(This has spoilers by the way. I did warn you.)
Storyline and Plot
C³ has a pretty straightforward storyline – a guy named Yachi Haruaki discovers a box sent to him by his father, only for it to transform into a young girl, Fear-in-Cube. Fear wants to get rid of the curse that has been placed on her, a cube which allows her to access 32 different torture mechanisms. Along with Konoha, Kuroe and Kirika (friends all related to cursed items) Fear and Haruaki try to lift the curse on Fear, while fighting off various enemies that are after them.
With the way this has been set up, throughout the whole show Fear doesn’t really get much closer to lifting her curse – it was more about the enemies and organizations sent to kill/capture Fear, since for some reason she seems to be popular with them o.O Of course, this is probably for the better, as early on we discover that Fear is actually extremely unstable with her emotions, and thus lifting the curse in a matter of a dozen episodes would have been very rushed. Instead we have gotten to the point where Fear discovers friendships and knows there is a hint of hope out there, which is good enough for me.
Keeping that in mind, we had three main arcs in the show: the setup and conflict with Peavey, the Sovereignty arc and the Alice + Vivolio Families arc. Up to the end of the Sovereignty arc I enjoyed C³ a lot, with the initial setup being fun as an intro and the Sovereignty issue having a good mystery and plot twist. However the last arc felt kinda rushed and had an anticlimatic resolution – it’s clear with the new OP and all that it was a new section of the story, but introducing it at Ep 9 didn’t leave too much room for expansion.
7/10
Characters and Development
The characters were all pretty fun – loved them! Fear was surprisingly NOT voiced by KugiRie, though I guess Yukarin works too xD On this basis, I was expecting a loli-fanservice pantsu-flashing main heroine, but I was pretty impressed to find out that she has a crazy, murdering side that’s filled with hate and bloodlust. Actually speaking of that, this show has this horrible habit of swapping from a dark gore theme to a comedy fanservice genre and acting like nothing was wrong, which was dodgy given the context of some of the scenes. It isn’t just Fear as well – tsundere Student Council President Kirika has some dark, gory secrets of her own that I found squeamish to watch, while the cursed doll Sovereignty underwent a massive personality change from unstable genderbender psycho to a moe maid. Haruaki himself wasn’t a wimp, and did possess some fighting powers while wielding Konoha, which I approved of xD
On the other hand we had the antagonists, which always turned up as weird ladies with unclear motives. In both cases with Peavey and Alice, their objectives and reasonings were only very lightly touched on, and it seemed that Fear and Haruaki themselves didn’t have much idea about what was going on. Peavey died far too quickly before we got any proper background, while Alice’s was more elaborated on…except by then the show had already ended -_-
PS. More or less all the female protagonists have had some form of fanservice, with the prize for most shots going to Konoha. Yeah gotta appeal to the perverts who love big tits. You know who you are.
8/10
Animation and Music
In a way, the first OP “Endless Story” was major trollage, since two episodes in we got a taste of the darker, gorier side of C³, which was completely masked by the innocent, flowery OP with all the sakura petals. Still, it was a decent song xD The second OP “Shirushi” was a lot catchier, and I think it reflected on C³’s battle/mystery element much better, which it needs more than its fanservice side.
The animation was pretty well-done all round, a trait consistent with production company Silver Link. Some battle scenes could have flowed a bit more or been done in slightly better detail, as it got increasingly difficult to take screencaps throughout all the battle scenes, though I do understand everything is moving pretty quick. Everything’s all fine on the character and weapon design front, some of those were pretty original xD
7.5/10
Recommendation
I’m not a massive fan of C³, but I guess that’s to be expected with so many other amazing titles that turned up this Fall. If you’re a fan of both lolis and tits at the same time, with no qualms about blood or gore, then this will suit your tastes just fine. Don’t expect too much plot-wise, but there should be enough in there to keep you entertained at least.
Overall Rating: 7.5/10