Code-E: About token conspiracies and sock puppets

(Progress: Complete, 12/12)

Eleven episodes later, I still can't let go of the fact that I'm watching a puppet show a good amount of the time. And people complain about Escaflowne noses. Try no noses.

There are two somewhat major components to Code-E's story. The first is coping with being different (an understatement). The second is a typical love triangle with teen angst which, when combined with being different, leads to cheap special effects attempting to depict the disruption of anything that utilizes electrons.

Notice how neither of the above include anything remotely cool or novel. Sure, being a walking EMP weapon is kind of neat in a sadistic sort of way, but the number of instances where it was used for neat is exactly three, all of which involved restoration of well-being. Last time I checked, electromagnetic radiation may or may not increase the risk of developing cancer, so even that is a bit of a stretch.

This is hardly a comparison, but two things that Read or Die (the OVA) and Code-E have in common, besides being produced by the same studio, is that they have glasses-wearing female leads with special abilities. And maybe a spy-type soundtrack. The similarities end there.

Yomiko Readman manipulated paper for seemingly mundane uses like making a paper plane. Did I mention it was a giant paper plane? Capable of supporting two adults, one of whom was carrying a rifle? Now that is neat. Also neat is creating a blade out of paper currency, and a crowbar to swing around pipes. Paper kills people! Who would have thought?

Chinami Ebihara is insecure but not so easily pushed around, because anyone putting the screws on her backs away when they see every single electronic device around them go haywire. Unless you're the resident stereotypical socially inept science nerd. Intense electromagnetic radiation disrupts electronics! Who would have thought?

Sorry, but watching a weak lead freak out and create QUALITY sparks day in and day out gets old fast.

Love triangle. Awkward adolescents suffer copious amounts of teen angst. QUALITY sparks! Behave immaturely. Incredibly juvenile. Running out of synonyms. Repeating self. Moving on.

If there was a second season and if that second season gave some answers and background on a slew of mysteries, then go watch this series. There is no closure at the conclusion. Chinami is pursued by shady foreigners and…? Some guy sabotages (my own impression) a new town development because…? The development had a violent resonance response to E/M because…? And so on.

Code-E just leaves viewers dangling. It could use that second season, but I question whether it deserves one.

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Code-E premiere episode: awkward and unamusing

You can get screen caps if you'd like at Moe Moe Rabu and Tenka Seiha, since I deleted the first episode immediately after watching it. Suffice it to say that it was extremely disconcerting, and I'm trying to articulate just what about the past twenty some odd minutes made it so. Diagnosis follows.

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There's a lot of screen time given to (I think it's safe to assume) the lead character, with a lot of head-on perspectives. The first thing that I picked up on was the fact that from that angle, there is no nose! Maybe I'm just spooked at the sight of a missing facial feature. It's a phenomenon not limited to just her, and every time I saw that angle — which is to say, a lot — I felt like I was looking at convenient caricature, a cheap attempt at being cute.

Case in point, image 47 from Tenka Seiha is like flood fill using MS Paint.

But it's not just the lack of a nose on Ebihara. Her glasses are so far down her face that they become an accessory to her face, as opposed to her eyes. It's not so much that it looks awkward, which it does, but she looks dumb, something only reinforced by her behaviour.

While Yomiko Readman was naive, she wasn't hopelessly inept at speaking, and she had a grip on her abilities. I could see Code-E spending over a third of its series length on frivolous gag moments involving awkward situations in the vicinity of electronics. Sketchy looking characters will probably be after our hopeless heroine but someone else will always have to bail her out because she's, well, dumb. But at least she's good at making nervous squeaks and various other irritating noises that may be construed as cute.

It's not good to make predictions on the first episode alone, which was nothing but awkward situations in the vicinity of electronics (plot-what-plot?), and it could wind up making interesting use of the world and its combat mechanics, but a lot of goodwill was lost in that first episode.

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