Stella Women's Academy, High School Division Class C3: Episode 10

Stella Women's Academy, High School Division Class C3 is an anime series set at Stella Women's Academy, and focuses on a new student named Yura Yamato. Yura is a new freshman at the school, and she's a timid girl with a rather vivid imagination. Yura ends up joining the C3-Bu Club, which is a club at the school that plays "survival games" with air guns.



At the beginning of episode 10, Yura officially joins the team at Meisei Women's Academy. During her first battle with Meisei, Yura is part of a two-man cell with Rin. Karila's brother's, Aila, team is at the match, and notices that Yura is with the Meisei team. He sends a picture to Karila, who shares it with the rest of Stella's team.




While Meisei wins the game, Yura didn't follow the strategy that Rin had told the team to use. For their next battle, Rin assigns Yura to be the medic, because she is keeping their previous battle in mind, Yura is rather upset to be the medic, since the person in that role can only battle during the final five minutes. There were times when Yura would be so busy seething about how unfair this was that she would tune out her teammates calling out for the medic.



At the end of the match, it turns out the other team won. All of the team members except for Yura shake hands with the winning team; instead, she just pouts and clenches her hand at her side. When I saw that, I felt that Yura needed someone to put a boot up her butt for showing such poor sportsmanship.



Yura later confronts Rin about why she was the medic, and all Rin will tell her is that she kept their previous battle in mind. Yura says that if things had gone differently right at the end of the match, that they could have won, and then Yura asks what she did wrong, and what else she could have done. Rin tells Yura that she shouldn't think that Rin will give her all of the answers, and it's something that Yura has to think about for herself. After Rin walks away, Yura simple interprets what Rin meant that Yura still isn't good enough, and that she needs to train harder. Unfortunately, Yura simply can't see beyond her old self-centeredness. At this point, I honestly felt that someone needed to tell Yura that, "There is no 'I' in team."



Later, Rento goes to Meisei to talk with Yura, and even tells her that she's welcome to come back to Stella's team. Yura rebuffs Rento, and says that she doesn't need Stella's team anymore; in fact, Yura believes that Meisei recognizes her true value.



At the next match for Meisei, Rin assigns Yura to be the medic again. She doesn't like it, but vows that she will win, even as a medic. When the last five minutes hit, Yura goes out to get as many opponents as possible. When one of her Meisei teammates falls and injures her ankle, Yura does nothing to help; she just returns to the match, acting as if nothing is wrong.



After the battle, Rin finally tells Yura point-blank that she's acting selfish and self-centered, and that there's no place on Meisei's team for Yura. Yura leaves, looking dejected. At this point, I was like, "Thank you, Rin, for FINALLY spelling it out for her!"



There's a scene right after this where Yura is on a train, heading home with the sun setting. This scene made me think of the scenes of Shinji in Neon Genesis Evangelion, where he was riding on a train at sunset and thinking over what's happened. At the end of this scene, Yura concludes that she can't go back to Stella's team.



After seeing this episode, my faith in this series is starting to become restored. I really do hope we will finally see the redemption of Yura that I've been wanting to see for the past couple of episodes. As a character, I really hope that Yura can find a good middle ground for her personality. While it's good she became more assertive, she just needs to work at dialing back her assertiveness a little.
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