Ask John: Why Did Stella Women’s Academy C3-bu Fail?
Question:
Why was Stella Women’s Academy, High School Division Class C3 unpopular? While not my top favorite of the 2013 summer season, it was an enjoyable show, but I find it perplexing that not only was the show unpopular with Japanese otaku, but that its first volume is one of the worst sellers for a 2013 anime, not to mention very little fanart has been produced for it.
Answer:
As I compose this answer, I’ve only watched the first half of the Stella Jougakuin Koutou-ka C3-Bu television series. But the very fact that I haven’t finished watching the show is evidence of the show’s fundamental weakness. Airsoft has been a popular hobby in Japan for thirty years, yet it’s never been the subject of an anime until this year. Yet, to great disappointment, the first anime to revolve around airsoft is an unsatisfying, weak show for two primary reasons. C3-bu feels like exactly what it is, a quick cash-in on the success of other, earlier manga and anime. C3-bu is essentially a hybrid of K-On and Upotte, both of which were hit anime. K-On a show about cute girls in an offbeat school club. Upotte is a show that put automatic firearms in the hands of schoolgirls. C3-bu simply tries to swap the light music club of K-On with an airsoft warfare club. But while both K-On and Upotte were buoyed by casts of adorable girls with engaging personalities, C3-bu features weak characterizations.
Yura, the protagonist, has almost no personality. She’s so quick to subvert her own ideals and go along with the flow that she has no personality of her own. She’s simply a foil to the rest of the show’s characters. Club president Sonora is so constantly supportive and positive that she doesn’t feel like she has a complete personality. She feels more like a Magic 8-ball that dispenses advice than a human character possessing a range of emotions. Karila is so single-minded and aggressive that she comes across as grating. Honoka, Rento, and Yachiyo are dull supporting characters that round out the cast instead of contributing depth and substance to the tone or narrative. By comparison, Strike Witches has a larger cast of girls, yet every character in Strike Witches is memorable and impactful while half of the core cast of C3-bu feels interchangeable and entirely superfluous. The result of this weak characterization is a show that’s not catchy and engaging outside of its action scenes.
The second, more debilitating flaw with C3-bu is its action scenes. A story about imaginary warfare ought to include plenty of imaginary violence and combat. But the C3-bu television anime instead takes a conservatively safe approach. I’m reminded by the principle expressed in the 2006 Christopher Nolan film The Prestige. Every successful magic trick consists of a pledge, turn, and prestige. As Michael Cane’s character in the film explains of the importance of the culmination of a trick, “… You wouldn’t clap yet. Because making something disappear isn’t enough… That’s why every magic trick has a third act.” The Stella Jougakuin C3-bu television series lacks the third act. The series consistently never depicts girls getting shot. The series’ frequent action scenes begin, but their endings are always off-screen. The camera always cuts away at the last moment, robbing viewers of the satisfaction of witnessing the natural conclusion, “the prestige” of battle scenes. The show seems to be so frightened of showing its cute girls getting shot, even by harmless plastic BBs, that every action scene ends anti-climactically. Viewers never see a girl or a team earn victory; we’re only told through dialogue that combat has ended or that a team has won a match. The entire point of airsoft combat is that it’s simulated war; it’s harmless fun. So feeling so politically correct and socially conscious that the show won’t even depict the natural outcome of its battles – girls getting shot with harmless plastic pellets – makes the show feel heavily compromised and unsatisfying. The reason why viewers watch anime is to see what doesn’t or can’t occur in reality. When an action anime is afraid to illustrate the conclusion and consequences of action, either for fear of setting a negative example or for fear of compromising the marketability of its stars, it ends up handicapping itself. Stella Jougakuin Koutou-ka C3-Bu should have been a fun, exciting, rousing comic adventure series, but in execution it feels like merely half a show, a series with under-developed characters and the conclusion of all of its action scenes censored out.
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“C3-bu feels like exactly what it is, a quick cash-in on the success of other, earlier manga and anime. C3-bu is essentially a hybrid of K-On and Upotte, both of which were hit anime.”
Did we watch the same C3-bu, John? Similarities to the action sequences in Upotte, I’d give you, but C3-bu wasn’t a slice-of-life show by any measure of the genre. It wasn’t a show about a school club full of girls eating cake, drinking tea, and being cute. The show was action and character development.
As far as Yura being “quick to subvert her own ideals and go along with the flow,” the point is that she had no ideals in the first place. She joined the C3-bu because she wanted to make friends and break out of her shell. She “goes along with the flow” because she doesn’t know a thing about airsoft and wants to be accepted and praised by her new friends. She’s not a foil to the rest of the characters. Rather, the story is meant to focus on her development from a timid girl too afraid to speak to people (Who, as a result, goes with the flow and tries to fit in with what she believes to be how people want her to be), into a girl with her own motivations, who is happy being herself and having fun. The reason she seems like an empty character at the beginning is because, for the purpose of the story, she does start out as an empty character.
Finally, I’d really question exactly how much C3-bu is about imaginary warfare. Airsoft features heavily in the story, and the show is sponsored by airsoft manufacturer Tokyo Marui, but airsoft is used more as the framing for Yura’s loss of innocence. It’s something both airsofters and non-airsofters can relate to. Airsofters know that airsoft is just a game, but a lot of us have encountered players who take it way too seriously and make the game less fun for everyone. Those who don’t play airsoft have naturally encountered people like that in their other recreational endeavours, and can relate, especially since airsoft is only used as framing. This isn’t Upotte, which was all about gun trivia. If C3-bu was an airsoft anime, there’d be scenes of the girls chatting about hop-up adjustments, different gasses for their pistols, and whether .23g or .25g BBs are better for Honoka’s G36K. Instead, the story focuses on Yura’s character development, by way of the sport of airsoft.
“C3-bu feels like exactly what it is, a quick cash-in on the success of other, earlier manga and anime. C3-bu is essentially a hybrid of K-On and Upotte, both of which were hit anime.”
I wouldn’t say Upotte was a hit anime if I remember correct that it did not sell all that well.
In my opinion the reason it flopped was that people were not willing to give it a fair chance.
“The Stella Jougakuin C3-bu television series lacks the third act. The series consistently never depicts girls getting shot. The series’ frequent action scenes begin, but their endings are always off-screen. The camera always cuts away at the last moment, robbing viewers of the satisfaction of witnessing the natural conclusion, “the prestige” of battle scenes. The show seems to be so frightened of showing its cute girls getting shot, even by harmless plastic BBs, that every action scene ends anti-climactically. Viewers never see a girl or a team earn victory; we’re only told through dialogue that combat has ended or that a team has won a match.”
Did we watch the same series? Yes there were some times where we were told about some team winning off screen but they do also show the girls getting hit with the BB’s. I would say this would have been more or a fault if the episodes were say 48 minutes instead the normal length of an episode. You only have so much time to do both action and character development.
I’m still going to say that C3-bu wasn’t a bad show at all, certainly not show of the year material but still once of my favorites from the summer season.