Review of Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion

Code Geass! R1! This was quite an intense anime, I don't think I've seen anything this intense since possibly Evangelion or something around there. It's a very aggressive thing and kind of gets pretty crazy at times but at the same time I liked different parts of it so.. here we go. Code Geass is basically about the story of Japan during an era of rule by a country that is very powerful and rules over a lot of the world, and Japan has a lot of conflicts within itself and outside.. it's basically not the best time, you could say... In the middle ofthis, Japan rebels and is defeated, and this is where Lelouch Lamperouge, the central character in Code Geass, comes in..

Interestingly, Lelouch is actually not from Japan but a prince, but a very low level one, who came to Japan with his sister Nunally. There, he makes friends with Suzaku, the son of the prime minister of Japan and this is kind of the main backstory for Code Geass, the story of Code Geass is really one of Lelouch (and intermittenly) Suzaku's kind of rebellion in order to make Japan a more independent country against Lelouch and Nunally's original country and their father.

Lelouch was kind of interesting to me because he was seemingly often apathetic but then at times would be fairly nice and cool to be around simultaneously, like he was kind of very hot and cold type of personality, although you definitely frequently saw the cold and dark side.

So that's a lot of the backstory, but a lot of tha tin Code Geass tells you about the rest of the anime as well, and there are indeed a lot of points along that trip, trials and tribulations for all parties, to say the least...

..but the odd thing I can never really shake off is how similar Lelouch was in many ways to his father and the other country he came from, in many ways everything he did within his organization was similar to how it was done in his other country.

The thing is everytime Lelouch would be mean and freak out and blame someone for this or that, you could see like dealing with just his crush on Shirley you can see a more just kind of straightforwardly human side, so I kept watching.

Then.. wow.. I think up until very near the ending, I thought Lelouch and his friends were at least kind of interesting, maybe not always likable.. but it often seemed like they were somehow trying to find a way to make amends with their rulers so as to have like a better life and there was a lot of conflict, and they weren't always doing things so well, and things weren't always going so well, and it wasn't still my favorite anime at that point mind you it was still just kind of not fun, BUT I think a like a low 8 is pretty good for R1, because it did kind of engage me, and you did see some nicer sides to the characters and stuff.

However, R2 is completely different, and part of the reason comes at the very end of R1, which for spoiler and others reasons, I think should just be a part of "R2" which wow R2 was no fun at all, because without spoiling too much everything kind of flies off the rails in the last part, and that continues off into R2 which was really just not very fun to watch.

Because of all that, I was tempted to make Code Geass R1 like a lower score, but it came basically so far at the end I thought it was better to just lump that in with R2.

So even though R1 kind of ended strangely, I was still ok with it being like an 7, it wasn't my favorite anime, but it was kind of interesting at least if not necessarily fun at times.

Anyway! Phew, long review, but you know another thing is I think in terms of more gray kind of characters I still prefer like D from Vampire Hunter D, and so on, just because I feel like if you subtract out a lot of the political stuff Lelouch isn't super different from D it seems to me at the core.

On the other hand, I watched another kind of politically heavy anime Legend of the Galactic Heroes, which featured another kind of tortured figure in Reinhard Von Lohengramm, and honestly I'd have to say I'd probably prefer CG to LotGH, primarily because I feel like LotGH was kind of jarring at times with how screwy things get , I don't really know how to phrase it or summarize as a point here exactly but CG seemed to emanate more power a bit.

And in the interests of explaining the big thing about R1 and R2 I'll go with the spoilers past this point.

(SPOILERS FOR end of R1/R2)

Um I should totally write a separate review for R2 for this, but all I can say is that ending make like NO sense to me jeez his whole "All the hatred is focused on me" was a total cop out excuse there was no way that was the plan, because I mean one of the things that happened in R1 was the Geass malfunctioned when there was peace with Euphemia, and then it's like everything went wrong and all that happened was a bunch of excuses blegh I'd give R2 a 6 but even that's being generous it might honestly be like a 5 or 4.

Even that whole malfunction thing was screwy I don't know it just kinda started to tear apart and I was like yikes this is crazy, but as this is overall a review for most of R1, I don't think R1 should be low for that.