WARNING: This review is going to be really boring. "Why?," you ask. Because [C] is really boring, and it's boring to talk about. I can get excited over a good thing because I can find creative ways to express my like for it. I can get excited over a bad thing because I can think of different ways to tell it to eat the ass-end of a north-bound cow. However I can't get excited over [C] because of how fucking boring it is. You have been warned, so don't complain about that if you're going to. [C] is about a kid named Yoga, who gets transported to an alternate dimension after accepting a mysterious cash fund in his bank account. In this alternate dimension, he has to fight different people in order to secure his future, which the dimension has as collateral. Every other fighter there does so as well, making this a fight to secure Japan's future as a whole. Each victory or loss has an adverse effect in the real world. As he battles, it becomes apparent that all is not what it seems to Yoga, and different people have different ideas about how to manipulate this dimension to affect theirs. My main problem with this story is that it's not original at all. What it is is a Frankenstiened mess of other anime; most notably Death Note, Serial Experiments Lain, and Soul Eater. From Death Note, we a get a moral dilemma tailored in a similar fashion, only handled so poorly that we don't know entirely what it's asking until the very end of the series. From Lain, we get an alternate dimension that controls the real world, only less awesome because the impact left on the real world is known from the start and the way they raise the stakes at the end is laughable at best. From Soul Eater, we get a fighting system with someone at your side that's humanoid but not actually human that acts as your weapon, but less cool each battle is boring and predictable. The staff even know that because one of the battles cuts off in the middle of it and they declared Yoga the winner because they couldn't think of a way for Yoga to predictably win it. Aside from making the aspect that they stole from each anime pathetic, the idea that these three anime can mix together is not a solid one. I can see someone connecting Death Note and Lain, but adding Soul Eater into the mix is just ludicrous. These three anime are so different from each other it doesn't make sense to mix them all up; But, if you're determined to do so, don't string them onto a boring plot that thinks it's better than it actually is. The main story is one that's been done before and better. An under dog-type character finds himself in an odd situation and begins to rise through the ranks, which is seen by the characters in it as shocking and which isn't seen by me, because I dosed off five minutes in. That is the entire extent of the plot, except when it tries to be deep. I say "tries" because each "deep situation" is bland as hell and something people could see coming from miles away. Most of it talks about about how this dimension is affecting the real world, and when I say "talks" I mean "drones on pointlessly, while alienating the audience." I know Darker than Black did something similar, but the universe in that set up in is in some way interesting and has a colorful cast of characters, which links me neatly to my next point. The characters are somewhat of a paradox. They're incredibly bland and uninteresting, but to the degree where they're so bland they're unforgettable. Yoga is the under dog hero of the anime, who stumbles around the series, trying to decide which moral side to take. His fighting partner is Mysu. Her role consists of bitching to Yoga and harboring a secret crush on him. The main villain is Mikuni, not that they want you to know that. The series tries to hide that fact very clumsily. His fighting partner is Q, a stoic character that hardly talks, probably in fear that whatever she says has to come from the same snooze-worthy script that everyone else's dialogue comes from. Other characters include a pessimistic teacher, a secret agent girl, an information broker with gold teeth, and a few others I can describe in whole using simple terminology. The only two interesting characters are Masakaki, who works for the alternate dimension, looks like the nephew of The Count from Gankutsuou, and consistently has fun in his own little way, and Sennoza, a rich charity worker, who's incredibly strong and tries to make the script more interesting. Seriously, the rest of the characters sound like their actors knew this was going to be boring going in and didn't even bother (I watched it subbed, by the way). These characters as a whole though are just as bland as the plot, except Mysu who is annoying as hell, and I would sooner leap from The Eiffel Tower than consider her likeable in any way shape or form. As for the art, it's bland as well. For the alternate dimension, it looks like they tried to fix the artwork of Gankutsuou and fucked it up. At least Gankutsuou's art look interesting in some way and had some feeling behind it. The art here looks like it was made by a robot programed to make something interesting without any reference material at all. The real world artwork also looks boring, but without any specific thing to rip off of, so it looks like that robot's programing was set to "generic." Still, the artwork here is just boring and not smug, like the story, or annoying, like the characters. The music is also generic as hell. Uninteresting in every way. Even the opening theme, which is by Nico Touches the Walls, the group that did the second opening for FMA: Brotherhood, which was an awesome song. What happened here? Did you guys agree to make a generic song for the anime, or did you look at the anime and make a song to match? My money's on the latter. Still, there is one saving grace for the music, the end theme. It's bye the same people that did the end theme for Eden of the East, another great theme, and this group decided to take the Sennoza route and tried to make the series interesting. As it stand though, the music is the least bland part of the series only because of that. I'm sorry that I've been repeating myself, calling [C] boring, bland, generic, uninteresting and such. It's just that there's no other way to describe the series. However, if I talk about the end, that might give me some wiggle room in my vocabulary. So, Spoiler Alert here. If you don't wish to be spoiled, just skip to the end. The Death Note styled moral dilemma centers around the choice of living for today or living to live again tomorrow. This is an interesting concept, but it doesn't come up until very late in the series, as I've mentioned before. It doesn't get addressed until the fate of Japan is at stake, which is a sloppy way to raise the stakes, which I've also mentioned before. The last few episodes of [C] have plot points that fly past faster than a caffeine addict in a race car and are never explained, and things begin to happen for no reason. Or maybe there is a reason, I just didn't pay attention to the boring dialogue long enough to make it coherent. This is all in effort to make [C] look tough and edgy enough to play with the big boys in the anime crowd. A hopeless effort I might add, because it makes it look incredibly silly and not serious at all. The ending of [C] is rather bullshit. It resets itself so that it leaves off where it began, and no effort has been made to offer some form of closure. I guess that was a little more interesting, but not by much. It was worth trying anyway. Overall: [C] is just an extremely boring anime with less substance than an empty jar. It thinks too highly of itself and is unoriginal in almost every way. It's not a bad anime though, just very inorganic. Something that you could make by putting a bunch of better anime into a blender and mix in some sludge. Don't watch it, unless you are suffering from insomnia is basically what I'm saying. 4.4/10
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