The main thing that really catches your attention towards the beginning is the setting. The creators placed a tremendous focus on the mysterious Financial District, and did a great job at building and fleshing out the setting. There was a sense of exoticness to the setting, with the rules and regulations to the battles and such rather intriguing at times.
However, this explicit focus on the setting pulled away a lot of screentime from the characters, leaving behind a cast of characters that are really bland and difficult to sympathize with. Seriously, Kimimaro remained a passive onlooker until the very end, Jennifer got little to no development until the last two episodes of the series, any mentioning of Kimimaro’s father just disappeared, and Souichiro’s mentioning of the conflict between different factions in the district (starlight guild vs whatever) completely vanished into thin air. The only real character worth noting here is Mikuni Souichiro, and even he ended up not doing anything exceptional for this series.
In the end, [C] was a series that was just too outright ambitious. It had a lot, and a lot, of interesting ideas and a well built setting. However, the serious lack of time in being able to flesh out these aspects to the show is what caused this series to falter.
