But before we get to that, we gotta have exposition.
Exposition!
Exposition. Somehow the US got involved and reversed the [C] reaction, which is now heading right back to Japan. Mikuni plans to stop it, of course, and this is where Sato and Kimimaro finally step in and do something about it. They will devalue the yen and thus delay Mikuni, giving the pair a chance to challenge him to a Duel with the hopes of taking away his “Darkness” card. It controls the rotary that prints money from the last episode, y’see.
“Save the future!” the two “heroes” proclaim, but amidst all the talk, exposition, and Sato stuffing herself with more food (I’m surprised she wasn’t eating something while doing battle with Mikuni), the anime still hasn’t explained to me why we want to stop Mikuni. There’s a scene that is supposed to be teary and emotional between Kimimaro and Msyu, where he confesses that he’s doing this to protect her. Yes, yes, the future is wonderful, but if Mikuni is stopped, then [C] will run rampant and then what? Didn’t [C] gobble up Singapore, the Caribbean Republic, and other places? Again, the anime hasn’t convinced me that Kimimaro is really the hero here, despite Mikuni acting and talking all evil.
MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS AND POOR ANIMATION
But hey, don’t let a plot discrepancy like this stop us from all the delicious Persona-esque duels. Sato will take on Mikuni, which is obviously stupid because we know she can’t possibly win: she’s neither a mahou shoujo nor does she have a penis. In the meantime, Kimimaro has to hold off one of Mikuni’s partners, but for reasons rather unclear to me. Haven’t all the duels up until this point been one on one? Why does Kimimaro have to hold out against anybody? If duels aren’t one on one, why doesn’t he and Sato both tackle Mikuni at the same time?
The fight between the two pairs begin simultaneously and at first, Kimimaro wants to go at it solo because Msyu isn’t feeling well. He doesn’t fare well so Msyu ends up fighting anyway.
“Micro-mezzo-macroflation! Overheated economy!” Again, how one entre beats another remains unclear to me since the second damn episode. How come Msyu can pull off that “micro-mezzo-macro” thing and Kimimaro’s opponent can’t? Is it their Midas money? ‘Cause even if that’s the case, since when did Kimimaro get so much money over the course of the anime? Whatever — Kimimaro defeats the midboss and rushes back only to see that Mikuni has defeated Sato.
Cut in half, in fact, with black money in lieu of blood gushing out of her. Is this defeated defeated? Shrug — it seems like it as Sato bestows her asset to Kimimaro in what should be a heartfelt deathbed-esque scene. Seeing as how she hasn’t really been anything in the story other than Ms. Exposition-who-stuffs-herself-with-food, I didn’t feel anything.
All seems lost when Masakaki suddenly informs Kimimaro that he has a Darkness card after all. Well, great — why didn’t this come out earlier? Mikuni protests to no avail; Masakaki tells him that he’s only following a higher order. Yay for deus ex machina! The episode closes with Kimimaro and Mikuni staring each other down. Final boss fight next week with everything on the line — present versus future — but who should we root for? I don’t know! I guess I’ll just assume that the protagonist is always after the right thing!
Moe Sucks 
You don’t know how gratifying it is to see someone else pointing out all the issues with this show. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills listening to other people do nothing but heap praise on it.
Everyone I’ve talked to will concede that [C] is flawed. Then again, I don’t talk to most of the animeblogging community.
Woah, where are these people? Most of the people I know have dropped it. /forever alone
Lots of speculah on this episode. One of the speculations is that the North American FD and the Japanese FD are competing on who will last the longest, hence why they decided to give Kimimaro a Darkness card. The FD has no true will, it just gets kicks out of people scrambling about fighting for a lost cause I guess. Either way huge deus ex machina right here, I’m not very happy about that even if it would make sense for the FD to mess around with Mikuni.
Some of the things that happened here would probably make sense if someone bothered explaining it to me. But right now I’m just confused why the awesome guy in the colorful shirts had to go bankrupt. It probably had something to do with Mikuni (as they were trying to devalue his money) but I’m not that smart or attentive to get that. So most of the things just confused me.
But I’m not judging the show until the last episode, but I expected much worse. I still think it’s a great watch. I mean, if I weren’t so busy glaring scenes at that look like plot holes I would’ve liked it more. Q cannibalizing another asset is pretty damn cool. At least [C] makes for cool speculations like Jennifer being pregnant hence her constant eating and awesome announcer sound effects.
Hm, yeah, if the Masakakis are nothing more than trickster spirits, what a bizarre setup. We would have a mysterious alternate dimension where a silly money game gravely affects the real world and there’s really no explanation for its existence other than to watch people suffer. In that case, [C] would be making no cogent point about the real world and I assumed that’s what the creators were trying to do.
WTF? By who? It must have been recent too since she’s not exactly showing. And that would also imply that her baby is symbolized by that dog thing of hers.
I think the FD having no will is more like something to do with economics and I kind of forgot what the FD was representing. Probably banks or idk. I’m sure I’m not the best person to speculate on that. Hurhur. In the end, watching [C] for the economics is like watching K-on! for the music. And that’s– okay.
The people on /a/ having been going on about it. It would probably make sense but even so [C] doesn’t have the luxury of time to explain that. But still– part of why I enjoy [C] so much is because of the discussions and speculations it fuels.
My favorite is what Q represents. She’s almost always seen eating money and her ability is Cannibalization, some guy over at /a/ said that if it’s true that Q represents Mikuni’s future with his sister, then there’s nothing there but his sister continuously ‘eating’ up Mikuni’s money for her hospitalization. Which is kind of a mindfuck for me right now.
My only issue with any of this is that [C] isn’t exactly making any salient point about economics. The economy isn’t just random chance fucking over people for kicks. The ties between Q and eating Mikuni’s money makes sense, but it’s more of a “That’s sorta neat…” revelation than a “This changes… EVERYTHING!“
I suppose so~ [C] has a pretty bad case of ADHD. Lots of interesting points, the inability to focus on one for a certain amount of time.
I’m just glad you watch this so I don’t have to.