Review of Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion

Unfortunately, Code Geass commits the cardinal sin of story-telling: it bases turning points of its story, that's based around hijinks of a clever manipulator, on sudden onset of ultimate idiocy as a plot-device. Moreover, it tries to portray protagonist as some kind of antihero and antagonist as "the true hero" but it does so by blatantly forcing the former to be maniacally bloodthirsty and latter - be willfully-blind whiteknighting-obsessed fascist collaborator who's maniacally self-righteousness. In the "moment of truth" our protagonist goes as far as actually doing the stupidest thing he himself mocks, proceeds to almost falling on his own shoelaces while "trying to stop"it and then jumps the shark to the moon. Something like as if, after being offered post of Hokage, Naruto would suddenly rape, kill and cannibalize Sakura, then proceed to slowly burn all citizen of his village, starting from infants and frail grandmas, and declare conquest on the whole world… No, it's more insane than that.

It's almost like this story was the basis for latter Re:Zero but Re:Zero became even more mangled by incompetent writing of characters, judging by poorly justified senseless violence and harem around frigid protagonist who is too full of himself. Whole "conflict" of main characters could have been solved by a simple sentence of: "those 2 crazy usurpers ordered mass-murders of women, children and elderly in which you indirectly participated, I do not do such things… so join me, retire from collaborationism / marry your princess or die now" (show likes to pretend that protagonist is clueless about who antagonist, obviously the only possible and well-known person, is). Or protagonist addressing that with his "first love" instead of wasting time, getting angry at clearly naive woman and then "accidentally" using her as worthless meat-puppet. Or him just wearing his mask while saying the stupidest things as figures of speech. Or anything else that would not be a comically cheap plot-device for whitewashing moronic fascist bootlicker of an antagonist into a hero.

I should have expected the downfall of stupidity when first writers started "foreshadowing" batshit insanity of Geass-holders in the most heavy-handed way possible. The final nail in the coffin of competency was the fact that ability of medical science has turned 180 on plot convenience where previously random offscreen hospital managed to fully heal in days a known criminal that was riddled with hundreds of bullets but left another character to die from a pistol wound in a non-vital area in state-of-the-art reanimation room completed with a long sappy monologue. Of course, at key points characters conveniently speak in meaningless remarks instead of voicing critical knowledge that could change the story their way. I can also feel the show going for "see, we aren't so different, you and I - unhinged delusional maniacs, so you've lived long enough to become a villain yourself" ending. The ending of this half is some soap opera cliffhanger, worse than director's cut of Re:Zero's season 1.

And, yes, I know that there are technically kind-of-almost-logical reasons for all events of the story. I don't care because they are clearly no more than poorly made justifications for scenes that authors wanted to make instead of consistent actions of established characters. Just as with Re:Zero. But of you liked Re:Zero then you should be jumping with joy during this series, there is even some metaphorical talk of "Witches" and "Demon Lords". I'm also getting some vibes of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex but with mysticism replacing quasi-scifi cyber-miracles.

The upside of the story is that villains are Anime British, based on real British imperialists of industrial age who were the inspiration for fascism and nazism, as It's always good time to hate the British. The downside of that is in the fact that the story seem to be deliberately directed to flame indignation of Japanese nationalism.