Anime Review: C - Control: The Money and Soul of Possibility

Title: C - Control: The Money and Soul of Possibility
Season: 1
Number of episodes: 11
Running time: 22 minutes
Released date: April 15, 2011
Summary taken from Anime News Network:

The Japanese government was rescued from the brink of financial collapse by the Sovereign Wealth Fund. For its citizens, however, life has not improved, and unemployment, crime, suicide, and despair are rampant. Kimimaro is a scholarship student whose only dream is to avoid all this and live a stable life as a civil servant. One day, however, he meets a man who offers him the chance to make money fast. From then on Kimimaro is drawn into a mysterious realm known as "The Financial District," where people engage in supernatural battles for the possibility of money.

3.5 STARS - I LIKED IT

MY REVIEW:

C - Control is a really quick anime that, while neither overly deep nor shallow, makes you raise questions about your decisions.

I went into this anime without much information on it other than the fact that it was relatively short and had pretty art--exactly what I wanted to watch while on Spring Break. :P I'm glad that it did not disappoint me.

Even though the anime is only 11 episodes long, it was immediately engaging from the beginning to the end. I ended up watching over half of it in one sitting before I realized how late it was and went to bed. And even then, the next day, I couldn't stop thinking about it as I went along with my daily routine until I could finish the anime.

While I was drawn in by the art, which is really beautiful and so well-drawn, the plot definitely kept me interested. I've never really been interested in politics or economics, but this anime incorporates both, and it was highly intriguing watching how a few battles and the incorporation of new money made so much of an impact in the real world compared to what everyone was doing in "The Financial District."

And the C - Control also raised the never-ending question of the present and the future. Should we be more worried about the future when we are barely surviving the present? Should we be more focused on the present when the future is so far away? And how will this decision impact my future? Or anyone's future?

They're good questions, and Kimimaro wonders through them very well as he tries to decide on who to trust and what to do to have the least negative impact on the world as he forms allies and battles to survive in "The Financial District." And the other characters are also really well developed. The anime focuses on them too, so you can understand their motives and actions.

There was one thing that had me confused in the beginning as I was watching it: there were many scenes where there were random jumps in the animation, like choppy editing. For instance, a girl would be picking up a french fry to eat and then it would jump to her holding an empty french fry container. I thought that it was some weird editing for the anime until I got further along in the series and realized along with Kimimaro that the actions that occur in "The Financial District" not only has drastic changes in the real world, but it can also slightly change reality. The changes are so small that no one except for people who play in "The Financial District" notices it. So those random scene jumps actually are moments when reality is changing, which I thought was a nice touch to the series.

Overall, C - Control was a very nice anime to watch, especially when you're on a time crunch. The ending was solid but a little open-ended, so there is a possibility of another season. However, the way I see it, the anime is good with just this one season.