What They Say:
Racing heartbeat and expanding fantasies… After being accepted to her dream school, Stella Girls’ Academy, Yamato Yura is excited to begin her high school life. “Maybe, at this school, I can change!” Then, when she lies down to rest after moving into her dorm, her hopes still high… she finds a Desert Eagle under her pillow! High school girls?! The C³ Club?! A survival game?! A new youth survival story is about to begin!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
It does seem about time for a school festival episode, doesn’t it? Yes, as quickly as things were progressing in the first few episodes, the series has since settled into the pattern of putting its characters in each of the typical one-episode formulas that fits the genres of either school sports team anime or cute girls doing cute things anime, and possibly the most obvious area of overlap between the two lies in the classic school festival episode. That’s exactly what we get here, and it faithfully follows every trope laid out over the past several decades.
The episode gives arguably a smidgeon greater importance to the festival than it might be expected to, as the club needs to find a way to fulfill their obligation to set something up for it while still having enough money to participate in a major future tournament, and therefore tries to devise a way to make enough money back from their festival attraction. After a series of overly cartoony failures (which comes up once more at the very end), the girls slap together whatever they can find and hope it works, much like the series itself in some ways. In case their previous ideas weren’t traditional enough for school festival episodes of anime, the two elements that go with their obvious shooting theme make it into… wait for it… a cosplay café! When it turns out that shooting guns isn’t quite appealing to the specific carnal desire that most of the male visitors appear to be at the festival for, they start turning into a bit more of a “service” kind of… service.
Yeah, things sure aren’t moving along like they once were. But before you think I’m writing this episode off as a total waste of any potential for the series beyond having fun (which is, again, a perfectly valid function of the series anyway), I should mention that once again it does make sure to spend a few moments bringing up Yura’s continued issues with fitting in and feeling important and appreciated to those around her. Seeing former classmates reminds her of how worthless she felt in such situations in middle school, and taking advantage of Sono-chan being distracted by something more important to win an even more “servicey” event of theirs (in which she envisions a Spaghetti Western scene, of course) only to meet Sono-chan’s silent disapproval further serve to hold her back from her attempts to be a new person who has no reason to worry about such things.
In the end, though, everyone seems pretty happy with how everything turned out and with each other, without any real conflict. Clearly this is bottling up to affect Yura more prominently when the series returns to more critical material at some later point. For now it’s basically brushed aside.
In Summary:
This episode holds less weight than ever, putting the girls in a school festival setting and having them go through the motions and providing a few different kinds of service to both the other characters and the viewers. There are again a few reminders that Yura still isn’t entirely happy with how she feels about herself, but that fades away in the face of these lighter tropes.
Grade: C
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Custom-Built PC, Sceptre X425BV-FHD 42″ Class LCD HDTV.
