Manga / Cipher Academy

Cipher Academy (暗号学園のいろは, Angō Gakuen no Iroha, lit. "Iroha of the Cipher Academy") is a manga series, written by NisiOisiN and drawn by Yuji Iwasaki, which was serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump from November 2022 to February 2024. An official English translation of the series is being published on Manga Plus.

Cipher Academy is an elite all-female Military School, founded in anticipation of the next great war, where the education focuses on teaching students to solve ciphers, codes, and puzzles in order to gather skilled codebreakers for the army. Iroha Irohazaka is the token male in the Academy's Class 1-A, who one day becomes entangled in a conflict between Kogoe Horagatoge, a genius inventor from Class 1-M, and Kyora Toshusai, a proud and enigmatic heiress to a weapon manufacturing corporation. After helping Kogoe, Iroha receives a pair of glasses embedded with technology that reveals hints to codes, and finds himself caught in a conspiracy surrounding 50 billion morg—a stash of cryptocurrency that could drastically change the global landscape of war.

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This series features the following tropes:

• 20 Minutes into the Future: According to Iroha's thoughts, the manga's set in around the year 2050.
• Absurdly Divided School: A mild example. All the girls and 5 boys generally share the same facilities apart from private ones, plus the various military regulations ensure segregation isn't taken too far. There exists a formal social structure, but since Cipher Academy's just opened, there's only 1 grade across the entire building. Said structure is roughly explained by this image,◊ equating to the usual student council president, vice president, secretary, gradewide leader, class president, and regular student.
  • A local political map of Class 1-A can be seen in this image◊, though unlike what it represented, the classmates generally got along with each other by this point (even (Anonimity)). It's mainly constructed from the Chekhov's Gun test "Seating Change Tetromino", and the random pairings it generated actually did grow some level of friendship between them (apart from those already in Kyora's or Nohime's clique).
• Aerith and Bob: Purely speaking about the Japanese-style names, there are normal ones like Iroha, Tayu, Yukako, etc.—then there's Ransurotto and Otamajakushi Mamushihishimeki. There are also many characters' names which are...
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: A lot of characters have ridiculous made-up names, or outright English words either presented in their original form or transposed into Romanized Japanese.
• Alliterative Name: Many, many characters. Some aren't as obvious because this trope only works for their kanji, but quite a bit are.
• Bizarrchitecture: The main building of the academy is shaped like a colossal padlock◊. It is flanked by metal towers in the shape of keys and lockpicks (which serve to delimit different zones of danger in the forest surrounding the academy).
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: In the beginning of Chapter 21, Anonymity is surprised that Iroha is suddenly way ahead of her in the poker game, and she wonders if she's somehow "skipped a chapter" since "last week's issue".
• Camping Episode: Chapter 17, where all the students take a break from code-solving to make cakes. At Rokaku's insistence, they do it from "square one", by going outside and harvesting all of the ingredients, from wheat to milk, from the Academy's farmland. The chapter ends with everyone enjoying cake in the woods around a campfire.
• Cast of Snowflakes: The large cast in this manga have their own differentiating appearances and quirks, making it easy to distinguish them.
• Chekhov's Gun and Chekhov's Gunman: So, so much. You can practically guarantee every single drawing of characters and objects has the potential to be important plot-wise later on. Often combined with Early-Bird Cameo.
• Classified Information: An unusual fourth-wall breaking example—some panels, or characters' lines, are censored with a note such as "ideology censored", "account retracted", or "company secret".
• Conveniently Seated: Averted. Everyone's seated by their seat number (sorted in a general Japanese alphabetical rule). Iroha, for example, sits right in front of the teacher's podium, and Kyora's clique members are spread out around the class instead of sitting right around her.
• Crapsack World: Very little is known about the setting outside of the Academy itself, but what we do know about it paints a very poor picture of the state of the world. Wars are common occurences everywhere, first world countries making use of Child Soldiers is Unusually Uninteresting Sight and the most valued currency is a cryptocurrency that profits on warmongering.
• Cut Short: The manga ended after a little over a year of serialization due to low popularity rankings, thought the last chapter at least manages to tie up loose ends.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Unassisted or forceful "Ice-Cold Reading". Kogoe's glasses weapons are designed to shortcut and assist the heightened focus cipher soldiers had to get into in order to break codes, though most have too much pride (including Iroha) to rely on them. Hence, they're usually putting their own mental strength to the test, with predictable consequences if they push themselves too far. So far, Iroha, Ensa, and Nohime have suffered from differing degrees of side effects. Iroha directly passed out after a series of headaches, Ensa's body went limp and full of sweat, while Nohime outright went blind.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Iroha's take on the academy's philosophy and goal. Other students take it as a hyper-competitive setting and dog-eat-dog world, simimlar to regular military academies where bullying, hazing, and power struggles are common. Having personally seen what the battlefield and the deaths it caused were like, Iroha wants to use all of Cipher Academy's human resources to crack codes together, instead of choosing a Code Emperor through a process of elimination who, no matter how good they are, is inevitably just one person, compared to the hundreds of different minds and points of view of the best students Japan can offer.
• Do Not Try This at Home: The ending of Chapter 16 has an admonishment to the readers to never follow Anonymity's example in blatantly cheating in murder-mystery games, since it ruins the fun, and "could lead to certain individuals losing every last one of their family and friends".
• Does Not Like Men: Cipher Academy's an all-girls school... supposedly. It's obvious some of them are uncomfortable around and have misconceptions about boys. Kyora, Yukako, Shitai are just a few examples. The academy itself also treated them as inferior, cramming the 5 boys currently enrolled in a single room like animals while the girls roomed 2-at-a-time at worst.
  Shitai: I don't understand what you mean by "boy".
  • However, given how high-tech and luxurious everything else was, the reality was probably slightly better than what's described. Cipher Academy provides 24-hour room and board facilities, including a great canteen, free of charge. Iroha's also basically a scholarship student whose benefactor enrolled him into the academy.
• Dub-Induced Plot Hole: In the first chapter, Iroha is tasked with filling out a crossword so that its solution spells out his name. The official English translation used entirely different words with appropriate letters... which backfired when Chapter 11 referenced specific words from Iroha's crossword.
• Exact Words: Involved in the solution to Puzzle 02. Kyora Toshuhai asks "who amongst us does this cryptogram refer to?" as she stands alongside her two sidekicks. However, she is including Iroha, the person she is speaking to, as part of "us".
• Format-Specific Joke: In a two-page panel in Chapter 18, Anonymity (who has a tendency for fourth-wall breaking gags) is leaning on the stitch between the pages. The gag only makes sense if you're reading the manga in its paper edition; in the digital version, it just looks like Anonymity is holding her hands in mid-air for no reason.
• Gambit Pileup: The final round of the inter-class leading private, "Trilemma Capture List". Class 1-A goes up against two coallitions: Class 1-B+C and Class 1-D+F. Everyone has their own goals and plans in this stage, with up to 18 participants. It's very confusing to follow even without the ciphers.
• Goggles Do Something Unusual: Several students in the class use "glasses weapons", glasses with various abilities, usually related to code-solving. Iroha himself receives a particularly powerful weapon of this kind; while most glasses weapons have highly specialized abilities, Iroha's can almost solve codes for him on its own. However, they're all seem to be tailor-made to the users, meaning only they can extract the glasses' full potential if they so happen to fall into another's hands.
  • Iroha's are able to project holographic, interactive images into his vision, suitable for him who has great visual acumen and 3D sense. However, using it for too long or to brute-force a cipher far beyond his abilities risks overclocking his brain—one time causing him to collapse entirely after attempting to decipher the "Dancing Soldier" cipher.
  • Senka's (and to an extent, Oboro's) are able to pick up clues in the form of different colours, befitting the gyaru's colourful fashion sense and contrasting Oboro's all-black getup.
  • Nohime's are in the form of contact lenses, and does nothing (so far) apart from enhancing her vision which is approaching blindness.
  • (Anonimity)'s is a literal Censor Box which disrupts all physical recognition and eletronic surveillance of her identity, symbolizing her lone wolf attitude. She takes it off when she begins to open up to her classmates, particularly Iroha.
• Gut Feeling: In chapter 9, even before solving the cipher hidden within the video message, Iroha immediately figures out its meaning ("This person is asking the world for help"), but is unable to explain how beyond a hunch.
• Harder Than Hard: There are some philosophical questions thrown in this manga which are treated like puzzles, even though they directly attack humanity's core psychology and have no correct answers, making them literally unsolveable objectively. These are marked as six-star difficulty puzzles.
  • Question 16 — "Why don't wars go away? How long will people... keep killing each other?". Throughout human history, the answer is simply because people are people, imperfect selfish beings who'll put their own interests above others, creating conflicts as natural as breathing. How to stop it? No one has figured it out so far.
  • Question 99 — "I made a stupid mistake, all right? Don't come to save me."◊ A dilemma faced by everyone when one of their own is held hostage or captive since time immemorial. Do they risk spending resources for nothing, or possibly risking other people's lives, by attempting a rescue? Or abandon their comrades heartlessly and focus on the wider scope?
  • The six key ciphers to unlock Class M's metaverse (where the 50 billion Morg treasure was hidden) by updating the glasses weapons from AR to VR, entrusted to each of the class-leading private, are marked as Question X, with a "?????" difficulty rating.
• Inexplicable Cornered Escape: In the first chapter, Iroha is sitting in a library, when he sees a girl (Kogoe) rush in pleading for help. On the next page, Kogoe's pursuers burst into the library, and nobody seems to be there except for Iroha. A few panels later, Kogoe is shown just barely managing to remain hidden behind Iroha's chair (and if you look at the previous panels again, you will notice parts of her clothes poking out).
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Whenever any character uses "Ice Cold Reading". While Iroha uses it most often, it's just a heightened state of focus most cipher soldiers can get into, either unassisted or using Kogoe's glasses weapons. Their personality usually changes in this state.
• Lost in Translation: The series is heavily based around ciphers and puzzles, many of which rely heavily on Japanese language, and are basically impossible to translate so as to be solvable by non-Japanese readers. For example, one of the very first puzzles requires knowledge of all of the following: Japanese kanji, the names of Japanese prefectures, the industry standards for sorting these prefectures, and the methods of ordering Japanese characters. The standout is the lipogram battle between Tayu and Iroha, where both participants cannot speak specific Japanese syllables; this is extremely hard, if not impossible to translate into English, so the official translation simply throws its hands up—leaving most of the original Japanese untranslated, not even attempting to carry the lipogram gimmick over to English, and peppering the text heavily with translator's notes. Symptomatically, a freelancer charged with translating the series to English on a weekly basis quit by the time of that chapter, because of how much of a challenge the manga's translation was.
• Military School: The Academy drills future military cryptologists. Its school uniforms are essentially military uniforms, and subjects taught include geopolitics, first aid, and survival.
• Non-Uniform Uniform: There are a few students who either wear a heavily-modified jersey or not wearing it at all, such as Shitsuke. The most popular modification is the elongated robe variant, used by Kyora, Ensa, and Shitai to name a few. Others wear something on top of their jerseys, such as Oboro, Shutan, and Seppun. Aen and Invalides wear different colors, instead of Cipher Academy's green uniform.
• Ominous Multiple Screens: Chapter 1 ends with a shot of Kogoe sitting in a dark room, surrounded by numerous keyboards in a circle and multiple screens, which apparently allow her to see through every camera in the school.
• One-Gender School:
  • Cipher Academy is mostly an all-girls school (the introduction hints that its creation was inspired by the Code Girls group, formed by the U.S. government during World War II). However, every class has a "token male"; Iroha is one for Class 1-A.
  • An all-male school called the "Trench Academy", for training commandos, is also mentioned (and Iroha is threatened with being sent there if he loses the code battle against Yukako).
• Only Smart People May Pass: The Academy's meal ticket machine lists all of its selection in Morse code, making lunch a chore for students who don't know their Morse.
• Poor Communication Kills: Shitai's and Yukako's "freedom fighter" group launched an eventually disastrous attempt at harming Kick-Attack Planning, having received information the company was employing child soldiers and engineers to develop WMDs. Actually, their target was the one group which was developing non-lethal weapons and trying to branch away from the main company, and their attack actually made this group disband, ruining Kyora's life work and goal beacuse of a misinformation. Both parties blamed each other to this day.
• Room Escape Game: Digital Cipher Academy is this. Students are ranked according to their daily scores and evaluations (meaning Iroha, despite being the grade-wide leader at this point, is still ranked dead last since the selection didn't contribute to his school grades), and are tasked to race to the bottom of this inverted structure, where the 50 billion Morg prize is supposed to be hidden, clearing one locked stage at a time. There are hints students can forcibly skip levels using shortcuts, but these are far and few in-between (not to mention predictably risky).
  • Stages are usually of these formats: A regular room escape where students must gather clues and solve small puzzles in order to escape and advance to the next floor (this may be taken individually or as a group); "forced encounter events" where students are pitted against each other, with progress barred until there's at least one eliminated (either completely booted out of Digital Cipher Academy or just forced to reset); "social deduction games" where students go up against Dekiai, the administrator A.I. where she'll attempt to trap players in verbal arguments. Failure to convince her of their causes will mean defeat; students are also free to engage each other in code battles like in the real Cipher Academy, with their usual Serious Business rules taking effect.
  • Iroha, meanwhile, divides them according to their penalties: "normal floors" with none in particular; "dangerous floors" with penalties of various risks; "bonus-stage floors" with secret passages which allow players to skip floors and warp.
• Sadistic Choice: A mild, non-lethal example. Iroha was presented by two options: Go and clear things up with Invalides, whose older brother sacrificed his life for Iroha, or receive intel on the "Dancing Soldier" from Tonbo, whom Iroha has temporarily made into his short-term goal. In short, he had to choose between the person who saved him or the person he wants to save now.
• Social Deduction Game: The in-universe "Murder at Cipher Academy" game, which is part of the process to select the Class Leading Private. Players are immersed in a murder mystery scenario, and, similarly to "Werewolf", each of them has a secret role, including a killer who must evade identification. This being the Cipher Academy, the game is combined with puzzles that reveal hints to the killer's identity. Players must unravel these puzzles while interrogating one another to uncover the truth. To make matters more complicated, each player has a hidden agenda and a different victory condition. Players also have special skills, such as being able to refuse answering when interrogated, or being able to instantly solve specific puzzles.
• "Super Sentai" Stance: This manga's Overly Long Gag. Initiated by Kyora's habit to do so, almost◊ every◊ group◊ presentation◊ becomes◊ this◊—applying to those not in the same class, even.
• Too Long; Didn't Dub:
  • The "lipogram battle" between Tayu and Iroha involves the participants being forbidden from using specific Japanese syllables. Tayu demonstrates this by describing several Weekly Shonen Jump series under this limitation. This cannot be directly translated to English, so in the official translation, Tayu's original Japanese lines are written out directly, with a literal English translation below.
  • At the end of Chapter 29, the members of Class 1-B say some apparently nonsense lines; they are actually speaking in code, which can be deciphered by reading every other syllable. Again, this kind of cipher can't be translated directly, so the official translation writes out both the original Japanese text and its literal English meaning.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Parodied in Chapter 17, where each character is labelled with their favorite type of Baumkuchen cake.
• Unwinnable by Mistake: Puzzle 19 (a chess puzzle masqueraded as a shogi puzzle) isn't actually solvable, as its solution involves an illegal move. The writer later admitted (in the magazine's author comments section) that he made a mistake in that puzzle.
• Wall of Text:
  • The climax of the code battle between Tayu and Iroha takes the form of a single image split between four pages, with a wall of questions from Tayu on one side and a wall of answers from Iroha on the other.
  • The complete solution to the murder mystery game is given in this way, as text in tiny letters taking up half a page, along with a Lampshade Hanging from Kogoe about how the game's finale would take too long to present in any other way.

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