Stella Jogakuin Koutou-ka C³-bu review

Even though Yura Yamato has enrolled in the prestigious Stella Girl's school she is still insecure and unable to make new friends. She also finds that her not appearing in the first episode roommate is some sort of gun fanatic. She is approached by the school's survival game (airsoft gun) group and like almost all anime school clubs pressured into joining so the group could maintain a quorum of members. After some initial apprehension Yura finds that not only does she have some interest in survival games but that her roommate is Sonora, the president of the survival game club.

Sadly you are still just a side character

c3bu is a relatively short anime show about a girl who learns what it means to love a hobby. While it may look like a small arms version of last year's Girls un Panzer this is show is quite different. The comparison is not entirely false however as this show does manage to do action scenes quite well. While I don't want to spoil anything c3bu does take a much darker turn about halfway through the show.

One lesson to be learned, you never go full Jojo

I consider this a rather mixed show. On one hand I consider the main character to be one of the more complex female leads I have seen in a while (see my article survival games and moral choices choice for a more complete rundown of her character). On the other hand the rest of the cast feels like two dimensional foils for Yura. The show's tone does seem to be all over the map, there are several elements (such as the supernatural elements which are introduced in episode four and then disappear until the end of the show) does make this show feel poorly focused in some aspects.

Still you can't hate a show with a good Rambo homage

Overall I consider c3bu to be a rather interesting character study even if it does have it's flaws.

Rating The bronze Charlotte (Madoka Magica) for not being the cute girl show you thought it would be

Survival games and moral choices

You don't get many editorials about your so I would think you would be a bit more interested

 

One of the more common complaints about Stella c3 bu was that it was a show that didn't know what it wanted to be. I think part of the problem is that it wasn't really a conventional anime show or even a conventional experimental anime show (the idea of what passes for a conventional experimental show is it's own topic that I will cover in the future). However it did something so very right in the advancement of gender equality that I think that it deserves mention.

 

One of the main problems with discussions of gender in anime or media in general is that unless some art piece crosses one of a few rather set lines in which interested parties will usually usually offer their almost canned outrage but other than that the wider idea of gender is generally left unexamined and thus little if any real progress is made or understanding is reached and most of our predispositions remain unexamined.

 

Even through there is no real villains in c3bu consider how female villains are often treated in media. Most often they are given the angst ridden back stories and easily end up joining the hero in the end. There is even a trope associated with this the high heel face turn (the link is here). While at first may look like a good thing, usually under some guise of violence against women is wrong or something, but in fact it demeans women by making them look as through they are incapable of true moral choice. What is even worse is that many so called feminists will ignore this because it grants them a type of leniecy for misdeeds.

 

How does this all connect to c3bu? First of all think of the show's nominal villain, Rin. While at first she appears to be a cardboard jerk and is later revealed to be a deeper character the redemption tropes do not apply. The most obvious reason is that she never changes moral positions, her positions are simply shown in a different light. This gives her a sense of dignity that the high heel face turn never could.

 

The character that I really want to talk about though is Yura. Her character is something that I rarely if ever see in any characters, much less female ones. She is a main character who is allowed to be corrupted by her own choices and is only redeemed when she realizes her own faults. This causes her to fail as not only the "strong female character" but also severely undercuts if not destroys her status as an innocent moe character. Given that Yura ended up failing to live up to these standards it is no wonder the show tanked in sales. However that very fact is something that made Yura so very human and unique as a character.