C³~CubeXCursedXCurious~

It is a given that every season needs an anime with a loli in it. It is almost undeniable fact. In the Winter 2011, it was the loli, Fear, who brought love to our hearts. Her story is unusual, for being a type of yandere loli, as well as a bit of tsundere. Her past is dark and bloody, and her friends' pasts seem to be equally so. C³ is a tale of despair, curses, magic, and perhaps some blood shed.

The story starts out with Yachi Haruaki, your normal teenage boy, living at home (because kids seem to do that a lot in Japan now a days), just living the normal life. One day, a package arrives from his father, a cube of some sort. He puts the cube in his house, only the next morning to discover a naked girl has now taken the cube's place. She seems to know nothing of how the world works, though she is trying her best to learn the ways of the world, even if it leads to her destroying the house in the process. One of Haruaki's friends, Muramasa Konoha discovers the girl, and rivalries ensue, of course in a harem like fashion. As it turns out, along with Konoha and Fear, it seems that sometimes curses take human form. It is revealed that Konoha can transform into a sword and is able to be used by Haruaki in order to defeat the bad guys, and Fear is the human form of the Black Cube, a torture device, and her weapon is the cube of which she is named. She can use over twenty different torture devices, but wishes to be rid of the curse. The anime follows Fear, Haruaki, Konoha, and later Ueno Kirika, the mysterious class president, in their adventure of cursed objects, and protecting, and hoping ridding the objects of the curse.

The art in C³ is actually rather quirky, but in a good way. Sometimes, the color shades will change on you, just like in a SHAFT production or like Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu. With that, the art work also tends to shift to what they are talking about, like when Fear mentions the fact Konoha has bigger boobs than her, they show her boobs in a way that is sort of mocking. Also, they tend to handle the serious situations with serious art work, and the light hearted ones with lighthearted artwork, such as flowers and over expressionate faces.  The art work, with the mood and quirkiness, is very consistent and fluid.

As basically a harem anime, each girl sort of fell into a stereo-type. Haruaki is one of these male leads that had some unknown power that seems to draw the girls in, and looks like just like every other male lead in existances: Brown hair and brown eyes. Konoha takes the role of the child hood friends, and also the sort of the main girl that Haruaki would pursue. Kirika is the definite tsundere, being that some of the stuff that Haruaki does kind of turns her on, but it comes out as fustration. Fear is definite tsundere, but she is a loli tsundere, meaning that, like Kirika, she get turned on in the same way, but she is too adorable about it. Also, she is sort of a yangire, due to her dark past and the fact she is a torture device.

The characters I think could have done with a bit more development. For example, I want to know more back story on Fear, and i thought I could see some more, besides the fact she was a machine used for killing and torture, but they kept adding new characters, like Sovereignty and Shiraho. It seemed as with the case with Sovereignty, even though her arc was done, I still felt incomplete with her character, and the characters that were introduced at the end hardly had any development. For a character cast like this, they probably needed to extend the anime to twenty-four episodes, or perhaps a second season. But as the loli of the series, Fear was very funny, where as the other characters were amusing, but didn't have me laughing like Fear did.

On the musical side of things, the first opening theme was amazing. The way Fear sort of danced at the beginning was super cute, and well coordinated. The same goes for the second opening, though with Kirika was more elegate than cute, but all the same, well coordinated. The songs for both will most likely end up on my iPod due the cuteness of the first, and the darkness of the second. Also, the voice acting was well done, especially Fear's "I'll curse you!" is super cute.

Overall, it is an excellent watch, despite what people might say. Lolis, cursed objects, and some what of a harem make this an excellent anime, though thankfully they don't concentrate too much on the harem aspect, just mostly the cursed object. Also, a word of advice when watching this anime: Watch until after the credits, some hilarious stuff happens then.