As I wrote a review for Code E I figured that I should also write a review for the sequel Mission E. Mission E is a fairly heavy improvement from Code E, but it is still far from perfect. The story is still fairly bad at giving exposition to explain certain events, but it is much better than Code E was in this regard. The feel of the plot is more consistent than Code E's and the characters are better written. However the story still has trouble giving exposition to explain certain events, the plot can take time to pickup as it feels very case
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of the week for a few episodes before the overall story starts going, and the story still sucks at explaining backstories and motivations for characters outside of the main characters, making certain actions and characters feel hollow or confusing.
The characters seem better written having had time to mature over the 5 year time skip and many events are only implied through passing details. For instance Saihashi is a part of the cast again and while what she did during the time skip is not really elaborated on she appears to wear dog tags implying that she was part of the military for some time during the time skip. This could also explain her proficiency with piloting a helicopter and a speed boat. That being said, as I mentioned above, many characters, especially supporting and antagonist characters, lack backstories outside of passing scenes that I can only hope was the production company trying to explain things that were in the source material, but I haven't read the source material so I can't be sure.
Chinami returns and while she is a main character this time around she also functions as a supporting character throughout a lot of the story helping out Maori. Chinami's personality seems to have changed a bit too as she now comes off more as air headed and very extroverted as though she was making up for her past introverted self, but she also shows moments of astute observation which is displayed mostly through body language and glancing looks such as noting when Maori is having issues with pain in her shoulder, or when after acting air headed and suggesting that they get food in the cafeteria of the school they had infiltrated she later remarked that there were no special ingredients in the food showing that she doesn't always act without thinking.
Maori is our new main character and takes the role that was previously held by Chinami in Code E. Her story has parallels with Chinami's but differs greatly in many respects. While Chinami was introverted and emotional due to her powers constantly causing her family to move for fear that she would be discovered. Maori is taciturn and never really seems to express her emotions, similar to how Saihashi was in the beginning of Code E before she started to soften up thanks to Chinami's influence. Maori deals with not being sure if she can trust OZ completely, feeling as though they are not much different from the Organization. This comes to a head after she was kidnapped and mentally toyed with by the mysterious Akane who seems to have no real affiliation and does whatever amuses her, such as giving Maori a means of escape from being held by the Organization and seemingly having knocked out most of the guards using some sort of tranquillizer. By the end seeing how Chinami was looking for her and various other events Maori softens and starts to become more of a "normal" girl including finding love. Also a fun detail that is hinted at early on and confirmed much later, Maori is the little girl with the dog from Code E who was next to Chinami when the dog scared Chinami and caused her to short out the air control tower. Maori actually thought it was her own doing and remarked that she was depressed about it for a long time.
Sonomi returns as Chinami and Maori's boss. Her role is mostly a supporting role akin to the stereotypical Bosley character in spy movies (I hope that reference isn't too old now). Her job is mostly handing out missions and running the organization of OZ while ensuring that the staff have the resources that they need. We also get some closure from Sonomi with regards to her thoughts about Kotarou and Chinami as she acknowledges that the two love each other but she was unsure if they had confessed to each other. She has also moved past her love for Kotarou saying that it was sort of like getting over a bad cold and somewhat mocking herself for how stubborn she was. She is now married but we get very little information about her family beyond the fact that she has kids and her husband is always concerned about her.
Adol returns as an antagonist. His motivation also answers one of the biggest lingering questions from Code E and its abrupt ending, Mils has survived but she is in a state similar to locked in syndrome. She seems unable to react to external stimuli. However hope for her is provided after a scene of Maori visiting her and holding her hand allows her to move slightly and even attempt to speak. This is later explained in exposition by Kotarou. While talking with Adol, Kotarou explains that Type E may have medical applications and proposes that the suits the girls wear on missions have the potential to enhance the nerve impulses and that may be enough to allow Mils to truly live again instead of being akin to a doll. Adol is one of the more important supporting characters and while it is implied that he was in love with his sister, him and Maori having a budding love that was born originally from a sort of whim by Adol to take Maori on a date after meeting her once before without realizing who she was.They can be assumed to become a couple as shown when they fell asleep together after the final mission and Maori's dog Dorota being in the hospital room with Adol after the final mission.
Kotarou returns as a supporting character and is mostly responsible for the technology that the Type E users utilize such as their suits. Beyond that him and Chinami are still a couple but they haven't progressed very far. It wasn't until a heavy push from Sonomi that they get engaged instead of just date.
Finally we have the return of our main antagonist from Code E, Hiiragi. While his motivation is never expanded upon aside from a panning shot of a picture of him and a young boy presumed to be his son and his rants calling Type E users monsters, we have no idea what drove him to hate Type E's. We do however learn that he is a biologist and that his work alongside a person named Akamatsu-sensei laid the ground work for much of Kotarou's understanding of Type E powers. Kotarou however reached a completely different theory than Hiiragi based on the same body of evidence leading to divergent philosophies. Under the organizations employ Hiiragi uses his power in a bid to eliminate Type E users from society. He also employs the mysterious Kiriku who little is known about aside from a final scene implying that they are a type E user despite Konomi stating earlier that only girls can be Type E users, something that is never elaborated on, and that they were subjected to medical experiments that still haunt them as seen in a very brief flashback.
The plot is fairly solid but at times the pacing can be questionable such as starting out with a scene with horror movie vibes and then a superhero action sequence before a break for exposition to explain what the hell is going on and then a daring escape. Through exposition and offhand remarks numerous questions from Code E, mostly its finale, are answered. Yes the animals in the area of the summer school had Type E powers. Yes Mils survived but she is unable to react to external stimuli being in a state akin to locked in syndrome. While not confirmed it is very heavily implied that the meteor shown in the opening scene of Code E's first episode did indeed fall in the area of where the summer school was and that is why animals and potentially even plants around there were able to use Type E powers and react to Chinami to produce the firefly effect, the theory behind which would later be used to create the suits used by Type E users. Sonomi moved on from her love and seems to hold no hard feelings, even pushing Chinami and Kotarou to finally get engaged. And we get a proper explination of Type E powers beyond the ability to produce EM waves. In short Type E powers seem to amplify nerve synaptic current. This would mean that the previous hypothesis of electrical cells similar to electric eels is likely very wrong and that the virus changes its hosts in some other way.
Sep 5, 2022 Mixed Feelings Spoiler
As I wrote a review for Code E I figured that I should also write a review for the sequel Mission E. Mission E is a fairly heavy improvement from Code E, but it is still far from perfect. The story is still fairly bad at giving exposition to explain certain events, but it is much better than Code E was in this regard. The feel of the plot is more consistent than Code E's and the characters are better written. However the story still has trouble giving exposition to explain certain events, the plot can take time to pickup as it feels very case
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Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Sep 4, 2022 Mixed Feelings Spoiler
I don't normally write reviews, but this anime gave me the urge to rant. The anime is an OK watch but nothing amazing, despite having some great potential. The main issues for me boil down to a few key factors. First the story seems to have a hard time balancing its two main plots, the romance that builds between the main character and the male lead as their relationship starts and grows, and the conspiracy in the background with shadowy agencies and people being interested in people who have powers like the main character. The opening even seems to have trouble deciding if it wants
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to be like a spy thriller or a generic romance story with action shots and the obligatory scenery shots.
Second the characters are somewhat bland but not completely flat. The male lead, Koutarou, is obsessed with science and initially takes interest in our female lead, Chinami, strictly as a point of scientific curiosity in regards to her powers. He eventually starts to show some emotion outside of being obsessed with science, but even then he feels generic. The female lead, Chinami, is at least believable in her timidness and lack of understanding of her own emotions since she has little social experience due to the problems her powers cause and her family constantly moving to protect her. However her powers, one of her key defining features, are hardly expanded upon and are used more as an obstacle than a gift. While she learns to control her EM discharge over time with the help of a fellow type E and the male lead, she doesn't seem to try and actively use her powers. The second female lead, Sonomi, just gets shafted so bad in terms of the plot. She is introduced to the story because of her love for the male lead and her mistaken belief that Chinami is trying to steal him. This leads her to come off as an entitled bitch as she constantly gets depressed seeing Chinami and Koutarou together and is really mean to Chinami. She softens a lot once she realizes that Chinami has powers and figures out that Koutarou is interested in her powers. However as time goes on she comes to realize that Koutarou is indeed in love with Chinami and basically gives up even encouraging him to go find Chinami. Her character feels like she was there to fulfil a cliche and to be the rich girl that helps move the plot along by providing the characters with a lab to research Chinami's powers and even helping sort the data about her powers. The Brinberg twins appear to be a bumbling pair of incompetents who are investigating Chinami in order to somehow restore their family's power. However the way this would work, kidnapping, recruiting, use of her powers, etc etc, is never explained and instead they function mostly as comic relief. They do occasionally help with the plot such as helping Chinami realize that she loves Koutarou by the sister Mils confessing to him in a ploy to use him in order to get to Chinami, and possibly for his scientific prowess as well, and by providing exposition in a few rare cases such as mapping out the rough range of Chinami's powers when she was near her emotional breaking point and caused a massive power outage. The third issue I have with the series is that when it decides that it wants to be more akin to a spy thriller with the Brinberg twins, the mysterious Hiiragi, people wanting to gain control of Type E's, the powers of Type E's, and how this all comes together in the final few episodes, the show lacks exposition. The viewer is left to piece together information from what little exposition was given throughout the anime. For instance the final few episodes seem to display animals having powers like Chinami and Saihashi, but the plot never explains why they have powers or why they are gathering beyond an implication that is was all because of some plan by Hiirag in the case of the latteri. Their powers are not explained and the viewer is left to figure out that the meteor that fell 20 years prior to the story, and only shown once at the beginning of the first episode, must have fallen in the lake near the area as seen on the map displayed for the city complex where the summer school is held. The meteor, like the one talked about in the exposition in episode 7 explaining the theory of how electric eels gained their electric cells as the result of the muticulim virus, is presumed to have had the same virus on it and that infected the animals giving them their powers. Further it is never explained why having a large group of Type E's together seems to form a type of resonance and increase their power output, nor why this seems to lead to what the anime refers to as decay in proportion to Type E interference, which this phrase is never spoken but simply shown on a computer screen as a building comes crashing down. Finally the ending of the series did a horrible job of setting up for a sequel and explaining where all of the characters are in terms of their current arcs. Chinami is never confronted by Sonomi for stealing Kotarou's heart, Mils survival from the building collapse is never clarified, we get no real explanation as to Hiiragi's intentions, and while Kotarou and Chinami confess to each other we are never shown anything beyond the implication that everyone from the school will be saved by the rescue squad who were in route and were able to find a place to land thanks to all of the flora and fauna around Chinami reacting to her em waves and glowing florescent green, the glow never being explained either but the cause implied by 2 characters thinking of Chinami when they see it. Also to make things even more confusing there is an earlier scene where we see a tank of green glowing firefly squid. Overall the anime feels like wasted potential with subpar story telling, a lack of exposition, incomplete plot lines, and a semi bland male lead who fulfils the cliche of making sure his childhood friend doesn't have her love requited because the new girl appeared.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Oct 28, 2019
Yume Tsukai
(Anime)
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Recommended
This is my first time ever writing a review, so this may appear a bit jumbled. I came into this anime with very few expectations aside from a basic idea of the premise from it's description. At first it was a kind of blah story that just barely kept my focus. However I have a rule when it comes to anime, if you start the anime you must finish it. I implemented this rule because I found some series that turned out to be hidden gems, or fairly interesting, that I initially considered dropping. This rule hasn't always been great to me, looking at you
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Mahou Sensou and Taboo Tattoo, but it has found me many gems like Wolf's Rain, Endro, and now Yume Tsukai.
This anime came to be enjoyable for me around the 6th episode as it started to settle in. I would rate the anime a solid 7 with the stipulation that in anime I care far more about the story than I do animation and music. As such this score is almost completely based on the story itself. I would recommend the anime if you like introspections on relationships and emotions with a bit of comedy and a pinch of cringey comic relief. Now let's move onto my full review 「Warning massive spoilers ahead」 If you read this far and care to be spoiled I will now break down the story and my thoughts. First let's look at the premise, everyone has dreams and these dreams are born from our emotions be it our fear, guilt, love, sorrow, or depression. These dreams are normally tucked away in our hearts but they can sometimes cross into our world and manifest themselves in various ways. A dream may not always reflect how we feel on the surface or even our personality but a dream does reflect what we are truly feeling. As these dreams can enter our world and cause trouble possibly harming or even killing people including their creators, a special way to deal with them was created, enter the Yume Tsukai. Yume Tskuai use toys to fight materialized nightmares by placing toys into special shrines built into their staves and invoking the power of the toys to take on their characteristics. The premise is an interesting one although the execution of the magical aspect of the plot and the rules of the magic system are slightly vague at best. Further the execution gives off a sort of power rangers vibe that turns many people off from the anime. However if we peel back this superficial layer and look at the stories that are told using these dreams turned nightmares as a story telling mechanism, then the plot and the anime as a whole begins to shine. The plot covers emotions somewhat broadly but nearly every story has an underlying theme associated with love be it the loss of a lover, the feeling of being unloved, what happens when love between people fades and how it can affect others, the fear of confessing love for fear of social clap back, fear of confessing love for fear of rejection, obsession, or even ideas of forbidden love. More on that last point later. The plot while explaining these emotions also uses these stories to build up our characters and give them some depth. Arguably our main character Touko sees the most development throughout the story, albeit it more as a establishing back story than a maturing sort of development. Her story is the big climax of the series and delves the deepest into the emotions of people by far. However to fully explain her story we need to explain the stories that proceeded hers and how they hinted at her past due to her reactions. Our first story is about a girl disappearing into a classroom that is raining. After we find the master of the dream that created the raining classroom we gain the reason for the dream manifestation, fear of confessing because of societal stigma and how ones love can be viewed as taboo in society. In this case it is a girl that has fallen in love with another girl and decides to confess, but before she can confess she overhears other girls gossiping and calling her gross for being attracted to another girl. This causes her to abandon the love letter she had written which becomes the source of the dream that spirits away the girl. This is our first hint at Touko's past as she exposes the love and doesn't feel put off by it despite it's societally taboo nature. Next we have a story of a little girl and her familial love for her father, despite her mother divorcing the father and taking the girl with her. The little girl longs for her father and that longing became the dream. Touko relates to this as she too had a strong connection with her father as she wears his mask at all times since his death. In the third story we have a women who is too shy and somewhat fearful of confessing to the popular guy in her office. This story relates to how Touko views love as a mysterious thing that we can't control. The fourth story is about another yume tsukai that is still in training and a case that she needs help with where a man has recreated his dead lover with his dream and has attempted to live with her. The yume tsukai in charge can't bring herself to separate this man from his dream at first because she too has lost a lover, the previous yume tsukai in her position. As a result she wears a hat that was her lovers, much akin to how Touko wears her dads mask. Touko shows the yume tsukai that even if someone is dead their love and your love for them will always remain by your side. A lesson Touko is very familiar with. The fifth story is about an old women who moves in with her sons family but is treated like a burden and wishes that she was dead so that the family she loves could go back to normal. This story doesn't so much affect Touko as it does her sister Rinko who is still in elementary school despite being a yume tsukai as well. Rinko in this case comes to understand the sadness and help the women out of her dream so that she can work her problems out with the family because disappearing doesn't really solve anything. The sixth story is about the yume tsukai who lost a lover, Satoka, coming to Tokyo with a very important goal and Rinko learning that there is more to life than work. Satoka's goal in coming to Tokyo was to obtain a special type of food from a specific stall that her lover once gave her so that she could fulfil a promise to go there with him to eat the food. She does this on the anniversary of his death. This story is another moment for Touko to relate again to the loss of someone dear. The seventh story is about a girl and her teacher who are in love. However the teacher's dream manifests itself to essentially seal him away hoping the girls feelings would fade because he found out that their love is forbidden. It is revealed, much to the surprise of the lovers, that they are in fact siblings related by blood that were separated when fairly young due to their parents divorce. Having been apart for so long and not knowing who each other were they fell in love with each other. This is one of the main stories that relates to Touko's past. If you haven't guessed already from the theme of the story the relation is incestuous forbidden love. But more on that later. The eighth story is about what happens when the love between two people disappears and how that effects those that are closely related to the lovers. In this case a little girl whose parents fight all the time and constantly say that if not for the daughter they would split up. This desire as well as the depression of the little girl fuses together into a nightmare that starts erasing the little girl from existence memory by memory. This story also has a bit of a subplot involving budding love between a childhood friend of the girls and the girl herself. While this story doesn't directly relate to Touko it does paint a picture of why we shouldn't wish to disappear because of the harm it causes to others in our absence. The ninth story is about a nihilistic boy who sees no point in the world because he seems to lack emotions. His dream eventually disappears after consuming him, much to the shock of Touko who had been interacting with him and sympathizing with him due to the despair she herself felt because of her past. The boys decision to allow his nightmare to eat him reminds Touko of her fathers death and set's the final plot in place. The tenth story is a bit of filler meant to give the support cast member Misako, Touko's aunt and her fathers sister, a bit of character development. The story doesn't really relate to any of the main cast but it does cover a man who loves big breasts and manifests his love for big breasts and idols in the form of a roughly two story tall big breasted idol girl called pai pai. When confronted he decides that he is tired of big breasts and leaves. Misako feeling sorry for the nightmare decides to stay with it for a bit until it turns out that the nightmare wasn't just a manifestation of its masters obsession but also his scorn for being rejected by the women he worked with. Misako is saved by her childhood friend, another yume tsukai, and comic relief character Hajime, a man whom she has feelings for despite the fact that he is a lolicon and views any girl over 10 years old as an old lady. The eleventh and final story is explaining Touko's past, how her father died and her coming to terms with all of the emotions hinted at throughout the course of the story. Touko's mother left them, it is a bit ambiguous but it is likely she died, and Touko essentially tried to replace her mother in her father's eyes, serious papa love vibes coming from this. At first it was just a normal father daughter love but eventually Touko developed romantic incestuous feelings towards her father. As a result she kissed him one night when he was sleeping while wishing to replace her mother as her fathers lover. Her father awakes to the kiss and is startled telling her to never do it again because it is not right. This causes Touko to harbour feelings of yearning, nearly obsession, towards her father which manifests itself as a nightmare that nearly consumed her. Her father appears and saves her but at the cost of his own life. This leaves Touko grief stricken. These emotions of her forbidden love and her grief and wish to punish herself manifests themselves in the form of a nightmare that resembles a younger Touko, about the age she was when her father died, in mourning clothes wearing her father's mask. Initially the cast, aside from Touko, seem to be oblivious to the identity of the girl when she appears at the toy shop to request Touko investigate the secret base on the mountain behind the shop. The secret base is the cave her father died in near an abandoned park that Touko and her sister used to visit with their father. There the nightmare reveals itself and after some running Touko decides to accept her fate and let the nightmare take her. This leads to Touko's sister entering a dream to find out the origin of the nightmare and discovering the truth about her sister's feelings for her father and how her father died. Shortly after a rescue mission is mounted with all of the yume tsukai. After some words from the grave via a memory viewed from invoking her fathers mask via their shrine staff, Touko comes to terms with her feelings as her father in the memory told Touko's sister that there is no such thing as a bad dream because dreams are just how people feel and you really can't change your feelings. Finally they kill Touko's nightmare and we end the story with Touko and her sister at a cliffside releasing the paper doll that represents her dream into the wind symbolizing that she is over her guilt and has embraced her feelings. Touko's sister gives her some words of encouragement saying that she doesn't believe that her love for their father was wrong, it just didn't fit the rules of our reality and they leave to go deal with a new nightmare. While I was able to guess the plot twist a mile away, although I am not sure if I have watched too much anime or if the foreshadowing was just a bit to on the nose but either way, I enjoyed this anime and the stories it told and the introspection it gives into society, relationships and emotions. However I do have a few complaints with certain parts of the execution and the pacing of the series.One of the biggest annoyances for me was the ambiguity of the magic system, especially since their Trump card seems to be something designed in a computer program. Aside from this the siblings love arc and its ending kind of heart my heart. Outside of these minor complaints the anime is fairly good for its age and relatively misleading art style.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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