each episode was individually released once a year from 2017 to 2020.

All 4 episodes were bundled together in a "complete edition" released in 2021; in addition to previous content, it includes an epilogue Chapter titled 9-nine-:New Episode, which was also released individually at the same time.

All spoilers contained in each of the routes will be unhidden below. Beware!

---

This visual novel contains examples of:

General Tropes

• Affluent Ascetic: Miyako may be an upper-class girl from the wealthiest family in town, but you would never know it from her frugal lifestyle. She gets nervous at the thought of spending more than 1,000 yen on anything, for any reason.
• Age Lift: The Western releases come with a disclaimer that all of the characters are 18 or older, despite the protagonist being in their second year in high school with his sister in first.
• Alliterative Name: Each of the game's full name follows this pattern: Koko, Sora, Haru, and Yuki.
• Alternate Timeline: Each game branches off into different directions and endings based on the heroine that Kakeru interacts most with and choices he makes due to that heroine.
• Big Bad: Iris serves as the main antagonist of the novel.
• Dirty Coward: Iris. As soon as the situation looks truly dangerous for her to stay, she runs away without a second thought.
• Family Business: The restaurant that the protagonists often meet up at is owned by Miyako's grandfather.
• For Want Of A Nail: Depending on a single choice that Kakeru makes, the plot, antagonist, and the allies he has varies, depending on the game.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Possessor of the Evil Eye Artifact user is none of than Yoichi, Kakeru's classroom friend.
• Intangible Theft: Miyako's Power of the Thief steals a person's memories of a stolen item along with the item itself. The victim gets their memories back when she returns the item, though they will not realize that anything has been stolen unless she admits to the theft. She can also read a person's mind by stealing just the memories themselves.
• Loser Protagonist: Kakeru. While the heroines have Artifacts that grant powers, Kakeru doesn't possess any that helps him fight off the antagonists.
  • Subverted more progressively with each game.
• Police Are Useless: Zig-zagged and Discussed. The protagonists do not want to risk scientists investigating the powers of Artifacts and inhibit them from investigating who the Evil Eye user is. Even Yoichi took measures in case the protagonists did contact the police in the third game.
• Power Tattoo: Artifact Users have a mystical mark called a Stigmata somewhere on their bodies. It appears whenever they use their powers but is otherwise invisible. If they overuse their powers, it will grow bigger.
• Really 700 Years Old: Sophia. As revealed in Episode 4, Sophia may look like a young teenager, but she is at least over a thousand years old.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Ghost and Yoichi.
• Split Personality: Haruka. As a side effect of using her Artifact that allows the user's fantasies to come true, she develops a personality that she created to overcome her fear of boys.
• Taken for Granite: Essentially the ability of the Evil Eye Artifact to its targets.
• The Quiet One: Haruka
• Visual Novel

9-nine- Kokonotsu Kokonoka Kokonoiro

• Affluent Ascetic: While Miyako is an inheritor of a large corporate, she does not like to spent a lot of money on anything.
• Bad Powers, Good People: At first, Kakeru thinks about this in regards to Miyako's Artifact but later rescinds it because it allows the user to give back the things it stole in the first place to the original owner.
• Distracted by the Sexy: A mild earthquake occurs at the very beginning of the story, where the anime event takes place, but some people are too distracted by Miyako's cosplay outfit to properly get in line.
• Driven to Suicide: The Evil Eye's user seemingly.
• Failure Is the Only Option: The first playthrough of the game will end with the bad ending, no matter what. It is only in the second playthrough that you will get a choice to change the bad ending.
• Left Hanging: The individual who was causing the petrification incidents is shown to be still in the town, but Miyako and Kakeru are unaware of this. Player is left wondering how they will deal with the individual.
• Literally Shattered Lives: In the bad ending, Miyako figures out the Evil Eye User's identity and goes to confront them alone. By the time Kakeru finds her, she has been petrified and shattered.
• Prolonged Prologue: While Episode 1 is technically is its own Episode, it mostly sets up the setting and the characters so that the future Episodes can quickly go by them to set up situations for their respective heroines. As a result, this game does not even reveal the Big Bad and has an Anti-Climax for the ending.
• Rescue Romance: Romance between Kakeru and Miyako begins because during the flame Artifact incident at their school, Kakeru saved Miyako from the attack of the out-of-control flame Artifact user.
• Serial Killer: The Evil Eye user claims total of three victims in this route.
• Through His Stomach: One of the reasons Kakeru falls for Miyako during this route.
• The Stinger: Overlaps with Happy Ending Override as another Artifact user looms over the town with a Slasher Smile.

9-nine- Sorairo Sorauta Soranooto

• Big Damn Heroes: Sora saves Kakeru being turned into stone from Ghost's Evil Eye.
  • In the finale, Sophia, Haruka, Miyako, and Noa all come into rescue Kakeru after his battle with Ghost.
• Dying Alone: Sora, not wanting to bother Kakeru any longer, leaves the house and disappears from existence and everyone's memories in the bad ending.
• Fading Away: In the bad ending, this happens to Sora after she loses control of her Artifact after forcefully erasing Ghost from existence and Kakeru is unable to relieve of her worries.
• Fall Guy: The post-credit scene shows that Yoichi purposefully used Takamine and Ghost as this as to avoid unwanted attention from Kakeru and his friends.
• First Girl Wins: In this route, this trope is in effect because the first heroine the player is introduced to is Sora, after Kakeru patches up his injury from getting a cut from World's Eye Artifact.
• Forbidden Love: Kakeru and Sora are well aware that this is the nature of their relationship, but after saving Kakeru from his scrimmage with Ghost, Sora's Artifact slowly makes her lose control of her emotions. As a result, she pursues a relationship with Kakeru despite the fact.
• In Medias Res: The game begins with the scene of Sora's existence disappearing due to the loss of control of her Artifact in the bad ending.
• Irony: of the situational type. In the finale, Ghost's attempt at turning Kakeru into stone turns against her as she loses the control of Evil Eye. Ghost's body turns into stone while her soul burns away due to Kakeru's flame Artifact. This is later revealed to be a setup by the true mastermind in The Stinger.
• Karmic Death: After Kakeru puts her in checkmate in their battle, Ghost becomes unable to control her Artifact and begins to turn into stone herself. Subverted because as an illusory body she cannot actually die.
• Kill It with Fire: Kakeru does this to Ghost with his Artifact in the final battle.
• Power Nullifier: Sophia first introduces Ambrosia, which are injections created in Sophia's world that can negate the powers of Artifact Users if used on them, albeit temporarily.
• The Stinger: The post-credit scene shows that the user of the Evil Eye was not Ghost, but actually Yoichi.
• Wistful Amnesia: In the bad ending, Kakeru loses Sora to her out-of-control Artifact and can no longer remember her. All he can recall is that he must have lost something important but cannot recall what it is he lost.

9-nine- Haruiro Harukoi Harunokaze

• Bad Powers, Bad People: There is no way to view a power that turns people into stone statues as a power for the good and as such, Yoichi and Iris are the ones who possess this power in the form of Artifact called Evil Eye.
• Big Damn Heroes: Yoichi and Takamine arrive just in time (reluctantly, in former's case) to rescue Kakeru and his gang from being wiped out by Iris.
• Cruel Mercy: Iris kills everyone, except Kakeru, by manipulating him. Before she leaves him to wreck havoc on the world, Iris makes Kakeru painfully aware that the only reason she attained her full power is all thanks to Kakeru and he will have to suffer knowing that.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Renya makes quick work of all five protagonists with his Artifact powers and martial arts.
• Determinator: Kakeru in his battle against Iris. No matter how many times he dies, he keeps going back to try to defeat Iris.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Rig Veda when Iris reveals herself as the mastermind.
• Enemy Mine: Kakeru and his gang are forced to work with Yoichi and Renya when Iris shrugs all of their attempts at stopping her.
• Everybody's Dead, Dave: Miyako, Sora, Haruka, and Yuuki are all turned to stones instantaneously by Iris. Only Kakeru is left, with Iris letting him to live to kill him last.
• False Friend: Yoichi is revealed to be true user of the Evil Eye Artifact.
• Foreseeing My Death: Kakeru takes advantage of his Artifact, Overlord, to learn from his deaths in alternate timelines and avoid his death against his battle with Iris.
• For the Evulz: Iris has two reasons as to why is manipulating others to gather the Artifacts. First, she is weakened and cannot fully utilize her powers until she fully synchronizes with Satsuki. Second, she loves to watch others kill each other using Artifacts.
• Literally Shattered Lives: All 4 of the heroines' statues shatter when Iris snaps her finger after turning them into stone statues.
• Manipulative Bastard: Iris. She's the one who wanted the Artifact users in the town to find and fight each other so she could collect them afterwards.
• No-Sell: Iris possesses a barrier-type Artifact which allows her to negate any attacks that are not strong enough to break the barrier. In addition, she can create multiple layers of them and even if one manages to break one of them, Iris can reflect back the attack after the barrier is broken.
• Off with His Head!!: Kakeru during the battle against Iris.
• Precision F-Strike: Kakeru when he realizes Iris manipulated him to take out Yoichi and Renya via poison and killed all his frienda via Evil Eye.
• Reality Warper: Haruka's Artifact allows her to do to an extent.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Overlord allows Kakeru to keep memories of the timeline branches.
• Skyward Scream: Kakeru does this when Iris kills all of his friends.
• Superpowered Mooks: Renya/Commander and Ghost both possess all three Artifacts abilities that Yoichi possesses, albeit at lower capability.
• Superpower Lottery: Yoichi possesses not just one, but four Artifacts, which include the abilities to teleport, shoot soul destroying spears, summon a clone of himself, and the Evil Eye, which turns people into stones.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Rig Veda and the protagonists work together to fight Iris.
• Terrible Trio: Rig Veda.
• The Many Deaths of You: Kakeru suffers from this from battling Iris.
• The Stinger: The post-credit scene involves Sophia talking to you, the player about how nine individuals are needed to defeat Iris and how the true owner of Overlord is not Kakeru, but the player.
• Title Drop: In the post-credit scene, Sophitia reveals the meaning of the title Nine. The number reflects the number of Artifact users required to defeat Iris. They are: Kakeru, Miyako, Sora, Haruka, Noa, Satsuki, Yoichi, Renya, and you, the player.

9-nine- Yukiiro Yukihana Yukinoato

• All Your Powers Combined: Kakeru does this to have a fighting chance against Iris possessing Yoichi's body.
• Alternate Timeline: Kakeru's choices can produce these (According to Sophia's comment, it is extremely odd than a single individual's choices can produce these.) and Overlord can venture through these timelines to interact them.
• Anti-Climax Boss: After meticulously planning, pursuing Iris, and recruiting allies for the final showdown against Iris, Kakeru... successfully defeats Iris for good. Everything seems to have went according to plan until...
• Bait-and-Switch Credits: When it seems that Noa's Artifact, The Order, vanquished Iris for good and ending credits begin, Satsuki's body in the credits is taken over by Iris (signified by Stigma on her left eye) and game is rewound back to the point before the killing blow is dealt.
• Batman Gambit: Kakeru's plan to defeat Yoichi and future Iris. He is aware that defeating the present Iris and Yoichi is essentially pointless because the one that is using Overlord is future Iris. As soon as future Iris observes her past self being defeated, she can rewound time before their defeat and wreck Kakeru's plans. Kakeru, with all of his knowledge and abilities of Artifacts that he obtained in different timelines combined, kills Yoichi enough times that he is forced to request Iris for more power. Future Iris takes over his Yoichi's body, just as Kakeru planned so he can kill her for good (preventing further use of Overlord).
• Boy Meets Girl: Kakeru and Noa in this route. The "losing" part comes when Iris kills Noa after her first Overlord use.
• Confession Triggers Consummation: Noa's confession directly leads to her consummation with Kakeru, albeit for a slightly melancholic reason. Noa notes that while Kakeru can redo events that occurred using Overlord and recall his experiences, she cannot. In addition, in case that battle with Iris goes badly, she does not want to have any regrets before she dies.
• Death Is Cheap: Kakeru's usage of Overlord at the end of Haruiro was this, but it is up to eleven in this route as both Kakeru and Yoichi die multiple times to achieve better results for their respective sides.
• Despair Event Horizon: Yoichi and Iris repeatedly kills all of Kakeru's allies as soon as Kakeru goes back in time using Overlord to force Kakeru to cross into this.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: After Iris fatally injures everyone, Kakeru uses last of his strength to drag himself towards Noa, who tearfully tells Kakeru he must rewind the timeline to save everyone before dying.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Said by Yoichi word by word in the climatic fight.
• Dying Declaration of Love: After receiving a fatal blow from Iris, Noa states as long as Kakeru remains who he is now, she will always come to love him again, even if he resets their relationship.
• "Eureka!" Moment: During his preparation for fight against Yoichi and Iris, it dawned on him that he was not the true owner of Overlord when he saw how Yoichi and Iris were using them. Just like him, Yoichi was not the owner of Overlord, but rather, it was future Iris who installed her memories to present Iris, who in turn, used her synchronziation with Yoichi to give the knowledge of the future events.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: Kakeru to Yoichi. Before he starts the final battle, Kakeru asks Yoichi why he would go out of his way to kill his friends over and over again. When Yoichi plainly states someone like Kakeru would never understand someone who simply takes joy in using powers to kill others, Kakeru quietly replies that he would have let Yoichi have this timeline to wreck had he found a single reason to sympathize with him.
• Gotta Kill Them All: Iris's primary goal of this timeline is to destroy Kakeru and his allies once and for all since regardless of the timeline, even if Iris retreats and waits until the protagonists die of old age, Kakeru's will to stop Iris is passed on to his grandchildren as well. So, as long as Kakeru exists, Iris cannot freely do what she wants to do.
  • The ultimate plan to stop Iris is also this. Iris develops her own Overlord and contacts her past alternate timeline selves to do the same. Meaning, even if Kakeru defeats Iris of the present timeline, another timeline's Iris will simply use Overlord to go back in time and change the results. Therefore, the only way to completely kill Iris is to kill future Iris and all alternate timelines' Iris at once.
• Heartbroken Badass: In the penultimate timeline's climatic fight, Kakeru has understood and mastered the powers of several Artifacts, but only due to their users being dead.
• Heroic BSoD: Kakeru after Yoichi kills all of his friends and lover repeatedly, with no hope of saving them even after using Overlord to reset the timeline seemingly.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Penultimate timeline Kakeru. As he tells the player/Nine to go back to an earlier point in this timeline to inform the others of Iris's true demise, he also requests that the player/Nine does not install the memories of what occurred in this timeline, but only install the fact that Iris is completely defeated for good. Kakeru of this timeline does not want his past self to burden himself or his friends with the horrific events that transpired in this timeline.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: By BOTH protagonists and the antagonists alike.
  • The protagonists' side: Kakeru. Kakeru's usage of Overlord against his fight with Iris in Haruka's route allowed Iris to confirm the existence of Overlord. Before, Overlord's existence was dismissed as a mere myth, so Iris never bothered to expand her research of Artifacts to include Overlord. However, after her confirmation that Overlord did indeed exist, she spent several hundreds of years to develop her own Overlord after her supposed defeat, allowing her to trump over Kakeru.
  • The antagonists' side: Yoichi. In his show of sadism and attempt to break Kakeru's mind, Yoichi left Miyako, Sora, and Haruka's Artifacts with Kakeru, despite Iris's insistence otherwise. Thanks to this, Kakeru later takes in all of these Artifacts for himself and fights Yoichi with them.
• Logical Extreme: Kakeru can do this whenever he gains an Artifact due to his innate ability to draw out an Artifact's powers. As exemplifed by the following examples:
  • Haruka's Artifact He is able to use Haruka's Artifact to kill Yoichi in the final showdown by dropping a frozen airplane debris. As Kakeru notes himself, the chances of something like this are extremely unlikely, but possible with the extreme usage of Haruka's Artifact.
  • Sora's Artifact: Kakeru can negate Yoichi's ranged attacks, but can also erase solid beings like Ghost without blinking an eye.
  • Miyako's Artifact: The range and power of the stealing ability is magnified. Kakeru can steal things even without knowing what the object in question looks like and Miyako's 10 meter range does not apply to him.
  • Illusory Body Artifact: Unlike Yoichi, Kakeru is able to illusory bodies that are not restricted to just one shape/body. As long as he can image something in his mind, he is capable of creating multiple copies of them. Even Kakeru is restricted to sharing his soul to just one illusory body, however.
  • World's Eye: While the player aka Nine's world is so far away in dimensions that both Sophia and Iris had difficulty reaching it, Kakeru had instantly synched with the player/Nine's world the moment the World's Eye got into his body.
• Love At First Meeting: Noa says that this was the case for her when she asked by Kakeru when she fell in love with him.
• Love Epiphany: Before their consummation, Kakeru realizes that he must have fallen in love with Noa when he vividly recalls how Noa smiled when surrounded by cats.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: Kakeru in the final battle. He is so laser focused on killing Yoichi over and over to break him that no amount of talking from his enemy will bother him at all.
• Not Quite Dead: In the battle against Iris in Satsuki's body, Noa used her Artifact, The Order, to attack Iris's soul directly. After the hit, it seemed as though Iris was truly dead because even Sophia could not sense her soul. However, after using her Overlord, Iris revealed that she planted a dummy soul that she was remote controlling to make it seem that she was dead.
• Oathbound Power: Noa's powers function like this, as she must perceive the opponent she is facing to be evil enough in her own definition for her to activate her Artifact, The Order.
• Oh, Crap!: Yoichi during his battle with Kakeru when he realizes Kakeru is dead set on killing him, not even caring about Iris.
• Passed in Their Sleep: Implied for Kakeru after his final battle Iris and Yoichi. At this point, he used at least nine different Artifacts to fight the two when some individuals cannot even handle one before going berserk. He states that he is feeling tired and closes his eyes for the first time in this timeline.
• Passing the Torch: Despite being able to live far longer than Kakeru and his allies, the reason Iris can't just wait until the protagonists die of old age is because Iris says that Kakeru's children continues to hunt her down to stop her, no matter the timeline.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Discussed. Yoichi assures Kakeru that all of his friends' deaths were quick, but he also tells Kakeru that he is not above crossing the line if he thinks that would break Kakeru mentally.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Avoided with Ghost (who now goes by the name Lena) since Kakeru took control of the illusory body Artifact but played straight in this route with Yoichi and Iris.
• Reset Button: Kakeru is forced to use Overlord to go back to the beginning when he first gained his powers in order to understand Noa better.
• Retroactive Precognition: Kakeru, with his knowledges of the other timelines branches, uses this to his advantage to gain Noa's favor in the beginning of this story. Only he would know the name of the organization that Noa thought of in her fantasies (Valhalla Society).
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Kakeru can transverse through different timelines (in this case, the previous 3 game installments) and remember them via Overlord.
• Secret Word: Before Kakeru goes back in time to get Past Sophia to trust him a lot sooner in the timeline, Future Sophia tells him that in the case where Past Sophia does not believe Kakeru says, Kakeru can state to her that Sophia wet her bed at the age of 10.
• See You in Hell: Iris before she is about to die.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Overlord allows Kakeru and the player to do this since it observes the future, present, and past and can interact them with no drawbacks to the user.
  • Unfortunately, the villains of this route, Yoichi and Iris, also use their own Overlord to their advantage to trump over Kakeru using his Overlord.
• Shout-Out: Upon hearing Kakeru's video game analogy of how she can use her power, Haruka realizes that she's basically got the ultimate Spirit Command, which Noa agrees with. Apparently, the two have played, though they claim it's just because some of their favorite works are featured.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Iris attacks the player/Nine using the same method Noa tried to use on her, but thankfully, Kakeru cuts the link between him and the player/Nine just before the attacks hits.
• The Scapegoat: It is revealed that the student who died at the end of the true route of the 1st game is none other than Renya Takamine, who was trying to shift the blame onto himself for the petrification incidents so Yoichi would no longer be pursued.
• Tranquil Fury: Kakeru. After suffering mentally from the death of all of his friends for almost 3 weeks at the hands of Yoichi, in the climatic battle, Kakeru is determined to get his revenge on Yoichi, using everything he gained from the timelines. His voice is noticeably emotionless and monotone, up until Iris intervenes personally.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Every time Kakeru and his gang planned carefully to deal with the threat looming ahead of them, the antagonist in the respective route usually thwarted those plans by revealing another Artifact power or quickly neutralizing the heroes in one way or another. After repeating time loops where all of his allies were killed, it seems as if Kakeru has given up as he remains in his room for almost three weeks. Yet, when he leaves and faces Yoichi in their final battle, Kakeru is able to counter every single strategy and plan Yoichi has, revealing that he spent the time holed up mastering and understanding his own power all this time to develop his current plan.
• You Are Too Late: Iris's usage of Overlord and her synching up with Yoichi only five minutes after Kakeru's synching with the player/Nine means that no matter what Kakeru does, he will always be too late to save his loved ones.