Another ho hum anime.
[C]‘s premise held some promise. Honestly, it did. Set against the backdrop of a struggling Japanese economy, a mysterious ‘Financial District’ is drawing people in, forcing them to gamble their lives away for money. That sounds kinda cool. In [C], however, this literally means silly video game duels where fighters shout out the names of their attacks and all that braindead nonsense. Whatever — an action anime can still be entertaining to take in if the rest of the anime is up to par. It’s just too bad that the rest of the anime is dumb as hell too.
• We’ll get the least important flaw about [C] out of the way first: it’s pretty much butt ugly.
While the show might not be a great anime with poor animation, but it can still be a good story so I won’t dwell on this point.
• Nearly all of interest in [C] fled me as soon as Msyu appeared. The fact that she’s dressed in about five ounces of clothes is pretty egregious, but it’s not actually what bugs me most about her.
While it’s pretty damn lame that — yet again — the heroine has to be this exotic looking lil’ number while Kimimaro is as normal as you can get (with normal looks and even normal life goals), this isn’t the worst thing about Msyu. Oh, did I also mention that she’s a battleaxe and totally chastises Kimimaro for failing to take things seriously when he doesn’t even know what said things are? All of these are pathetic cliches, even for anime, but none of them represents the biggest problem I have with Msyu.
My biggest beef? Every time she gets hurt, and it looks pretty excruciating when she shields Kimimaro in the second episode, Kimimaro naturally asks her if she’s okay. Msyu will then reply along the lines of “it’s odd for you to care about my well-being” and “I’m just an asset.” Really? Are we really going to go there? What is ‘there,’ you might ask? ‘There,’ where another female character in anime had been nothing more than a tool in her existence up til this very point, with naught to care for but obeying the orders of ‘entres.’ Thank the heavens, however, that a shounen ubermensch has come to teach her a thing or two about humanity, that she’s worth caring about, and maybe — just maybe — she can learn to… love. Give me a fucking break.
• Flashy battles with hardly any substance. What just happened in Kimimaro’s first “Deal,” a.k.a. duels in the world of [C]? We see Msyu taking one hell of beating until out of nowhere, Kimimaro yells, “Mezzoflation, ten million!”
Then Msyu pulls out a massive DBZ-esque attack and he wins. What? Why? How? Did he have latent super money dueling abilities? Did she? I can’t really “turn off my brain and enjoy” the action when I can’t even parse how the winners win and the losers lose other than one of the fighters managing to yell a bigger number.
• Infoduuuuuuuuuump — this is essentially half of the third episode.
Some silver-haired lady pretty much breaks out into exposition mode and it just goes on and on. Yeah, sure, I want to know more about the Financial District, but was there really no other way to make any of this info available to the viewers? Was bland narration all we could use?
• The other half of the third episode deals with Kimimaro’s father.
That sounds personal and interesting. On the one hand, you have a young man who barely knew his father and feels abandoned by said father — not particularly original, but it’s a start. On the other hand, Kimimaro is nevertheless willing to plunge himself head first into the enigmatic Financial District to find out all that he can about his father’s past. Unfortunately, the anime completely half-asses it. This subplot barely eats up any time whatsoever, yet Kimimaro still manages to gain an epiphany out of it: his dad wasn’t such a money-hungry jerk after all. I guess up until this point, Kimimaro never considered that his father was trying to acquire money for the family.
It has been said before, but it’s worth saying again: if you get an epiphany every time you exercise your mental faculties for just a second, you’re doing something wrong.
*****
In just three episodes, [C] went from intriguing to your run-of-the-mill battle anime with convoluted terms thrown around to make the plot feel a lot more complicated than it needs to be. Sure, there’s plenty of time for [C] to turn it around, but don’t hold your breath.
i dunno if i should watch it. i got a bad feeling about C right after i read the synopsis on anidb and saw the poster. the japanese have a talent for thinking up bizzare premises. finances + battles…really??? samurais on bikes and ninjas with computers were taken, huh? tough break. on the whole i’m really starting to get ppl who call anime cartoons precisely because of anime like C.
I’m not really sure what you mean by this. In general, I don’t put much stock into the “fine distinction” between anime and cartoons anyway.
It’s like Megaman Battle Network (or Star Force) and Persona got drunk and had a baby. Then again, I hate just stopping at comparing things. The show drew me in like any show should on the first episode, but the problem seems to be what I was drawn into. Like you said, it’s taken that battle anime route. Nevertheless, I’m just going to lower my expectations and keep going. Even if they’re probably going to throw some ridiculous “Msyu has feelings too” stuff in there, I’m going to stick this one out. Who knows? Maybe his entire life will fall apart and he’ll kill himself. That’d be a ride, wouldn’t it?
Yeah, I’d take that. I’d take anything over how safe [C] has played out. I’m not saying that the anime tricked the audience or anything by the first episode, but man, it could have been so much better. As it currently stands, [C] looks to be utterly forgettable.
I will keep my hopes up for C if in episode 4 Kimimaro has still held onto his beliefs about “just making do” or “just having enough to get by”. If he hasn’t maintained that moral decision vs. Souchiro than what little conflict left in this show completely goes out the window. Otherwise this is Deal or No Deal and/or Yugi-Oh.
After all that haranguing about how Kimimaro’s father was just doing everything he can for his family, I don’t think the chances are high that Kimimaro continues to follow his “just get by” philosophy. But who knows.
Man, cant a guy get something interesting without a girl attached to it? You know that the girl’s gonna have to make up for the male’s blandness. This might be like dragon crisis. Just saying. Expect lot’s of male protagonist love speeches. One question, Is Msyu ( how do they pronounce that) wearing stocking are something?
oh… ok I see now. thanks
Same shit, different year…
Don’t be so hard on yourself, buddy.
I dunno, I thought the infodump in the third episode was relatively painless. I mean it certainly had life in comparison to .Hack//sign constantly monologuing about stuff with only the slightest relevance to the plot.
The fight in the second episode… yeah, I’ll agree that it felt extremely contrived. I mean how would that automatically win the fight? Even the explanation in the third episode only makes it seem more improbable… or Yoga is Average Guy With Strong Latent Abilities #4,800,492.
Yet, even all that, I can’t say that I haven’t found it enjoyable, provided I’m willing to suspend my disbelief.
I only write to describe how I felt when I watch these episodes. It’s not like I’m going in with a preconceived notion of how I want to react to the anime. The fact of the matter is that the pair of episodes really bored me.
Eh, different strokes for different folks. I’ve just found that I get distracted if I start nitpicking. I enjoy it beyond my niggling doubts though, so there’s a gem in there somewhere. Just like HanaIro, I’m watching ’til I find it. And if I can’t find it, I can at least gripe about what weighed it down.
Do you have the impression that I’m nitpicking?
Hmm? No, not really. I was saying that picking dem nits was what kept me from really enjoying it before. Once I got past my gripes, such as the occasional sloppy animation and contrived fighting sequences, I enjoyed the other elements enough to keep me watching. While I wouldn’t consider it polarizing (Yet), [C] does have tons of glaring problems that I don’t blame anybody for getting annoyed at. I’m just rather forgiving for it trying something new-ish, is all.