C Danchi
Housing Complex C
C団地
"Housing Complex C" centers around Kimi, who lives in a small, low-cost housing complex located in the seaside town of Kurosaki. Trouble seems to follow her wherever she goes, and horrific incidents begin to occur. Is an ancient evil stalking the residents of Housing Complex C? (Source: Variety, edited)
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"Housing Complex C" centers around Kimi, who lives in a small, low-cost housing complex located in the seaside town of Kurosaki. Trouble seems to follow her wherever she goes, and horrific incidents begin to occur. Is an ancient evil stalking the residents of Housing Complex C? (Source: Variety, edited)
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Gsarthotegga
October 23, 2022
C Danchi is a stinky stew of Lovecraftian horror, on the nose social commentary, and CGDCT/SoL stylings, all of which combine to produce a whole lot of cringe-comedy, in both intentional and unintentional fashion. The main focus was obviously meant to be the Lovecraftian horror, but all of these other elements subtract from building tension and atmosphere, so the horror has no chance of being anything more than "so bad it's good" b-movie horror—but there's a thin line between that and "so bad it's bad." When it comes to attempts at evoking Lovecraft in visual mediums, there's usually the slow-burn horror intent on building atmosphere;there's also the more recent "inversion and social commentary" variety of Lovecraft-inspired/adapted works. C Danchi is a hybrid of the two styles. To make matters worse, C Danchi is not simply taking the basic concepts and ideas from Lovecraft or subsequent cosmic horror authors and expanding on them in new ways. The series is making direct references to Cthulhu by name, randomly showing a stereotypical Lovecraftian critter in the first few minutes, and depicting numerous drawings obviously inspired by Lovecraft's stories. Many authors continued to expand upon Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos after his death, and this kind of referential tendency has become commonplace in modern horror. If horror is about the unknown, then pop culture references should be abandoned as cheap b-movie crap. Nods and winks to the audience about "Cthulhu" is simply diminishing the horror and rendering this series as even more inauthentic. The cheap digital blood splatter in the opening, walking cliche's such as the all-knowing NEET drawing the alleged monsters like a tortured artist, and the senseless and badly placed cold opening, as well as many, many other elements, are also to the series' detriment. As for the social commentary and the inversion of Lovecraft, it's a fact that horror's roots stem from xenophobia—most of the main villains of horror stories are either monsters, aliens, ghosts, some kind of aberration, or outsiders. The clear intent with C Danchi was to show friction between the Japanese and the "fishing interns," the latter being migrant workers from the Middle East, and then relate these same tensions to past events, and, finally, presenting the question of whether we will "come full circle" with disastrous consequences or if we can, to quote the great philosopher John Lennon, "COME TOGETHER." If you're at all familiar with Lovecraft's works, you'll know about the xenophobic themes of many of his stories: true to the form of horror, the outsiders harbor dark gods, and they are to be repelled. The inversion of C Danchi instead hopes to bring together entirely unrelated cultures and reconcile their differences. It is possible to invert this trope effectively, but the writer does not have the skill to do so, or would prefer to make overcooked political propaganda rather than anything entertaining, artistic, or good. C Danchi takes the xenophobia theme and then turns it into a joke and milks it for humor in the dumbest of ways, and it's equally ham-fisted when they try to use it for serious, dramatic purposes. The writing, especially with the derpy Kimi tagging along, feels like Barney the Dinosaur: "I love you, you love me." Just add a bit of conflict. You can tell that this was meant for a Western audience or had Western influence without knowing it's airing on Toonami or was produced by Adult Swim. For most of the series, flat characters are guided along through a predictable and familiar culture clash plot. The social commentary first arises when a man introduces a dozen or so fishery interns to an elderly Japanese lady who is the landlord. The interns are presented as the sweetest little angels, while the old lady is rude and rebuffs them because they are foreigners, and this kind of conflict between natives and foreigners will persist throughout the series, usually resulting in kumbaya song and dance sessions. First of all, I was laughing the whole time because of the numerous awkward pans over the interns and the other characters, how painfully forced it was, and the comical music; I half expected a Brazzers logo to appear and confirm this was just a prank. I didn't even know the interns were supposed to be foreigners until they started speaking broken English, which was made even funnier by the awful English dub, and all of this adds to the sudden hilarity and weirdness of the scene. By this point, it's pretty clear this series has absolutely failed as horror. There are some interesting elements to the mystery and lore, but almost all of these threads are closed in a very fast infodumpy final episode, filled with plot holes, plot contrivances, and silliness that leaves me asking "Are you serious?" It's definitely telling that this was written by a VN author, and one who is concerned with spectacle and overly dramatic reveals above anything else, which is heightened by the blandness of the earlier episodes. The foreshadowing is poor for many of the reveals at the very end. Finally, there's the CGDCT/SoL stylings: this contrasting cute with horror thing from Japan needs to stop. Honestly, does Japan have to include children in everything? You're lucky to ever get a protagonist older than 18, but who wants to watch 9-year-old and 10-year-old girls, one of them sporting childish cat clothing—complete with a freaking cat tail—unearth spooky Lovecraftian monsters? Does this invoke fear, build the atmosphere, or contribute anything worthwhile to the story? Sure, it's good to contrast the horror with something a bit lighter or more ordinary, but this is too much! This is without doubt the "Hey, kid, shut up!" anime of the year. As much as I (learned to) like Higurashi, I think it's probably the no. 1 series that set horror anime up to fail. It combined ultra-contrasty CGDCT/SoL and a syrupy moe aesthetic with intensely paranoid mystery/thriller/horror writing. It's a combination that should have never worked, but they pulled it off because the scripting, the directing, and the non-linear story they had to tell was actually good. What also helped with Higurashi is that while it would cut to some very young kids once in a while, and they would baby talk and say stuff like "NIPAH MI NANODESU" or whatever nonsense, and everyone would nod and pretend to listen and say, "Aw! How cute," then we'd cut back to the older kids, and they would be like "So, anyway..." and they'd actually talk about important stuff. The problem is that our main counter-balance to the little tykes in C Danchi are like 70+, probably senile, and struggling to keep their dentures in while their mouths flap open to talk, and that also sums up everything I have to say about the animation, which is barely there—this is slideshow content. The humorous and light-hearted songs are simply awful. The music, even during the normal parts, should buildup to or in some way complement the horrific parts. it doesn't matter how spooky it might get later, as I'll always remember the clown show music that preceded it, and the constant tonal whiplash destroys immersion. You're better off having at least somber music or more scene-fitting tracks that aren't too silly. It's like the composer only had the most childish Halloween Music for Kindergarteners compilation to choose songs from. In many ways, music and sound design are the most important elements of horror, and this is another area where C Danchi is deficient. Essentially, we're left with a low-budget and clumsy story of culture clash meets Lovecraft in a cutesy cat costume for Halloween. There are too many mismatched and conflicting elements for this to be anything other than horrible. It's ironic that a story about an attempt to reconcile the differences between two distinct cultures is such an unappetizing mess of clashing ideas.
