Stella Women’s Academy, High School Division Class C3 – 10

Yura joins the Meisei Girls airsoft team, and in her first match with them she distinguishes herself as an all-around outstanding attacker. When they enter a platform medic battle, she bristles when Rin makes her the medic. She trains obsessively, but Rin keeps making her the medic in the next two battles. After the last one a teammate gets hurt while she’s covering for her, and Rin cuts her, convinced Yura only cares about herself.

It’s been long since clear that C3-bu is not so much a wacky metaphysical girls-with-guns series, but an increasingly serious character-driven drama about the different ways people prove their existence. And ever since we’ve understood that, we haven’t minded that transition in the least. This episode in particular – the darkest yet – was an emotional roller coaster as Yura joins the “bad guys”, becomes a crazed villain of sorts herself, and is then dropped just as quickly for being too selfish.

The episode made it pretty clear that Yura was going too far, and her behavior in the medic battles was both loathsome and ultimately detrimental to the team she was on. Rin also made the salient observation that Yura was “forcing her ideals” onto others. But while Yura is ultimately responsible for her actions and her current situation, we couldn’t help but sympathize with her all the same. She was only trying to become a stronger, more useful person.

From the start of the series we knew Yura was socially awkward, and her arc so far confirms that. Whichever social circle she settles down in, it isn’t long before she feels stagnant and restless, and her personality clashes with others. If she’s to have a reconciliation with Sono and the C3 Club (and that seems to be where things are headed) it will be when she realizes there’s no point in being Ultimate Airsoft Machine if no one will play with you, or worse, if it doesn’t make you happy.

Rating: 9 (Superior)

Stray Observations:

• We don’t see much of Sono, but what we do see of her shows us that she’s not losing any sleep over losing Yura (though no doubt she’s miffed).
• The medic battle was a neat idea we hadn’t seen before. We can’t help but wonder if Rin was trying to teach Yura humility by making her the medic. It didn’t work!
• As one of her underlings reports, Yura really is a fantastic airsoft player…on paper. But to use a couple of sports metaphors, she’s a bit of a glory boy.
• Another moment when we were simultaneously loathing and feeling really bad for Yura: when she was shooting blindfolded with bloody hands and giving poor Rento a very cold shoulder.