C3-bu ep7: my heart will pierce the heavens

Another beautiful day, another light episode of C3-bu to ease my mi– Look out! Sniper fire! Good god!  The person sniping is firing bb shots from an illegally modified rifle that the characters were just talking about! (Isn’t this all just a little too convenient, even for story telling purposes?)  What the hell? Since when did this show have snipers, assassins and thugs?  I thought everyone who played paintball was a good person?!

Yeah, the episodes starts off exciting enough. Strangely, it looks like the person attacking the two was aiming for Sonora’s hand. She tries to tell Yura that they should run for it and contact the police (wait, don’t they have cell phones?), but Yura as usual doesn’t listen, doesn’t watch her environment and bullishly tries to flank the sniper! This nearly gets her and Sonora killed, as Sonora has to grab Yura and jump out of the way before a car runs them over. Unfortunately, she’s not able to get up from that. It’s not because she’s dead or anything, she’s just sprained her ankle badly. As the ambulance picks her up, Yura catches what she thinks (and we know) is a glimpse of her rival, Rin.

The next day, everyone goes to greet Sonora in the hospital, where she gives them all the news of her circumstances and the ankle. And while everyone is understandably heated, aside from Yura who is feeling terribly guilty, she informs her club that they are to not let this affect them and move on to enjoying the upcoming tournament.

While leaving Yura’s guilt gets the better of her mind and she tries to resign from the club. They’ll have none of her guilt of course, since the fault for the whole incident to them lies with the sniper (I don’t totally agree). And they come to the conclusion that the only person with that type of personal malice to their leader would be Rin. DEAD-ON!  Still, there’s nothing to be done without any proof.  Facing the fact that their ace and leader won’t be around for the highlight of their year, the club resigns itself to failure and decides not to attend the tournament.  Yura seeing all this sadness makes an important decision.  She goes back to Sonora’s room and tells an apparently asleep Sonora that she’s going to take over the club in their stead, and make sure they win the tournament for her.  Sonora was faking the sleep though.

For the next two weeks, Yura studies hard and takes up the mantle of leading the C3 club.  Day after day, she intensely drills them on formations, strategies and physical fitness to prepare them for the tournament.  It rubs some of the members the wrong way, mainly Karila, but everyone falls in line and comes together until the day of the tournament finally arrives.

Once finally at the tournament grounds, the club decides to let loose a little while at the festival before the tourney starts up.  There they run into Karila’s brother and his team.  Where they’re informed of some of the other tough teams besides Meisei that will be attending.  One of the teams even appears to be a group of U.S. Marines!  One person showing up who they weren’t looking forward to seeing is Rin.  Karila and Yura confront her, and it seems like she admits to being in the area during the accident, but nothing more.   It seems nothing of importance will happen until the tournament starts in earnest.

End of episode.

This episode got a tad serious.  It appears that Rin was aiming to break Sonora’s hand with that shot.  I don’t know what happened between those two in the past, but this goes beyond “butthurt”.  This (at least from Rin’s perspective) is a blood feud tantamount to a reprisal due to betrayal.  It’s a shame, I get the feeling that Sonora really does hurt from this rift too, but the two girls have taken their falling out in two completely different ways.

In the meantime, it seems that Yura may be taking on Rin’s super serious take-no-prisoners approach.  And that’s the only reason I can guess at the moment for those strange looks and some of the hesitancy coming from Sonora.  Perhaps she doesn’t want to open up to her prodigy about such a bitter thing.  Maybe she doesn’t want to hurt Yura’s feelings or self confidence by telling her that she’s acting like her bitter rival.  At any rate, her inability to speak up may lead to Yura flaming out.  It’s a situation I really would regret seeing.  This show does like to romance things and generally be positive, so I’m not betting on Yura receiving what dating sim fans and RPGers would call a “bad end”.

I don’t know how long this tournament will last, this very well may be the last arc of the show.  So I’m hoping the C3 club gets to go as far as possible while still learning that it’s more important to do your best while having fun, than it is to win by any means necessary.  Rin and her team from Meisei academy getting their butss kicked, that will just be a bonus.

Further Reading:

• Episode 5 & 6
• MetaVerse Episode 32: No Matter How I Look At It, It’s You Guys’ Fault This Podcast Is So Long!