First Impressions / Series Introduction / Snapshots

OP Sequence

OP: 「DARK SHAME」by (GRANRODEO)

「大いなる神の審判」 (Ooi Naru Kami no Shinpan)
“Grand Divine Judgement”

**Before starting off, I’d like to first thank BakaMochi for helping out with the screenshots. 😀

And without further ado… from producer Kinema Citrus (.hack//Quantum, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0), comes the adaptation of Kamijyo Akimine’s shounen manga CØDE:BREAKER. And what a fiery start it is (literally), as the ball gets rollin’ with some good old human barbecue, with our heroine Sakurakouji Sakura (Hikasa Youko) witnessing a boy seemingly burning people to a crisp on the way home. Upon further investigation however, there’s no proof that the event ever happened in the first place… until the same boy, Oogami Rei (Okamoto Nobuhiko) transfers into her class the next day. Suspicious of his involvement, Sakurakouji confronts Oogami, ultimately leading to a chain of events the reveal him to be “one who is above the law (codes)”—a CØDE:BREAKER. Possessing supernatural powers, Oogami is one of a select few who judge those whom the law cannot, abiding by his creed of: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and using evil against evil.”

And for the most part, the first episode is your standard introductory affair. It takes a few liberties in terms of the events compared to the source material’s beginning , but the major points are maintained, and we’re given some glimpses into our main characters and their first interactions with one another. Sakurakouji and Oogami don’t necessarily scream innovative from what we’re given so far, but one must also keep in mind that the series is an action-oriented shounen. And if we use the typical series of this genre as a base, then it’s probably safe to say the characters themselves (and especially their development and complexities) likely won’t be as much of a focus compared to the action and fighting, which did admittedly pique my interest a bit. Don’t get me wrong though, there’s still the potential for great development in terms of the characters, especially when your heroine’s capable of kicking such butt in school and Oogami’s wielding epic blue flames reminiscent of Ao no Exorcist, but if my impressions from reading the first few chapters are right, chances are that this likely won’t take the forefront on most nights. As such, whether or not you like this series will most likely be determined by your aversion to the action/shounen genres.

Moving on, Kinema Citrus does a fairly decent job with the animation for the most part. Their choice in terms of how they animated the dog’s movements this episode was quirky and the decision to censor a few of the scenes of it being beat up somewhat strange, but there wasn’t much here to have qualms about. The background themes were however, admittedly spotty throughout, as many scenes were combined with songs that didn’t quite fit, or were just overly dramatic for the scene in question.

By now, you’re probably wondering, well darn Zephyr, “you certainly didn’t have much good to say about this premiere.” And well, it’s because CØDE:BREAKER didn’t necessarily wow in this initial showing. There is however, a definite potential within this series. For one, if the flames this episode were an indication, there should be plenty of action and fighting worth writing home about in the future. Furthermore, the philosophical concept of “justice” and how it should be handed out seems to be at the forefront of the story, and is something that could potentially shape the series into something rather complex. Also to note, are some of the series’ similarities to Ao no Exorcist and DEATH NOTE, which were both immensely popular during their respective runs, and the presence of Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood’s director Irie Yasuhiro. There’s obviously a foundation here for something good, or at least decent, though as I mentioned above, your aversion to action/shounen may play more of a role than anything else as to whether or not this series is right for you. Overall though, I’d say that CØDE:BREAKER still does enough this first episode and has enough of a foundation to be worthy of a watch.

Note: At this time, continued coverage of CØDE:BREAKER has not been confirmed.

Full-length images: 6, 8, 11, 12, 14, 17, 22, 24, 25, 28, 29, 31, 33, OP 1, OP 7, OP 8.

 

ED Sequence

ED: 「シロイカラス」 (Shiroi Karasu) by 鈴村 健一 (Suzumura Kenichi)

Preview

43 Comments

  2. You know, ZEPHYR, you should’ve totally covered K, man. If you thought this was bad, wait until you see that! Ah ha ha! If you watch that and this afterwards, this suddenly doesn’t look so bad. I generally dislike shounen as much as the next guy, but after watching K and then this, I suddenly found this not that bad.

    deathtogenericshows
    Reply

      1. Crook, go to Shin Sekai Yori’s post, man. It’s the best show of Fall 2012. Well among the shows that has been aired so far; I can’t really comment on shows like PSYCHO-PASS, which looked quite decent, as they haven’t broadcasted yet!!

        deathtogenericshows
        Reply

  3. I dropped the manga a while back. I would describe it to feel more like D.Gray-man with its battles and superpowers. I think the material is well suited for adaptation though and might be well worth watching like you said.

    shin
    Reply

    1. Woah man D. Gray Man was way more awesome than this dude. There’s barely a comparison between the 2. I read the Code Breaker manga but stalled since it kept getting REALLY repetitive.

      Allen Walker
      Reply

  4. I found the premiere surprisingly good. It surpassed my expectations. Good OP, good animation, an unconventional, but strong female lead (with a very low voice). The music was unusual, but sounded nice for a change and fit the mood most of the time, imo. I felt like I was listening to an anime OST from the 90’s. CB’s first ep is pretty solid when compared to the premieres of other shounen anime that aired earlier this year/are currently airing. (I won’t even write how I felt about BTOOOM!’s…)

    I expect a lot of action and character development from this series. If the standard premiere/introductory episode is this good, I can only expect the show to get even better from now on when things start to unravel.

    penguin
    Reply

    1. This.

      I can’t wait to see more.

      I also really like the director and most of the composer’s work so I’m really looking foward to how this grows and as a shounen action fan.

      DangerMouse
      Reply

  5. I really like the manga so it was really nice to find that they were adapting it into an anime. There are some fairly nice and unexpected twists in this series and there’s definitely a lot of character development so I cant wait to see it animated. How many episodes is this supposed to be anyway?

    And is it just me or was anyone else surprised with Sakura’s voice? I didn’t expect or picture her with such a mature sounding voice. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll get used to it in another episode or two.

    Watt
    Reply

  10. I am a little interested in how they will present the evil people in society. In Hell Girl manga and Death Note, there has been many types of people better off death that should have been in the Code Breaker manga. I hope that anime edition characters will show.

    @shin
    I can’t blame anyone for dropping the manga, I would have preferred powerful supernaturals against lowly scumbags. The manga got boring when they presented powerful enemies.

    L002
    Reply

  11. Hey Zephyr, when you compared this series’ wielding of blue flames to Blue Exorcist’s, were you aware that Ogami and Ren were both voiced by Nobuhiko Okamoto? I didn’t see it in your post, so I wasn’t sure, but that thought came to my mind almost immediately upon reading it.

    starqo
    Reply

  13. Probably going to drop this anime if it goes on long enough. The manga became insanely stupid after the first 50 or so chapters when everyone started switching sides, the fan service started overpowering everything, and it generally became a piece of shit.

    Sheapy
    Reply

  14. They had Prince in the OP & ED. Prince didn’t show up until chapter 60, but by then the crapper went the way of HSD Kenichi. Not that any of that matters. I don’t mind them skipping large parts of the manga since it was a POS and all. Too bad that it still haven’t recovered from that. It’s like the mangaka completely forgot what the story was about after volume 4.

    Megas
    Reply

  15. I’m not the type of person that goes back to the beginning of manga and rereads it so I couldn’t notice any scenes missing.

    I enjoyed the first episode and it seems to adapt everything from the manga.Unlike that crappy Fairy Tail anime that I dropped like a bad habit.

    Magoiichi
    Reply

  16. There was something bothering me when I saw Sakurakouji. It took me quite a while what it was and I finally found it. Her eyes. It’s too big. Her eyes are supposed to be slanted like Ogami’s. The others’ design look fine so I wonder why. And Hikasa Yoko doesn’t seem to fit Sakura but oh well.

    Anyways, the episode was pretty good just like the manga. The manga was off to a good start in the first volumes. Not much action and the “eye for an eye” stuff was the focus for the most part. Then the different plot twists came each and every chapter with every last page always needing a big revelation/cliffhanger and it just went downhill from there.
    Won’t stop me watching this though just because. And judging from the OP, it might only cover to the part where it stopped being good. So yeah.

    belatkuro
    Reply

    1. Indeed, specially that “Ino” was setup as comic-relief funny dog (his running animation was hilarious) .. then the series creators suddenly got serious and killed him off in a brutal way .. it was disturbing indeed.

      HunterWulf
      Reply

    2. A moment of silence for Inu, it was given that name by Sakura. I think I’ll write some words for its micro side story.

      Inu had just a few moments on this show, and we will not see him again, but he managed to shine and in the end, be a better character than even some “main characters” you can find around these days.

      At the beginning, it was very fun to watch Inu with its strange and uncoordinated way to move, the poorly drawn eyes and nose, the inability to get close to the only human trying to help him … but soon after, I realized that the director was really good in portraying a poor dog that didn’t receive anything from life, it was just the companion of a homeless and now a stray, having lost that little that he had. The quirky way to move was fun to see, but it served the purpose of defining Inu as a hopeless dog who can’t even walk normally.

      Inu was very afraid of the bad people hurting Sakura, nevertheless found the courage to sacrifice himself for the one person who cared about him, giving everything he had, his own life, despite having received nothing from life.

      Even if many will just laugh at me, I admit I was moved by the scene where Inu was dying, finding the strenght to lick the hand of Sakura while being in great pain. It remainded me of this little story, but don’t read it if you get easily emotional.

      I hereby declare Inu as my favourite character of this episode, so that I can be forever remembered as an idiot 🙂

      Voyager
      Reply

  21. I guess it’s just me, but I don’t find the anime does justice to the manga.
    I like the fact that I can see the power in animation and color, but that’s about all I like about the anime. The manga is better drawn, I didn’t like the voice acting of Sakura, and the cuts they made in the story made it less appealing to me.
    The series is not bad, and has potential, but I guess I’m just let down. I expected a lot more after reading the manga (190+ chapters) a few weeks back.If you haven’t read the manga, this anime would probably be nice.
    I think this comment will give me the most thumbs down post I’ve had yet…

    Djalaal
    Reply

  22. I hope no one starts bashing Code: Breaker and comparing it to Blue Exorcist because of the blue flames. Code: Breaker came out first, the powers were not acquired in the same fashion and there is no supernatural theme. Also “epic blue flames”? Yeah wait till later the blue flames…aren’t really that awesome.

    Also @Djalaal: I can see how you would feel that way. I liked it but I saw hints of what you said. I over looked them because they were minor. I hope you still watch it on the side.

    One guy
    Reply

  24. Sakurakouji is wearing circle lenses or something.

    I read 2 books of the manga when it was new, since I was a fan of Samurai Deeper Kyo.

    Unfortunately it was only so-so if I remember. However, the anime was much easier to watch than reading it. Lets see how well it is adapt. As I believe, voice acting and animation presentation makes a difference

    unknown2
    Reply

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