All I know going into C for Control is that it’s a sci-fi series from Tatsunoko involving super powers and money. I’m really not sure what to expect from that since Tatsunoko has been involved in both good and really bad productions before. Of course, their most notoriously bad project was made about thirty years ago (Superbook) so there’s no reason to expect that kind of miserable performance here, but I also haven’t seen much of their modern work, so I don’t know what to expect. Let’s take a look and find out.
Our story proper begins with a poor student named Kimimaro Yoga being approached by a strange humanoid by the name of Masakaki. Masakaki offers Kimimaro the chance to earn money in a strange place outside of normal time and space known as the financial district. All he has to do is become an entrepreneur and battle against other entrepreneurs with the help of a being called an “asset”, with his future as collateral. So if he loses, he has no future. Kimimaro quickly discovers that the battles in the financial district are distorting the real world. All he has to do is figure out what to do about it. That’s about all I can give away without moving into spoilers. The idea is quite fascinating and the themes of the future and economics are both handled pretty well. My biggest issue with the series story-wise is that it moves too fast. To be fair, it’s kind of necessary when you look at how short it is, but it really could’ve used at least another episode or two, if not an entire season to explore the concepts that it introduces more thoroughly. This leads to my more minor but still pretty big issue, they introduce far too many sub-plots. The series is eleven episodes long and they introduce several major sub-plots, which they end up either rushing through or leaving incomplete. The story is still well done and it is intriguing, but they tried to do too much with too little time and it does hurt the anime quite a bit. Keep in mind, this isn’t based on a manga, graphic novel or anything else. It was created and written as an anime
The characters are done really well, overall. Initially it looks like Kimimaro is going to be your typical angsty and somewhat whiny protagonist, but he moves beyond that pretty quickly. They also do a really good job of making the main antagonist a developed and even sympathetic character. Kimimaro’s asset, Msyu, is also really interesting. I do have one issue with her character, but I can’t go into it without giving away spoilers. All I can say is that it has to do with her dynamic with Kimimaro. The supporting characters don’t fare as well. Most of them have pretty basic personalities. Although, I’m honestly not going to hold that against the series too much since it is doing a lot with very little time and it would be unreasonable to expect them to fully flesh out a bunch of characters. That being said, they could’ve done more with their major supporting characters if they hadn’t spent so much time on unnecessary sub-plots.
The visuals in this are fantastic. The financial district and the assets have really unique, otherworldly looks. The regular world is nicely detailed and the characters look good. That being said, I did have two issues with the art. The first is that there’s some unnecessary fan-service and it is to the detriment of the narrative and characters. The second is the final battle scene. It’s done in this really hectic style that’s obviously supposed to convey intensity, but it fails. Instead it’s just bizarre and distracting.
The voice acting is competently done, except for the scenes in English. They have some really awkward and stilted dialogue. The music is really good, especially the track that they use for really intense scenes.
The yuri factor is a 1.3/10. There’s one scene where it looks like they might go that route, but they end up not.
My final rating for C for Control is a 7/10. It’s an entertaining anime with lots of good ideas. It does have some issues, particularly with taking on far more than they have time to deal with, but they don’t stop it from being a good anime.