Series Review: C3

Within this world, there are many cursed items which bring misfortune or death to their owners.  With time, some of these objects become self aware and able to take on human forms, not unlike a tsukumogami.  Fear-in-Cube, later renamed Fear Kubrick when she is introduced to a normal life, is one such cursed object, seeking to remove the curse that drives her owners to use her and the many torture tools her box form contains to torture and kill others.  To fulfill this desire, she lets Yachi Honatsu send her to live with his son, Haruaki a relatively ordinary high school student, whose main redeeming value (for the plot, at least) is his total immunity to curses, and whose home is built on a plot of land with an especially large concentration of positive energy, which, will help remove the curse.  Also living in the house is Muramasa Konoha, who, as her name implies, is a cursed katana

I wish we saw a little more of this Konoha. Her normal personality's a little too bland.

The story itself was split into three arcs.  The first centered around Fear and Peavey Barroy, a member of the Knights of Gathering, who collect and destroy whatever cursed objects they can find.  This arc serves as the introduction to the series and characters, which, by the end of the arc, includes the student council president, Ueno Kirika, a member of a group researching cursed objects, and the owner of two non-sentient tools, one of which renders her effectively immortal.

Fear's somewhat split personality is also clearly displayed, and AWESOME.

The second arc takes place shortly after the first is resolved.  The group is tasked with the recovery of a cursed doll named Sovereignty, who had escaped while being transported to Haruaki's place to have her curse removed.  However, due to the specific nature of her curse (a cursed love between the doll and its owner), and the actual feelings between the two, neither Sovereignty, or her owner Sakuramairi Shiraho want the curse to be removed.  In the end, however, a way to disarm the curse through the absolute destruction of the weapons within Sovereignty's body is utilized, cleanly resolving all of the issues.

Try hugging that

The peace is once again disrupted by the return of Ningyouhara Kuroe, a doll who successfully removed her curse, to the Haruaki household... closely followed by Alice Bivorio Basskreigh, a member of the Bivorio Families, a group seeking to bring as many cursed tools as possible together as a family.  After being confronted, however, Alice agrees to leave Kuroe alone in exchange for Fear, and begins a series of murders around town, with the implied message of "I'll keep doing it until you come along".  Of course, in the end, they, along with Kirika who had to break her link with her group to help, manage to stop her, though she manages to escape with the aid of the other member of the Families.

The naked guy's another cursed tool.

Overall, I'd say that C3 was a pretty successful series.  The characters were all generally likable and fun to watch, especially when they (or more specifically, Fear and Konoha) flip their psycho switches and proceed to start kicking ass; the individual arcs came together as well, and it finished on a mostly satisfying, if very open-ended note.

Don't worry, he's not talking about "that".

But Kuroe and her camera are just plain awesome.

Of course, that's not to say things were perfect, either.  Problems in the execution and flow of the storyline were pretty minimal, but there were several very noticeable cases where the art took a major hit, or when the flow of an episode would simply fall apart.  The final episode would be one such example, with Alice switching back and forth from incredibly dangerous opponent to an absolute joke, along with some very noticeable off-model moments.

Perspective. Artists need to learn it.  Poor Yachi's about 2-3 feet tall there.