Code Breaker – 04

Things just became fabulous.

This is a fairly short review since even though a ton of stuff happened, I can’t find much to talk about. I mean, I love the show and everything, but there are just so many week in a row I can say “the blue flames look cool”.

So how about that partially established rivalry? …Sadly, this was probably the most exciting part of the episode. I can’t say that any of the explanations were overly insightful and even though this was mostly to introduce Toki, it did drag a bit. Let’s set that aside though, and go into more important things.

…Like how fabulous Heike is. From that gold frame to the way his teacup sparkled, they have his fabulousness down perfectly. On the down side though, they also seem to have taken away his reading material of choice (aka his erotic bondage novels). Speaking of that though, they also seemed to have completely removed Toki’s chain smoking tendencies and the bullets he shot back at the guards didn’t even kill any of them. …They’re just sucking all of the fun out of this show. Maybe the smoking part isn’t important, but killing the guards in the manga made a point that absolutely all of the Code:Breakers are ruthless despite their personalities. Maybe Toki missed since Sakura interfered (they’ve definitely upped her attempts at stopping everyone from dying from her attempts in the original), but I do think they’ve softened him a bit.

Are Nenene and Toki siblings or are they not? Just how much of what Toki said this episode was the truth and how much was a lie? His actions were fairly confusing this episode, and the question as to whether the two character are related or not is still up in the air. …Though the answer should be fairly obvious considering that the likelihood of two characters coincidentally being born with the exact same heterochromia is low even in anime standards. So why doesn’t Nenene know who Toki is? …The anime should answer that eventually. …If the episodes even get that far.

“I-it’s not like I want to you to burn to death or anything! B-baka!”

So in the manga, the events of this episode came before Hitomi was introduced, so this is kind of what I meant by that somewhat random fight between Hitomi and Yuuki helping the plot move along. Without that, we’d just be watching Rei killing people with no real goal and Toki randomly showing up. After this job, I’m pretty sure there’s one more mini arc before Yuuki is even formally introduced and the first arc even begins. Bringing back the topic of this episode, they mention Hitomi casually here as well, so at least they’re trying to keep him fresh as the idea of the current antagonist. …Though I’m not sure why the illegal organ operation suddenly turned into a power user experimentation lab. Maybe to make the next episode more exciting battle-wise? To show off how good they are at animating everyone’s powers? …I wonder if the kid in the wheelchair is still going to be there at the end of this operation. …And if she is, how they’re going to incorporate that into the plot.

Again, a lot happened, but at the same time not a lot happened. More than half of the episode was dedicated to explaining things that we already knew about the Code:Breakers. I suppose its good for newcomers who still haven’t grasped their heads around the concept of Code:Breaker, but for me the episode just dragged on. Heike was sort of a distraction, and I did like Toki’s parts with Rei, but it was the exact same things as last episode other than that. Sakura is still pushing Rei to stop killing. Rei doesn’t listen and burns everything in his way. The special effects still look pretty cool minus that one really obvious CGI bench (the door was surprisingly well done though… I’m not sure if that was CGI or not though). However, that being said, the animation certainly had its QUALITY moments this episode. I guess it is a fairly new animation studio (or at least they haven’t been in charge of that many anime series) after all.

I wonder how many time they’ll use this exact same camera angle in previews. It’s two episodes in a row so far for this shot.

About Karakuri

University student and the one at Metanorn who's known for wearing glasses. Likes blood, insanity and plot twists, but also plays otome games and adores cute romance anime. It balances out... somehow.