This show is gorgeous, it’s directed by Tetsurou Araki (the director of Death Note and Kurozuka) and animated by Production IG. It’s bound to be action packed, and for those reasons I’m going to blog it. I don’t have any expectations for this beyond mere eye candy, though.

Here’s the thing: we’re in the middle of a very creative season, with continuations of shows with incredibly rich and imaginative settings (Last Exile, Hunter X Hunter, Fate/Zero), new series with really creative premises and purposes (Ben-To, Un-Go, Chihayafuru, Mirai Nikki and even Phi Brain). And here this show comes with its superpowered teenagers, bland boy meets mysterious girl, stereotypically sadistic villains… and that’s pretty much it. Beyond the fact that it can shoot a good action scene and that this show looks amazing when it wants to, it just doesn’t have anything that sets it apart.

What I’m really afraid of is that this never really gets fixed. My big problem here is that this thing is written by the same guy who wrote Mai Otome and Macross Frontier (ignoring for a moment that he also came up with Seiko no Qwaser). Thankfully these first two episodes were not as bad as Mai Otome: this show is unremarkable, not bad, obnoxious and stupid. However, I’m more and more beginning to see this as the spiritual successor of Macross Frontier, but without the idols. It too looked pretty, but had a very weak story and bland characters, who never really seemed to know where they were going.

I was hoping for this episode to prove me wrong, but instead this was even more generic, due to the lack of quiet moments. First of all there are the usual questions: why do both the military and the rebels, despite having plenty of adults, depend on teenagers to pilot their mechas? If you have a reason for it: then that’s fine, but don’t just put some cute girls in mecha suits just for the sake of fanservice.

Also, the blond kid. Whose idea was that; seriously? This guy is the only actually bad character in this series so far. In every single scene, he’s portrayed as a psycho with a temper, even when there’s no reason for him to be so. I mean, the bomb girl in Mirai Nikki was psycho for a reason: she was risking her life in the middle of a truckload of explosives that she set up herself. This guy instead is like “muhahaha, I’m evil; bump into me and I’ll kill you!”

What’s more is that this show is too busy portraying its bad guys as assholes, rather than actually make compelling villains. The point where they killed those random civilians (who strangely were never mentioned again after their death; not even people mourning about them). What’s also bugging me is the existence of the female lead: why is she in this show, really? All she’s done so far is give powers to the male lead (which, according to what people are saying, can be done by everyone else as well). Oh, and appear in his school. Why was there a need to show that in the most cliched way possible?

However, what has also really bugged me so far: I’m seeing very little of Tetsurou Araki’s distinctive style here. I’m a fan of Death Note, Kurozuka and also that one story he did for Aoi Bungaku: the atmosphere and direction there were rock-solid, but they were nothing like what was shown here. This show needs to grow. Get rid of that psycho blonde and focus more on the characters without wasting time on pointless side stories or making the action too repetitive.

Yup, the ending is going to be really important for this one: how will this get solved? That’s the big question. That will be the biggest factor in whether this show will leave a bad taste or not. The thing is that Mikuni is not one of those stereotypical villains who are evil for the sake of being evil: he made the decision to drastically alter the country and tighten the grip of the Midas Money on Japan, because the alternative would be even worse. What can Kimimaro and the information broker offer to prevent bankruptcy?

If it hits the right marks however, then this will end up as a really good series. The interesting thing with C is that we were all obviously expecting the same directional style as with Mononoke and Kuchuu Buranko, and yet it was very different. And yet, the direction in this episode was once again really good. The use of music got even better than it already was, it kept changing and keeping things dynamic while at the same time keeping things together and developing its plot in one direction. This climax so far has been rushed, but not random, and yet it was packed with neat ideas worthy of a climax, rather than just let everything devolve into just “more power!” like anime often pull this.

I am still surprised that this show hasn’t self-destructed yet, though. Lately, I’ve gotten very sceptical of series that try to stuff too much in too little. Especially adaptations suffer from this (Togainu no Chi, Yumekui Merry, Kuragehime, Sengoku Basara, Durarara), but also original stories like Fractale and Sora no Oto tripped up pretty badly in their final stretch. Interestingly, the cause of this seems to generally be half-assed pacing: the shows misuse their time, plowing on slowly and forgetting to build up vital plot points, or suddenly force a huge increase of pacing when they suddenly realize that they need to end on something epic, ending up with too little time to actually pull that off. C doesn’t have that, or so far at least.

It will depend on the next episode to see whether the creators really knew what they were doing, but so far I can see the layout of this series: first it took its time to flesh out the world with its random cases, showing a different part of is concept with every episode, while it actually started in time gaining momentum for its finale.

I mean, this show has still flaws: there’s a lot of stuff that came out of bloody nowhere, and that lack of ability to explain this stuff is unfortunate due to the short length. That black card in particular came out of nowhere and while it’s understandable that that clown would have some sort of trick like that, it would have been nice to have seen that announced beforehand. This episode also again has Kimimaro winning against all odds and I’m still not sure how he exactly did it. This was a flaw that had it coming from the beginning, and unfortunately wasn’t avoid. But those action scenes looked damn cool though.

Ooh, this episode was very good! It probably even was the best episode since episode 2, but at the same time it still was nothing like these first two episodes. The key of this episode was suddenly getting a lot of customers to book a room at the same day while three of the staff members were either sick or had a day off. The stress in keeping things running and the build-up of this were really well done here.

On top of that, the added chaos also showed different sides of everyone, and nearly everyone was enjoyable to watch. The only one who wasn’t was that Takako-woman, but she served her purpose in making things even more hectic by focusing on the mystery guests. This is the pace that this series needs to keep up.

This episode was forced, though. It’s one thing for Grandmother to collapse on such a busy day, but Kou also just had the perfect timing. Not to mention that this set-up was perfect again for fueling the Tohru love triangle that I never really was a fan of. That’s one thing that this series still needs to convince me that it’s going to be worth the build-up.

This series is crazy.I mean, this was already apparent and all, but this episode again was just completely out there. This episode was again disturbing and again in a different way than before.

The use of a cute girl for a fourteen year old boy… as if he wasn’t tortured enough already. It’s a good thing that this girl likes to make her victims suffer and all, but that act of hers was great on hindsight. Sure there was fanservice and all, but that was more like functional nude than fanservice. I’m not sure whether the manga had an explanation of why her brother found her at exactly the right time and all, but even then this was a ridiculously intense and crazy episode.

It’s just a shame that the animation in this series wasn’t up to the usual Manglobe standards. Because of that the distorted faces of that girl sometimes became a bit stupid. At the same time though, Ganta cursing his heart out at the end was just awesome.