C団地

C DANCHI

ANIME

STATUS
COMPLETE
EPISODES
4
RELEASE
October 23, 2022
LENGTH
25 min

DESCRIPTION

Housing Complex C centers around Kimi, who lives in a small, low-cost housing complex located in the seaside town of Kurosaki where 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: Adult Swim)

CAST

Kimi Shirokado
Ayahi Takagaki
Yuri Koshide
Haruka Tomatsu
Kan-chan Mia
Takaya Kuroda
Takashi Takamura
Kazuhiro Yamaji
Mitsuko Momochi
Ai Orikasa
Toshi Wada
Kujira
Seiichi Koshide
Wataru Hatano
Rubel Hossen
Takeshi Nishimura
Keko Koshide
Sayaka Oohara
Hideo Momochi
Kisou Kobayashi
Yuusaku Yara
Kentaro Yoshii
Nobuo Tobita
Elderly Man A
Kazunori Nomiya
Elderly Man B
Koudai Takegawa
Elderly Woman A
Alice Sakurai

EPISODES

Dubbed

| | |

Not available on crunchyroll

REVIEWS

Almy
20/100
how not to do horror. or pacing. or writing. or directing (full spoilers)
housing complex C. i typically don't expect a lot out of horror anime, but adult swim is pretty good at "dark stuff" so maybe they could hit this one. they didn't. they really, really, really fucking didn't.

one thing you’ll quickly realize with this show is that they have no idea how pacing works. despite being a four episode show, the first three episodes feel sluggish. the show meanders around interactions between different undeveloped characters that never really hit a meaningful climax at all. our main character is a girl named Kimi who lives in a housing complex with a bunch of old people, and some foreign immigrants and a new girl are moving in. that’s all the background we get.

in the first episode we meet one of the younger women in the housing complex, and her shut in son. they both die by the end of the episode. it’s revealed that there’s a big creepy hidden tunnel underneath the housing complex which i’m sure is not nefarious and nothing will happen there. and that’s pretty much it. 1/4th of the show is gone and basically nothing has been accomplished

episode 2 begins with the “horror” and shows someone has been dumping dead animal carcasses and fish around kimi’s apartment. kimi notices some racist tension between the old people and the new immigrants, and decides to hold a shaved ice party to try and help them settle their difference. In our first big actual “horror” moment, they find a beating heart inside the shake syrup.

now would be a good time to talk about this show’s racism plotline which is fucking shit and awful. the old people and the immigrants don’t get along which leads to them hating pretty much anything the other group does. this comes to a head in the third episode, when one of the immigrants, Khan, gets beaten up by some old people. the plotline then immediately ends and is never brought up again

the first 15 minutes of episode 3 consist of racism based fighting that goes nowhere and does nothing. we are now 70% of the way through the show and absolutely fucking nothing has happened so far. after this the real plot starts. yes they waited until they had 30 minutes left in the show to actually focus on the plot at all. one of the old guys goes on a long winded rant about the town’s mythology and how he thinks he’s discovered something and honestly it was so incredibly boring i remember basically none of it outside of this secret song thing.

he then disappears and they track his steps back down into the tunnel, where they discover a secret room hidden in a passageway. kimi and her friend, the new girl, enter the room where you temporarily get a glimpse of some weird living thing hanging from a branch in there. while watching the show, you might think this is an important clue as to the show’s mystery. it isn’t. it’s never brought up at all. after that they find a bunch of hieroglyphs on the wall, telling a story about fish people from an ancient time. also the old guy is dead.

now you might think episode 4, the final episode, is gonna spend its full 25 minutes telling the secrets of the housing complex and bringing about a satisfying conclusion. WRONG. the entire mystery of the show is solved in an 8 minute boring ass monologue by the ghost of the old guy. the monologue is boring as hell and frequently extremely incoherent and impossible to follow. the main thing you need to know is that kimi is actually a god and some rival monster things have been planting the dead animals to try and fight her or something i think.

after this the show just fucking gives up and begins murdering people for no apparent reason. the new girl and her family go on a murder spree around the complex. the highlight of this time is kimi giving khan a paper saying “if you ever need help, read the words on this paper”. after receiving the paper he walks out of his apartment and immediately gets stabbed.

the new girl then chases kimi into a deep part of the underground tunnel where kimi rips her parents limb from limb, transports them into the tunnel, and then showers the girl in blood. she then vaguely rambles about how “humans ruin everything” and “this species sucks” before resetting the town and the housing complex. the show ends

my closing thoughts are that this fucking sucks. i don’t even know what to say this shit was terrible
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0215MADman
62/100
Housing Complex C's extremely short length is both a blessing and a curse.
I'm fairly generous towards Adult Swim originals. I'm a long time fan of the block and I want to see them succeed in these final years of cable. Overall, I love FLCL Progressive even though no one else does, FLCL Alternative was alright, Fena: Pirate Princess started off strong but didn't go anywhere, and I watched one episode of Blade Runner: Black Lotus before deciding "yeah I'm not interested in this one". Finally there's Shenmue, which as someone who's never played the games, I really enjoyed. And now we have Housing Complex C, which can only be described as Adult Swim's plan B if Uzumaki wasn't ready in time. I applaud that we got a new horror anime but this was way too short.

God, what was the plot? A bunch of middle easterners move into a seaside housing complex, the old Japanese residents are racist, there's a mystery going on underneath the housing complex, and also one of the residents is really into the Cthulhu mythos. This is 4 episodes long and that is all I could remember about the plot. This is written by amphibian, a visual novel writer, and you can REALLY tell. Most of the dialogue is expository, which for a visual novel that goes on for several hours is fine to have. But for a 4 episode anime, essentially a 90 minute movie? Yeah it comes off more as wasted time. 80-85% of this show is exposition, let that sink in.

The first thing I noticed when watching the credits is that the character designs are by the great Yoshitoshi ABe. His designs are far closer to that of RErideD (a hilariously bad sci-fi romp that goes on for far too long) than any of his late 90s/early 2000s works, but his presence is a welcome surprise and one that I think would have generated more interest in the series had it, or for that matter any of the Japanese crew besides the director/writer/producer/studio, been revealed prior to episode 1's drop. Honestly while we're on that subject, it IS kind of weird that they bothered to reveal the director and studio since both are pretty unknown. The director is a complete mystery, so much so that it could be a psuedonym, and the studio is mostly known for in-between animation. I don't mind them being unknowns, I appreciate new faces, though the direction is pretty meh. The use of negative space was probably to build suspense but it comes off as really lame shot composition. Can't say I cared for any of the storyboarding, but the animation itself is fine.

In the sound department, I have nothing to say about the music because there is nothing noteworthy or memorable about the music. That's perfectly fine, not all scores need to be bombastic and catchy. In the case of Housing Complex C, being atmospheric and lowkey is fine. To address the elephant in the room, the series is currently only available in the English dub. It releases on HBO Max three hours after broadcast but the HBO Max version only includes the English dub, which is strange but not surprising. Part of the reason Adult Swim partnered with Crunchyroll for their last three shows was because Adult Swim is incompetent with providing the Japanese sub. Nevertheless, the dub is good and is only going to piss off the die-hard sub elitists who would probably never give this show the time of day.

A lot of my criticisms with Housing Complex C are negated by how short it is. If this were 12 episodes long and none of the problems fixed itself this would be an easy 5/10. But it's 4 episodes! I have to give this anime props for not wasting my time. There's no sunk cost to be had, it's the length of a movie. That being said, if this were a movie it wouldn't be that good of a movie. It's over an hour of exposition followed by a really anticlimactic (but fun) last 15 minutes. Do I recommend it? Well, it's 4 episodes long, you likely decided if you were going to watch it before you read this review. It's alright, there's significantly worse horror anime out there. One thing I will give Housing Complex C is that it didn't anger me, it did not make me despise the choices that are made. This is not a bad anime, it just also does not have anything exemplary either. The last episode is neat but didn't build up to it very well. I would love to see these guys make another Adult Swim anime. Just one that's either longer or makes better use of the 4 episodes.
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SenNkA
60/100
Absurd horror is great, absurd ending not so much...
Watch out for spoilers!!

C Danchi had a great potential and does not deserve the hating it gets... well, almost.

Story:
I like cosmic horror set in present. I have to say, I liked the ancient cave and the mythology. With that said, it felt predictable. Once the moss appeared, I knew what it meant.
However, the gore - dead animals - suprised me and were kind of a welcomed twist. I have to admit, I didn't fully understand it, or the details of the story, but I think C Danchi did a good job serving us a horror story.
Horror is not just jumpscared and blood. Horror is this unwelcomed feeling deep inside us. And I had that feeling the whole time I was watching. Of course they could get deeper into it, explore the lore, tell us more about the ancient god(ess) or the weird stone... but for what it was - a 4 episode anime - it did a decent job.

Characters:
The character of Kan was the most memorable for me. Ever since the first episode, I had this odd feeling about him. And it might be because of his design. I couldn't shake that feeling until the last second, but then I was so happy for him. The ending he got was deserved.
Mister Takashi Takamura was the key character - the one that figured everything out. I saw people comment that the conclusion was rushed, but I don't think so. It was the ending that was rushed - but we will get to it a second later. Think about it. The man discovered the truth, and wrote it down. But that on itself wasn't a rushed explanation. It was just a regural lore episode/part in which we learned what the heck is actually going on in the C Danchi. It worked like it worked in any TV show, like it worked in any other anime.
Yuri on the other had was such a miss of a character. That girl had so much potential. They screwed it up a few times: first in the car, when she seemed to be this "I don't care about anyone and anything as long as I have my games" but changed once she approached Kimi as this scaredy cat, and then she changed in the end. It felt like 3 different characters, which was a shame, because she could be really interesting.
I was also a bit pissed with Wada, but honestly, points to her. It felt fresh and it felt new, we all know that old Karen that hates everyone and everything. So even though everyone hated her/was suprised by how she acted, that was a good character!

Entertainment value:
6/10
I wish I could give this anime more points, they would be deserved. I like the opening song, I like the animation and the art style, I was totally into the story... the ending ruined it for me. I didn't mind the gore, the head in the soup, the mummy dog... But the "twist" of Yuri's family being some kind of psychos, killing everyone was pretty stupid to be honest.
The anime would do great even without it.
Not to mention Kimi's mom in the jar... which was such a waster twist. They could do more about it, a lot more. So solely because of that, I am taking four points down, staying upset that this could be really great!

Conclusion:
Watch this anime, but stop at the timestamp 8:24 of the fourth episode and make your own ending. It will be much better than what happens next. This anime felt like writing a thesis. You put down some great ideas but then forget to read it over before you send it to your professor. If they only took another look and saw that some things needed more explaining or being removed, this would be a solid 8!
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