CHARACTER: 7/10
ART: 7/10
SOUND: 5/10
ENJOYMENT: 6/10
OVERALL: 6/10
The need for money only increases with time but what if you could score a big one by betting something? Tempting? Then again what is Money? How much is your future really worth? Would you stake your own future for the sake of others? These topics are attached to the story of ‘C: The money of Soul and Possibility Control’ meaning the anime is mainly about the Economic side of the Stock market! Don’t worry the concept is really stimulating, the world building is set to its own style thus segregating itself from other shows. I like seeing a story about the Economics of the world since it involves all of us even though it’s a confusing topic to grasp for most of us. And the story goes something like this where Yoga (who’s the MC) is a College student who’s broke as hell and after meeting an eccentric individual, is selected as an entrepreneur to a place that exists in the supernatural dimension where he can make a lot of money by betting his future. A player’s future is conjured up to a Familiar being that acts as an Asset and both shall participate in a deal (battle) with other players on a weekly basis where winners are rewarded with more money (Black money of special kind that are only visible to the players of Financial District yet they work as normal money) while the loser nervously calculates the magnitude of loses since their future depends on it! (Losing your future entails losing your meaning of existence!) In addition, the players that go bankrupt are immediately kicked out from the Financial District for eternity! Yoga’s Familiar predictably turns out to be a demoness named Msyu and while new players lose in their first match, in a typical fashion, Yoga manages to survive his 1st battle with the help of Msyu. And this anime gets interesting when we discover that the corroborative from the district actually has alarming ramifications on a worldwide scale which makes sense since more use of Financial district currency (Black Money) in the market naturally will lead to the fall of the country’s actual money! Early on the plot captures your undivided attention regarding the struggle of what’s more important, sustaining your present or shielding your future! The introduction of this concept elevates the show to new heights due to its interesting and challenging memo. Yet the message was poorly delivered due to the overall repetitive nature of this arc and generic direction in which the finale took place, lazily putting the end to this stimulating plot and replacing it with a predictable fight between the good and bad guy!
I will start with Mikuni who’s the most interesting character of the anime since he was the most fleshed out and he kinda happens to be a villain, even though he isn’t, no matter how hard the anime tries to make him one though! He was one of the rare ones to win in his debut at the District and later went on to build his own guild which reached to the top in no time, making him and his guild very rich. We also see that Mikuni’s yearning for money isn’t driven by selfish desires unlike most of the District players, he’s rather arranged himself in a powerful political position by constantly working towards regulating the tide of District money by helping the government and its partners from reaching total bankruptcy during their Economy’s meltdown! And the aforementioned continued arc comes into play here where Mikuni is all in for jeopardizing the future just to enhance his presence while Yoga eventually goes against this ‘vision’, hell bent on protecting the future. What’s brilliant here is that both sides aren’t exactly wrong nor correct. They just happened to choose a side and since you can’t have both, you can side with either of them without feeling guilty! While Mikuni’s portrayal as a character was great, Yoga’s development was that much boring! You swiftly lose interest in him since he comes across very generic. His wins never counted as wins for me since he won his battles just because he was the MC of the show, not cause of sheer skills or strength! Also, he prides himself on wanting a Normal life yet easily gets abstracted by others without weighing out his actions or penalties, this just proved that he had no real ambitions. Msyu doesn’t get a lot of screen time but she’s pretty generic too and she’s present just for the romance! The romance came across very clichéd and unreal and misplaced! From what I saw, Yoga treated Msyu more as a friend than a master unlike the other players and she mistakenly takes this act as encouragement for feelings which just made Yoga look bad cause he’s only doing this out of his naivety! Plus, Yoga has eyes on his future only and maybe Hanabe (another girl). To make matters worse, an effort for the Romance sprung up in the last 2 episodes and the anime failed at prospering their relationship so everything felt very forced! The rest of characters are mediocre as well who rarely get any screen time, making them forgettable and hurting the show’s momentum. I mean I can only remember 2 of the side character faces, a lady and a guy. All I know is that the Lady eats all the time while working for some secret government branch and the Photographer guy can basically do anything! You can either get by with Awesome Secondary characters + Weak Leads or Stellar Leads with Average Supporting characters and this anime gets by none! Hanabe is another student character but her arc was really weird cause she goes from a typical friend of Yoga to a sorta potential love interest to a depressed girl all in 1 episode! After which she’s barely mentioned at all.
The overall animation is well lit with bright colours but the quality remains inconsistent throughout and while the design of characters and the Financial district were all well done, their execution turned out to be messy with sloppy use of 3D. But Top marks to the visual department for brilliantly displaying the Best and Worst of both worlds! I particularly loved the visual representation of the Black border which were used to distinguish between the 2 worlds, perfectly doing their job whenever Yoga and Msyu were together on a single screen. In addition, the fights were nicely displayed by showcasing the different type of magic used and the use of Black money as a replacement for blood was cleverly shown! But then again, the editing in some episodes were very jarring. As for Voice Acting and the Soundtrack, it was pretty generic with nothing really standing out.
This anime oddly finds itself in a unique category of its own by explaining its story too much yet you understand very little of it! I found the main reason to be the inconsistencies with the rules of the world, the fights and the story itself! Despite dedicating a few episodes for explaining the mechanisms of the Financial District, you are still hazily unclear with some parts. For instance, you use Black money to use magic during a fight so powerful magic means Big bucks but none of the characters every showed any type of concerns when using massive magic spells. Some players had more than 1 Asset which wasn’t explained either or tricks like boosting you up during a battle by letting other players to your stock were never brought up or used again. Let’s just say I didn’t agree with the justifications given! It’s also pretty apparent the Studio were running out of money for the quality drops in spite of the anime’s 11 episodes run time. This also means a rushed ending where too many things happened in the last 2 episodes thus ruining the finale. And just like the quality of the show falls as you proceed further, so does the writing! The major events towards the end were introduced just to raise the stakes for they were flimsily explained by glossing over many vital points. The anime would have benefited with a slightly bigger budget and more episodes to fill in the plot holes. Still it manages to leave an impression for here I am writing a review about it! It’s a mix bag, not exactly bad nor good, but somewhere in the middle.
