Anime Blu Ray Set Review: C3
By: ScarletteNote: We were provided a review copy of C3 courtesy of Funimation
C3 : Haruaki Yachi has seen his fair share of curses, but despite his familiarity, even Haruaki is out of his element when his father mails him a cursed torture cube with the humanoid figure of a cute young girl named Fear Kubrick (no relation). Now, he’s got to help her break her curse and leave behind her homicidal past before dangerous forces get ahold of her deadly powers. Sassy loudmouth Fear has a hard time keeping a low profile, but with the help of Haruaki’s other cursed comrades, maybe this cubed cutie can find her place in the human world—IF she can break her curse.
Box Set Review:
The boxset for C3 is what you would considered "standard" for blu ray sets. It includes the entire series, 12 episodes, in both DVD and Blu-ray format. The packaging is clean, highlighting the series main character on the front. It doesn't give much away about the show, but the box isnt cluttered--which gets points with me because I really dislike super busy boxes. That being said, the box art is enough to make me pick it up and flip it over to find out about the series. The art design is clean and seems to be something that peaks my interests.C3 box set is a standard set that includes a small handful of bonus features: the textless opening and closing songs, US trailer, and some hype trailers. Nothing too special, if these had been the only "bonus" features I would have been just a little disappointed. However, the C3 provides a small wow factor by providing you with the OVA of the series as well. Not a bad bonus feature, as the industry really likes making multiple box sets for more money--its nice to see an entire series in a single collection. Currently the C3 complete series box is is retailing on the Funimation site for $37.49, reasonable price for what you get in the set.
Anime Review:
C3 definitely looks and seems like something right up my alley, the kind premise that I would enjoy quite a bit. It looked promising, started promising, and just faltered about half quarter of the way through. The story shows some really great potential for character development and growth among the cast, but it just never happens. Everybody in the cast is forced into a certain character criteria, and stays in that criteria the entire time. The only character that is mildly interesting is Fear, the main character, who just so happening to live in the cursed box of torment. Her gemni type personality is what keeps her a little fresher than the rest of the cast who is very one dimensional. But sadly, Fear- at best- is two dimensional, even with her personality flips. She goes between curious and sweet, to murdering psycho pretty quickly, but the triggers for the events are nothing surprising. Whatever you think will trigger Fear, does--C3 uses a very stale character formula making me not so attached to anybody in the show.The show is filled with a ton of fan service, as there is only one male character out numbers by a large female cast. The fan service is what really kills me about this series. I dont mind the occasional fan service or moe but when it over runs an episode, effectively taking up a large portion of the series time, it just gets old really quick. Almost as if the creative team on C3 spent more time imagining fan service than developing a solid foundation and character development. The story and execution of the story is barely acceptable, but it makes C3 for an easy watch, it doesnt take up too much brain power. The animation is good, but you can tell C3 wasn't exactly a high budget anime. C3 released back in 2014, and even though the animation is considered "new school" but you can tell that it looks pretty dated or not of high quality. The colors are pretty flat, very minimal shading and detail attention--this is pretty prevalent in the character's eye. When Kirika is in a scene Im distracted by the poor state of the animation, particularly her eyes. They're huge--standard practice in anime--but they're so DEAD and flat looking. And this just isnt her character design. I understand that it's her nature to be pretty dead pan, but there are plenty of other series who have similar characters to Kirika and the other anime just executes the look better. I mean, you look at the eyes on her and its very plain, no dimensional aspect, just a single color for her eyes and that's it. And it's this failure of art direction that runs rampant in C3, everything in the series lacks any kind of finesse to make the series interesting to look at or do a double take, or even just appreciate the style and animation.
The voice acting in C3 is passable-- they could have made worst decision for the voice actors and the direction for some of the scenes, but this only stands for the Japanese audio. The C3 box set does not include fully dubbed episodes....and that's for the best. I swung by Funimation's streaming platform to check out a dubbed version of C3 and...I lasted about 15 minutes before I had to stop. The English dub is awful. There is no beating around the bush on this one, do NOT ever watch the dubbed version of C3. Please, do yourself the favor and pass. I suffered half an episode for you to let you know to NEVER do it.The Verdict?:For the price, C3 is a good buy for someone who is looking to expand their anime collection. Is C3 ground breaking? Far from it. Is it a solid anime? Debatable. The animation and voice acting is passable, the story and development is lacking, but its an easy watch that will keep you entertained for a few hours. If you're into fan service, C3 has that ten fold--please enjoy Kirika's cursed weapon outfit, its the flagship of the C3 series. If you've got some cash to burn and time to pass, C3 will keep you occupied for a span of time, but it's really more of a "I got nothing else to watch" show. C3 is a passable anime, it hits all the usual-standard- anime notes, but is nothing spectacular in any department.