It’s almost like guns are weapons or something! 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)
The upcoming 24-hour tournament that was vaguely used as the basis for the school festival fanservice shenanigans of the previous episode is fast approaching, but not everything is going as planned. The episode opens with Yura and Sono-chan caught in a situation of uncharacteristically serious danger, as someone has modified their survival game weapon to be more powerful, becoming a BB sniper firing at the two girls and actually doing some real damage.
This is silly enough, considering the generally very lighthearted atmosphere of this series. It’s just a simple little cute girls doing cute things show, right? Their cute thing of choice just happens to be something that’s actually quite violent, and that juxtaposition is what makes it funny, right? Well that’s worked so far, or at least that’s what the series has established itself as, whether it’s used that foundation to deliver a top-notch production or not. But it’s not just that it treats this all super seriously and feels very awkward and disconnected from what we’ve been watching for the past six weeks. What annoys me possibly even more than that is Yura’s insistence that “nobody who plays survival games can be bad”, as her friend gets shot down protecting her, as the BBs pierce a metal can, as she narrowly avoids the same fate. And it’s not as if it’s a safe and innocent activity that she’s saying can’t possibly attract anyone with ill intentions. That would be naïve and idealistic enough, but in this case the activity in question is, again, violent by nature to the point of being a pretend version of killing each other. If anything, the sniper (whose identity is never hidden even a little bit) is simply going back to the roots of this hobby, being true to its source material.
On the bright side, at least the episode has a lot of more solid material than the past few, both in terms of plot progression and character development. Surprisingly, Yura’s insecurities don’t seem to play that big a part in this situation, as she is instead inspired to go all out as the interim group leader to ensure that they enter this tournament and do their best, regardless of Sono-chan’s status. This does fit with her tunnel vision that got a bit of focus in the previous episode, but it seems to work out mostly for the better in this case.
Much of the episode is spent in preparation for the tournament, leading up to the day of the game itself and setting up for the next probably several episodes (it is a 24-hour event, after all) as far as what the dynamic will be for our protagonists and the other returning characters over the course of this competition.
In Summary:
.While this episode does make considerably more progress for the plot and also appears to develop the characters a bit more than a few recent ones, the subplot of these toy war weapons being used violently, Yura’s disbelief that such a thing could be possible, and the general unfitting tonal shift during early parts of the episode hinder the experience a bit.
Grade: C
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Toshiba Satellite L655-S5191 PSK2CU-1C301U Notebook PC.
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