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Housing Complex C Mini-series Finale Episode 4 "The End Of The Line" Discussion!!!

OwlChemist81

By OwlChemist81
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Toonamiguy321 Elder

Toonamiguy321

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Well, I gotta say in its final stretch, this ended up being one wild ride. Among the originals, I’d rank this as the best so far, not that that is a high bar or anything. 
 

Biggest black mark for it is pacing, and a lot of people called that the moment we found out it was 4 episodes. This episodes mass info dump in particular, where the characters standard speech pattern was thrown out because he had to vomit out so much lore and info so quickly, was difficult to follow. Once we got over that hurdle though, it was a solid 9/10 up until the credits rolled. 
 

Do gotta say though, having another Demarco/Maki original that ends with the main girl being a god and the credits rolling over them with a different hair color makes them seem a little creatively bankrupt. 
 

In the end, I’m just glad my boy Khan survived. And I guess also his homie who hit the road last episode when he found out he was in a horror anime. 

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Sketch

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6 minutes ago, Toonamiguy321 said:

Well, I gotta say in its final stretch, this ended up being one wild ride. Among the originals, I’d rank this as the best so far, not that that is a high bar or anything. 
 

Biggest black mark for it is pacing, and a lot of people called that the moment we found out it was 4 episodes. This episodes mass info dump in particular, where the characters standard speech pattern was thrown out because he had to vomit out so much lore and info so quickly, was difficult to follow. Once we got over that hurdle though, it was a solid 9/10 up until the credits rolled. 
 

Do gotta say though, having another Demarco/Maki original that ends with the main girl being a god and the credits rolling over them with a different hair color makes them seem a little creatively bankrupt. 
 

In the end, I’m just glad my boy Khan survived. And I guess also his homie who hit the road last episode when he found out he was in a horror anime. 

They kinda pulled a reverse Fena and it certainly was a more satisfying ending than Fena.

Part of me feels like the big reveals had to all happen in this episode but they could have gotten to the tension in episode 3 by the end of episode 2 and showed some more suspicious activity from the Kushide’s. Short of Yuri acting weird in the OP, the knife in episode 2 and something Kushide said in episode 1 there was hardly any reason to suspect the Kushide family until the dang episode preview. Personally I thought Yuri was sus by episode 2 but I didn’t expect her parents to be god worshipping psychos.

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Daos Paragon

Daos

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10 hours ago, ben0119 said:

And now Housing Complex C looking like it's been abandoned for years.  Khan the only survivor.

Well, that seemed pointless lol.

Hah that's the word that came to my mind when I saw the final episode. I was like, so what was the point of that? 

Human beings are scum, pretty much everyone dies. Great story bro.

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Jman Hero

Jman

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20 minutes ago, Daos said:

Hah that's the word that came to my mind when I saw the final episode. I was like, so what was the point of that? 

Human beings are scum, pretty much everyone dies. Great story bro.

Maybe it’s an allegory for the block.  Jackasses ruin everything, it falls to ruin, everything sucks forever because of streaming services.
 

 

 

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atomicinumatt Centurion

atomicinumatt

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So, I really liked Housing Complex C.

I think my only complaints are shared with most others. Namely the large info dump during the finale. But I guess that is what you have to do when you only get four episodes. I still feel that it could have been done better than spending the first half of the finale doing a monologue info dump. I also did not feel as connected to some of the characters, like Yuuri. But this could just be due to a lack of screen time and the low amount of episodes?

All in all though, I really liked it. The story was good and had me reaching and guessing in the first couple episodes. The characters that actually saw some screen time, like Kahn, I really ended up liking. I loved the reveal that Kimi is a god and the twist that Yuuri was evil. Her death scene was so satisfying. There are still a few questions I have but hopefully I can answer them with a re-watch. 

I see that some are saying the ending is pointless, as Housing Complex C seems to go back to 'normal'. And while there are definitely some symptoms of lazy writing, I think the story is about a whimsical god who got bored but also wanted harmony, so she created a place where time stands still and people can try and live harmoniously but humans probably were not ready for something like that..

I don't know. All in all I give it a solid 8.0 - 8.5 out of 10. It is definitely [as]/Toonami's best original anime so far haha I just wish that it was more full-length! I feel like a lot of its issues could have been solved with just an extra episode or two. I have not re-watched any of it yet and am waiting for the marathon next weekend so I will see you all there!

This will definitely be fun to watch back-to-back for Halloween weekend!

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Toonamiguy321 Elder

Toonamiguy321

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Not sure if this has already been discussed, but early promo material for HCC used the red splatter behind the logo. When it actually started getting ads on TV, it used the blue splatter. This piece of advertising used both. 
 

Was there any significance to this that I overlooked? Or was it just a stylistic choice? The red version obviously looks like blood and fits a horror theme. I didn’t notice anything that relates to the blue. 

A6CB0F15-93A6-4268-BE17-0F8947D39D52.jpeg

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PokeNirvash Monster Mutant

PokeNirvash

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On 10/23/2022 at 12:11 AM, rpgamer said:

This exposition dump feels like some lazy writing...

Eh, at least it was properly foreshadowed, unlike the entire Koshide family - even Yuri, the fucking ten-year old - being psychotic fuck-os.

On 10/23/2022 at 3:24 AM, Sketch said:

They kinda pulled a reverse Fena and it certainly was a more satisfying ending than Fena.

Damn straight!

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Blatch Luminary

Blatch

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Okay, so... I kind of loved that finale? Yeah, I know, this show has the morality of an edgy teenager, but there's something about Kimi being a god in loli clothing (as a Touhou fan, I've seen it), and then feeling so spiteful over her friend being a worshipper of some other god and wanting to kill her that she decides to wipe out all of humanity that's so satisfying. And so was Kimi dismembering Yuri's parents with limbs coming down from the fleshy ceiling, followed by showering her with blood in the grand 90s Nickelodeon tradition, a scene I remember from the very first promo they showed for this series. And hey, I'm glad Kan survived all this too. He seems like a nice guy.

There were definitely some problems with this show. I don't think it's an effective horror anime, and I'm not even sure if this finale made the rest of the show worth it, but it's definitely something I'll remember for a while. The show looks good (which, interestingly, has been a trend with all the recent Toonami originals), the voice acting is solid, and it seems like there will be some things that stand out on a rewatch, not like this show is going to get another rerun after the marathon next week. I would personally say Shenmue is the best of the recent originals, although I actually didn't connect with that one as much as other people did. (Mostly, I thought the pacing was a bit mechanical, the plot got too convoluted in the Hong Kong arc, and the ending is a gut punch now knowing that we're probably not getting a second season.) This one was far from bad; I'd give it a 7/10, mostly dependent on the finale.

One last thing: in regards to the pacing, when I found out there was going to be a 10-minute infodump (more like eight minutes, after personally timing it) in this episode, I braced myself for the worst. But it at least managed to be compelling. I wonder if the production team wanted six episodes for this show and were only able to get four. That would explain why they stuffed all this lore into the finale like clowns piling into a small car. There were also certain things that could've gotten a little more fleshing out, methinks, like Kimi having reality warper powers (which feels like it came out of nowhere, although I wouldn't be surprised if this was teased at some point), the ancient society that worshipped her (and the analogues for Yuri and Kan within it, who were spotlighted in the OP), an explanation of how the time loop works... but hey, it's not a terrible thing that all of this went unexplained.

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PokeNirvash Monster Mutant

PokeNirvash

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Okay, time for a more substantial collection of final thoughts.

I went into Housing Complex C not having very high hopes. When you're an original anime with a bunch of no-names attributed to the core staff, you're announced the same day as not one but two more FLCL sequels, and it's only a month or two from your premiere broadcast that your episode count turns out to be four... it's not difficult to temper expectations, especially with [as]'s prior track record on in-house anime productions. (And I'm not talking about the obvious Western parodies like Perfect Hair Forever or Gemusetto.) So it was a pleasant surprise to see the people involved actually pull off what, at least according to ANN, were for many of them a first attempt at an anime. I think amphibian actually being a visual novel screenwriter helped with that, he had enough experience to know how to make something work, unlike the complete novice who lucked her way into being Fena's head writer without a single credit to her name.

I found little issue with the technical aspects. The animation wasn't anything remarkable, but it was functional with an art style that looked good enough in a consistent fashion that any QUALITY didn't feel too out-of-place. The music, though unmemorable, was also fitting across the respective scenes in which various pieces were used. And as always, Bang Zoom put in a great effort on the voice acting. It's hard to place a specific favorite - Doug Stone remains one of my favorite "old guy" voices so I'm biased towards Koba, though Jake Eberle did a great job making his voice memorable in Taka, and Sean Chiplock's off-the-rails portrayal of Mr. Koshide in the finale was absolute aces - but they were all good. (Assorted thought: "Kimi sounds exactly like Fina from Kuma 3 Bear, but without the lisp.") And then there's the writing, which provided plenty of intrigue that set up several mysteries that were all answered by the end in manners ranging from satisfying to satisfactory. Sure, a lot of them were answered in a posthumous narration of lore done in the same vein as Collar6's infamous Infodump Saga, but I'm not the kind of person who watches things in a straight shot on my own time, pausing for reasons that aren't just secondhand cringe, so I was able to handle them well. (Besides, they weren't Hakyu Hoshin Engi levels of rushed, which is the best any anime can hope for in its pacing.)

Of course, Housing Complex C has plenty of flaws as well. While I can appreciate the attention to detail in making it part of the Lovecraft mythos (and not the absolute farce Nyaruko-san turned it into), down to tackling his regularly employed themes of xenophobia head-on and making something positive out of it... I can't help but feel that, being an American production, the decision to use the Cthulhu mythos as the basis for the overarching lore and mystery was a lazy one. Predictable, even. Though not nearly as lazy, even with the subtlest bits of foreshadowing sprinkled throughout the show itself and staring us straight in the face during the opening animation, as making the Koshide family the villains this entire time. Not once are we shown a single hint as to their psychotic mass-murderer sides, not until Taka realizes they're at the ultimate fault for the mysterious happenings. And even then, it comes so out of left field that it feels as if a completely different person wrote them than the one who wrote them for the first three episodes. (And last I checked, amphibian wrote all four, no outsourcing needed.) To cap it all off, making Yuri complicit in their irredeemable actions, even having a budding murder fetish of her own, is just insultingly edgy. I literally uttered "this is edgier than Akame ga KILL!" at one point. And I meant it.

That said, the Koshides' gloriously guroge-worthy deaths were all cathartic and deserved, but at the cost of Kimi almost using her God powers to chuck a "rocks fall, humanity dies" ending on us. I'm so sick and tired of those kinds of endings, especially when they come straight the fuck outta nowhere and happen for next to no damn good reason. Newsflash, Iyoyoloki Soyohosu: the tiny town in Japan you've holed yourself up in for 20,000 years is not the microcosm of Earth as a whole that you think it is, so don't you fucking dare think the forced insanity of a nuclear family is enough reason to conclude "all humans are bastards" and just end everything! [sigh] Though for what it's worth, Kimi did give Kan her emergency shutdown code in the event that she came to such an impulsive decision, and he used it effectively, so it balances out.

Speaking of Kan, he's a good man despite initial appearances, and I'm glad he managed to survive the series, scathed but more importantly alive. I bet Rubel was the one who messaged him on his phone at the end, and the two of them meet back up and start living their best lives now that their "horror movie chapters" are finally over. (I've already got a cameo planned for them in one of my Kunoichi season 2 chapters. I should get back on that...)

All in all, it's not hard to place Housing Complex C on the ranking board of [as] original anime as in the upper half, but nowhere close to the top. It was a solid piece of animation, but one with too many warts for me to consider a favorite. If you've ever visited my MAL account, you'll have noticed that I gave this show an 8, but that's because my scoring system is like IGN; it needs a massive overhaul that I'm too lazy to do piece-by-piece in the single sitting it deserves. But I'm slowly working my way towards something more reasonable, and my actual score proves it. Though not a major deviation, I give Housing Complex C a 7/10. Stronger than expected first impressions plus the ending being on my mind frequently enough to keep me from falling asleep at the usual paces can do wonders in adding that extra half-to-whole point I initially settled on.

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