English Dub Review: Code:Realize “Illegal Race”

Go ahead, call it an airship. That’s a freaking blimp and you know it.

Overview (Spoilers)

Saint Germaine has a plan to get to Isaac Beckford’s secret lab. There, they might find the secret to the Horologium, and cure Cardia of her affliction. Problem is, the only way is to get a hold of his unpublished papers, which are currently in the possession of the mob. Good news, they’ve made it the grand prize of their annual “illegal” airship race. I will get into a rant about all the stupid wrapped up in that sentence later. In order to win the map to Cardia’s happiness, they will have to enter the race. They don’t have an airship, though, but Lupin says he’ll get it for them. Yes, he stole it. No, we aren’t supposed to worry about who he stole it from and no, nobody bothered to ask him. Impey goes in to overhaul the thing, but still finds it lacking in horsepower. He manages to get the ship to the starting line just in time to compete. While they prep, Impery meets with a strange character. This is Nemo, a mad scientist, and he is also a part of the race. He’s also obnoxious. The race is off, but one thing is certain: no holds are barred. The ships start ramming each other and firing cannons in an attempt to destroy their competition, rather than just fly faster. However, in an attempt to lighten the load, Impey removed all the cannons. Now, they’re defenseless. They are also the fastest airship on the scene. So fast, the paint is peeling off! No, really, the paint that Lupin used to cover over the logo of the mob’s cover operation flakes away. Now everyone knows the airship was stolen, and the mob puts a hit out on our heroes! Just when things couldn’t look bleaker, Nemo arrives on scene from far above, taking out all of the enemy airships so that he and his monstrosity of a ship can take down Impey themselves. Alas, Impey made his overhauls well, and they outmaneuver Nemo with little trouble. Unfortunately, the enemy ships decided to wait for them on the return leg, and have opened up a salvo with everything they have. Impey reveals their secret weapon. A giant cannon designed to fire a man-sized cannonball. One. One man-sized cannonball. With Helsing in it. The vampire hunter is shot into one of the other ships, and proceeds to lay waste to them. He even takes one of the enemy ships and uses it to ram Nemo. Impey doubles back to pick him up, and they head to the finish line, unopposed. However, the engines overheat, and the airship crashes instead of lands. Oh, well. Since they were the dark horse in the race, the mafia bookies made a killing, enough to make them willing to call off the hit and give them the prize. Once inside Beckford’s secret lab, Cardia discovers the horrific truth. The lab is filled with tubes, each containing an exact clone… of her.

Our Take

Okay, this plot is scraping the bottom of the stupid barrel. First, this race. It’s supposed to be illegal, and run by the mafia. However, these airships are not tiny, and they are flying right through the middle of London. The end of the first leg is to go around Big Ben for crying out loud! If this were illegal, then why weren’t all of these ships being shot down by the military in defense of the palace? They would have good reason to, given that the ships are firing cannons right over the city, with little regard for collateral damage. Not only that, the only reason given why Lupin doesn’t just go and steal the bloody paper is the Sherlock Holmes (Yeah, I know, they flipped the S, I don’t care. It’s freaking Sherlock.) is guarding it. Sherlock may be a private detective, but he works with the police. Him suddenly getting hired by the mob to protect their stuff? It doesn’t seem in character. It was just a weak excuse by the writers so they could explain why they were railroading the heroes into this cockamamie race. I’d also like to bring up that Impey says he got rid of all the cannons, in order to reduce the weight of the ship. However, he then custom builds another cannon, hidden under the deck for no reason, which is big enough to fire off a Steampunk Saiyan Space capsule (Patent Pending). The extra weight of the larger cannon, the cannonball, and the mechanisms to open the deck and raise the hidden cannon are far more than the weight of the standard cannons he took off. Nevermind Helsing getting shot out of a cannon at another ship would kill him on impact. Did you see that cannonball after impact? I didn’t that thing was ripped to shreds, and the only thing keeping Helsing alive right now is plot armor. Nemo was the literary equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. Yes, the Nemo of 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea was a scientific genius, so portraying him as a mad scientist isn’t too far off the mark. However, this pit of writers has probably never read Jules Verne, and made that the entirety of his character. What was the point of choosing known literary characters as a base if you’re going to butcher them to the point of being “in name only”? Just make up your own idiotic characters, and save us all the pain of our face slamming repeatedly into our palms. What was actually good about this episode? The end. That isn’t a joke. The stinger revealing that she’s a homunculus was the only part I was interested in. Come to think of it, the stingers of this show tend to have better content than the show itself. I wonder if I can make a better show by simply lashing together the stingers…

Sorry to say, the dialogue of the translation is horrible. I’m starting to think Jerry Jewell should stick to voice acting and leave off the ADR Direction because none of the lines flow as if people are saying them. More meaningless words get shoehorned into gaps after the actual content was long gone, rather than really considering what is going on on screen. This makes the lines forced and awkward. His direction of the cast seemed to consist of “Ooh, that was good. Let’s try it again, just like that only this time, try to be more annoying.” Dracula, Nemo, Impey… heck, even Lupin annoyed me. I don’t blame the actors since it seems to be across the board. The animation was not really worth the time. Many of the shots were choppy in their animation. The only parts that were consistently smooth were the CG scenes, which consisted of two different models, one replicated ad nausea, all getting into a slow-motion tizzy with each other. Because All-Out Blimp Warfare is exciting.