Review of Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion

How do you keep that figure if all you ever eat is pizza? Please enlighten me, Coco Chanel. Story: It’s Death Note with terrorists. Just kidding, it’s nothing like Death Note at all. Former Britannian prince Lelouch tries to get revenge for his mother’s death by destroying the empire with his terrorist organization. Of course it’s not that simple, not at all. Code Geass is a story about idealism, politics, betrayal and mendacity. How far can you go to reach your goals before you sell out your principals? How far WILL you go? Does the end really justify the means? Is your own ideology worth more thanothers? Oops, that’s a lot of questions. But Code Geass is not as heavy as other works (like the recently reviewed Ghost in the Shell) and manages to tell a compelling story that doesn’t need you to think too deeply into it (if you don’t want to). This is one of the few anime that manages to serve both sides. Are you interested in ideological conflicts or do you just want to see some cool mecha fights? Why not both? Buy now and get a pizza for free! But as good as Geass is with these things, it isn’t without flaws. There are some interesting plot twists, but they often happen because of coincidences, that can test your suspension of disbelief. When a gust of wind can lead up to the deaths of hundreds, that’s a lot to swallow. A problem of its initial run, that doesn’t exist anymore, was the fact that the story was divided into two separate seasons, even though it was meant to be an ongoing one. At the end of season one, basically nothing is concluded and it ends on a huge cliffhanger. Today of course, you can just watch both back to back, but when it first aired, that must have driven people nuts.
9/10

Art:
The first thing I noticed was the odd character design. Everybody seems to be incredibly thin, especially the males. Well, it’s a CLAMP anime after all (at least the character design is), so if you’ve seen some of their works before, you will not be too surprised. Besides this, which is more a question of taste than a quality attribute, Geass looks very good. The animation is smooth and the mecha fights are flashy. This show has aged a lot better than many others of its era.
8/10

Sound:
Let’s start with the openings and endings. The first opening is very memorable, though it isn’t my personal favourite. The second is pretty bad, but the third is very good again. It’s the most fitting as well. The first ending is horrible, simply horrible. I didn’t think Ali Project could “top” their terrible Another opening, but this is even worse. I hate it (yes, I know that Geass is older, but I watched Another first). The second one was much better, though still not my cup of tea. The voice acting was solid, some of them pretty good. Jun Fukuyama does a nice job with Lelouchs maniacal monologues, but the crazy laugh does not really hit. Mamoru Miyano did that better in Death Note. Oops, now I did a comparison after all. My bad.
6/10

Characters:
Code Geass is full of characters. Okay, that’s a weird sentence, but really, there are tons of em. Our protagonist is Lelouch, an incredibly cocky guy, who acquires a neat supernatural power that lets him command anybody to do whatever he tells them to do. With this he decides to start a revolution (hence the name of the series) to destroy Britannia. His high intelligence gets him far, but he still makes mistakes along the way due to him believing in his own invulnerability. Despite having somewhat good intentions, he clearly loses sight along the way, though it’s up to the viewer to decide when exactly he crosses that line into villainy. Or is he still a hero to you? His counterpart is a a guy called Suzaku, who despite being the subject of racism and oppression fights for the regime that hates him so much. I don’t get him, what exactly does he try to accomplish? He says he wants to change Britannia from within, but how on Earth is that going to play out? He is easily the biggest hypocrite in the entire show. For example, he keeps saying how he doesn’t want to fight or hurt anybody, yet he is an elite soldier, constantly killing rebels. What a joke. He is supposed to be the other side of the coin of Lelouch, but there is nothing likeable or heroic or logical about Suzaku. They wasted a perfect opportunity to present an equally questionable character on the other side of the battlefield and have us choose who is in the right or not. With Suzaku, it’s at least very obvious who’s in the wrong.
The rebels are divided into different factions, some more traditionalistic, some more terrorists than rebels. The main focus is on Lelouchs group called the Black Knights. These people aren’t very heroic at first, being driven entirely by hatred towards the Britannians, making them no better than their oppressors. Lelouch turns them into a group of “justice warriors”, which most of them seem to enjoy, either because of the fame or because they really wanted to be like that in the first place and just didn’t know how to do it. Kallen is such a person. A determined and able fighter, who develops a devotion towards her leader like a father figure. She is your typical hot-blooded amazon, but unlike others of her kind, she is able to think before acting. The royal family was raised into power-hungry and narcissistic maniacs, who do anything to keep their power and have no qualms to terrorize civilians. As we get to know through the few scenes with the king, that is exactly how he wants them to be and only few managed to withstand this inhuman upbringing, namely Lelouch, his little sister and Euphemia. Euphy is kind of like a personification of blind idealism. Much like Suzaku, she wants to change the system without resorting to violence, but unlike him, she is in a position where this is at least somewhat possible. She reminds me a lot of Princess Diana and how the world saw her as the down-to-earth, humanitarian member of the snobbish, cold British royal family. While there are multiple characters that are clearly evil, she seems to be the only one who is purely good.
Almost done. Finally, we have the student council. They are a heavy contrast to the dark and serious theme of Code Geass and could be ripped right out of any random slice of life anime. Despite them being somewhat of forced comic relief, I felt that they add well into the show. After all, Lelouch is trying to live a double life and one of that is that of a normal student. The fact that one of them has an obvious crush on him makes things a lot less easy for our genius, which I thought was a nice idea. Shirley is also one of the few anime girls who doesn’t try to deny her feelings at all costs, which was very refreshing. Now, have I forgotten somebody? Oh, right, that immortal girl who eats pizza all day and doesn’t really help Lelouch despite helping him a lot. CC is a big X factor and her true intentions as well as her background are always left vague. A very interesting character, who will probably become a lot more important in the second half of this anime.
8/10

Enjoyment:
Code Geass does a very good job at staying away from clichés and genre standards that so many other other anime fall victim to. The world building, the story progress and the forming of conflicts between multiple factions, characters and ideologies were done incredibly well. On top of that, the pacing is wonderful. There is always something going on, but you never feel knocked over by it. Sometimes it feels a little constructed, but if you can look past that, Code Geass is an incredibly entertaining anime that you can easily binge if you want to.
9/10

Overall:
8.0/10