Review of Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion

Kids: "Mom we want Death Note!" Mom: "We have Death Note at home, kids" Death Note at home: Code Geass Code Geass had the chance to be great if it learned the same lessons that Death Note did in regards to setting up clear and consistent rules regarding the protagonist's superpower. The hook of this power, combined with the political intrigue and mech suit fights, could have created something special. Instead, the show decided to wallow in a bunch of anime tropes that undercut the tension -- and by "anime tropes" I'm not just talking about Kallen Kozuki's exposed breasts, although those are frequently on display as well.The main selling point is the protagonist's "Geass" power, which is the ability to mind control anyone he looks at. However, the show establishes some boundaries early on: First, he can only use this power if he's directly looking his victim in the eye, so it won't work if they're just talking on the telephone or are wearing fancy sunglasses. Second, he can only use this power once per person. He only gets one command so he ostensibly needs to make it count, although the limits of this get fudged as the series goes on. It’s not as detailed as Death Note, which explains its rules at every commercial break, but it’s sufficient enough. It starts to break down a bit towards the end as more characters have random immunity to it to create tension, and it receives a "powerup" to arbitrarily resolve tension at one point. Still, my overall opinion of it is net-positive.

The plot twists are a mixed bag. Minor spoilers in this paragraph, I suppose (I'll try to be vague). In one instance, the protagonist has a *whoopsie* moment and accidentally orders one of the girls to go on a murdering spree. I REALLY enjoyed this twist, for what I'm sure is the wrong reason. It was one of the funniest sequences I've seen in any anime, with this hitherto sweet girl suddenly telling everyone to KYS like she's a CoD gamer, and then gunning down innocents with an assault rifle while still in her dress. The show played this off super seriously, clearly trying to show it as a terrible tragedy, but I was cackling with laughter the entire time. The emperor's reasoning was also fairly well-handled. The emperor is shown as a one-dimensional villain earlier in the series, where all we hear is him giving speeches about how much he loves racism, or flashbacks of him beating his children while screaming at them. The reveal of his plan adds some nuance to him, although it needed to be fleshed out a lot more as the protagonist basically says "meh, don't care lol" when he learns of the plan and still opposes it anyways with a soaring speech, and it's not even clear what he's really arguing against. The final twist of what the Zero Requiem entails is utterly stupid and is a bad note to leave the series on. It's essentially Step 1) Become hated, Step 2) Buzz off, Step 3) ?????, Step 4) Everybody sings Kumbaya. It stretched my suspension of disbelief well past breaking point.

The philosophical bits are also a mixed bag. Like many anime, this show devotes a decent chunk of time to the "justified use of violence". Initially it handles it surprisingly tastefully. There's a sequence where one of the minor character's father dies as a result of the protagonist's actions, and instead of doing the usual anime thing of either swearing off violence forever or turning into a total psycho, the characters just kind of muddle through, accepting that what happened was bad but not going off the deep end. Later on though it seemed like it was headed to crazy town, with the protagonist ordering the death of a bunch of mostly-innocent people while ranting about how he couldn't wait to betray a minor character who was completely loyal to him at this point. I thought the show was going to imply "anyone who uses mind control ever is irredeemable" and became worried. But that's not what happened, actually. The show just kind of forgets about the whole idea, and by the end the two sides are nuking entire cities, and the reaction is little more than "that was bad... anyways, let's continue with the plot". I think this should have been done better or just ignored entirely, but at least it didn't go full Vinland Saga.

The battle sequences and especially the mechs are a mess. They have no defined power level, and there's a new version in almost every battle that seemingly annihilates all its competitors except for ones piloted by named characters. The show tries to set up scenes where the protagonist is "dueling" the enemy strategist like the generals of two armies facing off against each other. But the reliance on anime tropes wreck these attempts, as battles are always decided by whichever side pulls out the trap card of a new mech model or some environmental hazard that instantly blows away 99% of enemy forces. The show likes to imply these battles are like chess matches, but this would be like if one side had the ability for their queen to shoot a laser that instantly killed all enemy pawns. Fantasy writing can sometimes have an issue where if magic is too powerful then it just dominates everything, and there'd be no reason to assemble armies if e.g. they could all be destroyed by a single wizard casting a giant fire inferno. Code Geass shows this problem extends to sci-fi. There's no tension in these fights, and the generals are idiots for bringing extra soldiers into the battle. The fights don't even look that cool, as the animated mechs seem more like toys and their pilots spend much of the battle taunting and debating each other.

The costumes are excessively goofy (especially for Zero), and characters' proportions seem really off, like these toothpick people all have severe anorexia. I got used to it after a while, but it was still jarring at the beginning.

There's too many minor characters, and by the end I was getting them mixed up. I would think "Why is this lady taking pictures of everything?" and "Who the heck is this blonde twink and why is he having an existential crisis. Why should I care?" C2 is probably the most interesting character in the whole show, but she gets fairly little screentime with all these other randos running around. She spends most of her time locked in the cupboard eating pizza. There's a pretty big reveal about who she's talking to in her mind, but it gets resolved in like 5 minutes.