This is not what I was expecting at all. Get ready because I had a lot of catching up to do. How Evil are the first 5 episodes of  Code: Realize ~Guardian of Rebirth~?

Code: Realize ~Guardian of Rebirth~
Studio: M.S.C
Genre: Mystery, Romance, Action/Adventure, Male Harem, Steampunk

After that last travesty of an anime, I had hoped to stay away from others that had visual novels as source material. Against my better judgment, I decided to give this one a try anyway (Chris: Bullcrap. I made you take this one <_<). You know what? It’s pretty good. That being said it’s meant for an entirely different audience than me. For this, I’ll just be focusing on what makes this special.

Our protagonist is Cardia Beckford, and she may or may not be human. The show is somewhat unclear as of yet. We just know she has no human heart. It’s either been replaced by a device, or she never had one. Cardia is a lot like Emi from Infini-T Force, at first. She’s completely void of hope and has no wishes of her own. Although she eventually gets a few wishes that she wants to be fulfilled.

She wants to find her father to get some answers. She can only remember things that happened after she got the artificial heart… thing.  And she kind of has a major Rogue-complex. She can’t touch another without killing them. Her “poison,” as it’s called in the show, is the least of her problems.

Very early on a group called Twilight – a shadow organization that thankfully isn’t made up of sparkly vampires – plans to capture Cardia for a yet unseen purpose. We have seen that they are willing to do anything to get her, which would make sense even if their leader is lying about being Cardia’s sibling. I personally think that may be a lie.

Then we have Queen Victoria. People seem to like threatening her. Too bad for them, it never really works.  She will take any verbal abuse, then dish out her own in threats or action. She even threatened to discipline the main antagonist.  Even when her life is threatened, she keeps a cool head. While she did some pretty horrible things, it seems she has only done them to protect her kingdom from harm.  Though I think starting a war just to show off your military’s strength is a bit much.

On top of being a powerful figure in the show, Queen Victoria is something of an antagonist herself. Her army is constantly helping Twilight to track down Cardia. Until episode 5, that is. There seems to be a three-sided struggle in the show so far. We have our heroes, Twilight, and Queen Victoria all fighting for their own goals. Victoria seems to play both sides a lot. Her men have rescued Cardia and company a few times and endangered them other times.

Are you wondering who the other heroes are yet? I left them out of it for a reason. This show borrows characters from other stories and people from real life but it also includes totally original characters.  I’m going to do this in order of appearance to make it easier on me. The first person Cardia meets that isn’t working for Victoria or Twilight is Arsène Lupin. That’s right, The Thief Lupen. He is truly a gentleman. He doesn’t even try to take advantage of Cardia one. Impey Barbicane is the next in line. He’s the team’s engineer and he can build and maintain a variety of gadgets, including their vehicles. He is constantly trying to flirt with Cardia but she is too innocent for it to work.

Next is Victor Frankenstein… yes, that one. The team refers to him as Fran, so I’ll go with that. Fran is the team’s medic and supplier of things like knockout gas. He also has a dark past but we will get to that later. Saint-Germain is kind of the team’s patron. He allows them to use his mansion as a base and helps out in missions too. The last person in the main team is Abraham Van Helsing, the famous vampire hunter. The team refers to him as Van most of the time, so I’ll just call him that.

Now with Van comes the darker part’s I mentioned earlier. Van and Fran are partially responsible for the eradication of the vampire race. Neither of them sees themselves as heroes for what happened either. Fran made a poison that killed a lot of them while Van was forced to kill off their royal family whom he knew personally. Dracula, the son of the vampire king at the time, survived and vowed revenge on his old master and the entire human race. Here’s the kicker, Van was blackmailed by the organization he worked for – Twilight.

Dracula does eventually join the team, although he has yet to help on any of the missions. Another thing is it doesn’t appear that vampires drink blood in this show. In fact, in a flashback, Van says they are a peaceful race. I wonder why they were targeted for extermination. Using them as an example to other nations seems a bit off. Maybe we will find out more about this later on? Well, I better get to the last character right?

Gee. I have no idea who this guy could be. It’s not like copyrights exist in our world or anything (actually there’s this whole weird thing with the estate. It’s really interesting. You should check that out). I wonder if he’s friends with anyone named Alucard. Herlock is every bit the genius detective you would expect him to be. Lupin actually ran away from him when he was forced to confront him. It probably didn’t help that Herlock deflected the smoke bomb.

So far I’m liking the show for the most part. This is a much better show than I expected it to be. I would say it’s about as evil as a Killer Robot Army. It’s a fun series that has potential, I’m hoping a few questions I have to get answered soon. If you liked this review check out our others. Or, if you’re curious, Code: Realize ~Guardian of Rebirth~ Simulcasts on Crunchyroll, Saturdays at 8am EST.

Well, that’s all I have for you today. Thank’s for letting me waste your time, people.

Keep It Classy,
Evil Bob