As a twenty minute long standalone episode thing, this review shouldn't end up being too long. Additionally, there's no way I can talk about it without essentially spoiling the whole thing. That being said, I still intend on being thorough, even if a small part of my brain is telling me well if the ONA is only twenty minutes, then surely this review should only take twenty minutes. Or less.
~~Introduction~~ The Entire Review
But first, a tiny bit of background information about Luger Code 1951 just to give an idea of what it is. This was a story idea/scenario that won an award. I mean sure yeah okay, reward the guy with two million yen (an equivalent of $17,000), plus a manga (by the Medaka Box guy) as well as anime adaptation. Described in that article, it doesn't sound terrible or anything.
Humans having a modern war with werewolves and the werewolves having some sort of military code that only werewolves can understand... like okay, that could be really silly/dumb, but it could still work if done right.
...Was it done right though?
The characters are one note/very typical. There's the soldier/military type with Alex Rossa (he's the one with the hat), there's the non-military type/genius character with Testa Lielbelle who's the translator whose entire purpose there is to hopefully translate the Luger Code, and Yonaga. Yonaga is the captured werewolf girl who is the reason for Testa and Alex's appearance as a captured werewolf seems to be the key to translating the Luger Code. Which you know, makes sense. The code is made by werewolves, let's just go get a werewolf.
However, Yonaga is openly hostile and she hates both the werewolves as well as humanity and doesn't care about the war, openly stating that they can both kill each other for all she cared. We really don't get to see much of a deep reason on either account. It's because of her "cursed blood" the werewolves hate her so she hates them back and as far as humans go well, to hell with humans, am I right?
Okay, okay, but what about the action? What about the action? The male werewolves when transformed look... uh...
...It's not like I want to be a heckler towards every single show I watch. But these werewolf forms do not look intimidating. Like okay yeah, if a gigantic muscular man with a dog face, a tail, and furry arms came charging at me in the darkness of night I would be genuinely terrified. BUT, I wouldn't be thinking "oh no, I'm about to be mauled to death by an actual werewolf" which is what these are supposed to be.
Additionally, the actual action itself is very... nothing stands out. The werewolf battle at the end was I guess supposed to be the climax and by that point I was just... it definitely didn't help. Despite this being only twenty minutes long, I was ready to be done. Which is not what your viewer should be feeling if you're doing action.
Okay, the characters and action are underwhelming, but what about the story? Surely there has to be something good here. Or at least, that's what you wish to believe. See, the whole thing is that Testa and Alex are here to get this captured werewolf to solve the Luger Code. Or perhaps the truth is, despite being a supposed genius translator, he just turns to Alex eventually and says "Well no, I've figured it was impossible the entire time.
...Don't you just love it when a show looks at you totally unashamed, smirks, and tells you everything was actually a complete waste of time? To be fair though, the Luger Code is literally just the werewolves recording and sending their howls?
This entire trip ends up utterly pointless and also disastrous for both Testa and Alex. Alex gets mauled by a rampaging werewolf man, and Yonaga shoots Testa to then turn him into one of the werewolf men to kill the other werewolf man.
How does he kill the evil werewolf exactly? Oh, he just jams his silver cross into the werewolf after they battle. In the manga, he crushes his cross down into a makeshift silver bullet and fires it at the werewolf. Either way, the werewolf is killed via silver. Hold on, these werewolves that humanity is in a terrible war with and Alex just absolutely could not kill earlier without his buddy becoming a werewolf himself, have the traditional werewolf fatal weakness of... silver.
...Okay look, before humanity discovered that werewolves existed and promptly went to war with them, I'm sure the concept of a werewolf was still present somewhere in the mythologies and etc of this world. Why would they not immediately try silver on werewolves and why would they not be armed with silver bullets after realizing their great effectiveness against WEREWOLVES???
I really do wish I was done at this point, but I do need to rag on Yonaga. I hated her absolutely and entirely. Because it was obvious what type of character she was going to be almost immediately from the start.
"Okay, Testa protected Yonaga from the other soldiers, this means Yonaga is gonna end up helping Testa and Alex against the werewolves despite previously expressing disdain for both sides of the war. She'll doubly need rescuing from the situation she causes when she howls summoning wolves to the cabin. Also from Testa, of course."
Everything ended fine and dandy for Yonaga. She shot Testa point blank without even a hesitation and then changed him into a werewolf, costing him his humanity for the rest of his life. Wow, thanks Yonaga. It's a good thing Testa's fine with this. Maybe if it had been someone else, they wouldn't have been wholly willing to be eternal outcasts of both werewolves as well as humanity with you.
Wait, hold on. I somehow brushed over something monumental. When the cabin was on fire, Alex/Rossa just outright turns his head back to Testa when everyone's running for their lives for the door and tells Testa to just leave Yonaga. Excuse me? From the very start, retrieving the captive werewolf was the entire point. You can't just leave her to die in a burning cabin, THAT'S THE WHOLE MISSION ~~(even though it turns out getting her has no impact on the Luger Code anyways, Testa just can't solve it at all).~~
#Conclusion#
To summarize, I would say quite obviously, I thought very little of Luger Code 1951. It's astonishing to me that this actually spawned from a scenario that won a contest. But if this was the best to offer, I can only fathom the other sorts of entries in that contest. Perhaps Luger Code 1951 simply won because it was the most outlandish idea of the bunch. Okay, humans are at an actual war with werewolves following WWII and a couple of humans are trying to decode the werewolves' military codes. Like I said, a werewolf war could have gotten either really silly or really entertaining, in a very silly and almost childish way.
"I want to see a war show. BUT WITH WEREWOLVES INSTEAD."
To me, there's nothing wrong with that. Unfortunately Luger Code wasn't anything as entertaining as that could have been. Instead of the actual war between werewolves and humans, we get to see the attempt to decipher the werewolves' military code which ends up both fruitless as well as pointless and horrible for Alex and Testa. Alex gets mauled quite a bit and Testa gets shot and loses his humanity and has to wander around with Yonaga for forever.
Actually, I do find it worth noting that the manga version actually provided an ending where Alex actually somehow apparently deciphered the Luger Code somehow after he got back and his wounds healed, and he was apparently waiting for a message from Testa and Yonaga hoping that they were still out there somewhere. Well, what do you know? The manga actually has an actual ending. It's amazing what you can do if you even try a slight amount harder.
Still, the manga is more or less about the same as the anime, and I give the anime a 1.5 out of 10 or 15 out of 100. But I think the overall moral of the story is clear.
Luger Code 1951 won some guy two million yen/$17,000. The sky is the limit kids, don't let your dreams be dreams.
takes a swift step into an endless chasm and falls endlessly laughing all the way down
