C³ – 12 [END]

Does anyone remember what this anime was actually about? …Me neither.

The last episode already? Wow, the fall season of anime came and went pretty fast. Anyways, now on to winter anime! What, you want an episode summary or something? Sigh, fine. I guess I can give you one.

With no introduction or recap, C3 starts right from Alice and Fear’s fight. Alice finally introduces her Cursed Object as Carnival Cleaver and its ability is to remember prior attacks and block them. If that wasn’t enough, it also remembers the opponent’s weak points. Fear and Alice battle it out for a bit and Konoha joins in. Meanwhile, Haruaki has some kind of realization and tells Kuroe that he’s different from her. He then proceeds to do something with his handcuffs that results in a large pool of blood and some injuries. Haruaki manages to get the handcuffs off and brings Kuroe to the others.

Alice then proceeds to pull a mirror from god knows where and explains that it makes the user beautiful and can pull the user to the other side (which is what stopped Kuroe from moving). It can also duplicate what’s reflected inside it and this is proven when some weird scene involving rainbows and fish in suits happens and another Alice comes out. The reflection only lasts for 10 minutes though and the curse from the object causes Alice to start bleeding. However, she feels it’s her duty to go through with the curses and so her reflection joins her. …Also, she’s not restricted to just one copy of herself.

Welcome to Yanderefest! Yuno couldn’t make it because she was too busy killing the other attendees.

Fear goes to attack the mirror, only to drill through an Alice copy and cause the first case of actual censoring that this anime has had. Fear freaks out and the Alice copy looks like she quite enjoys having a hole where her intestines used to be. Fear starts losing her sanity again, so Kirika goes to attack Alice. However, Alice stops this easily and Kirika gets her fanservice shot of the episode. Alice notices Kirika’s Cursed Object and uses the opportunity to fondle Kirika’s kidney… or whatever organ that is.

Meanwhile, Konoha’s glasses are breaking for some reason and Haruaki asks her to revert to sword form. Konoha doesn’t look like she likes that idea, but she does it anyways and Haruaki tries (and fails) to fight Alice. Luckily, defender of justice Shiraho appears randomly and then proceeds to verbally abuse Alice. After that, maid of justice, Sovereignty appears. After a short speech, Sovereignty uses her doll powers to move Kuroe and break the mirror.  With that, Shiraho and Sovereignty leave.

With her ability to move back, Kuroe uses her hair to stop the reflections, giving Fear the chance to attack. They battle for a bit until Haruaki joins in and Fear summons a creepy doll/iron maiden thing. Remember how Alice said she was orphaned? Well it turns out she hates humans and loves Cursed Objects because humans didn’t bother helping her in her crappy childhood. Fear uses her torture device to destroy Carnival Cleaver and Alice throws herself into the ocean…. Where she’s caught by some guy on a boat and the two start making out. Lolwut.

Alice just wanted a hug

Fear doesn’t want to let them get away, but her long range attack is blocked by a twintailed lolita. Also, the guy who caught Alice is a Cursed Object. He somehow knows Kirika and he mentions that Alice’s Cursed Object had an Indulgence Disk in it for whatever reason. Fear says that she’ll accept the disk, but not Alice’s love.

After all of that is over with, everyday life resumes and Fear still can’t dance. Kuroe mentions how Haruaki helped Fear with the Indulgence Disk thing again (lol she filmed it) and then gives Fear and Konoha their wages for working part time at her shop (which she’s taking a break from. Again). Kuroe has forgiven Fear for suspecting her and Fear tries to give her money to Kirika since she left her organization for them. Kirika says that she left of her own will though, so she doesn’t accept the money. She also takes this opportunity to strip.

I-it’s not like Kirika wanted one last shot of fanservice or anything. Don’t get the wrong idea!

So the credits roll and all of the characters are shown continuing on with their lives. Himura is alive and in the hospital, Sovereignty is still being forced to cosplay, Fear can dance, and Kirika’s (surprisingly bishie) older brother is reading with some pink haired woman.  Or at least I assume that it’s Kirika’s brother.

Credits aside, WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?!

After that, Fear and Haruaki chill on a roof and Fear is confused. Since Kuroe got rid of her curse and Konoha is almost rid of hers, she asks if they’re human-like tools or tools that became human. Haruaki says that she probably doesn’t need an answer to this, since they’re them whether they have a curse or not. Fear seems to accept this and the two stare off into the distance.

End Thoughts:

…..And there you have it. The only thing going through my mind really is how much this needs a second season. I mean, they left it open enough for one. Alice got away with her random lover, we have no idea what the Indulgence Disks do, Haruaki is an orphan as far as I’m concerned, god knows where Peavy is/what her organization that was completely forgotten about is doing about Haruaki’s harem of undesirables, Kirika’s organization is still in the shadows and I still have no idea what Kuroe’s purpose is. Konoha needed her own episode. They went out of their way to make her character interesting (I’m talking about the blue hair here), and in the end, didn’t have enough time to explain how or why. Hell, we don’t even know about Haruaki’s childhood or why he’s conveniently curse resistant at all. Though the thing that probably troubled me the most here was the last minute introduction of seemingly important characters. Alice’s lover and lolita friend are currently nameless and only served as a deus ex machina type escape for her. Also, that random introduction for Kirika’s brother and that pink haired woman. Why did they feel the need to add that in there?! It’s not like we’ll be seeing them ever again unless there’s another season to this.

Okay, on to the actual episode. They went all out on the action here (though there still were a bunch of derpy screens). This episode also convinced me that the directors behind this have a SHAFT complex. They’ve been adding in SHAFT like imagery all of this time, but those of you who have seen Madoka will probably join me in saying that Alice’s mirror world was awfully similar to the witch scenes. Overall this anime normally covered up the QUALITY shots with flashy graphics and visuals and really it was the fast paced stuff that the animation quality dropped. They made sure to put more money and effort into the slower and more emotional stuff though, which made the animation levels really really good and really really bad. So yeah, the quality was all over the place, but at least there were a bunch of excellent looking scenes. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of SILVER LINK’s stuff in the future (and oh look, they’re going to be doing the adaption to Tasogare Otome x Amnesia sometime soon).

What was I talking about again? The episode? Right. …Though really, half of the episode was spent of Alice effortlessly winning, then Shiraho shows up out of nowhere, says her piece and then leaves, a bit of it was Alice losing and then the rest was spent on trying to conclude everything while trying to shove in some fanservice to remind everyone that this was a harem show. Maybe I’ll check out the DVD release to see just how bad the censored part to this was, but other than that, if I touch on this further I think I’ll just get angry about how empty that ending felt. This was an anime that started out poorly and then trolled us all (multiple times) by suddenly getting better. Unfortunately, the storyline kind of died somewhere in the Alice arc. I know that this was following the novel at a pace of about one chapter per episode, but the thing about the novels is that there are 11 volumes currently out and I don’t think that this anime went past the 3^rd volume. A lot of people have been saying that this would have made a better 24 episode anime and I’m inclined to agree.  It’s not that the anime was bad, but there were just so many things that were vaguely mentioned and then forgotten about. So yeah, second season: WANT. If not, there will be tables flipped.

 

And so I leave you with this last bit of fanservice.