C³ – 03

Some people take getting their arms cut off better than others

Sorry for the rather late post again, midterms are brutal. Oh how I miss those days of summer where I had time to write three posts in one day… and the warm weather. I miss the warmer weather as well.

This episode picks up where it left off last time with Fear suddenly turning insane. She uses a black cube and summons a bunch of torture devices to attack Peavy with. I should probably also mention here that Fear apparently has 46 of these torture devices (they seem to have left out that little detail). Fear and Peavy have a sadist battle for a while and they’re pretty evenly matched with both of them sustaining mild injuries.

Fear suddenly claims that she has 100 years more experience than Peavy and Peavy’s other arm goes flying off due to Fear’s summoned guillotine. With her arm gone and her other arm weaponless, Peavy uses her catchphrase a bunch of times saying that she’ll kill Fear. The woman’s obviously lost it (even more so than before). During this, Fear laughs manically and Haruaki just kind of stands there watching this entire thing). Suddenly, bandages come out of nowhere and pull Peavy away from the battle and down a nearby cliff.

Haruaki thinks that the ordeal is over at that point, but Fear attacks him using her torture wheel…..thing. Fear says that she wants to hear him scream because making people scream proves her existence. Haruaki still does nothing at this point and Konoha (still in sword form) has to force Haruaki to defend himself from Fear’s attacks. So yeah, it looks like Haruaki’s skills from last episode are probably due to Konoha guiding him. The battle ends when the black cube Fear is using to summon her torture devices is knocked out of her hand and disintegrates.

Fear turns back to normal and notes the rain as another thing she’s experiencing for the first time. Everything Peavy said was true and Fear says that she realised what sin is through killing so many people. Haruaki is perfectly okay with housing a serial murderer since her curses (that have affected her other owners in horrible ways) won’t affect him because he’s immune for whatever reason. However, Fear doesn’t believe that she can be forgiven and after saying that Haruaki’s kindness is the worst (and something else that can’t be heard), she runs off and disappears down a cliff. Haruaki finally faints from blood loss.

He wakes up in his house with Konoha taking care of him. She suggests he go to the hospital, but obviously, he wants to go search for Fear. Konoha says that Fear left on her own and Peavy is still out there, but Haruaki says that Fear’s final words were “It’s best if I sleep alone”, so she’s planning on doing something worse than just running away. Konoha gives up on trying to talk him out of it and talks ‘to herself’ saying that Fear reminds her of her past self and how she probably doesn’t have any common sense (though most of you probably already figured this out in episode 1).

Meanwhile, Fear stumbles about the city in the rain thinking about how screams prove her existance. There, Kirika runs after her into a dark alleyway to see if she’s okay. However, when she catches up to her, Fear summons a giant drill torture device (using the Rubik’s cube…?) saying that Kiriko’s screams will do fine. Fear attacks Kirika and is about to kill her, but Kirika yelling at her to stop brings Fear back. Fear walks off after that.

So back to Peavy, she’s now naked and bandage loli bandages her up. Apparently this causes extreme pain because in order to close a fatal wound, it needs to exert the same amount of pain. Also, the Chupacabra Bandage is alive (and cursed). Peavy gets angry at the loli for taking her away from the fight, but the loli says that Auxiliary are there to support their organization’s missions. If she had let Peavy die, it would mean that she was incompetent as an Auxiliary. Peavy calms down with a cigarette and insists on seeing her Auxiliary’s face. It’s a (GASP) loli.

While Haruaki searches for Fear, he gets a call from Kirika saying that Fear was acting weird. She says what she saw was nothing though (ignoring the fact that Fear tried to kill her/summoned a giant drill with a Rubik’s cube). Haruaki promises to tell her the truth later.

During this, Fear remembers her past and how she tortured the one she loved. She goes to the ocean and to the end of a dock, noting how eerie the ocean looks. Remembering Haruaki, she thinks she hears his voice, but when she turns around, there’s no one. Feeling regretful, she falls back into the ocean thinking that Haruaki won’t come after her because she’s cursed.

Around then, Haruaki runs to the ocean because he thought she would be there from her past words. Seeing Fear’s cube on the dock, he notes how obvious it is where she went and dives in after her.

When Fear wakes up, Haruaki is carrying her and it’s stopped raining. Fear gets angry at Haruaki calling her heavy and almost says that she’ll curse him, but stops him sentence. Haruaki then says that he has something to say as well and that if Fear says to put her down or to leave her alone, he’ll curse her so her boobs stop growing (lol). Haruaki repeats that he can’t be cursed so it’s okay for Fear to be there. Fear then explains that she’s terrified of hearing someone close to her scream (so what set her off last episode wasn’t the blood, but hearing Haruaki cry out in pain). She asks again if it’s okay for her to be forgiven and Haruaki says it’s all up to her.

After the ending credits, Konoha and Kirika go to Haruaki’s house to find Fear on top of him trying to wash his back. Konoha has had enough of walking in on this stereotypical harem stuff, so she announces that she’s moving in with them as well.

End Thoughts:

Well it’s nowhere near as the first episode, but I found this episode was just a big ball of drama. While I can understand Fear being depressed over being a murderer and that, did we really need an entire episode dedicated to her emoing around in the rain? I guess the entire thing just felt incomplete to me. I mean, Haruaki’s speech at the end was pretty much the exact thing he’s been telling her all episode. I guess it was solved by the fact that he ran after her…? I mean, I like how it ended and all, but there was just something missing in the solution. That being said, Haruaki is actually a pretty awesome character who probably deserves the harem he’s building himself. Fear is actually pretty interesting herself. I hope they focus more on Fear’s past on upcoming episodes because that story about killing the person she loved sounds extremely intriguing to me. The same goes for how cursed objects come into existence and such. Just when did Fear become conscious of the fact that she was killing people and it was wrong?

While this episode was dramatic, the animation did the drama well. There was so much stereotypical dramatic stuff going on with the animation, but it was all beautifully done. For example, the slow motion rain during that one scene looked amazing. Same with the monotone effects they used by the ocean mirroring Fear’s mood. Also, that scene with Fear sinking down in the water and the black closing in on her was pretty thought evoking as well. By coincidence, I was learning about representing different emotions in design class a couple of weeks ago and an example for depression was pretty similar to what was shown there, so that scene really clicked with me. The angles this anime uses are pretty interesting and these people really play on emotions with little things like this.

This anime has come a long way from the first episode in such a short time, but where will it go from here? Of course Peavy will come looking for revenge, but I seriously hope that they don’t revert back to the standard harem stuff in the meantime. I guess they could also bring in another person from Peavy’s organization as well. That would be interesting. But what I’m most concerned with now is Fear’s cube thing. If that’s what she uses to summon those torture devices, will any cube do? Does she even really need it? Will the anime even bother to explain this to us? So yeah, the storyline could go anywhere from here so next week should be somewhat interesting. As long as they don’t do anything like episode 1 ever again, I’ll be content.

Preview: …There was not a single flash of Fear’s underwear this episode. Let’s hope they don’t try to make up for it in ep 4.

About Karakuri

University student and the one at Metanorn who's known for wearing glasses. Likes blood, insanity and plot twists, but also plays otome games and adores cute romance anime. It balances out... somehow.