“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and evil for evil.” – Ogami Rei, Code: 06
A world where there are a lot of people who cannot be judged by the law for 1. It is because they have money to save themselves from their faults and sins and 2. For they have the position to manipulate other people to save one’s self. For people such as these where evidence is impossible to keep them in prison or even to make them admit guilty, there are people who’d do the work and judge these people themselves. They are called the Code: Breakers, those with special abilities to judge those people who cannot be judged by the law and those whose existence has been erased from society.
Code: Breaker, an anime adaptation of the manga Code: Breaker by Akimine Kamijyo, is a 13-episode series that deals with justice and how six different individuals pictures justice on their own way. A new generation of assassins that works under a hidden organization called Eden, supervised by the Prime Minister. The main character, Ogami Rei, meets up with a witness during his last mission, Sakurakouji Sakura, who became closer to him by being involved on his every mission, saying she’ll stop him from killing people because it is wrong. But as a Code: Breaker, they must eliminate every witnesses and thus attempted to burn Sakurakouji but failed to do so since the girl also possesses a unique ability that protected her from Ogami’s flames and thus, became more involved with the hero and his other companions.
Eden has six Code: Breakers in total and Ogami is the sixth, Code: 06. Code: 05 is Hachiouji Rui who possesses the ability to use shadow. Code: 04 is Fujiwara Toki with the ability to manipulate one’s magnetic field. Code: 03, Tenpouin Yuuki with the special ability to use sound. Code: 02, Heike Masaomi with his ability to manipulate light. Lastly, Code: 01, Hitomi – considered being the strongest Code: Breaker in history and as the “ace” of the team – a traitor in the series that opposes Eden and its ways to justice.
If you don’t mind spoilers from the anime and manga, I’d advise you to skip the next paragraph and continue onto the next.
The anime adaptation of Code: Breakers is different from the manga itself. There are actually a lot of changes and a lot of scenes added. I am not quite sure if I should be happy about it or not but one thing is for sure: I enjoyed watching the anime. In the manga, the Hitomi Arc is actually pretty short. It was a scene created in order to introduce some of the Code: Breakers and serves as an introduction for Code: End. Rui hadn’t not yet appeared and obviously, the school on where Sakurakouji Sakura and Ogami Rei go to have a different set-up. There are also some character differences from the manga. For example, Sakurakouji’s father who is supposed to be weak and sickly happens to appear healthy in the anime and that Fujiwara Toki is supposed to be a Yankee-type of guy who smokes and he appeared on the anime as a genuine, yet play boy, kind of guy. But nonetheless, they manage to get the characters’ characteristics towards people good.
End of spoiler-prone area.
Story/Plot: 9/10
Even though the story was different from the manga and there are a lot of changes and additional stories included, it was still good and they happen to preserve the main essence of the Hitomi Arc. Not only that, they also got to deliver a lot of things that the manga didn’t. For example, the relationship between Hitomi and the other Code: Breakers and the past Code: Breakers and how deep Hitomi feels for those who have special abilities like him.
Characters/Character Development: 8/10
The character development is so-so although the only dominant development only happened on three characters, Ogami Rei, Hitomi and of course, Heike. If the story happens to extend more, the other Code: Breakers might have a chance on showing their development as well.
Music/Sound: 8/10
The Opening and Ending songs are quite good and matches up with the series and I have these bias opinion about GRANRODEO who happened to have sung Kuroko no Basket’s Opening songs as well. The sound is actually pretty times as well even though they are not that often used.
Animation: 8/10
Pretty average animation but I seriously love how they blended the CGing to their 2D animation. The fighting scenes, especially during episode 12 with Rui against Yukihina, were good and the way they have implied the special effects for everyone’s special ability was really good, except for Toki’s which was obviously CGed to the core.
Script: 4/10
No, seriously, I wanted to include this because this series’ script sucks to the balls. LOL The manga didn’t have that much names called so why does the anime repeats someone’s name over a few times in one episode and why do they have to say, “An eye for an eye,” line whenever they go on battle? I mean, it delays the time to attack big time!
Overall Rating: 8/10
This is just an average anime. It only has 13 episodes and the only selling point of this series is the plot itself and the unique characters and their relationship with each other. This is not really a must-watch but if you REALLY care about justice and don’t mind much supernatural abilities (like Code Geass, at least), then this anime is good for you.
Recommendation:
I recommend you to watch this if you have free time. I would also like to recommend to you to read the manga since the arc after Hitomi’s is rather very interesting. Not that if you mind the recycled version of Flame or Recca. XD Plus, every little tiny thing that was revealed on the next chapters is pretty much mind-blowing.
If there’s a second season, should I watch it?
Apparently, I doubt if this series will have a second season for various reasons even though they did show Code: Seeker on the final episode.
- The chronology of the whole series is messed up from the manga. If ever they do plan on having a second season, it’ll be an entirely different story than that of the manga.
- They changed a lot of things and explanations during the whole series. Especially about the school where the main characters go to since it is a crucial place that will be used later on the story.
These are the main reasons so far but if ever this series do have a second season, I will watch it although not sure if I’m going to blog about it since they usually drag the story by adding more scenes than needed.