Cipher Academy Part 2: Unedited Audio and Recording Notes

About the Manga

• Plot

  • Each class has to compete against each other with the winner’s leading private becoming the leader of the whole grade. First they win some confusing games against the infiltration classroom. The second match has all of them play tag with the remaining classes coming together to take down 1-A. This includes class 1-F which is a class trained in torture and should not be at this school. 1-A wins because even though they didn’t capture as many people as the others, none of their players were captured. Also Iroha is interested in meeting the cheerleader who saved his life by opening his cell bars with superhuman strength.

  • Kogoe decides fuck it and just gives them all magic glasses which transport everyone into the metaverse where they compete to become the code emperor and get the 50 bajillion bitcoin for world peace or something. There’s: a bomb defusing game, a really confusing mahjong game, a really confusing game of craps, the prisoners dilemma, a trial where Iroha must prove that the most traumatic moment of his life wasn’t his fault, a really confusing Othello game, an actual fucking sewer level, and a very silly dance-math game. At some point En and Iroha confess their love for each other which is very sweet but doesn’t matter. 

  • The two left standing are Toshusai and Iroha who compete against each other in a room of bones. They do a crossword where they try to describe the other person. Toshusai gives a very detailed description of Iroha but Iroha’s crossword answers themselves end up being encoded to “protect the truth” so he wins. Next he’s challenged by Kogoe who says that you can’t actually end all wars and that it wouldn’t be best to do that anyway, so it’s better to control wars. Iroha asks why you don’t just control peace, which is so fucking stupid that it breaks Kogoe’s brain and he wins the 50 zillion NFTs. 2 years later everyone is still at school committing clandestine war crimes except for Iroha who is living like a mad max character in the desert where he meets the super strong cheerleader. His plan to stop wars didn’t work and he blew all the money. 

• Characters

  • Iroha Irohazaka

    • Has their physicality matter

  • Kogoe Horagatoge

    • Seems much more active in behavior

  • Toshusai

    • Completely forgotten about

    • Oh jk she back baby

  • Tayu

    • Leveling up as a bad bitch

    • Apparently outed a minister of defense

  • Anonymity

    • Big focus I think? It’s weird they seem to act like she’s important but then isn’t

    • Yeah she falls off at the end

Why it failed / What it did worse

• This series is just so up it's own ass

• The plot moves quite slowly and i feel the mcs always win

• The pyramid is dumb it inherently has a hierarchy built into it

• Still doing puzzles is impossible for non-Japanese speakers. Rotating letters is very clever though

• It still doesn’t really show a life outside of code in a satisfying way like they have an athletic field but never really explain why it exists

• The on the spot code is kinda neat but a lot of the codes could have been made in advance like you can write that math problem on anything

• The code solving explanations are still kinda handwavy

• Have you ever noticed that none of the important characters ever fail? Like they always get the puzzles

• It kinda just forgets about the longform plot for a while and the author is like oh shit let me remind you like 10 chapters in

• It does more but still not enough wit the format and I find the meta plot kinda boring

• Did it just give up explaining some of the puzzles? Isn’t that the point?

• A lot of the main characters don’t really change much like Iroha has almost no development

• The author is just so far up his own asshole you have trouble enjoying the series

• The series kinda makes a character feel important and then abandons them so fast besides the MC

What it did well / What it did better

• I like the different classes having code focuses like infiltration vs just code breaking 

• It puts some effort into how the different students synergize with each other 

• Lmao that disguise lady just fucked up and was like whatever 

• The social games with the answers is really fun

• The upside down and mirrored text is cute 

• Oh look some backgrounds!

• I’m always a sucker for dreamteam rights

• Lmao the bear is great, it’s really the author fucking around with how silly his ideas are

• The oops however did you solve my puzzle with Toshuasai was funny

• Art steps up a lot more interesting splash pages

• I gotta say it at least attempts to juggle all the characters

• I like them actually fucking with the puzzles, it feels clever as the straightforward puzzle solving was getting old

Misc Thoughts

• Why does this artist like covering eyes so much noth the main teachers

• The woman who said part 2 and 4 of jojo is best is correct 

• So are they just gana gloss over the grave thing ooor

• I really want to see this author make a series where he has like a 50 words per chapter limit or something. He’d def have a textless chapter with a giant speech at the end

• Gotta love the interacting with the panel on page 17 in chapter 36 in the forest

• I tried scanning the QR code and it didn’t work

• Who the fuck is En chan

How tricky a puzzle would this part of the manga be

• David: Chinese Finger Trap, at first it seems novel but once you get the gimmick it’s solved the same way

• Jordan: phoenix wright case

• Guest: too tricky to be worth solving

• Six Word summary

  • David: Gold’s stuck up it’s own ass

  • Jordan: dude I’m just barely holding on | translator’s note: dude I quit

  • Guest: i challenge you to a code battle

• Flop or not

  • It’s a flop but way better than ill boy and ill girl, kinda wanna say read the first 2 volumes of family sins

  • Flop read Yugioh season 0