People know a hero when they see and need one the most- Someone who can stand up for them against oppressors, someone to lead them out of their plight and someone to lead them to victory against a villain who wishes ill will upon them...
...But what if the hero merely fights the villain to further his own agenda? What if he only sees people as mere pawns in a game of chess to be used and then discarded when they outlive their usefulness? ...What if the hero turns out to be worse than the villain?
Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion (both seasons)
Studio: Sunrise
Director: GorÅ Taniguchi
Licensed by: Bandai Entertainment (formerly)/FUNimation
Number of episodes: 50
Genre: Mecha, Alternate history, Sci-fi, Drama, Tragedy
Story:
Code Geass' story is set in an alternative timeline where the world has been unevenly distributed between the European Union, The Chinese Federation and The Holy Britannian Empire.
The Holy Britannian Empire is the largest of these factions (containing all of North and South America, most of Africa, Russia and some of Europe and Asia) and is the main focus of the three empires in the series. The series takes places 5 years after Britannia has conquered Japan using a new technology known as the "Knightmare Frames" (basically the assorted mecha of the series). In the intervening years, Britannia has stripped Japan and its citizens of all rights and freedoms and renamed the country Area 11 and its citizens as Elevens. Relationships between the Britannian colonists and the Elevens are understandably strained with the Britannians oppressing the Elevens. Thus, some Elevens have resorted to terrorism to try to liberate their country from their occupiers with minimal success...
...Until Lelouch puts his plans into action.
The plot itself follows Lelouch, a former member of the royal family, as he seeks revenge against his father and siblings for killing his mother, crippling his sister and abandoning them altogether. Ultimately, he seeks power to destroy Britannia and create a better world for his sister. He tries to do this through forming his own rebellion force known as "The Black Knights", using his extremely intelligent and strategic mind and a power known as Geass that upon direct eye-contact allows him to command people to do anything he wants against their will.
Though I found myself enjoying the story well enough, there were plenty of flaws with the series. Much like in Full Metal Panic, the highschool comedy aspects feel rather out of place in conjunction with the mecha warfare themes of the main storyline. Also the first episode of the first season and second season are scene for scene identical. This bothered me greatly as the last episode of the first season leaves off with a pretty big cliffhanger, much of which does not get resolved until the end of the first episode of the second season. This just felt cheap.
The most notable flaw with the series is that after a while, it becomes predictable. Each battle dissolves down to Lelouch coming up with a brilliant plan, executing it almost perfectly and something unexpected coming along and throwing a wrench into said plan. It becomes pretty obvious that every one of his plans will not work out the way it should. That being said, the methods Lelouch uses to handle these twists tend to be interesting as they tend to show just how much of a dark protagonist he can be.
Characters:
Code Geass has an extensive cast of characters, many of whom get a good, albeit sometimes short, amount of development. These characters include Lelouch's loyal Black Knights, the various members of the royal family and Lelouch's classmates. Characters change allegiances quite frequently based on Lelouch's actions, so enemies will often become allies and vice-versa.
and of course, my personal favorite: The mad scientist, Lloyd Asplund
The two characters I feel need the most attention are the two main male characters, Lelouch Lamperouge and Suzaku Kururugi.
Lelouch himself is an interesting character. Much like characters such as Shiroe from Log Horizon, Lelouch is smart and comes up with brilliant strategies that the other characters often never see coming. The one thing about Lelouch that you learn quickly is that he is not a good person. With the exception of his sister, Nunnally, and the woman who gave him his power, C2, Lelouch sees everyone as pawns to be used until they are no longer needed. He will often without hesitation order people to kill others or themselves or get his hands dirty and kill them himself. He puts on masks (both figuratively with lies and literally with his alternate persona of Zero) to make people follow him and do what he wants. I have to admit that Lelouch is one of the few characters that has ever made me feel like a terrible person for rooting for him as many of his actions are, to be frank, dark as hell.
Suzaku is Lelouch's first and closest friend and pretty much the opposite of him in beliefs. Suzaku is an Eleven who is also an Honorary Britannian in the military. Unlike Lelouch who believes the system is so broken that it needs to be destroyed, Suzaku believes he can fix the system from the inside. Unlike Lelouch, Suaku tries to avoid killing whenever possible and will put his own life on the line for others. He is the skilled pilot of the specially made Knightmare, Lancelot. This position puts him at odds with The Black Knights and (unknown to both of them) Lelouch himself.
Suzaku is more or less the closest thing to a "good guy" character the series has. One interesting part of the series is watching Lelouch's actions slowly corrupt him until Suzaku is no longer the same character by the end.
Animation:
Sunrise is a large studio comprised of around 13 branch studios and is known mostly for all of the Gundam series and for spawning other studios like Bones and A-1 Pictures. The branch studio that made Code Geass' only other notable works includes Dirty Pair and s-CRY-ed. Having not seen either I could not really say how they compare, but I found the animation in Code Geass to be somewhat mixed.
At times the animation is quite good boasting vibrant colors when needed while also having more muted colors. Backgrounds and foreground characters often display a solid amount of detail. The animation is quite fluid at times as well. However, at other times the animation quality drops, especially for characters in the background.
CGI is minimally used throughout, which I found refreshing as I have frequently found myself taken out of an experience when other mecha anime used CGI rather than their own animation for action sequences.
Additionally, the character designs were outsourced to CLAMP so they tend to have CLAMP's more slender-y stylization of the character. I will admit I actually like CLAMP's character designs, but they definitely take some getting used to.
Sound:
The soundtrack does a good job of backing up the characters and action, as well as not getting in the way of the visuals. The soundtrack builds up ambiance with more ominous tracks in more dramatic scenes while also having more orchestra-centered tracks to back more action centric scenes. Some tracks have a more neo-classical vibe, some have a more whimsical vibe, some a more "James Bond"-y vibe, but all really do a good job of capturing the themes of the series.
Unfortunately, the opening and closing tracks do not do as good of a job of capturing the feeling of the series. The openings feel too overly optimistic and lack any correlating theme to the series itself. The closings do somewhat of a better job, especially the two Ali Project ones, of coming close to the themes of the series, but even they felt off compared to the rest of the soundtrack.
Language-wise the English dub for Code Geass is quite solid. After switching over to check out the Japanese dub, I found a couple of roles that I felt were played better in Japanese versus the English dub (most notably, Kallen), but the English had some equally solid performances from the cast. In fact, I found Liam O'Brien's portrayal of Lloyd Asplund and Crispin Freeman's portrayal of Jeremiah Gottwald to be exceptionally good, and Johnny Yong Bosch as Lelouch Lamperouge himself may be one of the best roles I have heard him play.
Personal Enjoyment:
Despite the few flaws I have enumerated, I found myself really, really loving Code Geass. Openings and closing aside, the music did a good job of capturing the feeling of the series. The animation can be a bit iffy at times but altogether is pretty solid. The world building does an exquisite job establishing a genuinely interesting setting for the story.
The thing I loved most about the series, however, was how it made me question whether I really should be rooting for the main character and if those he is fighting against are really worse than him or not.
Finally, not to spoil it but the ending of the series may well be my second favorite finales of a series, right behind Steins;Gate's, just because of how well executed and how fitting the last episode was for the series.
Final Verdict:
After assigning scores to:
Story: 4.00
Characters: 5.00
Animation: 4.00
Sound: 4.25
And my Personal Enjoyment: 5.00
I have given Code Geass an assigned score of:
4.45/5.00
Recommendation:
I would give Code Geass a buy recommendation, but unfortunately since it was owned by Bandai Entertainment finding a reasonably priced copy may be a bit difficult. Thankfully, FUNimation has announced they have picked up the rights to the series out of limbo, so an eventual re-release should be inevitable.
Alternative anime to check out:
Full Metal Panic (Season 1, Fumoffu and The Second Raid)
Full Metal Panic follows Sousuke Sagara an uber military guy who is rather clueless about everything else and a member of an anti-terrorist organization known as Mithrill, as he tries to go undercover to safeguard Kaname Chidori, a spirited highschool student with a special gift that puts her in danger.
Admittedly the first season (done by Gonzo) has not aged that well, but both Fumoffu and The Second Raid (both done by Kyoto Animation) are extremely well done series in their own right.
Jormungand
Jormungand follows the arms dealer Koko Hekmatyar, her mercenaries and a former child soldier called Jonah as they travel from place to place selling goods all over the world.
While it may appear not to have much in common with Code Geass,Jormungand did make me question myself for rooting for the main characters at one point, and the soundtrack also did a good job of capturing the series' general themes.
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