Review of Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion

An anime that has a good concept, but unfortunately turned out to be horrible. This is by far the most rage inducing and stupid anime I've watched to date. Also, please don't read this review if you're someone that gets offended easily. I'll just give a quick synopsis of the story first. Code Geass is a story about Lelouch and his quest for vengance against the Brittanian Empire. The Britannian Empire is the strongest nation in the world and they eventually conquer Japan, renaming it to Area 11. Lelouch seeks vengance for Britannia because of his mothers death, and he just wants to make theworld a better place for his sister. At the beginning of the series, another character named C2 gives him a power named "Geass". This is a power that allows him to give commands to anyone just by giving eye contact, and they'll obey anything. The story starts from there.

In my opinion, the anime actually has a strong start to it. I liked the main character and liked the fact that he had such a cool power. It did a great job of hooking me in ever since the first 2 episodes. I've only had a couple of minor problems with the anime at this point. The only thing I wanted to know about is how Lelouch is so "smart" to begin with? What makes a high school kid so smart to the point where he's trying to start an entire rebellion? Well, that's isn't that big of a deal. My problem with this anime isn't even the story at all. My problem with it is the bad writing and the poor execution. I feel as if this anime could've been a masterpiece if it wasn't written so badly.

Now I'll be talking about the good parts of Code Geass. As I said before, the story is actually pretty interesting. Code Geass has decent animation to it. It's not that special, but not bad at all. The openings/endings/background tracks are pretty awesome. The voice acting is also pretty well done. Lelouch is actually a damn good character, and very enjoyable to watch. Unfortunately, that's all the good things I have to say about this anime. Now I'll be talking about whats bad about this anime.

My biggest problem with this anime is how pretentious and edgy it is. The writers tried to make it seem smart, but it really wasn't. The only reason Lelouch was able to last as long as he did was because of plot armor and asspulls. For example, somehow him and his "Black Knights" produced 1 million copies of the same Zero outfit. That makes absolutely no sense at all. And everytime Lelouch is cornered he always ends up surviving because of asspulls.

The perfect example of this is when he was cornered by the Chinese Federation in season two. He didn't think of a plan or anything. He ended up surviving because of plot armor and asspulls. I'm not going to go too much into detail, but anyone that actually watches the anime knows what I'm talking about. A smart character wouldn't need asspulls to help him escape from a dangerous situation. A smart character would think and come up with a plan. A smart person wouldn't be consumed by power and ambition. A smart person would engage in some sort of moral reflection, and Lelouch has never done that. That's exactly why he lost control of his power and ended up getting thousands of people killed. A smart character would've never let that shit happen. That's exactly why I consider this anime to be fake smart. Infact, this anime has some of the most stupid characters you'll ever find in anime in general.

Speaking about stupid characters, this anime is filled with them. Infact, Lelouch is the only likeable character in this anime. Every other character is one dimensional, and they get absolutely no character development at all.

Well, maybe Suzaku did get some character development, but it definitely wasn't good. The only time I remember him getting development was when he just randomly said "RESULTS MATTER MORE THAN THE MEANS". Suzaku is supposed to be the complete opposite of Lelouch, yet the writers just ruined the character that they built up. Now that he just randomly changed his beliefs, it makes the rivalry between him and Lelouch non existant. That just made him a boring character to me. This is pretty much poor execution at its finest.

About the other characters, none of them are interesting in the slightest. As I said before, only like two characters get developed. Everyone is boring and don't have any sort of depth to them whatsoever. C2 has got to be one of the worst female characters I've ever seen. Her entire character is pretty much just a plot device. Anytime something bad happens to Lelouch, she'll be there to save him. That is the definition of a living/breathing plot device. As for Kallen, I don't really think she's a bad character at all. I feel as if she would've been a good character if she was fleshed out more. Unfortunately her only role in this anime was to fight with her lame ass mech.

Speaking about fights, Code Geass has a lot of them. Let me tell you this, Code Geass has really boring fights. It's not even because they're fighting in mechs, it's just because it's somehow so boring. I've watched a lot of mech shows, but somehow Code Geass makes mech fights seem so boring. Some people say that it isn't mech focused, but I have to completely disagre with that. Maybe in season one it wasn't mech based, but in season two all they fucking do is fight in their lame ass mechs. I'll be explaining what I mean by that later on.

Season two specifically has a lot of boring mech fights and none of them end up being good. They just keep fighting the same battles over and over again ad nauseam. I think the boring mech fights are just there just to take up screen time. These boring ass mech fights really made season two so boring to watch. As technology goes up, the use of strategy goes down. Instead of using strategy to win, season two is all about who has the stronger mech. That's pretty lame.

Code Geass has a lot of boring filler that doesn't really do anything for the story. The entire Mao arc was just completely stupid overall. It didn't contribute anything to the main storyline, so I have no idea why it's as long as it was. That was easily the worst part of the entire anime IMO. That's where most of the illogical/nonsensical things took place.

There's also a bunch of school filler involved in this anime and it's just silly. One second Lelouch is making plans of how he will destroy Brittania, and the next the anime turns into slice of life bullshit. The entire school setting in this anime was completely unnecessary. It didn't contirbute anything to the plot whatsoever. None of those characters from the school should've gotten more than a minute of screen time. I don't remember their names, but they sure as hell got a lot of screen time when they shouldn't have. That's just pure stupidity from the writers, nothing more.

The art style in Code Geass is very bad. I honestly felt sick when I first saw how the characters looked. They're literally built like sticks and have huge heads. It's not that big of a deal, but yeah it was pretty bad.

Overall, I think this is an extremely overrated anime. It definitely doesn't deserve the rating it has. Don't watch it :)