C³ - CubexCursedxCurious

シーキューブ (C³)

8.0(1)

OtakuDen

6.6(84,820)

MAL Score

Ranked #7514

Popularity #1522

Action
Comedy
Ecchi
Supernatural
Harem
School

Episodes: 12
Duration: 24 min per ep
Aired: Oct 1, 2011 to Dec 17, 2011
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

Based on Minase Hazuki’s light novels, *C³ - CubexCursedxCurious* follows Haruaki Yachi, a high schooler with an unusual knack for withstanding curses. His quiet routine shifts when his father mails him a mysterious black cube—only for Haruaki to wake up and find a naked girl named Fear in his kitchen.

Fear is the cube’s human form, a cursed instrument of torture with powers of her own. As Haruaki gets drawn into the supernatural fallout surrounding cursed tools, the pair end up facing off against other such instruments and the people who wield them, mixing battles with offbeat comedy and school-life complications.

Otaku Consensus

C³ lands as a watchable but uneven Fall 2011 curiosity: its brisk 12-episode pacing, TV-MA cursed-object edge, and less-grating-than-expected harem lead helped it outperform the red-flag packaging for several reviewers. The recurring criticism is not the concept but the execution: thin character development and passable-to-poor visual polish, especially the shading on weapons, settings, and characters, keep the SILVER LINK. adaptation from becoming more than a short, fan-service-heavy diversion.

Why You Should Watch

Watch C³ if you want a compact supernatural harem that gets to the guilty-pleasure material quickly: cursed-object fights, abrasive comedy, school-life jealousy beats, and fan service that reviewers found impossible to ignore. It scratches part of the High School DxD itch, with ecchi chaos colliding with danger, but without the franchise commitment, and it has a bit of the weaponized-girl novelty that made older light-novel adaptations so bingeable. The appeal is not prestige animation or deep lore; it is the odd tonal snap between torture-weapon imagery and sitcom timing, carried by a cast of recognizable Japanese voices. If you want something darker than a standard clubroom harem but lighter and shorter than a serious cursed-artifact saga, this is a two-evening watch with enough weirdness to justify its reputation.

Key Characters

F
Fear Kubrick(VA: Yukari Tamura)
Yukari Tamura gives Fear the show’s biggest tonal swing, playing cute-comic volatility against the character’s torture-tool identity rather than treating her as a standard magical girlfriend.
K
Konoha Muramasa(VA: Minori Chihara)
Minori Chihara’s Konoha functions as the stabilizing presence when the series shifts from harem noise into supernatural weapon conflict.
K
Kirika Ueno(VA: Eri Kitamura)
Eri Kitamura’s Kirika became a visual talking point because reviewers singled out her cursed-weapon outfit as the series’ flagship fan-service image.
H
Haruaki Yachi(VA: Yuuki Kaji)
Yuuki Kaji’s Haruaki stands out in the reception because at least one skeptical critic expected a grating harem lead and came away relieved he was not the deal-breaker.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
The series is a one-cour adaptation of Minase Hazuki’s light novels, airing in a tight 12-episode run from Oct 1 to Dec 17, 2011. That short form is central to its reputation as an easy, low-commitment watch rather than a sprawling mythology piece.
2
SILVER LINK. frames the material around abrupt tonal contrast: school harem comedy sits beside TV-MA cursed-tool violence and torture imagery. Reviewers who expected pure trope recycling noted that the darker edge made the familiar setup stranger than the packaging suggested.
3
The visual reception is a defining part of its legacy: critics called out weak shading on weapons, settings, and characters, while still noting isolated shots that looked genuinely watchable. It is a rare case where the opening and select images are often discussed more warmly than the episode-to-episode animation.
4
Fan service is not incidental; home-video reviewers described it as abundant and specifically identified Kirika’s cursed-weapon outfit as the flagship image of C³. Viewers sensitive to ecchi framing should treat the TV-MA label as meaningful.
5
Its English-language home release is notable for being a Funimation release without an English dub track. For collectors used to Funimation bilingual sets, C³ stands out as a sub-only outlier.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: The title is commonly rendered as both C³ and C3, while the full subtitle expands the three Cs into Cube, Cursed, and Curious.
Fun fact 2: C³ was produced by SILVER LINK. in the same era when the studio was building a reputation around light-novel and school-comedy adaptations.
Fun fact 3: Anime Herald flagged the Funimation release as unusual because it carried no English dub track, despite Funimation’s strong association with bilingual home-video releases.
Fun fact 4: The Geekly Grind framed the Blu-ray set as a better purchase for collectors than for viewers seeking a landmark series, calling out passable animation and voice acting alongside weak story development.
Fun fact 5: On MyAnimeList, C³ sits at a 6.57 score from 84,807 votes, with popularity far stronger than its rank: #1521 in popularity versus #7510 in ranking.