I have no idea what the creators were thinking with this episode. Let’s start with the beginning. After Mashu and Kimimaro’s poor communication skills led to their defeat last week, they begin this episode with perfect teamwork and knowing their opponent. All of their cooperation issues from the previous episode are resolved. This could have been a good opportunity to develop Mashu’s character, whose most notable trait is that she likes ramen. But we skip all of that development and jump straight to the result. Well, it’s a short series, so maybe they didn’t have time.
Except then the next twenty minutes are spent with three different people spouting gibberish at Kimimaro (and sexually assaulting him). I honestly have no idea what the point of this was or even what their disagreement was. Something about Souichiro fighting for the present, IMF girl wanting to destroy the root of the problem, and the other guy fighting only for the future. I’m not sure how their actual plans result in these things though. Kimimaro has a big decision: let the other guy forfeit on his behalf, or fight it out. Here’s a brilliant idea for the two of them: instead of paying money to forfeit, why don’t you both just stand there and do nothing?! That would make everyone happy. But no, Kimimaro, genius that he is, decides after all of this discussion, that he must fight and win. And he proceeds to (apparently) bankrupt the guy, the one outcome that every single person wanted to avoid.
I say apparently because they skipped the only potentially interesting part of the fight. They had Mashu get beat up and bleed her black blood all over the place. Then she and Kimimaro hold hands, scream at the top of their lungs and walk forward into the light of battle… only to immediately skip over to the aftermath.
Somehow, we have romantic hints being dropped between Kimimaro and Mashu this episode, which came completely out of nowhere. I guess we can forgive the creators for this one, since we probably would have noticed if the two main characters didn’t have a net personality less than a block of wood’s. Also the IMF woman has transformed from one of the more interesting characters into a complete joke of fanservice fodder and fast food.
Overall I’m rather disappointed in the direction that C has taken. It has an interesting premise… but it hasn’t fleshed it out well, isn’t making the best use of its time, and the characters are completely uninspired. It took over from Fractale this season in more than just its timeslot.
You are a moron.
Hang yourself
Woot, my first hate mail! I was worried I was doing something wrong. Thanks Anon1, I love you too!
I honestly just don’t understand what happened. Did Kimimaro win or lose? If he won, how the hell did he manage to do that?
I’m pretty sure he won, since the guy he was fighting seemed to lose his charity. As to how: it was through the power of LOVE and FRIENDSHIP.
“scream at the top of their lungs and walk forward into the light of battle… only to immediately skip over to the aftermath.”
= I actually liked that though. The show didn’t do… what we’re expecting xD And it also shows that the fights aren’t the main focus of the series ;D
It certainly wasn’t what I was expecting. And I don’t really care about the battles anyway. But skipping it entirely was rather abrupt, and I think the battle might have actually been more interested than Kimimaro getting lectured about who knows what by half the cast (which was the main problem for me here).
I think the big issue for me is that I can’t figure out what the main focus of the series is. They spend the first episode building up the main character who has money issues. Then they completely forget about all that, make him completely generic, and set up this unique world which seems to have some interesting politics and economics behind it. They proceed to neglect the politics and economics in favor of fighting. And now they ignore the fighting and have some philosophical talk about what the best way to save the world economy is. (here is where I don’t know what they’re talking about, since they haven’t explained much more about the economics behind the financial district: perhaps this is just me?) It seems like they’re on track to forget about all that saving the world economy stuff next and have a love triangle between Kimimaro, Mashu and IMF girl (purple haired girl has already been forgotten).
All of the individual components of C are great (except the last two), but I don’t feel that they’ve been tied together very well. It seems to me when watching that the show is having problems focusing its attention.