Fans of the shounen genre/demographic rejoice! The anime adaptation of Code Breaker is now here! With the deluge of shoujo series airing in this Fall 2012 anime season, you now have an anime for you to watch! Fans of Hikasa Youko also rejoice! She’s voicing another interesting bishoujo with long black hair! Are you people now ready for the grilling session? If you are, please continue reading the article; if not, prepare yourself for the unexpected and close this article.

I never would have thought that I would encounter another series whose teaser images deceive you to expect great visual quality on the anime. And surprisingly, it’s not made by the guys in Studio Satelight! Yes, this series has poor-to-mediocre overall visuals, and it’s underwhelming. Thankfully, it’s not as bad as the ones seen in Little Busters!. Don’t get fooled by the seemingly-polished details in the character designs. Examining it carefully; you would notice that eye details aren’t symmetrical, face sizes aren’t in proper proportions in some scenes, and the design lines aren’t clean. It’s also inconsistent in how the characters were illustrated. In some scenes, the details are clean, but they’re shabby and dirty in most scenes. Setting art? Background art? They’re mostly two-dimensional backgrounds with a some heaping aids of CGI. They’re detailed well, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement on them. Ironic enough, the ED theme has great CGI-’enhanced’ real-life images as the background. Code Breaker‘s anime adaptation should give K a lesson on how to enhance real-life images for use on the art! Animation techniques in this series isn’t remarkable; it’s bogged-standard, they just do the job. Period. The animation used for the flames don’t match the sheer smoothness and sharpening found on Ao no Exorcist.

Despite hiring top-billed seiyuu, the voice acting doesn’t define the characters nor the voices used. Thankfully, Hikasa Youko’s voice miraculously save this from monotonous doldrums. Other voices don’t leave an impression nor define their characters at all, yet. Thankfully, the pitch is in the right side. Background music does the job of portraying the scene’s mood, but they’re not in the proper timing. They’re also not unique, the beat and tones are too similar to those heard in most shounen anime adaptations.

Code Breaker’s anime adaptation is like any other shounen anime adaptation. The main heroine is introduced, followed by a mysterious transfer student who happens to be the series’ anti-hero. The script for the dialogues are what one would expect from a series under the demographic. It should be noted that some scenarios involved cheesy and corny lines that are cringe-worthy enough for someone who watches a lot of media and reads a lot, even if they’re meant to add humour. The slice-of-life sides are just there to narrate a story that’s already tried-and-tested by many series. It’s nothing new, but the story is apparently hiding something that might pique the interest of the audience. The first episode properly gives off the suspense and mystery that we people expect from pilot episodes, but the direction makes the first episode blandly done and predictable.

Code Breaker is a decent action shounen anime adaptation of this series. Watch it if you fancy the idea of this series, you’re a fan of the manga, want to see some different story being narrated, or if you love watching action shounen.

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