Review for C - Control Complete Collection

Introduction

This is my second time watching C-Control. C-Control isn’t its proper name, that would be C – Control – The Money of Soul and Possibility, which probably wouldn’t fit on the DVD case (although Funimation have managed it), and is hard to remember anyway. I always get the Money, Soul, and Possibility bits in the wrong order, as well as the ‘and’ and ‘of’ bits. It’s worse on IMDB, where it is simply called ‘C’, which let’s face it is a bugger to search for. C-Control is the compromise title that MVM have chosen to market it with, while in Australia, Siren are calling it C for Control. How about C for consistency? Anyway, like I said, this is my second time watching the show, although I wasn’t too enamoured of it when it was streamed to the UK. Then again, the streaming service it appeared on was certainly lacking. You may order caviar and champagne, but if it’s served up by an unhygienic vagrant smelling of too many feet, you’ll still lose your appetite.


I’m certainly motivated to give C-Control a second chance, especially as it’s an anime from the noitaminA broadcasting strand in Japan. noitaminA is that anime slot that delivers something other than the usual mainstream shows, it delivers shows that push the boundaries, surf the cutting edge, and play to audiences more used to thinking with their brains than with their glands. These are shows that dare to do something different, and tell unique stories. In the past, noitaminA shows have included Eden of the East, Princess Jellyfish, Shiki, House of the Five Leaves, Tatami Galaxy, Fractale, Usagi Drop, and Kids on the Slope. C-Control was broadcast in 2011, and was anime’s take on economics. It’s still pretty timely given how we’re suffering the after-effects of the last financial crisis, and when you see the opening credits, showcasing the world’s major currencies, and the mischief that the world’s governments use them for, you expect this to offer some biting satire.


Japan is a prosperous country, but that prosperity doesn’t necessarily filter down to its citizenry. Financial worries translate to poverty, uncertainty, unemployment, crime and suicide, and in the midst of all the success, the little guy falls through the cracks. That isn’t going to happen to Kimimaro Yoga, an economics student who works two part time jobs to put himself through college. He’s got an ambition, one that equates to a stable life, but stability is the rarest commodity of all in modern Japan. Even Kimimaro needs money, and when an odd figure appears offering a way to make large amounts of money fast, even Kimimaro is tempted.


A unique, black credit card offers access to the Financial District, a parallel world where deals actually are cutthroat, where participants do battle for monetary gain, with their assets brought to life as combative avatars. Kimimaro meets his avatar, a demonic little girl named Mashu, and when he’s thrown into the deep end against an opponent, to everyone’s surprise the rookie stays afloat. The financial district represents the old superstition of making a deal with the devil, only this time the price for immediate financial gain isn’t the soul, it’s your very future, and with every gain or loss, there is a price that is paid in the real world. Kimimaro is brought face to face with that cost in the most striking way that gives him pause, but there is one player in the Financial District who believes he has found a way to play the game to benefit the real world. Souichiro Mikuni is one of the biggest philanthropists in Japan, and he wants to recruit Kimimaro to help him save the nation. But surely you can’t expect to make a deal with the devil and actually win?


All eleven episodes of C-Control are presented across 2 discs from MVM.

Disc 1
1. Complication
2. Coincidence
3. Conspiracy
4. Conversion
5. Cultivation
6. Conflict

Disc 2
7. Composition
8. Confidence
9. Collapse
10. Collision
11. Control (Future)

Picture

C-Control gets a 1.78:1 anamorphic native PAL transfer, courtesy of Australia’s Siren Visual. The comparatively short episodes are made 4% shorter as a result. It’s a decent enough transfer, clear and sharp throughout, bringing across the animation smoothly and with the minimum of fuss. The only real issue is the compression artefacts around scenes with fast motion, particularly during the opening credits and the action sequences, but you’ll have to pause playback to really notice it. The animation is strong, with imaginative and impressive character designs, where the world of the Financial District is a fantasy CGI creation mirroring the real world. C-Control is certainly an accomplished and attractive animation.

Sound

You have the choice between DD 5.1 English and DD 2.0 Japanese with optional translated subtitles and a signs only track. C-Control gets some impressive music, not least the theme songs (although the end theme sounds and looks a lot like that to Eden of the East), while the action sequences, the otherworldly reality, and the odd muffled communications that Entres have with their Assets are represented well in the Japanese stereo that I chose to listen to. Naturally the 5.1 remix that Funimation give the show gives it more space to breathe. The dialogue is clear, and the subtitles are accurately timed and free of error.


Actually this is one show that probably is better served by the dub. The Japanese audio is marred by some really bad Engrish during the IMF and UN scenes, dialogue so bad that it was obviously written by someone for whom English was just a passing curiosity. Some of the lines make very little sense, and it really helps at this point to switch to Funimation’s dub instead, as their adaptation reworks the dialogue to flow a whole lot better.

Extras

C-Control was released on DVD and Region A-locked Blu-ray in the US by Funimation, but in Australia, Siren Visual only released it on DVD, which is a shame as its sheer visual imagination would look stupendous in high definition. MVM have ported the Siren Visual discs for their release, but fortunately Siren have kept most of the extras from the US discs as well, with only the C-conomics extra feature and the original Japanese promos absent. Siren’s version also maintains the original language credit sequences, where Funimation are more apt to reversion them to English text. There are also no next episode previews, although I can’t recall if the original streamed episodes had them.


Both discs present their contents with animated menus.

Disc 1 has an audio commentary to accompany episode 5. When I tell you that it has Monica Rial (voice of Q and script adaptor), and J. Michael Tatum (voice of Souichiro), you won’t be surprised to hear that there is a lot of giggling, a whole lot of mutual backslapping and very little else. But if you want to partake of the migration of hair as the human body ages and the benefits of the menopause, then this is the commentary for you.


Disc 2’s audio commentary accompanies episode 11, and features Todd Haberkorn (Kimimaro), and Brina Palencia (Mashu). If you think that the episode 5 commentary is nonsensical, wait until you get a load of this!

You’ll also find the US trailer, and the textless credit sequences for the show.

Conclusion

C-Control was definitely better the second time around. It works much more effectively in marathon form, where you can watch the show over a few nights, rather than waiting a week (if you were optimistic) for the streamed episodes, and losing track of just what was going on in the story. This is a show that you really have to pay attention to and keep track of, to get the most out of it. That said, C-Control never really quite hits the target, as it remains unsure of the story it’s trying to tell, the message that it wants to get across. It’s also like another noitaminA series, Fractale in that it has a whole lot going on beneath the surface, is playing with a multitude of ideas, creating a complex world, and a rich and involving story, but by cramming it into just eleven episodes, it never has the space to develop satisfactorily. In the end, despite the eye-candy, the satire, and relevance to current affairs, C-Control falls short of its aims. The worst thing is that the very mechanism that it uses to tell its story is that which causes the story most harm.


It’s Pokemon with credit cards! You’re telling a story about the world that we now live in, a world damaged, reeling, and still coming to terms with the after effects of the financial crisis of 2008, the whole banking sector meltdown the proceeded from the sub-prime mortgages mess in the US, and which then chain reacted across the world picking up every local financial toxic mismanagement along the way. C-Control’s way of exploring this mess is to cross the old myths about selling one’s soul, with a parallel world fantasy, and Pokemon style creature battles.


While the creators of the Financial District are never identified, their devil clown visages are obvious, but the deal isn’t power for one’s soul, rather money for one’s future, nebulous a concept though the future is. There is a price to pay though, an obligation to take part in deals in the Financial District, which in this case means using one’s Assets, creatures or imps summoned forth with the Financial District’s Midas money credit cards. They do battle with the Assets of other users, or Entres, using special moves based on micro, mezzo, or macroflation, but which appear on screen as whatever special finishing move the animator can think of (It’s usually based on some economics term though).


The winner gets more money, the loser chances becoming bankrupt and expelled from the District, having lost his future. The trouble is that Midas Money isn’t real money, although only players in the game can tell the difference. And the more people partake of the Financial District, the more this money floods the nation. Before you can say Quantitative Easing, the effects of the devaluation of the currency wreak havoc on the country, with the poor getting poorer, the rich getting richer, and crime rates soaring.


What’s worse is that losing a deal has physical effects in the real world, literally rewriting the history, with the world often changing physically around an Entre, even for a winner. Kimimaro beats his lecturer in a deal, and the next thing they know, the family that the lecturer had, two children and a third on the way, none of them ever existed. The more deals take place, the more the world changes, and it always changes for the worse. It’s a little like Steins;Gate, but without the time travel rationalisation to make it all meaningful.


In C-Control, the philosophy behind the financial district becomes the wedge between Kimimaro and Mikuni. Mikuni believes that it is possible to use Midas Money, to make a deal with the devil to save the nation. He’s all about using the future to maintain the present, as the tangible now is more important than a nebulous future. Mikuni’s approach is to minimise the damage to the country, as well as to to his opponents in deals, and at first Kimimaro sees it as a laudable goal. But the more he takes part in the deals, the more he comes to understand, to define what the future actually means, and he begins to realise that it is the last thing that should be sacrificed.


C-Control is good at delineating the problem with the current world economy. It’s all come down to gambling, to creating money (apparently from nothing, but actually it’s borrowed against the future) where the actual value of a commodity is lost in the race for greatest profit. It’s all imaginary, unreal, fragile, and can collapse with the slightest gust of wind, the briefest US Government Shutdown, but on it all hinges our very day to day existences. C-Control in its allegory is brilliant at showing just how dumb it all is, but like its protagonist Kimimaro, it can present no realistic alternative to it all, just a brief wish that we’d stop doing things this way. And despite our best intentions, the idiocy of the Financial District is always waiting.


There is a lot going on in C-Control, but there is not enough space in the show to adequately explore it all, and I doubt even adding the C-Conomics extra feature would have helped. Also while it poses all of the questions, it fails to offer any thought provoking answers, which in a show of this ambition is disappointing. The most annoying thing is that all of this is hidden by the flash and dazzle of the Pokemon-esque antics of the deals. Whipping out your credit card, striking a pose, and yelling out the name of a special move or three sort of demeans the whole thing, and I think the story might have been more interesting, if drier and less accessible without the parallel world, fantasy antics.