Review of Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion

***SPOILERS*** Before I start, I implore you to read the review first before trying to chop my head off. If there is ANYTHING I say in this review that isn't 100% accurate, feel free to let me know. Also, I have not watched the second season nor plan to for a long while because of how appalling season one was. Now, since this is a very negative review, there will be spoilers as I said before because it would be impossible to address the major flaws in this series without revealing large parts of the plot, so let's get into this. The largest and most impossible to ignoreflaw with this show is filler. I am truly baffled as to how a show can have this much critical success when well over 50% of the show is filler. How the fuck can you even pack THIS much filler into a 25 episode anime? And don't come at me with this "it's not filler, it's slow paced" bullshit; it's filler.

Since I'm going to assume you've already watched this anime before reading this review because of the spoilers warning I gave earlier, I'm going to skip giving a backstory since you all should already know the plot. The story is about our protagonist Lelouch trying to reclaim Japan from the Holy Empire of Brittania as Zero, assisted by the "Geass" given to him by C.C., a power that allows Lelouch to bend anyone to his will once he has made eye-contact with him/her. Unfortunately, the plot elements that contribute to this main plotline are less than 50% of the episodes.

Already at episode 6 we have a filler episode that contributes absolutely nothing to the main story, "The Stolen Mask". It is an episode about Lelouch trying to recover his Zero mask from a cat who stole it, yes, that takes up an entire episode.
The entire Mao arc also contributed absolutely nothing to the main plot. It is a completely pointless side-story that takes up about 4 episodes, the most impactful thing to come out of that pointless side-story is Lelouch using his Geass on Shirley to get her to forget ever knowing about Zero. The worst part is that this happens during our protagonists first encounter with Mao, then this meaningless side story of Mao continues on for another three episodes. Can someone explain to me how the kidnapping and recovery of Nunnally contributed ANYTHING to the main story? What was accomplished by the end of the Mao arc? A character (Shirley) with awful characterization that didn't give me a reason to care about her as a character lost her memory of Lelouch. Oh my, soak up four episodes with this shit, fuck freeing Japan from the grips of the Holy Empire.

The parts of the show where this bullshit (aka blatant filler) isn't going on, are (for the most part) just side-stories of x group has captured x area, Zero and friends will free the people of x area. I can't call these parts of the show filler though, because they do have some correlation with the main plot, however these are simply just side-stories.

The show starts showing some semblance of coherence around episode 18 after Suzaku is knighted by Euphemia. Unfortunately, three episodes later we have another POINTLESS filler episode "The School Festival Declaration" where everyone builds a giant pizza. Are you fucking kidding me? Four episodes away from the end of the series and it's fucking "let's build a pizza" day.
I'm getting a headache writing this..on the topic of pizza though, there was something particularly cringe-worthy about the shameless Pizza Hut product placement.

Sigh, regardless, continuing on from let's build a pizza day, the show again shows a bit of coherence for three episodes, then ends on a cliffhanger.

Overall - This anime was recommended to me because all I had been watching up until this was psychological, dark, dementia type anime like Lain, NHK, Koi Kaze etc, and this was my break from those types of shows, so I had absolutely no bias while coming into the show, all i was expecting was something decent so my review is purely objective.

This was truly one of the most fatiguing and frustrating anime experiences I've ever had. The only reason I didn't give this a 1 is because the art and sound were fairly good. This show is compared to Death Note a lot but I don't see the comparison whatsoever. Death Note, while not flawless, has a coherent plot. Geass is a clusterfuck of filler and side-stories with poor characterization. I couldn't find myself able to give a shit about any of the characters, the characterization was that bad. HOW THE FUCK IS THIS SO POPULAR? You know what I shouldn't be surprised because garbage like Ghoul are among the most popular, and that pile of shit was actually better than Geass, even though it's like comparing dog shit to cow shit.
Anyway, I'm going off on a tangent now because writing this really annoyed me.

3/10, do yourself a favor and don't watch it.