Review of Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion

Code Geass is among the most overrated anime in existence. This is the story of a genius high school student who is, in fact, SO genius that he can and does outsmart an entire opposing military with experienced generals and unfathomably more resources and manpower, all while still going to high school. He's so smart, you see, he can be merely a part-time rebel and freedom fighter and still win. In addition to him being so smart, everyone around him is pretty damn stupid. Our main character, with his super secret identity that no one can figure out, takes phone calls on his cell phone ashis alter ego and doesn't change his voice when doing so. No one looks into this though, so we're good. He also opposes a military that has the technology to build giant war mechs, but, don't worry- they surely wouldn't have the technology to do any kind of height/weight/voice recognition with their ample footage of our masked main character- so they definitely couldn't figure it out. His conveniently blind sister, who has excellent hearing because she's blind, also never recognizes his voice. This same blind sister gets abducted and held hostage, and her captor talks very openly in front of her about things our main character does as a vigilante, but she instantly dismisses all of this as "a game", has absolutely zero questions about the entire ordeal and it is wrapped up neatly and never mentioned again.

Needless to say, the plot holes and believability issues in this anime are absolutely egregious. It is packed full of stupid characters, absurd conveniences and countless situations where one could say to themselves "Right, but, what if they just did X instead?" and instantly any believability falls apart.

I've heard this anime described as "Death Note with mech" many times and I think that comparison does this anime a huge disservice. This anime cannot come close to the quality of Death Note and loses the comparison in virtually every area. Lelouch is not as intelligent, believable, badass or well-written as Light Yagami. Death Note's L is a laughably superior character to Geass' Suzaku to the point where they don't belong in the same conversation. Death Note has superior writing and pacing. Death Note has superior animation. Death Note has far fewer dumb characters and conveniences, which again harkens back to the low quality writing in Geass. Perhaps the only area in which Geass is arguably superior is the soundtrack, which was a cut above average and stood out a few times in a positive way, but unless you're a teenager going through that rebellious, I'm smarter than everyone else, screw the adults and the bosses they can't tell me what to do phase, Geass is vastly inferior to Death Note.

Going further on the previous point, much of Geass plays out as a teenager's egoist fantasy. The world revolves around one guy, he's vastly smarter than anyone and everyone else, he knows everything about everything even though there's no reason for him to (he's a strong chess player, and therefore he must be an expert on real-world military strategy), he doesn't make mistakes and everyone follows his orders unquestioningly without anyone betraying or assassinating him, ripping his mask off, attempting to deduce his identity, etc.

Geass got interesting ish towards the very end, with the final five or so episodes taking a much darker and more compelling turn, but it was far too slow, bloated, non-believable and at times offensively stupid leading up to that point for it to change my overall opinion.

Overall, overrated, and I'd sincerely challenge viewers who watched this 10+ years ago as a teenager to rewatch this now as a proper adult and see if, minus the nostalgia goggles, you still feel the same way as you did then. It's really hard for me to imagine non-teenagers would find this anywhere near as good as that audience seems to.

OBJECTIVE RATING- 6.5-7
PERSONAL ENJOYMENT RATING- 6-6.5