The 9nine: Rulers Crown anime is a compelling adaptation of a visual novel. If you watch it standalone you might think the original visual novel was just a SteinsGatelike time travel story with urban fantasy magic action. While thats technically true what you may not know is that the original visual novel was episodic with four episodes focusing on the main character romancing each of the four main heroinesyes including his little sister. In a way thats both the best and worst thing about the 9nine: Rulers Crown anime especially compared to the visual novel. If you only care about plot reveals cool magic action and an allkiller nofiller approach to building charactersjust enough for you to care about them before diving into the plotthen 9nine: Rulers Crown does that best. The world of artifacts is a way for the main characters main villains and some side characters to have secret magic powers tied to a TV show. The story starts with Kakeru Niimi the main character a seemingly normal slightly snarky but nice guy wanting to get closer to his classmate Miyako Kujou an attractive kind and feminine girl who works at a small coffee shop. His goal of getting closer to her ends up dragging him into a huge plot revolving around the city they live in. As stated with 13 episodes the anime builds up the five main characters well enough. In addition to Kakeru and Miyako we have Sora Kakerus gremlinlike little sister whos cheeky but clearly cares for her big brother Haruka who seems to have multiple personalities switching between a shy girl with social anxiety and someone confident and flirty and Noa Yuuki who seems extremely aloof blunt and edgy but knows a lot about the situation and may have the powers to deal with it. For the most part the characters are introduced well. You get a sense of their general personalities and theyre pretty likable. As the story progresses you meet more characters like Kakerus best friend Yoichi Renya a chuuni redhead a mysterious blonde woman and a mysterious talking plushie Sophie. By blending genres like mystery action sliceoflife comedy and romance 9nine: Rulers Crown creates an interesting world and characters. Its not the best in terms of characters or plot and can feel derivative at times but the way it blends urban fantasy with a SteinsGatelike time travel story is wellexecuted. There are cool twists and drama once the plot gets going around episodes three or four. Sadly while the plot is generally well done the character interactions and development are more of a mixed bag. The main character Kakeru is mostly well done. However because the anime adapted the plot by eliminating most of the sliceoflife romance and comedy it feels jarring that his socalled crush on Miyako Kujou fades into the background extremely quickly after the first few episodes until the way end of the show. Similarly while theres some teasing about Soras feelings for her brother its barely addressed outside one or two scenes toward the middle of the anime and is quickly forgotten. Haruka has great moments about wanting to overcome her shyness but her arc feels fragmented mostly occurring toward the middle and end of the show. Theres also an implied romantic crush on Kakeru clearly based on the visual novel but it lacks buildup since her sliceoflife episode from the visual novel was cut. Noa Yuuki probably has the best overall character development as her story ties heavily into resolving the increasingly complex plot. My issue is that her warming up to the main crew feels a bit jarring due to the lack of sliceoflife moments making her transition from cold to fitting in with the group feel abrupt. Id comment on Miyako but I think she was intentionally written as the least deep character which isnt necessarily bad. Shes a shy but nice deredere character with just enough depth in wanting to help people. There are also some personal nitpicks I have like how Kakerus best friend Yoichi is kept a bit too conveniently annoying personalitywise or how the redhead Renya never makes his love of flatchested girls rants from the visual novel. I also think that even though Sora seems to be the most popular heroine from the original VN fanbase I always thought she was fairly annoying. While the animation is mostly serviceable there are moments where the animators clearly used lazy stillswhen characters are zoomed out or in the background they often have funnylooking eyes or shadows over their faces so the animators didnt have to draw them in detail. Overall 9nine: Rulers Crown is an enjoyable but inconsistent experience. It excels at drawing you into the plot and delivering crazy reveals about the magic the main villains and the time travel aspect. While there are likable characters and decent comedy not all of them shine in the character development department and their supposedly close bonds dont feel as strong as they should. Id recommend 9nine: Rulers Crown with a cautious positive recommendation. Watch it if youre interested in eventually reading the visual novel if you really want to see something that emulates a SteinsGatelike time travel story or if you enjoy urban fantasy magic action.