C0de Breaker [Anime Review]

 "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, evil for evil."
It appears that this anime is rooted quite firmly in the idea of Lex Talionis, or the law of retaliation.

Our heroine, Sakura Sakurakoji. (Yes, that is her name...)

Lex Talionis is a rather uninspired legal idea. It is simple mercantile justice - a harm is done, thus to compensate for said harm an equal harm must be paid in kind.

2.5 out of 5 stars

Sadly the anime is rather uninspired as well. I suppose if your source ideal, source material is uninspired so will your final product.

Our villainous 'hero,' Ogami Rei. 

I grabbed this anime on sale, thankfully, mainly because the manga I read a few years back seemed relatively good. The problem was that the translated manga I was reading only had two volumes released in the states. Two volumes out of some 26 total volumes. That was pathetic. I think I must have been motivated to see this because the manga died so early here.

Sakura stops a fight between two C0des.

Here is the most telling thing about this series I can admit to. This in my mind damns it the most.

I fell asleep during multiple episodes. I always watch anime late at night. I rarely ever fall asleep during one episode in a series, but to fall asleep during multiple... that is damning.  Maybe I was feeling ill, but usually when I'm sick I watch lots of anime...

Yes, the kid in this image is the same guy (Toki) in the green
jacket above. No, he is not super deformed. He is lost.
When he is lost, he becomes a child...

There is more that damns this series.

First, it kills a dog. Painfully. Remember the last time an anime killed a dog? Remember how little I liked that... if you don't click HERE. I'm not even a dog lover... however movies rules say that if you kill the dog, the movie is bad. I'm trying to think of an exception to this rule, and I can't. At least not right now.

Two things: 1. The cat (Yuuki) is the lost version of the red
haired guy above. 2. The blue haired character is a girl...
which some have mistaken for a guy. How?

Secondly, the characters are flat and static. They do not seem to grow through the course of the series. I know it was only 13 episodes long... but still. I expected more. I wanted more. I never grew close to any character. Sakura was the closest, but even she was little more than a caricature. She had the most depth of any character... and that was not much. 

This series could have been good.

This series could have been a complex undertaking analyzing and looking at what Lex Talionis really means. It could question the meaning of good and evil...

It could have been so much more.

Perhaps one of things that really let this series down was the fact that another series, a far better series, had already begun to plumb the question of good and evil. If you want to watch a really good series, I recommend Psycho-Pass and Psycho-Pass Volume 2. It does a lot better job questioning and handling the bigger philosophical issues. Be warned, those are older reviews so the rating is at the bottom...

This was just a middle ground series. C0de Breaker was just not special, and the characters were the same.