Anime: Luger Code 1951 4v3e6k

It’s been almost a month since the Fall season started, which means that pretty much all the shows have come out, and people pretty much know what they’re going to be watching. This is an especially interesting season with a lot of promising series, but I get a sense that there’s one people are glancing over. Why? Well, for starters, it’s not a TV series, but rather an original net animation, and it also premiered fairly late in the game, on October 22nd. Now what could I possibly be talking about but Luger Code? And I know what people are going to be thinking while they’re watching this, “There’s a Luluco ONA? I love Trigger, how did I not know about this?” Well, stop right there. Not Luluco, Luger Code… 1951.

I was actually very much looking forward to this for a few months now, and at first, myself and many others thought it would be a TV series. Most anime sites seemed to say it was a series, and it was in general based off of this Shonen Jump+ writing contest, where the winner would get 2 million yen and a manga and anime adaptation. This is what won that contest, so I can’t help but wonder if this is some sort of pilot episode, and that if it’s successful it will become a full show, but I’m not entirely sure. Now, you may be thinking because I was looking forward to it, that I thought it was going to be good. Well, actually it’s rather the antithesis. I thought it was going to be bad, really bad. Studio Deen teaming up with the writer of Aldnoah.Zero, Big Order, and Boku no Pico? Sounds like a recipe for disaster. But a recipe for an extremely enjoyable disaster, at that. So needless to say, when Luger Code came out last week, I had to watch it the minute I found out.

Was Luger Code worth it? To that I say, “Yes”. Luger Code focuses on this young prodigy who is a University professor, tasked with deciphering a code created by werewolves to communicate wirelessly, the Luger Code. He’s dying to study it, and because it’s so hard to decipher, he decides to embark on a journey through the frozen tundra to catch a werewolf that could be the link in helping him crack the code.

Now one of the first notable things Luger Code manages to do within its 25 minute runtime is find an extremely contrived way to include the title into the series. “We can’t kill the werewolf! I need to find out her Luger Code!!” *title nod* When you are watching Flying Witch, you will never hear one of the characters spout out, “Oh look over there! A flying witch!” Why? Because it always comes off as silly. Now this is not a knock against shows that have the title named after a character or something important in the series, I just think in this case, if they truly wanted the concept of the Luger Code to not feel so cheesy, they could have used an ounce of subtlety.

And if there’s one word that does not at all manage to describe Luger Code, it’s subtle. The ONA takes itself really seriously while also being extremely over-the-top and dumb. I found it especially hilarious when the show managed to contradict its own laws of physics by having the main kid run over a werewolf earlier with his van and send him flying back, but then later accidentally tries to run over the werewolf again and then the van gets sent flying without the werewolf even doing anything. How does something like that even happen? The music feels as over-the-top and corny as it could possibly be with its really loud, blaring score the minute the wolves come on screen. What makes it worse is how tense the voice acting is with how stern and serious the characters are trying to sound. The music ends up clashing with the voice acting as a result, and it’s pure camp.

The characters themselves feel very tropey, with Testa feeling like a pretty bland lead, who’s only really memorable trait is the fact that he’s smart. Alex Rossa, Testa’s partner who gets him out of rough situations, feels like a direct rip of Doppo Kunikida from Bungou Stray Dogs, if you removed anything that fleshed out his character and just kept him as the angry, no-nonsense guy with glasses who has a bit of a softer side to him. The wolf girl, Yonaga, is not a particularly great character either, since her character motivations for not liking either the werewolves or the humans don’t feel terribly justified. The background characters are dumb as bricks, since they seem to not be informed about anything happening around them. They make really rash and stupid decisions that only add to the anime’s body count.

The production values… oh the production values. The characters go off model so much, it’s insane. Faces shrink and expand all the time without explanation, and continuity is extremely questionable. Half the time I couldn’t even tell whether or not the main dude was supposed to look like a character from Gundam Seed or a character from Nabari no Ou. Action scenes near the end feel awkward as the werewolf is constantly switching between running away from our protagonists and being a supposed clear threat.

But it’s because all of these janky and strange choices are made that Luger Code is so enjoyable. The ONA’s director, Shinya Takahashi is certainly no newcomer to anime, having worked on many series and OVAs over a long period of time. This is his directorial debut, and it actually feels a lot like he was taking influence from old, schlocky 90s OVAs. The later half of Luger Code, especially, felt very reminiscent of Bio-Hunter, an old OVA of which Takahashi did key animation on. Luger Code’s charm rests within the same charm those schlocky OVAs do. It’s stupid, takes itself way too seriously, makes very little sense, but never loses its sense of fun. This is why part of me would not want to see more episodes of this in the future, because I feel like even with a 2nd… no, excuse me, 1,952nd episode, it might just start to overstay its welcome and lose that charm. Leaving it with very little value overall.

But maybe, just maybe, I am underselling writer Katsuhiko Takayama’s abilities. After all, that trollish, pixelated grin in his MyAnimeList picture is the grin of someone who fully knows what he’s doing and doesn’t care.

With all of this in mind, I would still recommend Luger Code 1951 to anyone who is looking for pure schlock and stupid fun. It’s not the best of its kind, but if you put this on, get a friend or two to watch it with you, you are bound to have a fun time. And I’d say there’s definitely some value in that.