C – full title C: The Money of Soul and Possibility Control (or, alternatively, [C] CONTROL – The Money and Soul of Possibility) is the next up on our alphabet roundup. And, of course, it is completely different from the other two. No, this time we’re doing a masquerade death battle anime, for some reason themed around economics.
And I feel like I should get this out of the way at the start; if you’re looking for a show that makes shrewd business awesome, see yourself over to Spice and Wolf. C isn’t like that; finance is just a convenient scheme for Faustian bargains and corrupting, addictive power. Sure, now and again it will tie in, but mostly we’re just doing super power brawling where your bank account is your hp.
Still, that seems amusing enough for an outing. How does C deliver on that premise?
We open in the one case where I have to reference K – C also opens with a battle not involving the main character before we’re introduced to either said character or the real premise. The difference is, C does this quite well, using the battle to introduce the premise (in a way those unspoiled can actually understand), and making it interesting in its own right. We start with a desperate man trying everything at an ATM until he busts out a mysterious card and enters the PIN of the Beast (666, not the 616 version that’s arguably older. The new one is ingrained in media history anyway, and how we got between the two could be an essay totally unrelated to this or any anime.)
This summons an equally mysterious taxi, in which the man requests to go to the Financial District. The taxi drives right through the wall and into our insane otherworld of the show.
There, we encounter another individual, who will be an actual character. They have themselves a 2v2 battle (“Deal”) with their supernatural creatures (“Assets”) doing most of the heavy lifting. The challenger we’ve been following loses and is declared bankrupt. Shortly into the episode proper, we’ll catch up with him jumping in front of a moving train.
From the start, we get the focal character’s vibe, which in turn causes us to understand more or less what “deals” are about – fights that aren’t exactly to the death, but that still have massive impact, with money being the prime motivator to participate.
Cut to real main character Kimimaro Yoga. He’s a scholarship economics student from a troubled background, whose main problems are studying for tests, making ends meet, and that the girl he has a crush on has a boyfriend. He’s visited by Mephistopheles… er, Masakaki, an overdressed, paper-white, and eerily smiling humanoid entity of many dubious capabilities (like phasing through solid objects and offscreen teleportation) who is willing to offer him a bargain: a massive sum of money, with his future as collateral.
Yoga, oddly enough, rebuffs the devil whispering in his ear, only to discover the next day that he’s gotten a bank error in his favor to the tune of 50,000 yen. Objectively, not a world-shaking sum, but quite a lot compared to the state of his finances. After spending a day worrying about it and talking in hypotheticals to his crush and co-worker, he decides to not report this and to utilize the money. This triggers Masakaki to reappear and make a brand new temptation, on which he can be a bit more forceful because, even if there were officially no strings attached, Yoga did accept the gift. This seems Yoga dragged to the Financial district and thrown into his first Deal without a tutorial.
The battle is against a random encounter, but is still a lot of trouble for Yoga and his new Asset, who receives the name Msyu (or Mashu depending on if you trust subtitles or official copy. I trust the official copy.). Eventually she’s able to guide her master into triggering her cast-from-pocket-book ultimate, bankrupting the other guy and making bank in the process.
Yoga is returned to the real world, but soon finds that his encounters are no dream, with even more money in his account and the new ability to see the cursed black “Midas Money” bills produced by the Financial District for what they are.
Wherever else C may go, these events – spanning the first two episodes – are really well executed. The fights are solid enough, not really amazing but totally serviceable, especially since we know there are some serious stakes. And it’s nice that we don’t just hurl Yoga into trouble, the show takes some time to build a threatening, supernatural atmosphere.
As we continue, Yoga is contacted by the champ of the intro fight and a viewer of his first Deal, Souichirou Mikuni. The old ace seems to take Yoga a little under his wing, offering some level of advice and guidance. Some of this reveals that Yoga’s disappeared deadbeat dad was involved in the Financial District, and actually committed suicide after losing it all.
Yoga doesn’t have a lot of sympathy for the old man he never really knew, but the revelation still seems to disturb him. It’s not enough for him to tap out, though, and thus he’s induced to continue participating in (at least) weekly Deals. The next one we see turns out to be against one of his professors. Yoga wins big, though Mikuni on the sidelines provided some help by buying a “share” of Msyu.
In the wake, he finds out the losing one’s future clearly means different things to different folks. In the professor’s case, his two kids and one more on the way have all vanished with no normal mortal having memory they ever were. Oops.
Answering this somewhat, Mikuni it seems has a guild of like-minded competitors who try to keep their wins and losses alike modest, preventing blowback on the real world. Though provisionally, Mikuni recruits Yoga and begins to teach him the ways of the Guild while Msyu plays the tsundere.
After a few more random encounters and an episode getting Mikuni’s backstory and Msyu’s perspective, we dig more into that whole “The future as collateral” part and what the Financial Districts really mean. Yoga pursues those he’s encountered, and sees the world steadily degrading. Meanwhile, we hear that the Southeast Asia Financial District (next door, so to speak, the one we involve ourselves with here is the Far East) is on the verge of collapse. Sure enough, it eventually does so in spectacular ways, with Masakaki very amused as the District crumbles… and all of Singapore goes with it, swallowed up by the financial version of The Nothing. Buildings, people, past, present, and future by all we’re told.
The overall idea and theme seems to be a conflict between present and future that the unknown dark masters of the Financial Districts have set up. Some believe that the Midas Money needs to be stopped, because a present with no future is irrelevant, while others (particularly Mikuni) believe that the present gives rise to the future and must be preserved first and foremost.
The fall of Singapore though is where C goes a bit off the rails. The phenomenon cascades, and Mikuni makes a bargain with Masakaki for enough Midas Money to insulate Japan… at the cost of twenty years of future, which seems to apply to the whole nation as people start vanishing or just taking turns for the worse. Seeing the devastation claim a generation of children, his co-worker, and nearly ruin his crush, Yoga teams up with an international spook lady who wants to oppose Mikuni and reclaim the future from the grasp of the Financial District.
Also, Msyu appears to represent Yoga’s potential future daughter, which he takes to well and she less so. It’s awkward and minor, but I’d feel that if I didn’t note that, I’d have missed a spot worth hitting.
Since everyone has been put in a bind, the North American Financial District folks begin an assault on the Far East. Mikuni makes another deal with the devil for more capital, and after the cost of the last one, you have to imagine that Masakaki’s cackling is at the cusp of a total victory. Government lady has a plan: before the dark forces claim their due, defeat Mikuni, bankrupt him, seize the card that gives him the authority to invoke the press, and run it in reverse, paying back what was gained.
This comes down to Mikuni and Yoga having a Deal-duel while some side characters scheme to get out of Financial District free by crashing the Yen with hyperinflation and making the Midas Money that masquerades as it worthless. Eventually, Yoga is triumphant and has the presses reversed, returning all the futures the Financial District stole as its market closes. Yoga even has a little chat with Masakaki’s god-like superior before being sent off.
Thus, he finds himself in a restored Japan, brighter than any he’d lived in, but which is alien to him. Also, they use US Dollars, not Yen in this timeline. Even the people he knew in his life before the Financial District are strangers to him, though that doesn’t seem to bother Yoga too much. At the very end, Masakaki reappears, affirming that wherever there’s a future, the Financial District can appear to trade in it, but that what Yoga won back is safe… at least unless Yoga would like to make a bargain.
Thus ends C.
Forgettable shows are a vast sea, and in that sea, C is… just another fish, as you might expect. It starts strong, ends a little awkward, but it tries to be emotional in places and philosophical in places and thrilling in places. If you go in having dispensed with the idea of the show actually being about economics, the yarn of making Faustian pacts, trading away the future for a (theoretically) better present or not… it’s simply and basically effective.
It doesn’t quite land on its ambitions. It stumbles through plot movements, unsure of where its going. Sometimes, the pace seems too slow, and other times (though far more rarely) it feels too fast, like something is being skipped. The fighting, which is a fairly large component of the show, is pretty alright but it isn’t perfect. If there was ever a show that could have had wowed sideliners commenting on the fight to make it clear how awesome this was supposed to be, C was it, and it didn’t get that as often as it felt like it needed it to hype things up.
Of course, on the other side, the stakes are really well done. When Yoga loses, even by a little, and we see his life take a turn and his fear for what else around him might have paid the price, it’s a good moment.
Everything in this show sort of half works. Msyu is fun and her affection for her master is cute, but it’s understated. We never get full heat, full pathos, or full creepiness out of it.
For all its efforts, and despite the temptation to give C a C, I’ll offer it a B-. It’s not a bad show. Honestly, it’s not even that much of a forgettable nothing, all things considered. I’d watch it again, and that counts for a good deal when discussing where things go in the grade book.