Code E - RePost

Code E aired in Japan from early July until late September in 2007. It follows the day-to-day adventures of Chinami Ebihara, the new transfer student. There is just one thing wrong with Chinami…she emits powerful electro-magnetic waves when her emotions fluctuate. The reason she is the new transfer student is because her parents move every time her powers are discovered, in order to protect her from being viewed as an abnormality. On top of that Chinami is incredibly shy and nervous, partially due to her abilities or curse, as she sees it. With her parent's love and understanding they do as much as they can to keep her calm and away from electronics. Her father is a work at home author who has an affinity for all things Hawaiian and all-nighters; he's pretty much a slacker. Her mother is a prim and organized professional…odd pair. Chinami fits the perfect glasses-girl otaku stereotype.

    On the way to school on her first day Chinami's secret is already leaked to a fellow classmate. The series takes place a decade or so in the future, display technology has evolved to the point where most advertisements and signs are electronic. Chinami ends up mildly freaking out on the bus ride and shorts out all of the internal electronics, signs, cell phones, etc. On the bus with her is Kotaro Konnagi who, unknown to either, is a fellow classmate. Kotaro notices the strange incident on the bus and begins to wonder if the new girl caused it. Kotaro is a 100% obsessed science freak. He is the sole member of the school science club, but unlike most science geeks in anime he is a normal 'good-looking' easygoing boy, he's just 100% dedicated to the study of the natural world.

    Right away Chinami makes a friend in school, the bubbly Keiko Komatsuna. Keiko takes it upon herself to give Chinami a tour of the school during lunch. As they near the science clubroom, Chinami begins to emit EM waves. She gets nervous around complicated and delicate machinery, which only makes her cause them to malfunction. As they pass by the room, which is filled to the gills with computer equipment, everything in it fluctuates. Kotaro is in the room at the time and takes note of Chinami's presence. At the end of the day, as Chinami is about to leave school, Kotaro approaches her and states that he is interested in her body. He means he wants to study her to see if his theory is true and to find out why. She thinks he is coming on to her. Chinami, who is quite shy and inexperienced with boys, completely freak out. All the lights in the school explode and everything electronic short out. Her secret is out, at least to Kotaro, and this is only her first day. Now she has to see how long it will take for everyone to connect the dots. Kotaro convinces her to be his test subject and he immediately confirms her abilities. He is now determined to study them and help her control them.

    A fellow classmate, Yuma Saihashi, notices Chinami's abilities too. Yuma is a shrine maiden who lives at her families' Shinto shrine. She is the tall, intelligent, reserved and serious type. After confirming Chinami's abilities she approaches her, for she too can emit EM waves. Yuma takes it upon herself to train Chinami in ways to control her abilities along with her emotions. She also reinforces the idea to keep her ability secret from anyone she can. Yet by this point she is one of 3 people that know about Chinami's abilities in school. The third one is Kotaro's pseudo girlfriend, Sonomi Kujo. Sonomi is a short, fiery, jealous redhead, who comes from an extremely wealthy family and is completely sold on the idea that Kotaro will be her man forever. Kotaro on the other hand has never really noticed her exact feelings for him and sees her more as his best and oldest friend. In the beginning Sonomi thinks that Kotaro likes Chinami and gets extremely competitive, but then she learns about what is really going on and lends a hand, and some resources, to help study Chinami.

    The peace doesn't last though, as two German siblings, Adol and Mils Brinberg infiltrate the school as exchange students in order to spy on Chinami and gather data on her ability. They are trying to find what are referred to as Type E people in order to restore their family’s power and wealth (they never explain how). The Brinberg's are goofy comic relief and eventually the real antagonist shows up, a mysterious man who heads a government funded revitalization project (you got me). He has people observing and studying Chinami's Type E abilities and eventually lures her to the proto type electrical city that the government has funded to study her even more. Chinamio finds out that Kotaro, who she is falling for, does not love her or have any interest in her other than her ability. She has a major emotional episode and ends up blowing up a lot of machinery around her. After it ends she is no longer able to emit EM waves. Now she can finally live as a normal teenager. The entire class ends up going to the city, which is operated by the mysterious antagonist, out in the country, as part of a summer school program. While there Chinami has to come to terms with her feelings and the fact that she is now just a normal student. The organization that runs the prototype city has to figure out why she no longer has any Type E abilities.

    Ok, this was a pretty decent series, yet there are quite a few things that were not explained. One was what the hell the Germans were actually trying to do…. aside from spy on Chinami. The other was, who the hell the 'antagonist' guy was and what he was trying to do. It seems like he had this entire proto type future city built to study Type E's, maybe even Chinami specifically. That part of the story didn't even start rolling until after the half way point and didn't really make a lot of sense, only as a background for the climax of the story. Mils ended up looking at some data collected about the Type E ability on a laptop in the city but the result didn't make much sense either. So aside from the weird mini arch at the end the series was a good one. It was nice and relaxing, a little funny and quite a bit endearing. Chinami is the a-typical clumsy, nervous bookworm girl. She reminded me a lot of The Paper from Read or Die. The series reminded me a lot of Read or Die, the Ova's not Read or Die the TV series, although the animation studio that did this show did the ROD TV series.

    The love story was pretty low-key until the end, where it didn't really get too involved as well. For the most part the series is a school life sci-fi series as opposed to a romantic comedy. One thing I liked  about the series was its use of 'around the corner' future tech. The coolest thing was the electronic display blackboard in the classroom, which frequently shorts out due to Chinami. We are so close to being able to have this technology available to the masses in reality that I can taste it. It makes me yearn for everything to speed up a couple of years so we can have that kind of technology now. With such things as the iPhone and the Microsoft Surface computer being marketed and developed the technology shown in this series is already possible. We just need to implement it, ah to be my children's age in this time, for them to be growing up when technology is expanding even further than it was 10 or even 5 years ago.

    So, if you like nice, quirky, high school shows, this one is a good one for you. Just don't get upset if everything doesn't add up in the end, because a lot of it won't, in fact you will wonder why it went the way it did. In 2008 a follow up series was released called Mission E, that takes the Chinami away from the fun and relaxing world of a high school student and turns her into a spandex clad government super hero, protecting other E-Types from the mysterious evil organization that is still trying to gather them. The series was such a change from the original story that it made me violently ill and I could only watch 2 episodes of it. Fans of Burn Up would enjoy the second series.

UPDATE: As of January 2016 this series has not been licensed in North America and is unavailable.