C3 finally concludes with nothing of value lost – having started off spectacularly, the series progressively fell victim to identity disorder, shuffling between situations and characters to the point it simply “sucks”.
Looking first at this latest episode, it’s just outright terrible. Our cast composed of sexy and cute girls, as well as presumed male lead Haruaki, who actually receives little to no screen time, are fighting against the second blonde haired female antagonist of the series – the same one who has been holding up the story for several episodes now, and we simply cannot understand why. She speaks of “the families” this and “the families” that, yet it is all no more than gibberish to even the most attentive and perceptive of viewer.
Think back to episode one, C3 gave us what seemed to be no more than a lighthearted slice of life with grand amounts of delicious blue haired eyecandy, then the second episode changes all of that in an instant. While the series was still doing well at that time, still retaining its charm, consider this, from that point on, it has shifted from a comical slice of life, to a hardcore action series, to who knows what – all while shuffling around the role of main character and sustaining an implied romance, yet failing, or rather, not even attempting to build upon it.
The series simply expanded in all the wrong directions – if anything, it imploded as it never properly elaborated or closed a plot point.
We’re not sure what the premise is within the 12th episode – yet going based on all the apparent visual nonsense to ensue, as our characters do battle for whatever reason with the blonde haired woman who is bothering them for who knows why, Sovereignty and Shiraho arrive to deliver a sexy flavor to the series, with ample amounts of moe as well – and as Shiraho does some trick, she suddenly changes the entire flow of the fight.
Our crew of protagonists big and small were all being annihilated – now within only a split second of lacking creativity, rushed pacing, and flawed story writing, you can’t even tell they were ever losing. To make matters more infuriatingly disgusting and insulting to the light novel and manga, no one loses. The blonde escapes with characters we’ve never ever seen before – as if they’re attempting to promise viewers a second season or something. Although if that hypothetical second season will be anything like this, we certainly do not want it.
When C3 began to focus on characters beyond our adorable Fear-In-Cube, this is where it simply began slipping off the edge – they couldn’t properly decide how greatly to feature each character, and eventually, it reached a point where the main characters were being overshadowed, and side-characters, with their respective lives, were receiving all the attention. The new OP did not aide to combat this at all – assuming this arc involving the blonde haired “families” woman revolved around our Fear-tan, why does the opening sequence feature BDSM bishoujo Kirika?
The opening sequence is a significant part of a series and if it does not properly portray the show – that’s not doing anyone any favors in attempting to comprehend what this complicated mess of an animation is about.
And in regards to the Shiraho moe mentioned earlier, moe is a facet of a series and C3 originally offered this in abundant quantities – yet as it carried on, the cute scenes also died off. This was a poorly balanced trait which either should have been minimal from the start, or simply have not existed assuming they didn’t want to carry through with it fully to the end.
This is not to say the series had to be all moe all the time – yet recent episodes, this one especially, have been lacking in the cute Fear close-ups we’ve come to love. A significant change in format and expectation which the series originally set itself.
Besides the fact many minor characters were bland and difficult to sympathize with from beginning to end, zero substantial progress has come in regards to our heroine’s curse with the conclusion of the series. The purpose of “intelligence disks” remains obscure and they feel completely out of place – awkward even as attention jumps over to this lately introduced and still unclear aspect of the story after the end of any fight, still ambiguous in their relation to the curse.
If one were only to watch this series up to half-way through the second episode, they would literally be at the exact same point of plot development, minus the introduction of several meaningless characters who won’t contribute much to the main story anyways.
A single great feature of the series was its transcendental visual elements as we’ve mentioned with earlier episodes:
One cannot say anything without first recognizing the unworldly artwork. It is beautiful on a level of superiority unmatched by even Fate/Zero or Guilty Crown. The character designs of moe girls are of course not nearly as original, yet the overall composition is where they become exceptional.
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In this single still frame, C3 contains more artistic technique than one will ever find in any anime – even when taking into account those highly abstract few. This single frame is a testament to the series’ applied skill. Keep in mind C3′s tactical pallet of artistic tricks is mixed, looking below one can see the high variety of different styles clashing. Various color schemes utilized in every scene as if every individual frame was artfully brought out to the fullest, which they most definitely were.
Yet as episodes went by, even this formerly marvelous facet was quick to die off, with much of the aesthetic beauty being replaced with budget animation techniques and pathetic fight scenes, leaving only a seldom amount of visual splendor compared to that seen from the start – meaning that not even this can serve as a redeeming aspect of the anime in the end.
Overall, C3 is a great series – however the anime is not, it fails to live up to the aesthetic majesty of the manga, and it embarrass itself in terms of plot and complete composition.
