STORY: 4/10
Analysis: Premise 2/2, Pacing 0/2, Complexity 1/2, Plausibility 0/2, Conclusion 1/2
Episode 1: Gah, the same old crap I saw in all those throw away shows. Some meek guy suddenly finds a clueless naked chick in his house and before you know it, the girl-next-door appears and starts a cat fight for whom gets to have him. FOR WHAT REASON, HE IS A WUSS! After which fetishes each one of them represents (the flat-chested loli tsundere and the megane busty yandere), he goes to school and she goes for a walk… Hey wait a second, where did she find the clothes? She came in the house completely naked, the wuss was living all alone there and I doubt the love rival gave her some. Either the wuss is a cross dresser, a panties thief, or this show already doesn’t give a rat’s ass about plot continuity. Meh, I might as well keep watching for this amazing thing everybody was talking about. The rest of the show is about random things she does wrong because she is a dumb broad and the wuss is supposed to teach her. A dumb broad and a teenager tutor, all alone in a house. Yeah, the usual hentai excuse that never heads anywhere; I’ve seen that a million times already. Further more, she is a loli that transforms into a box. That’s right, it goes beyond the loli-in-the-box trope. The pilot episode was the same trash as always but then they say the second changes everything. Let’s see…
Episode 2: Half of it was the usual random school comedy skits I wouldn’t care less about. The other half suddenly turns to some weird fighting shounen with insane characters. And people all of a sudden transform to swords and summon guillotines out of thin air. What is this, the ecchi version of Soul Eater?
Episode 3: Cube girl is now all emo for being a weapon of mass destruction and the whole episode is spent on the meek dude looking for her and accepting her for whom she is. Yeah, very corny stuff but definitely NOT what I would expect to see in the third episode of an ecchi title. Unfortunately the ending of episode 3 turns back into a more than typical ecchi by having both the chicks to AGAIN trying to win his affection and AGAIN having fan service.
Episode 4 and onwards: So they are now trying to train their powers, while still goofing around and fending off crazy people with magic weapons. And no, I won’t bother to make further explaining to what exactly they do because it is just a slight variation of the same plot that happened above.
Each episode up to 3 had a very different feel to it, which is a good thing. The problem is these types of shows usually spend the first 2-3 episodes with good humour and a promise for an amazing continuation, only to quickly turn to wasted potential and run-of-the-mill sex jokes that head nowhere and end in the middle of nowhere. I felt like the series showed all it had to show in terms of context in episodes 2 and 3, with 4 and on feeling like a rehash. No matter how many new characters or areas or notions were introduced latero on, it still felt like it reached the maximum of its capacity. As expected, it turned to an almost storyless random ecchi premise which henceforth rehashed what was going on in the beginning.
CHARACTERS: 5/10
Analysis: Presence 1/2, Personality 1/2, Backdrop 1/2, Development 1/2, Catharsis 1/2
Generic with openings for improvement that burn out early in the story. I have seen these stereotypes a million times so far and only when they escape their mold by developing is the only way they get my thumbs up. The problem of course is how they remain generic softporn fetishes, with little motivation for you to care about them, and they all pretty much follow the same pattern to the point it becomes boring. They all try to have this cute/sexy feeling combined with heavy drama in the likes of Elfen Lied. You know, cute little sexualized girls that feel emo for being used as weapons and not loved as people? The problem is that Elfen Lied had buckets of blood, death, and nude, amidst a pseudo-excuse for social criticism and moral deconstruction… while C3 is just goofing around with shallow personal drama. No matter how many times they fight, nothing of importance comes out of it and death is just a joke. So by the end of the show you get nothing but your generic dorky male living in a house full of harem bimbos, and the viewer doesn’t care about any of them in the least. You don’t feel like the scriptwriter did much with its characters other than introducing one, presenting a superficial problem, and then thrown aside just to introduce another one with a similar problem. Gets boring fast.
ART: 9/10
Analysis: General Artwork 2/2, Character Figures 1/2, Backgrounds 2/2, Animation 2/2, Visual Effects 2/2
The production values are very good. The character figures are generic as hell, but the visual effects and the cinematics are simply amazing and I was surprised to see this is not a SHAFT production (although it has people who worked for them). The show is basically separated into your typical ecchi comedy with its overused sceneries of schools and houses full of sexy lolis goofing around with a hapless male, and to psychedelic fighting scenes, full of creepy-looking fluorescent weapons and yandere chicks attacking one another. The later part is definitely a lot more eye-captivating as it has far more smooth animation and exciting choreography, although even the silly everyday moments were given attention in terms of cinematics and colour palette. Eventually though, there is very little to look at despite the wonderful way everything is animated for the sole reason there is no actual gravity in whatever happens. Injuries are a joke, weapons are magically appearing out of thin air, and the girls are doing the usual dumb romcom things we see in all such shows.
SOUND: 6/10
Analysis: Voice Acting 2/3, Music Themes 2/4, Sound Effects 2/3
Meh, generic songs and squeaky voices; nothing much. I was surprised to see Fear being voiced by Tamura Yukari and not Rie Kugimiya. Their voices are so alike and Fear is a loli tsundere so why not? Meh, I guess they all sound the same after awhile.
VALUE: 1/10
Analysis: Historical Value 0/3, Rewatchability 0/3, Memorability 1/4
Although a step higher from being just goofball softporn, the series still becomes boring quite fast simply because it is trying to combine light themes with heavy ones in an uneven way. I am more than aware how most famous high seller anime are in effect serious themes presented in a light/comical/sexy way but C3 is not a good example. The transition from ecchi to heavy drama was too sudden and although it was quite a shock the first time it happened on episode 2, the repetition thereafter in almost the exact way didn’t have the same impact. So no, overall the story was bad for becoming repetitive and shallow too fast and too obvious. The ending leaves you completely apathetic and I really wonder if it would be better off if it had ended on episode 3, long before the excitement was gone. I personally find no replay value in the show and didn’t enjoy it much past episodes 2 and 3.
ENJOYMENT: 2/10
This anime looks like a weenie…
c3
… when with care it could look like a monster cock.
C==============3
OVERALL: 4.5/10
