Review of Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion

Overview: Code Geass is a show that left me shrugging and saying, "Well, I guess that happened now!" Which isn't really a good thing. Tonally erratic, filled with parts of plots done better elsewhere. It's a depressing affair lead by a Machiavellian lead character who grows more and more tiring as the show goes on. Story: It's hard to grasp what point this anime is trying to get across here given the octopus like approach it has to storytelling. This anime is equal parts Mecha, Slice of Life School Drama, Political Thriller, Harem, Alternate History, Game of Risk, and Supernatural... something. It attempts to weavethese together in a meaningful way but fails to adjust the tone appropriately. Similarly, there are plots for each genre that could easily be snapped off into their own story (and a lot of these ARE other anime done much better) but because they all have to share space, so it ends up being a bunch of swiss cheese plots. They cover this all up with flairs of "Twists!" that just usually amount to, "Hey you know that plot thread we were building up to for six episodes. Kill it."

The story is very cyclical. After a while, you get exhausted with watching a merry-go-round of Character A fumbling his way into failure and Character B making decisions for dumb reasons. The show wants to break these characters down through misery and the watcher, in turn, becomes miserable with them. Perhaps out of sympathy, but more likely out of just losing hope any of this is going to come to any satisfying conclusion.

Art:
This anime farmed out a bunch of design choices to different camps. Most notably the character designs were done by CLAMP. I love CLAMP, but their style doesn't not do well here. For a story so much about race, the choices they've made for the character designs don't communicate the difference in ethnicity in any way. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out Lelouch was supposed to be British and not Japanese. Knowing the nationality (and thus loyalty) of a character by sight is EXTREMELY important in stories like this. It would make Suzuku's otherness (and thus the immediate prejudice he faces) much more hard hitting. Instead, we have to wait patiently for the story to explicitly indicate whose side everyone is on.

The Mechs were also farmed out though I have little to contribute to that topic, as it falls out of my expertise. The designs seemed pretty generic to me, but were varied enough in silhouette, function, and color scheme to be immediately identifiable, which is vital.

On a technical level, CLAMP'S style is always better served in manga form and not in anime. The oppressively long legs do not animate well and everyone looks pretty goofy (Zero's design in particular was really silly and he reminded me of an overdramatic dracula cosplayer who got their head stuck in a bucket). Animation wise, there were a lot of cut corners (I.E. They didn't need to show that circuits realigning animation every. single. time.) and a lot of obvious recycling and looping. Overall, though, it got the job done and had some flair here and there.

Character:
Sometimes I just wonder if characters like this aren't my bag or if they're just trite at this point. Lelouch is your classic, watch me walk to the path paved with good intentions into hell, trope. Suzaku is.... also that. I guess I can appreciate when no one is completely clean of blame in a man vs man scenario, but it isn't a theme that's used particularly well.

There are a lot of characters in this anime, some are even pretty interesting. Kallen and CC being standouts that most often get shoved to the side so the boys can make some more dumb decisions.

Creep Factor:
Hey! This anime wasn't actually that bad. There's one explicit LGBT character no name, who mentions she'd rather look at a girl, and is told "I wish you'd get back in the closet" but it played as an exasperated friend dealing with her friend's love-sickness than shaming her for being open about it. There's some very young girls ending up with much older men but... eh, it's not explicitly sexual and can be understood as the weird (but still bad) mechanics of nobility. There's a lot of gratuitous T&A shots but... eh, you live your life, anime. Is it bad when I'm just pleased there isn't explicit bashing or extremely negative depictions of LGBT folks or women?

Final Verdict:
If depressing plots are your fancy and you've already watched Evangelion and Death Note, go ahead. Otherwise, just watch Evangelion and Death Note.