English Dub Review: Code:Realize “The Flames of War”

Wow, now two secret organizations with bad names want their hands on her. What next? Illuminati?

Overview (Spoilers)

London is burning. While Lupin and Cardia were in Whales, getting over her self-hatred, Twilight launched Code:Realize. Cannons fired all over the city, and the bridges have been destroyed. Twilight agents in the military attempt to capture the queen, as others in plague masks, murder the citizens all over the town. The rest of the team narrowly escape the explosions, and St. Germaine is missing. When Cardia and Lupin return, they see the carnage, and soldiers fighting soldiers. They realize that the only hope of getting to St. Paul’s Cathedral is with the help of the British army. To get that, they will have to rescue the queen. Luckily, they run into the other three guys on the way. The gang launches their rescue mission, with Impey, Frank, and Helsing making a distraction outside. The other two locate Queen Victoria in the halls, and lead her to a secret sewer passage to the last remaining bridge. Victoria recognizes Cardia as the “monster” with the acid touchbacks her if she’d be willing to talk after everything is over. Not much time to have that chat, however, as Finis and Twilight are lying in wait on the bridge. Finis stands there, taunting Cardia with his knowledge of their father’s plan. He knows that when the two of them come together, it will set in motion the end of all life on Earth. because of her, everyone, even her friends, will die. She refuses to believe him, and Lupin attempts to shut the smug pipsqueak up. He gets shot twice for his trouble. Fortunately, team distraction arrives with smoke bombs and a boat, making for a quick getaway. Once they make landfall and get to a hideout, everything is revealed to the queen. She promises the help of the military in taking back St. Paul’s. In the meantime, St. Germaine returns, meeting with Cardia alone. He has many words of encouragement for her, but some bad news after that. He works for an organization called Idea. In order to put history back on the right path, he has been sent to kill her.

Courtesy: Funimation

Our Take

This episode was slow, and while it may have moved the plot along a bit, it did so without much to keep me entertained. I can tell that it is written straight from the script of the game, except with the addition of running scenes to transition. The writing feels like a visual novel, which I could at least speed read through. Here, I’m locked into the dialogue that says a lot but reveals little. With the whole interchange with Finis, we still know nothing more about what Code Realize is. He’s just being mysterious. At the same time, the introduction of Idea to the mix feels like one secret society too many. Yeah, sure, they’re probably time travelers, but, who cares? Germaine isn’t going to kill her, and the entire point of them being there is rendered moot. The end result, bad guys are out in the open, and the story is ramping up to a final battle. But other than the fact that she is a core component of Code:Realize (something we could already figure out), nothing compelling is brought up. I’m willing to bet we could trim down this episode and fuse it into the next one, and nothing would really change. I keep hoping for things to break out into real action, to have the characters actually take on the villains when they are right in front of them. Or, at least, to have Helsing try to take a shot at Finis. If you were at war with a megalomaniacal midget, wouldn’t you shoot at him when you got the chance? Nah, just shoot to distract. The writing is simply lackluster, attempting to drive up the tension by leaving a bunch of mysteries in place. Unfortunately, we can tell the answers to those mysteries are mundane, with cliched outcomes.

For the most part, the animation is the same level we’ve had since day one, plus a bunch of errors all over the place. Especially with faces and eyes, we had so many deformities, I couldn’t even count them. The only part of this show that stands out visually is the character design, which occasionally shows some intriguing, if overly-ornate, choices. The voices all have a single note, with only Impey’s outburst being of a different emotional level. Otherwise, you might as well have the whole thing done by a text-to-speech program. The voices aren’t unpleasant, they just don’t try to take the characters anywhere.

Score

Summary

So, in the end, this episode is like the rest of the series thus far, lukewarm and mediocre. I give it six revolutions out of ten.

6.0/10