3ET: Stella Jogakuin Koutou-ka C³-bu

Yay! We're not the worst show of the season!

Studio: GAINAX

Director: Kawajiri Masayoshi (Debut)

Main Cast: Makino Yui as Yamato Yura, Sawashiro Miyuki as Kashima Sonora, Kayano Ai as Hatsuse Karila, Yonezawa Madoka as Hinata Yachiyo, Nishizaki Rima as Kirishima Rento, Saito Chiwa as Mutsu Honoka

Writer: ???




For all of my readers, which I could probably count on both hands if I'm being generous at this point, I'm trying different styles which each 3ET that I write. I don't want them to become purely formulaic, so I try to figure out an angle from which to come at each show to tell the story of whether or not I'm going to pass or fail a show. I think in the case of Stella Jogakuin Koutou-ka C³-bu (Stella-bu), a chronological order is necessary to get the feel of how I came to my decision in its case.

The first couple minutes of Stella-bu are decent. We meet our main character, Yura, as she arrives at a fancy girls' boarding school. For a couple of minutes, we see her looking around in awe at her ritzy new surroundings. We also see her fail to talk to a girl who asks for directions, stammering her way throughout the encounter. Instantly we have her character well established. She comes from a lower-class background and is painfully shy, and that's with very little dialogue. Not bad show, not bad at all.

Remember everyone, yuri goggles are a matter of safety.

The rest of the first episode show Yura meeting the rest of a the titular club, which turns out to be an airsoft gun club. The only one who doesn't show up is her eventual roommate, Sonora. These girls are very bland in their characters, as Karila is the gun nut, Honoka likes cake, Rento has glasses, and Yachiyo is small. But, the episode is saved when they actually start an airsoft game. Karila is playing the role of "Rambo" while the rest of the girls try to hunt her down. These scenes are where the show shines, as they are well-directed, the action is easy to follow, and they get my heart pumping a bit. Then, to top it off, we see Yura's imagination of the battle imposed over the movie Rambo. And it's where we can see her start to fall in love with the idea of joining the club. I mean, we know she'll join the club in the end, but it was still a good scene.

The second episode opens with Yura meeting Sonora, the president of the club. She had been in America for a sharpshooting competition and instead of over-pressuring Yura into joining, which the other girls do in a series of painfully unfunny scenes, she gives her some space. By the end of the episode though, they are playing another airsoft game where Yura, the novice, has to play the bodyguard to Sonora, who uses her wits and various items around an abandoned school building to eliminate the other members of the team. While this scene is another solid action scene, it is elevated to greatness when Yura starts imagining herself in the movie The Bodyguard complete with a barely legal rip off of a certain Whitney Houston cover playing in the background. This is also a good spot to mention that the soundtrack is quite good, with a jazz background to add to the strange juxtaposition of cute girls shooting guns for fun.

AND IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Sadly, the third episode completely fails to capitalize on this momentum. Its plot is that the club goes off to a competition. At this point, we have no idea how long it has been since Yura joined the club, nor was it mentioned in the previous episode. Once there, the action scenes are a step down from the first two and instead of doing something original or interesting, we meet Sonora's rival, who snipes at her with dialogue I've heard in dozens of other shows that include a rival of some kind. Then, Yura is place in a hopeless situation, gives up, and is harshly admonished by Sonora. And we finish up with a hot springs scene. Because that totally needed to be there.

So, what I am left with is a show that does some interesting things in the first two episodes with a third episode that is a complete letdown. I wasn't completely in love with the first two episodes. I felt that the story of Yura joining the club could have been done in less time, probably in one episode, as there was a lot of wasted time running over things that had been previously said and gags that didn't work. Still, I was on the fence going into episode three, and with that episode falling flat on its face, I have to fail Stella-bu.