The Code: Breakers leap into action and Ogami sets his sights on Hitomi.

What They Say:
The Code: Breaker team discovers where the bombs are planted. There are too many of them to deal with, but between the police, the Kizakura-gumi gang, and Yuki, they do their best to deal with them. Meanwhile, Ogami heads to Sky Tower to confront Hitomi.

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
After getting some mildly necessary background on Hitomi but also some interesting background material on how the Code: Breakers have evolved under him and an early look at Ogami, the show shifted back to the present to give us Hitomi’s plan in motion. Kidnapping the prime minister certainly makes a splash of things, and it does figure into Hitomi’s goals, but it also feels like a very public feint in a way to something else. His idea of bringing the Code: Breakers into the open as champions of his view of justice certainly makes sense after what’s happened to him, but the approach just leaves you feeling cagey about his motivations in full.

With things in a state of disarray over the bombs that are everywhere, the Code: Breakers are working pretty furiously at times to get it all dealt with and it has a good sense of action and progress. But for Hitomi and Heike, they’re simply observing and waiting for the final elements to fall into place. And that mainly is a matter of them waiting for Ogami to arrive where they are, which is where he also amusingly has Sakura strung up in rope quite high in the air. There’s just a sort of amusement that comes from it in that this is the best that Hitomi can come up with to not only deal with her but to get Ogami all riled up so that he fights just a bit more recklessly and emotionally. It does lead to a decent bit of a fight between the two though as Ogami draws his sword and goes to town on him.

The events here flow well overall as there’s plenty of action working in the background as you have the Code: Breakers racing to disarm the bombs, but it the main focus really comes down to what Hitomi is doing and that has to draw the others in eventually. The action is definitely good as we get the variety here and the tensions ramp up well, especially as even the police are getting more involved in what’s going on, though they can do only so much. One of the more fun segments is watching the way Heike is messing with Toki, but that’s just a sideshow distraction overall, regardless of how well it’s done. The real focus keeps coming back to Ogami and that slowly takes more shape.

In Summary:
Code: Breaker is pretty much working through the action segment of the series at this point, though it knows where to draw things out a bit to allow for dialogue (and budget). The tension has certainly gone up a bit with the bombs being hunted and much of the populace unaware of what’s going on outside of the supposed kidnapping. With the Code: Breakers running around and Ogami confronting Hitomi directly, it’s building well but still feels like it’s missing that critical connection to truly make it exciting. The episode is also hampered a bit by the fact that Sakura is largely relegated to a hanging prop, though at least they avoid making it full of fanservice and instead keeps its focus on the action and the tension of the moment.

Grade: B-

Streamed By: FUNimation

Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.