Recap: While Yura continues to go into a downward spiral, Sonora prepares to leave the C3 Club. The girls decide to have one last match to see her off.

Gee’s Thoughts: Picking up after Yura’s emotional breakdown, we find that the C3 Club is going through its own dire straits. Sonora will be going overseas yet again at the end of the month, perhaps for the last time. In addition, her enthusiasm for airsoft has been diminished, only hanging around the club hoping Yura will return. Yura however, is still nowhere to be found. Having had enough with the general mopey feeling of the club in recent times, Rento goes searching for her, finally finding her in an arcade. Yura’s become a shadow of her former self, reverting to a combination of her formerly weak-willed self and the gun-obsessed mall ninja she had become. Though Rento and Yura’s tragic conversation goes nowhere, the rest of the club vows to be better, hoping that better communication and honesty will prevent something like this from happening again.

In the end, a pep talk from Rin of all people convinces Sonora to drop her own facade and play to win again. It’s an interesting contrast really. Sonora adopted a relaxed “just for fun” persona to allow her to enjoy airsoft with others, but in the end learns to enjoy winning again. Meanwhile, Yura became obsessed with victory in the hopes of validation from her friends, when really she needs to relax and have fun for fun’s sake. Thankfully Yura’s reality warping skills pop up again and another pep talk from Mysterious Fox Choujirou  finally convinces her to take up airsoft again.

While the whole thing is a little cliche, I can’t help but love the underlying messages of this episode. Rento and the other girls begin to understand that their antics have sometimes been selfish and that what they do for fun isn’t necessarily what others enjoy. Yura’s feelings of abandonment and lack of direction are something I can sympathize with, and her realization of her need to accept herself before she can hope to earn the acceptance of others is surprisingly well done.

Overall, C3 continues to surprise me with the entertainment it’s given me, and while it’s not exactly the deepest or most well executed show around, it never claimed as much so I find myself continuously surprised by what I’m getting. I look forward to seeing how Yura patches things up with the rest of the C3 club in the finale. It will probably involve cute girls doing cute things (with guns).