"C" is about Kikimaro, a 19 year old college student who's studies economics and is trying to have a normal life by getting enough money to live by every day. That is until a mysterious figure named Masakaki offers him a deal that allows him to make more faster money if he allows his future to be collateral. He accepts and gets sucked in The Financial District, a parallel world where each week, he must compete into battles known as deals. If he wins these deals, he gets more money and if he loses, he loses everything form his future to his friends and even his existence will be erased. Now Kikimaro is on the fight of his life to uncover the dark secrets behind his father's disappearance and the district itself.
The story for this show is really engaging. It's a story about money and how man's obsession with money can affect their outcome of their future. Can the money that you won on these "deals" save your future or will it just make your life worst than it is before? It asks a lot of questions about our use of money and it's up to the viewer to figure those questions out for themselves. I also like the world of The Financial District, where members fight on these deals with their "assets" in order to win battles (kinda like Pokemon but way cooler =P). The characters are pretty good. Mikuni is a man that owns Japan's financial district and would do anything to save his country from disappearing from reality while risking something more precious that he never thought before on his life, while Kikimaro is a normal kid trying to deal with the situations around him and doing his best in battle to save himself and his future and Jennifer is a woman on an investigation in The Financial District and finding out if the Midas Money (the currency in The Financial District and it's all black) makes it out of the real world and affects the worlds economy and there are other characters that I forgot to mentioned, they felt disposable, serving no purpose in the story (minus the teacher of course). The biggest problem with the story is that it rushes a lot of unresolved plot holes into the final episode and it ruins the whole point of following these characters throughout the whole story, despite what was going for in the beginning of the show. Also, it's a short series with only 11 episodes. Goddamn it! Why does every show with a very cool concept has to be fucking short?! This show has potential to be an excellent story but with 11 episodes only, it's not enough to expand the concept to big lengths. What a letdown.
Although I have to say, the animation by Tatsunoko Productions is a visual stunner, even on Blu-Ray. Watching this on Blu-ray made my eyes melt with how much vibrant and colorful detail there was in the art, but the real show-stealer is The Financial District. The style of that place is like TRON meets Wall Street and it's a pretty slick place. The art is creative and the overall luxurious design are excellent. Character models are well drawn and they had their unique looks but the model for Masakaki is the one I loved the most. It just looks like a cool anime style version of The Joker but in a more demented way. The dub by Funimation was hit and miss. The actors that steal the show are Scott Freeman on his over the top but chilling performance as Masakaki and Brina Palencia's rough but at times cute performance as Msyu, Kikimaro's asset. Michael J. Tatum's performance as Mikuni is bland as hell and it feels very shallow in the emotional scenes of the show. Todd Haberkorn's performance as Kikimaro was Ok, but very typical and nothing outstanding on his performance. Funimation could have hired some unknown actors to voice these roles instead of using only famous people over and over but hey and while It's a decent dub, it isn't anything amazing to listen to.
C-Control is a good series. It has it shares of big problems like huge plot holes that never get resolved and some issues with mediocre secondary characters, but it offers an interesting story to keep you interested, some nice action scenes and some top notch visuals that will look glorious on your HDTV if you have one. However, if you get too focused on these plot-holes in the show, then your enjoyment on this show will wear thin on you.
