Code Geass: Hangyaku no Lelouch R2

Code Geass R2 is, in essence, the most resounding travesty in the history of Japanese animation, and proof that anime fans will watch anything if it panders to them enough. It is to anime what Heroes is to US television, except that when Heroes became terrible midway through the viewers abandoned the series. This monstrosity only got more popular in the same situation. It's truly baffling.

To start, the story picks up right from R1(and by "pick up", I mean reset the whole plot), but manages to go absolutely nowhere for at least 10 episodes. The titular "rebellion" is cast aside into the domain of minor ... sub plots, like Ougi's relationship with that brown woman in the first season. Instead we get the genius Lelouch running around in meaningless fanservice episodes and battling characters with sorcerer's eyes. Remember how in season 1, the story revolved around interesting characters in a semi-realistic war in an alternate timeline of Earth? Ha. That much time into this season and the most important and game-changing thing you'll see is a C.C. upskirt. Then halfway through it meanders around some outlandish garbage in a plot entirely about two characters that for all intents and purposes died in the first season. Hell, the middle section of the show is so tacked on and meaningless I honestly can't comprehend why it was ever there to begin with. Finally, for the last half of the series the story turns at a 90 degree angle by the end of each and every episode. Lots of completely pointless and boring battles happen near the end, but it doesn't matter since the circumstances don't make much sense, no sane viewer has any emotion invested in the characters fighting, and the battle tactics that were once the high point of the series are now something you'd find Zapp Brannigan doing. This amazing torrent of plot holes, bad pacing and meaningless events reaches its climax in a contrived copout that probably wouldn't have even been that bad if the rest of the story were consistent. Or tolerable. Or comprehensible.

Another horrific aspect of the series is its characters. Actually, this is probably the worst part of the whole thing. The entire cast of CGR2, save for roughly four characters, is so badly written that the people on the screen can't even stick to the single sentence that defines their whole persona. Or their character is moronic. Or their main purpose is to pander to a certain sect of otaku. Or they're just boring. Or they serve no established purpose in the series at all. If someone can comment on my profile and explain why Gino, Xing Ke and Jeremiah were in this show(Crispin Freeman shouting LOYALTY is not a valid excuse for Jeremiah. Even Crispin himself doesn't know why that guy exists or is popular), that would be dandy.

Oh yeah, and no one dies in this show except for the obvious. Everyone else, be they exploded or hurled off a cliff, inexplicably lives for no reason other than to annoy the viewer.

But let's discuss the good characters in this show: Lelouch, Suzaku, Rolo. Yes, that's correct. Out of CGR2's enormous cast of about 40 recurring characters, only three are anywhere near being decent. You'd think C.C. would be on this brief listing, but she doesn't exist for half of the series and as soon as she shows up her character is completely rewritten after her only story-relevant sequence.

Code Geass R2 is Lelouch's story, first and foremost. He is the only consistent part that holds all of this garbage together. That might've been intentional, but I'm not entirely buying it. Even so, Lelouch's character is boring, his motivations change constantly and all of his "intelligence" from the first season has been relegated into performing "miracles"(cheap/contrived/ridiculous plot twists) and sending in waves of dudes to clog the enemies' cannons. His master plan and endgame strategy seemed genius enough to thousands of idiots across the internet to give him incredible praise, but it really was just as much of a joke as the rest of his iceberg summoning and floor collapsing antics. Think Watchmen, if it were written by a 12 year old.

Next we have Suzaku. The Ryuho to Lelouch's Kazuma. He doesn't exist in this story until a little ways in, and doesn't do much until halfway through. He spends a lot of his time angry over what happened at the end of last season and struggling over his tool-ish idealism. In fact, all this guy does is angst about Lelouch for a majority of the time he's around. This one time he was told to protect someone, but she wandered off and died. So Suzy blamed Lelouch, because that's how he rolls. He's basically Kira Yamato with a bipolar personality and even more immortality. Suzaku's actually a rather unlikable character and his personality swings around like a pendulum, but that's about as good as it gets in this series.

Except for Rolo. Rolo is the best thing to come out of this trainwreck. His character, despite being introduced solely as yaoi fanservice in Suzaku's absence, is the most consistent and well written in the series by a good distance. He develops, never contradicts his purpose, and was a key point in one of the most memorable and non-idiotic scenes. Ultimately Rolo was totally unimportant, almost as if the writers set him on a shelf next to the series so he didn't get covered in the sticky, smelly substance it was leaking all over the place. So sad.

The final aspect of this tripe I'm going to talk about in detail is the focus. Code Geass has none. What is Code Geass about, in the end? What is its genre? Who is it marketed to? Respectively, those answers are: Nothing, All of them, and Everyone. The only unifying thing in Code Geass is Lelouch's character, but he isn't a good character. He's not as interesting as Light Yagami in terms of personality or his goals and he's not as well written as someone like Kenzou Tenma. So really, all you have is an entire story centered around this barely-above-shounen-writing guy with no prominent driving themes, commentary or anything like that.

Code Geass also attempts, and apparently succeeded, in appealing to every kind of anime fan. The series was fairly consistent and balanced during its first season, but the follow-up did nothing but shine spotlights all over its cliches and pandering features. The character designs become more fanservicey and CLAMP-y, drawing in boys and girls. The robots suddenly evolve from bipedal tanks to laser-spamming, transforming, energy shield-bearing monstrosities. The genre fluctuates between melodrama, politics, comedy, fantasy, romance, science fiction, psychological thriller, school stories and what have you depending on the episode. It just doesn't work. Taniguchi and the writers had no interest in being original or telling a cohesive story here and instead set their eyes on making tons of cash for Sunrise.

But yeah, the animation on the DVD versions are pretty good and the soundtrack is by one of the better guys in the business. At face value, Code Geass isn't a bad series. It's mindlessly entertaining, but the issue here is that so, so many think it's anything more than that, which does a disservice to people who watch good, original and well crafted Japanese animation and to the industry as a whole.

I'm going to write a review about R2 that may not be well liked among Geass fans, for the low score I give it, but I ask the reader to hear me out and read this in an impartial light.

First off, I would like to say that "R1" was an amazing premise, with massive twists, good characters, good plot, interesting premise and overall good execution. I did honestly like R1. R2 keeps the crisp artwork and sound style of R1, so I give those a high score, but R2 has some deep recurring flaws that pretty much butcher the series in my opinion.

All ... spoilers are appendixed, you can read through without spoilers of this or the first series, but some spoilers will be included to show where I'm coming from at the end of the review (but will be forecast in advance)

These are the two biggest elements of a character-driven story: The character development and the plot progression.
I'll begin with Character development, and quite frankly, there was none. I used my basic litmus test of character development and every single character failed. This test is simple, I ask "would this character have done anything at the end of this series that they weren't willing to do at the beginning?" Note: WILLING, not ABLE. for example, Lelouch may have been willing to do all the things he did, but unable to do them until he gained his Geass. However, his objectives, his desires, did not change at all during the whole show. This applies equally to the whole cast. Not a single one of them changes their opinions about anything, they simply change in the methods they use to achieve their goals (if even that), which is indicative of a plot without development. Now this wouldn't be such an issue to me if development hadn't been the writer's goal. When a certain character dies halfway through the series, (1) there are effectively no ramifications on the characters who should have been deeply influenced by the act. Now what this said to most viewers would have been "this was proof of Lelouch's inner strength, a test of character". However, to me it plays out like such: the character died, which the writer had intended to happen. The death did not have a significant impact on the plot. Thus, the character was only included to be killed off and prove Lelouch's strength. However, this also means that the character who was there was only there to be killed, which means this character was effectively treated like an object to be played with by the plot, and I feel no need to sympathise with an object. When viewed in this light, the fact that Lelouch's inner strength was tested is a moot point, because his character could have been tested in so many other ways that did not involve the writer using a character as if he/she were an object.

This is the biggest problem with R2, the complete lack of character development. They "explain" characters, they "test" characters, sure, but they do not "develop" them. Essentially, the only development that does occur happens about 10 seconds prior to the credits rolling, which is far too late to warrant me giving this series a good mark.

The second major problem is that R2 broke my willing suspension of disbelief. There are three main examples of this: one, where a cliffhanger fell into a cliche and overused trope area (2), which from that point on, trivialised all other cliffhangers and was a major detriment to the series. Two, the fact that a certain character survived halfway through the series despite the fact that they should have died (3), this trivialised death- if one character could survive, then they all should be able to, but they did not, which further proves to me that the writer was only killing off characters to try and induce character development, which again, proves that the writer was objectifying characters, which is the exact opposite of character development. And thirdly, the fact that there was two recurring elements effectively ignored (or "handwaved") as the series concludes (4/5), which shows to me that the writer was putting stuff in to make the series more interesting, not because they were actually useful as plot devices in of themselves, which trivialised the role of almost every nonmajor character and filler event.

The final biggest problem is the plot. In essence, about a dozen or so episodes of R2 are filler. While the series always seems to be doing something, apart from the final arcs, all it really does is tread water. Most of the subplots are irrelevant to the final outcome, as (6) shows. Basically, the plot waves its arms and creates a lot of fuss, but doesn't really *go* anywhere for almost the entirety of R2. And when it finally does pick up, it fails to have any twist at all. Cliffhangers, sure, twists, no.

So overall, R2 took the brilliant effort of R1, but failed to run with it, effectively adding in a whole bunch of filler arcs, characters and subplots that really were irrelevant to the main plot, and failed to really develop any of the charters. As such, R2 was a major letdown for me, as it basically undermined all the efforts of R1 apart from the artwork and soundtrack.





WARNING++++SPOILER APPENDIX++++WARNING

(1)Shirely's death, Lelouch doesn't so much as mourn, which is fine, if it weren't for the fact that they had no need to kill her, so the lack of mourning is effectively a double-negative, they cancel out the contrive death by having a contrived funeral, which breaks my willing suspension of disbelief and still fails to deliver any meaningful development.
(2)When the "double" turned out to be a "latex perfection" (Tvtropes term) ie: a chick wearing a mask. Pretty much a completely trivial and very unbelievable (where did they get it, why doesn't anyone else use them, etc), bending heavily my willing suspension of disbelief.
(3)The maid, she was ON the ship that was destroyed by the "FLEIJA" blast. Sure, Nannuly should have survived, but how the heck did she? She may be ninja, but come on, seriously? This SHATTERED my willing suspension of disbelief. Bandages do NOT solve all problems. She only survived by plot induced invulnerability, which completely trivialises the many deaths in the series.
(4)Li's recurring cough. essentially not mentioned at all by series end. What was the point of even including the thing? Fake drama, that's what. Pretty much sums up this whole series.
(5)The fact that "if Lelouch's geass gets stronger...." Well, he just puts in two contacts lenses. Again, fake drama. That's not interesting, that's disappointing.
(6)He TOLD THE VIEWER THE PLAN in R1. Like, literally. Sure, it wasn't for long, nor was it step-by-step, but he still did it. Pretty much forecasts the ending perfectly to someone who'd been paying attention and knows even the first thing about how martyrs work.

Well, I'm not going to be very positive about Code Geass R2. Since the first season was actually pretty good, I started to watch CG R2 in the hope that R2 would be just as great.
Oh, how I was dissapointed.
Even though I learned that this season was 'NOT AS PLANNED', it's...bad. It's just a bad continuation on the first season. VERY bad. The start wasn't that bad, but the further the serie progresses, the more stupid it becomes.

Story : 1
Oh come on. EVERY episode there's a dumb plottwist. They have destroyed the entire story the first season built up. Next to that there's a ... ton of plotholes. I seriously cannot believe that anyone would believe that this is good stuff. Most of the plottwists are just stupid.
WHERE DO ALL THE KNIGHTMARES COME FROM? It was getting more and more like Dragonball Z thanks to those.
'THIS ISN'T EVEN 10% OF IT'S OUTPUT YET!!11"
Also, dead characters should STAY dead. The story is horrible. HORRIBLE.

Art: 8
No matter how bad the series have become, the art is still pretty good. It's good too look at, nothing too special but it's better than I've seen in some series.

Sound: 6
I do not like the second OP en ED. That was the only downpart to season one as well. The OP and ED sucked after a while. I didn't really notice any good BGM.

Character: 1
In season one, the characters were great. In season 2, LOL PLOTTWIST! LOL CHARACTER CHANGING! LOL DIFFERENT GOAL! etc. I'm not going to waste more words on this...
Oh, I forgot, they screwed every character up.

Enjoyment: 2
I just watch it now to see what kind of stupid plottwist they give it. Seriously. It's enjoyable somewhere, but that's mostly because it's so stupid.

Overall: 4
Season one was much better. This season is full of plotholes. It looks like DBZ and some of the character revelations are just stupid. This show is very overrated. I can see what some people like in it, but they just don't pay enough attention to the story imo.
The ending was actually decent, compared to some episodes, but that doesn't mean a lot.

The real world has to be clarfied: ridiculous plot,unsustainable
characterization,self-contradiction theme,added with the so-called humanity,even the most chaos and meaningless animes I saw before cannot contain these four "charming" elements in one episode while the most audiences still applaud this a miraculous epic ending（絶妙である）.

These rapturous audiences' brains have been kidnapped by their unlimited hormone.The tragedy is not that they overrate one anime but their concept about estimateing the value of a anime has been totally destroyed by the recent brainless fashion.so as I recommend,what you guys really need is these splendid masterpieces bellow
(search 世界☆官能映画祭 in AMAZON please)

STORY
The whole serial,both CG and R2,made the same ... mistake.In order to creat an impact on audience they sacrifice the rationality of a story.The narrative rhythm is crazily fast while the storyline is badly organized and monadic in logic.What's more,the moneygrubber BANDAI even gives press on the staff as they always do.For the sake of scale model sales,each robert and character would be given its own show time so tons of robert battles and fanservices take lots of time which should be given to enrich the stuff.

Another joke I see in CG is ,comparing with Death Note or Liar Game or JOJO,the only way to show a role's high IQ in CG is to reduce others'.The flaw of enemy is always easy to find once Lelouch needs it.The duplicate cheat won't be found.Every role would ignore the key point because the plot need so.

ART
To watch Schneizel's face in the last several eposides,the recangle-shape cheek will tell you part of the truth.And the people in background should feel lucky if they have an ordinary ratio in face and body (It's not CLAMP's fault).

CHARACTER
The character design is a mixture of CLAMP and Takahiro Kimura,speciality as well as their repulsive interests. Body gestures in some scenes even make me think of Variable Geo.Bedlam as the world was set, some new characters is desighed for being killed only,someone without sense of being died a grand death,someone set as a pierrot ended as a hero,the plot is trying to cater for all the audience's taste from time to time but lose the control of the changing in role's character.

SOUND
Everything does well with the music.BGM has a medium quality and I feel lucky that Hitomi also made excellent performance in R2.As for Ali Project,it was said on 2CH that this middle-aged woman's troating can easily break down a person's esthetic standard if he/she is still a virgin.<(*^__^*)>joking only

ENJOYMENT
The guys nowadays can hardly find out what really take efforts in the plot.Even such an explicit end as CLAMP used 20 years before can move them to tears successfully.they call it a masterpiece,a classic,an amazing serial while the director has already been devastated by SUNRISE.Congratulations !you guys enjoyed a half-year-long barbarous rape in R2.Should I say "All Hail Lelouch!" as you guys did?

OVERALL
No more argue. it's ture that i dont like CG. After all, I wrote these words for unleashing only.
p.s. 谷口さん,see you in GONZO this month.

Coming off the high of Code Geass season 1, season 2 sorely disappoints. It tries to be a story of epic proportions, but just misses the mark. From the very first episode, it doesn't immediately follow the events at the end of season 1, jumps around even more than at the end of season 1, and season 2 only gets worse from there. The scattered and constant skipping of scenes ultimately turns the overall narrative into a jumbled, incongruent mess, filled to the brim with innumerable contradictions and plot holes. AND it's even worse of a knightmare to keep track of events and of where ... the story's at than the second half of season 1 was. Unsure if that's what the writers were aiming for in the first place. Just like George Lucas turned out to be the phantom menace of his own franchise, the writers of this anime's second season turned out to be ledouches of their own rebellion. The very frequent and pronounced Pizza Hut product placements/corporate shilling scenes/episodes constantly made me very hungry for pizza, was personally distracting, and took away precious time from progressing or telling the actual story. Season 2 had good animation, art, music, and sometimes cool gundam battles that acts as a veil (or a zero mask) for its terribly executed, nonsensical plot twists and vapid or fatally flawed philosophical quandaries. Season 2 started off as a 6 or 7, but ended up as a 1 or 2. Meet in the middle and it gets a 4/10 donut (the substanceless empty in the center kind of donut) recommend.

When i saw the first series of Code Geass I was captured by it. The story, the characters, the intense plot. Even the same opening song "Colors" by Flow i keep listening it. I waited so much the beginning of the new season, the R2, to see how the story will end. But every episodes i seeing, the more insensed the story became. Lelouch/Zero that start as an hero and an extraordinary strategist acting like a crazy man, his enemies became his allies too often. The story give us many example of stupid situations like tha knight of Cornelia that continue to call Lelouch ... "my princess" or V.V. killing Marianne with a giant submachine guns. Too many examples of stupidity are present in this ugly seaso that have successfully sink what time ago i believe was one of the greatest i ever saw. Now i can only sadly pass from a 9 (first season) to a 4 (R2). I suggest to avoid to see it if you had liked the first that will always be the best.

time to review the most overrated anime of all time. code geass. when it comes to shows that are thrown around with the likes of awsome anime like death note and ttgl, it pains me to see this one among them.

so lets start off with the characters. lelouch, aka the douchebag ledouche. lelouch is an exiled britannian prince who wants "muh revenge!" on his dad after the emperor exiled him and his sister japan whitch was being invaded by britannia. lelouche, like light, uses machevelian schemes to accomplish goals, but his schemes r never shown how they work so theres no real entertinament value in ... that and we juts get told that he is a genius with no proof. and the worst part is that all the other characters get dumbed down to make lelouch look smarter lol. then other characters r suzaku, who sucks even worse than ledouche as he is just there for the opposing viewpoint to ledouche's "ends justify the means" character, and he goes through twists that suck ballz in r2.

every female character in the show except for nunaly and a few others are subjected to stupid fanservice like obligatory kallen butt shots or cc stripping to her underwear and spreading herself out on sofas which just insults the viewer.

the mech action gets real boring real fast and is really uninterestign, and u only hear ledoouche shout commands that dont make sense.

the story is really crappy since ledouche keeps going to HIGH SCHOOL of all places while leading a rebellion, and we get stupid filler episodes and random crap like human instrume - i mean the sword of akasha gets introduced in r2 and offs villains in anti-climactic ways and the ending doesnt make sense if you think about it... code geass is, in every sense of the word, in absolute trainwreck. don't watch this for the love of god.

This review is about both seasons of Code Geass rather than just R2. There are spoilers so "SPOILERS ALERT". They are necessary to justify some stuff here. It's a long review but please read it till the end if you have the time. Anyway I expect from people who read this review that they watched all the episodes. If you still haven't seen them all, just beat yourself up and go do it now.

First of all, I liked watching Code Geass and the first season is really good at least until the middle of it. It had what it takes to appeal to a large ... audience. It's the kind of series really hard to make because you're trying to please all the fans and sometimes things get fucked up. But not in Code Geass. You have fast-paced mecha battles, slight humor to liven up the show, "complex" strategic battle, a large cast for guys and gals to pick a favorite and so on. Code Geass was one of the best anime of its year if not the best.

But then towards the end, someone realized that this anime had a very good cash machine potential ( I really don't know if that's what happened ) and tried to increase it. Way to go to fuck things up. So the first half of the season was really good but then you get developments and plot twists that make no sense. For example the Euphinator scene. Why would Lelouch joke about ordering his sister to kill "Elevens"? It felt so "not at all" natural. It's the same as joking about ordering her to suck his dadidudongo. You don't do that, not to your sister or anybody. Anyway let's just look past it since that scene got what it wanted, that is a HUGE twist of events.

As a whole, R1 had a lot of good stuff going on and became the kind of anime you expect a sequel. And so R2 came. I remember being so hyped about it that I watched most episodes twice. But that makes your mind go "What the fuck just happened" after the second viewing.

The first thing to mention that everyone must have observed is "PLOT HOLES". A classic example would be the Geass, the Lelouch Geass.
In the first season, you see Lelouch ordering a girl to draw crosses on a wall everyday to test the duration of his power. Okay... that's a good idea.
In R2 Lelouch lost his Geass and those who were geassed just weren't anymore as the cross drawing girl stopped doing her stuff ( There is the possibility she is fucking dead but who knows).
Again okay... that makes sense.
Then you have Suzaku detonate a Freya Bomb because of a R1 past Geass...
--> What the fuck just happened?
What about the chess games between Schneizel and Lelouch?
It was so retarded I didn't know how to react.
Plot holes are flaws but if you don't pay too much attention, it's not that bothering.
Let's just move on.

The art is really good, a least for female viewers ( I'm not saying guys must hate it ). You can't go wrong with Clamp-style but seriously, sometimes you do...
I'm talking about the facial expressions. That's right, Lelouch may be a bishounen but I really think he should keep the Zero Mask on to prevent showing his shocked face. Another one would be the "Nina learned about Euphie's death's face". It must be the ugliest face I have ever seen in an anime, worse than any monster in a Tim Burton movie. And what about big round anime eyes becoming dot eyes? Too goddamn weird. Just look at Lelouch's contact lens and the size of his eye. Don't you think there is something wrong here?

Concerning the music, openings and endings are awesome. Really good choices, nothing to say here except they rocks.
The downside would be the themes. Why the hell do we always hear trumpets in Code Geass?

Characters are the biggest flaw in R2. Not only do they get shittier, they don't make sense. And here comes Kaname Ougi, the shittiest, most useless character in Code Geass history, worse than a Knight of Rounds yet with more screentime to fuck things up. How come this guy gets to be Prime Minister? In R1 he was so useless that his crew decided to take orders from a stranger.
In R2 he doesn't get any better and infects his crew with stupidity. He fell in love with Viletta who he took advantage of because she got amnesiac ( what a creepo... ), he wanted to leave the Black Knights because he realized he was a useless piece of shit, but when Lelouch was discovered as a former Britannian prince, he and his comrades went all batshit over his ass. It's like: "-Damned that former Britannian prince who saved our sorry asses multiple times, we can't let him live after he helped us get back our territory. -Yeah, we can't forgive him for what he's done, that is defending us from the Britannian Empire. If it weren't for him we would still be getting our asses kicked in our own country. -Totally, guys you are so right let's just trust this NOT former Britannian prince Schneizel who tried to kill us multiple times, if you think about it, it makes more sense since he wants to beat us into submission"...
Moreover, the pacing in R2 messed up so many things like character screentime for the Knights of Rounds or even Marianne. The remaining Knights'fight against Suzaku could be described by 3 screenshots: Suzaku&Lancelot, sword slashes, Suzaku&Lancelot...
I'm not gonna talk about Marianne, she's just too useless for the plot.

In conclusion, Code Geass is great but R2 is such a bad sequel I can't even give it a 5 because after viewing all those episodes I had a bitter aftertaste. It has a lot of qualities but fucked up too much on a lot of points to redeem itself. I gave it a 4 because it could be so much better with a planned R3. If you try to make it a cash machine at least try to make a good one.
Finally I'm not trying to underrate the show, I couldn't care less about its score.
I also don't give a shit about how many "helpful" "not helpful" I get on this review but I'd like to read about some opinions so give feedback if you want. By the way, trolls are welcome.

Entertaining show for teens which took itself MUCH to seriously and by the last episode landed with a joke of a plot

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

The first season was more than solid. "Code Geass" is a mecha shounen (roughly "for teenage boys"). It's entertaining and it has ability to completely enchain the viewer. Animation and sounds are good, characters are interesting and so on. It still has all this strengths in the second season.

On the other hand in the second season the story suffers from the one of the most severe cases of cringe-inducing plot writing I have ever seen. To some extent ... it seems to be inevitable - the anime is not the shortest and it's driven almost entirely by dramatic plot twists. It would be extremely difficult for creators to make all of them plausible. Unfortunately the farther series goes the more unbelievable the story gets, to the point of being utterly unbearable. Some characters' actions are so massively idiotic and/or out-of-place that it ruins all pleasure for the viewer. While first season is relatively free of this, the second one is ruined by it to the extreme. Particularly glaring horror parts of writing started exactly at the end of episode 22 back in the first season, and by episode 19 of the second viewer's head automatically bangs the wall.

The second downside of the story writing is its huge discrepancy between how particular characters are portrayed and what they actually are. Like it's often the case with anime creators they apparently wanted their story to stay in the gray morality area, where every character has its own justifiable reasons and where there is no obvious right and wrong. It is generally a good thing, world stays more complicated and viewer can root for both sides of conflict. Here however...

Second main protagonist is hands down one of the most despicable anime characters ever (if not THE most). Guy is a liar, traitor, murderer (of the worst imaginable kind) and essentially Vidkun Quisling reborn. Yet he is surrounded by plot with aura of partial righteousness. Even his enemies in the show seem to sympathize with his reasons. In other words he is supposed to be an anti hero. He is not. What writers of the story entirely miss here is that in so called reality any sane person, given the chance, would shoot this guy on the spot.

The show does exactly opposite thing with the main hero. Lelouch as portrayed by creators is supposed to be Machiavellian, ruthless and disregarding ethics, on a slippery slope to becoming a full-fledged villain. Writers presents him that way because they clearly want to have a gray anti-hero as a protagonists. However they completely fail at convincing me to see Lelouch as villain, despite numerous attempts. The problem is, the only real flaw in his character is that he is not Machiavellian and ruthless enough, on the contrary, he tends to do things out of spite, even deep into season two, for purely idealistic reasons and is generally too whiny and emotional. As a result he makes several grave mistakes but during the entire show he actually does exactly ONE ruthless thing, and even that is explainable. Yet we are supposed to at least partially despise him because of his villainy.

And main duo is only a start - in any decent ruled by karma universe almost entire main cast of characters (except arguably Lelouch and C. C.) deserves to be severely punished for genocide, unwarranted weapons of mass destruction usage, ethnic cleansing, support for apartheid, backing murderous political leaders for no reason, immoral medical research, high treason and last, but not least, massive stupidity. It concerns especially the entire Britannian royal family (including oh-so-good Princess Nunnally), anyone who was actively supporting them, virtually all members of Black Knights organization and most of UFN leaders. Yet, seriously, the show tries to make viewers cheer for their happiness at the end. Shshsh. At the end of the show there are still more reasons to back "evil" Emperor Lelouch than his enemies. And the show really tries hard to convince viewers otherwise, completely oblivious to consequences of its own story. Really, really annoying.

It is all effect of the anime for teens trying to overstretch itself and tackling very serious issues (should anyone collaborate in occupied country? is it ethically responsible to instigate insurgency? who is responsible for collateral casualties? what is the price one is willing to pay for take down an evil empire? bring a world peace? are empires morally comparable?), while keeping retarded parts of the show. It's not a certain recipe for disaster, some shows managed to pull this off, here however we have the case of exceptionally crappy writing full of ill-conceived twists and dei ex machina. It was forgivable in the first season, maybe because it was less apparent, but in the second one it just makes me sick.

Not to mention, the second season multiplied original faults from the first one. It was full of childish fanservice but now, omg, over-sized busts of heroines torment viewers everywhere. How I hate that! Awkward romances continue but the worst part is this high school masquerade. Come on, even in first season it was barely understandable that Lelouch is hiding there, in second one it is plain retarded. OK, there is a reason for that, it's this standard Japanese high school obsession, which forces almost every anime to take place there. Still, it's annoying as hell. Which is very repulsive and makes the whole second season of the show not worth recommending.

Before we start let me give a basic example of what a GOOD written dialogue between two characters must play out :
- Hey pull my finger.
- No, I'm not falling for that again.
- Then walk through that door
- Already seen the trap there
- Pull my leg
- I see sleeping gas bombs.
- then take this cigar
- why thank you.
- *Pulls out his own lighter and finds out the trick behind it while trying not to overlook for something*
... And well... That sadly did not happen in Code Geass. OK moving on to the review
- REVISION -
Since most didn't like my Cringe of the Rebellion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pMTt8x6Kbo) because I was poking fun at Code Geass, I decided to take my time and rewrite some of my points on the review I gave, because. It was vaguely explained, and I could sense it.
As much as I didn't want to do this well... Lets begin.
As mentioned before Code Geass takes a grand-scale war setting with characters taking war seriously, feel discriminated and overwhelmed... It doesn't work here.
A well written war story needs inspirational characters on both sides who don't overshadow the rest because they're smart and the others aren't.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes did the same but the characters there were equal and people could like and decide who to vote for even wwith corrupt nobles. Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 took war seriously, even if it felt Amuro had plot armour because of the Gundam.
Lelouch however... Automatically overshadows and overthrows everyone with almost no effort because of his power, he isn't a tacticion like Char Aznable or Yang Wenli, he's a manipulator taking advantage of his power to earn anything. Sure, there was a moment where he used his brains, before forming the personality of zero.
But at the same time, he's just a child abusing his power to win over anything. (And regarding his questionable decisions and plot armor when it comes to doing something)
Suzaku, the supposedly equal opponent to Lelouch doesn't feel like an opponent as much as a taunt buddy, which is further proven in the second season where he becomes an aristocrat. Which he had hated after seeing what they can achieve just from a nuke. (Also did I mention he killed his father by accident thus gaining the power to a Britannian loyal soldier? And the fact that he denies Zero's choices because he thinks they are wrong and by the end he starts questioning whether the Britannian Empire was a right choice yet decides to join them to the end?)
So he betrays Lelouch and lets him have false memories and live!? Yo Suzaku Didn't you like... Want to kill him for killing your waifu or sth? WHY JUST WHY DID THE WRITERS SAY THIS IS OK?!
C.C the MAIN HEROINE is as dry as any lead can be, she's just a whole pizza hut waifu advertisement for people with really REALLY REALLY bad choices of girls. Nothing much I can say for her.
As for the other characters like Karen, Villa, Orange, Charles, Rolo and other characters which were one of the few far-fetched characters main characters that felt like they were supposed to be left as side characters that wouldn't matter, other than when LELOUCH VI BRITANNIA ... I mean Zero tells them to do something they're characterization is as bad as the characterization of the side characters in Galactic Heroes, 0079, and even Vision of Escaflowne. And the cast isn't even that overwhelming to need more than a few episodes of development but its so niche it's pitiful, if they were more put on as a focus than mostly Lelouch & C.C, it would of had better fleshed out and side characters.
While it could of been better here and there not much complaints in terms of the first season but oh boy, the second one just rocks the boat!
And yes, Galactic Heroes did the same bullshit with its aristocrats they feel one note or barely have any redeeming quality and so do the side characters in Code Geass.
Half of my problems with the show were not fixed with the second season, infact there were MORE problems than less once I had finished it. Regarding the ending well... It was magnificent, well done and perfect. Sadly the show didn't do as much, oh well. Atleast the composer did his job.
Code Geass is plagued by pathetic writing, horribly developed side charactersm shock factor/sudden character deaths for the sole reason to make you cry and nothing more. Plot convinence to extend the series so that the Sunrise to get earn more money than it should so the studio can go on and re-release another gundam each year because the writers/authors of gundam are suffering from brain damage at this point.

I'm going to make this quick. Complete character 180s, plot-holes, plot conveniences, loop-holes, ass-pulls and the most overrated second season of any anime I've seen to date (but not the worst that honor goes to Haruhi). That's what Code Geass R2 is. It is a complete disappointment for any fans of the first season (even though the first wasn't a masterpiece and is still overrated).
Suzaku sucks even more. Lelouch still has a sister complex, but manages to be even dumber, Rolo is one of the most useless characters I have seen ever and the plot turned into a complete mess. Plus, the useless fan ... service doubled, but with less nudity ( :'-[ ).
I know this is a pretty controversial point of view (like my Tokyo Ghoul review), but I still think it's the most valid point of view based on critical thinking.

Is the show bad? Not really, but highly overrated. It's a fun watch if you are not too critical, but for me it killed my braincells way too much.

Want a better antihero? Watch Death Note.

Want a better Mecha? Watch NGE , Tenpen Toppa Fuck Logic Up the Ass (Gurren Lagann great show) or Gundam.

Want a better terrorist show? Watch Terror In Resonance.

Want good writing? Watch The Legend of Galactic Heroes or Tatami Universe.

This has to be one of the most overrated anime series in history. If you just want mindless entertainment that tries to throw every possible idea at you including mechs, magic, high school drama, and fan service, than this is the anime for you. In the end though, I found this the most disappointing show I've ever had the displeasure of watching.

Code Geass is nothing but a giant rush of testosterone and adrenaline that tries to convince the viewer that its inconsistent story telling contains depth. In the end the only real way to enjoy this show is to completely turn off ... your brain so you're not capable of questioning the idiocy of most of the characters' actions.

While there are some beautiful mech fights, there are times when the character designs look awful. Not a single character was designed with originality. They either had border-line anorexic bodies or they were designed with boobs larger than their face. I even noticed some characters' body proportions changing in the middle of episodes. Granted I'm not surprised. When an anime uses every cliche in the book, it's only natural they use same methods for their character designs.

Character development was nearly absent from the series. Yes, the writers make you believe that characters are developing by suddenly changing their perspective, but when a character is constantly doing that and then just reverting back to how they were before, that's not development. That is called flip-flopping, which is what most of the characters do through out this anime.

Personally though, what really kills this anime for me is the ending. The ending should have ended with Lelouch defeating his father, and during his final confrontation with him, realizing he was just as big of a monster as his father and in the end nothing but a hypocrite.

Instead the anime tries to convince us that Lelouch understands these concepts yet continues down the exact same flawed path, showing he has truly learned nothing.

Fans claim he died because that was his punishment; he couldn't live in a happy world with his sister. However, keep in mind Lelouch makes the plan to do die when he thinks Nunnally is dead. When he finds out she's alive, his resolve nearly breaks. His plan wasn't some masterful scheme to help the world. It was the world's most arrogant method of committing suicide.

Lelouch had the audacity to lecture his father about morality. That forcing kindness on individuals is an act of villainy. Even though Charles explains what he has done was for the good of everyone, including Lelouch, Lelouch refuses to listen to his father's views. He can't forgive him for the pain his father caused him. However, what did Lelouch do? He forces his own values on people, acting just like his father did. Now I know people are going to claim what Lelouch did wasn't as bad as his father because Lelouch still gave free will, but when you're mind controlling people through out the series, and even leave many of them mind controlled after the conclusion, that's a pretty weak argument. In the end he was taking the same philosophy as his father. He was forcing his views and his version of peace on everyone else, even though no one seemed to want him to do so; something he said just a couple episodes ago was morally wrong.

I find it interesting that the ends only justify the means when its Lelouch applying the means. If anyone else is killing people or making lives miserable, they're automatically a villain, but apparently not Lelouch.

You can actually make the argument what Lelouch did was worst than his father when it comes down to how he treated Nunnally. Lelouch emotionally scars his sister in far worst ways than his father ever did. Nannually was able to be happy after what her father did to them, but was completely miserable when Lelouch betrayed her. (Yes people, it is Lelouch who betrays her, not the other way around like fans claim). Lelouch was willing to use his Geass on her despite having no need to do so except for the writers desire to be dramatic. Sure he confesses his so called "love" for her while she is under his control, but since she can't hear those words, it counts for nothing. Those words weren't meant for her. They were meant for Lelouch so he could express his feelings for her while not running any risk to himself. He truly was the coward Nunnally called him.

Nannually would have remained completely heartbroken if she hadn't found out at the last minute Lelouch still cared for her. (Granted the way the writers went about Nunnally so easily believing Lelouch was completely evil in the first place was as mind dulling as the rest of the plot. Nunnally has the capability of telling a person's intentions just by holding their hand. You mean to tell me schneizel nor anyone else never held her hand during the entire time schneizel was taking care of her?)


The so called "heart filled" conversation Lelouch had with Suzaku during the last episode about Geass being like dreams and accepting help from others completely contradicts what Lelouch has been doing the entire time. Lelouch did not use his Geass to create dreams. He destroyed the dreams of countless individuals. While he did have help in the end, his last words almost imply as if he did everything without the need of help from others.

Lelouch somehow manages to pull some of the greatest ass-pulls in Anime history, with details left out as to how he actually accomplishes it. The so called peace Lelouch achieves is nothing but a farce and the most far fetched ending I have ever seen in anime. His whole plan is nothing but a lie and in the end doesn't bother touching on truth issues of human society and what creating peace would truly require. Does he really think no one is going to figure out that Suzaku, the guy who helped Lelouch kill billions is actually Zero? Or that no one else is going to start wars?

If the writers had bothered to study politics and world history at all, they would see that creating a common enemy does not create peace. After World War 2, U.S. and Russia became enemies despite being allies against the Nazi's. The Middle East has been known to unite against common enemies such as the British, but once victorious they turn on each other again. What has brought about more peaceful times has been showing mercy and diplomacy. Offering hands of friendship and working together not just in times of war, but in times of need. You need to educate people by removing prejudice and hate from the equation, not increase it. I know that sounds cliche itself, but it is the truth.

In the end Code Geass is an Anime that wants to have its cake and eat it too. It wants to be deep, humorous, serious, and over the top all at the same time, but in the end just feels like a bad written soap opera.

This will be a short review. R2 absolutely broke my heart. When I watched the first season of this show, I fell in love with it. I thought that, despite its flaws, it would become a new favorite. It presented some interesting political themes, some fascinating conflicts and questions about the nature of political conflict and revolution, commented on the nature of racism and capitalism and how it intertwines with imperialism, and placed ethical pressure on the price of war, even if that war is just.

Well, when going into season 2, I wanted more of that. What I got were, first, an intense focus ... on all the flaws in season 1, but blown up and magnified. Don't like the oversexual fanservice? Sucks, you're getting it every episode now, with a side of implied sexual assault. Don't like the distractions in the pacing for this fan service? Too bad, how about an entire episode with the concept 'what if lelouche dated every girl ever'. Think some characters are terrible and wish they'd be expanded on? Well outside of Suzaku getting a tad more justification for being a raging moron, you're getting a heaping helping of absolute stupidity.

But don't worry, there's new flaws. New characters keep being introduced which are comically ridiculous or just outright offensively annoying. (cough rolo cough). Did you like those interesting political takes? No those are gone now. Enlightened centrism for us, apologism, and outright incoherent messaging is all you get from now. Liked the pacing? No, no. Things just happen now out of the blue, whenever, I guess. What about the interesting characters, like, say, C.C.? Hah, sorry, she's going to be turned into a literal slave girl with an uwu master personality who lelouche abuses.

Why did you do this to me, Code Geass. Why.

Let's pretend for a moment that Code Geass, the series as a whole, is a pizza. You like pizza, right? I love it. At first, Code Geass was looking like a pretty jawsome pizza -- the world's BIGGEST pizza, in fact! A pizza so big that you'd need to be piloting a giant mecha to even toss it, I bet. But see, before long, things start getting a little messy: First, a land shark from Gyo charges through the kitchen. You jump the shark in your mecha, dropping the pizza and drowning Japan in cheese and tomato sauce. ... Oops. "Oh well, no big deal," you say. "That wouldn't have been a good pizza anyway. Not enough toppings. I'll try again later."

That was the first season. Now, with R2, your little brother comes to help out. Didn't know you had a little brother? Well, you do. You must have hit your head or something, caught a touch of amnesia. Come to think of it, you haven't been acting quite like yourself lately. For that matter, nobody seems to act like themselves anymore -- they all start doing things that don't make sense, and before you know it, they're throwing anchovies and pickles and chocolate sprinkles and fried chicken and mars bars and honeycomb cereal and eyeballs and oranges and robots and sweaty socks into the pizza, and it's just a mess. Eventually, the pizza ends up collapsing under the weight of all its toppings, and it's just pandemonium. Girls are falling into the tomato trucks, and cats are wearing helmets, and teachers are exposing their ass cheeks, and everyone has super powers and your mother's a loli and your uncle's a loli and your sister's a zombie and your brother's yandere and oranges are loyal and violets are blue and hoagies are traitorous and i don't even know what i'm saying anymore what the hell is going on has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?!

...So you pretty much just blew the pizza to smithereens, and half the world with it. Oops. Some delusional nutcase claiming to be Christ the Messiah tried to clean up the mess by eating it all himself, preaching something wacky about how the sooty, cheesy mess represented all the evil in the world or whatever, but it didn't work out -- see, it wasn't long before his fat, bloated corpse full of pizza, steel and concrete started rotting, and everything leaked right on back out. A good effort on his part, I guess, but what a stupid idea. He was loony.

"...Well, yeah, okay, that all sucks," you say, "but wasn't it fun?" Well, yeah, I guess it was kind of fun. But you know man...that pizza looked really tasty back in the beginning, when it was just cheese and pepperoni. I wish I could've eaten it. Now I'm just hungry and regretful.

Code Geass trys to be philosophical but with the intelligence of a first grader. "The end justifies the means " well sure maybe if your only interaction with human conflict is V for Vendetta but maybe you should know anything about human history before making such a ridiculous claim.

Really the entirety of shows for edgy teenagers like Code Geass attempts to be philosophical is just some guy having read a summary of one of Nietzsche's books and thinking it sounded cool. These shows just say these grand statements but barely (sometimes not at all) support these statements at all in the text and the ... messages are bullshit most of the time anyways. The grandiose nature of these works makes us overestimate the quality of these shows but you must realize the utter hubris ( or just mindlessness) to present such complex issues in such a lazy and incorrect way. There is a reason most children's shows only deal with simple, black and white issues. Problems might emerge when a kids only introduction to inherent human differences and class warfare is Suzaku and Lelouch's little talk at the end of episode 5 while C.C was showing her bare ass on screen lol.

It just feels like Code Geass is all the bad stereotypes about anime that people who don't watch anime imagine when they think of it. I don't know how people mention it alongside the other all time greats of the medium.

Code Geass' first season was unremarkable but enjoyable, this second season though manages to drag even the few things that I enjoyed about this series into a pit of dullness and melodrama.

Now don't get me wrong, the series was over-the-top and extremely melodramatic even in its first season, but it effectively used those tonal modes to support a structure that all and all worked. Code Geass looked at a wider political conflict while at the same time keeping its parties grounded into humanity through human drama.

This second season completely breaks that structure. Personal plots become wide end-of-the-world matters, wider plots get reduced to personal conflict... ... in short, it tries to bring everything together but crash and burns horrifically in doing so.

There are other problems obviously, like the addition of a huge number of completely uninteresting new characters and the increased focus on mecha action. But all of these are in the end not all that important... what truly drags this second season down is the complete failing in resolving the themes and plot-lines of the first season in any satisfying manner.

The failing is not only in the structure, but in the content itself. All the characterization the protagonist went through ends up amounting to nothing and any political, ideological or even personal statement the series seemed like it was trying to make in the first season, is completely undermined by a bland resolution that calls on the worst cliches of the genre.

Until the last five episodes I would have said that Code Geass would have been a much more interesting series if it was framed from the point of view of literally any other character but the protagonist, but now to be honest I have to wonder if the few interesting enjoyable bits weren't just a fluke.

this show was ridiculous, the characters were nonsensical and idiotic, all of them. few had their moments but on the whole it was beyond the pale. the show really leaned into depicting women for horny teenaged boys. it was silly the amount of leg work they had to do to find any semblance of reason for literally any action in this show. also didn't like the animation (even without the lurid depiction of women).

the redeeming parts were that the scientists, with the exception of nina einstein (like, what?), were hilarious, and the opening and ending songs were great, even if the ending came in so ... quickly after the final scene that it barely gave the moment time to breathe, if at all

One of the worst anime I have ever seen, it's compared to AOT or Death Note when it's nowhere near as good. It has one of the most horribly written, hateable characters I have ever seen in any anime. Suzaku and terrible character writing in general: every single character, even side characters, is terribly written, including the main character; the plot is contrived and nonsensical, and the ending is even worse. This is a smart show for stupid people. If I were to go into every single aspect that is wrong with this show, I would sit here typing all day, but the main pivotal ... moment when I realized the sad truth was how badly written this show is, which is based on a great concept and had potential going into R2 despite the problems of R1, which was overall still far better. was the moment Nunnaly and the Black Knights were easily manipulated by Schneizel and turned against Leluch, the Black Knights, and Kallen, as made clear in various moments already. They knew Leluch, or Zero, was using them; what Schneizel told them was already obvious by the time he said it, and it made them betray the man that gave them everything they have. Nunnaly, a naive young girl who does not understand, suddenly morally judges her own brother she loves and is manipulated into launching nukes, killing millions of people, making her the same as the piece of crap. Suzaku, and then after her brother lets Suzaku kill him, she suddenly loves him again. What the actual fuck is this? One of the things that made me like R1 was Leluch and his relation to school friends and sister. Suzakus existence is a crime in itself. I watched every single episode hoping he would finally somehow die before the end, and it ends up being him, the pathetic, self-serving mass murderer who betrayed and murdered his best friend and own people and did everything to prevent his own people, his own blood, from being free, who ends up being the one to kill Leluch and live at the end. Are you kidding me? This is supposed to be a good ending? The show does everything to convince us Leluch is evil and is ready to do everything to achieve his goal, even if it is wrong. Euphy was not innocent, and the writers did not even have the guts to make Leluch do it on purpose; it had to be an accident. The entire ending is Leluch making himself humanity's enemy to unite them, but that doesn't make any sense and betrays his core character. Leluch is not Eren. Leluch never did anything to justify him being killed. Suzaku deserved to die. Suzaku was a million times worse than Leluch.

I now arrive at the second and final season of Code Geass, where everyone says that one of the best endings in anime is shown and where it goes down in anime history. After hating the first season, I didn't really have any hopes except for the ending to be great, so I went in to have a clear mind about it. I was pleasantly surprised that the first 6 or 7 episodes were terrific, so I thought, maybe, just maybe, it would be good...but it turns out worst than the first season with a decent ending that was made a bit too obvious. Let's ... break down this story to explain why it's a pretty awful anime.

Things I finally noticed:
I realized a few things while watching that explain why things are written how they are, even if these are just my assumptions. I started to notice that Code Geass is written like a chess match mixed with a greek tragedy. Not because of the excessive usage of the word "pawn," but because of how obstacles came about. There's almost always a straightforward way to stop problems in how Lelcouh outsmarts his opponents. He comes up with no solution that includes complex planning over spans of episodes with problems besides the final plan he makes. Complex planning is an obstacle, but the solution includes multiple things before even reaching the first step of that big solution. Now there are times where that happens, but it's only two or three problems before everything goes really smoothly.
The Greek tragedy part comes in with how there are dilemmas in the show. For example, Lelouch and Suzaku's whole relationship is similar to something you would find in a greek tragedy, but this is a problem in the show itself. Greek tragedies are simple at their core and allow drama to happen mostly. It's kind of hard to do that in a series like Code Geass, where it has all this political talk and complex things happening with this straightforward drama that isn't that interesting half the time but also is exciting. It's a struggle that I see the series has between complex and simple.

With my assumptions out of the way, let's talk about the very few good things about season 2.

The good things in a terrible show:
The music and voice acting, as always, is still a great part of this and helps the unbearable moments feel a bit better. Even if I dislike a majority of characters and stories, the voice acting and the music still give me a bit of the emotion that they were trying to get me to feel in the first place.
While I don’t care for fights nor liked seeing the mecha fights since I was invested enough, they’re really well animated, and each fight is uniquely done for the most part. In fact, even the regular animation and facial animation are well done as well, and really show you what the character is feeling even without having to read/listen to the dialogue itself even though the voice acting does make it believable as well.
The slice of life parts are ;delightful even if they break the writing more and more. They're still pretty fun for what they're worth.
Suzaku is the only character with an arc that feels complete and worth it throughout the series. He starts out trying to redeem himself for his sin by trying to be on the "objectively right" side and change things from the inside out. This season is where he realizes that it's impossible not to commit sins when trying to change things for the better, so it goes down a path where he does whatever it takes to complete the last plan, which made me like the ending since his arc came to a great conclusion.

The things that make this a terrible show:

The story is structured in a way that makes it predictable and dull. Obstacles are placed, and Lelocuh must figure out how to stop it until he does something so bold; it ruins him later on until a giant mecha fight happens until Lelouch has another plan that wins him the day. Now, this is a gross generalization of how it's actually structured, but it sure feels this way a lot of the time since the mecha fights take so long. It always feels like there's no real danger in the show since Nunnally is the only thing Lelcouh cares about which is apart of his character, but makes everything feel less important since he doesn't care about any other character besides that. It makes us, the viewer, not care about them since why should we care if he doesn't care unless we have a personal liking to them or they affect Lelouch, which they mostly don't unless it's to be an obstacle for him to face later on. They feel like actual pawns, and it's not really interesting to watch that when the show is trying to make us feel for these characters when we already know it's pointless in the end. It's not like any of them actually get any consequence since most of the characters don't change in any way or lose/gain anything. This affects the story since its events are so depended on caring whether they will live or die, or who's going to change the outcome when you know only a select few actually do change the outcome. Some characters do give way to new plot points, but, as I said, there are only the select few. You then have this weird way of getting to Code Geass in the sense of what will actually change the country since it's a merry go around way of getting to certain stages of the plot. An example would be teaming up with the Chinese Federation and the making of the Untied Federation of Nations. They both feel like natural steps to take, but with how we got there, it doesn’t feel the least bit natural. Especially when the worldbuilding is poorly done in Code Geas where I have to wonder if this made logically sense in that world.To simply things, Code Geass’s story is where each set piece feels like the it makes sense but the buidlup and aftermath of it all never makes sense to me.

The characters have and still are a major problem with this anime. Already talking about how most feel like actual pawns themselves, the characters that do feel like ones are, sometimes, even worse. Firstly, I must address Lelouch as he’s arc does continue onward, but the one he has here doesn’t seem good either. If season one was about giving him setbacks but tons of victories that made him arrogant and insane, season two is more about crushing him with defeat after defeat to make him more sane but crush that ego he had before picking himself up to do what he has to do to save Japan. Writing it out like that makes it sound wonderful, but there’s only one problem. Because I just went through a season of seeing him success no matter what, and characters I couldn’t care less for, his defeats are meaningless to me because I know (with the result of not being invested because if I was, I won’t care about this) Lelouch will success and no one important, to him, will die because season one proved this fact, time and time again. There is one character that does die that could be used to counter this, but he already lost her once in a different way, so why should I care again when her character is still the same as ever? Rolo also dies but Lelouch starts to hate him as the season goes on, and even when he start to like him again, he’s not even close to his driving motivation (well, he technically is, but there probably was tons of other characters on his mind during that). When Nunnally “died,” it could have been that point where that idea could have changed in me, but she comes back with a lazy attempt to explain it away, and that was the point I lost all investment in this story or characters. Again, it repeats the problem that Lelouch (and the rest of the main cast besides best boy, Suzaku) where it does seem like a good route for that character, but once you start to see it unfold, it’s a mess. A side note are the two female characters Kallen and C.C. since those characters are ones that could have been more interesting, but, sadly, were half baked in this season.

The thing that was praised the most:

To finally say, the ending is good for a story. It ties up everything nicely and has a good conclusion to the whole series finally leaving it ended, and anyone that was invested and love the show throughout, completely satisfied. Not me though. Did I think it was bad? No, of course not, it’s the type of ending that anyone would want for their favorite story. Did I think it was amazing? No, of course not, I couldn’t care less for anything that happens at that point. Everyone could have died and Lelouch could have truly been a dictator, and I would still say it’s decent since I truly care no longer. That’s the thing about endings. The only way to say if they’re truly amazing or horrible is if you were invested in the first place. Endings are important since stories are technically waste of time and a distraction in life which is why we seek good stories or stories we find enjoyable so we don’t have to think like that. Endings are that final award to prove that the time we spent sitting in forward of that screen was truly worth it (I’m taking a jab at myself here since I put stories as my reason for living at this point), but if you just spent hours, not caring about what happened, the ending will naturally be something you don’t care for since it’s there only for the people that loved it. Hence, why I think it’s a mediocre ending and I feel I wasted my time on these two seasons.

Closing statements:

I like to believe I wanted to love Code Geass. No, I did because I love seeing a good story. No matter how popular, overhyped, old or new, simple or complex, I just want to see a good story unfold before my very eyes, and, if Code Geass was one, I would have wholeheartedly loved it. But, alas, I didn’t think it was good, and, even worse, thought it was so terrible that I’m still wondering why people enjoy it. I was going to watch the movie after this, but, at this point, I’m tired of Code Geas want nothing to do it with it no longer which brings me to giving this season a 2/10 for being worse then the previous one.
So long Code Geass.
I hope we never cross paths again.

Soap opera of self-defeating psychotic irredeemable (yes, even the lolis) war criminals dancing on corpses of the innocent and allies continues (see review ID: 390574 ), now with mockery of Chinese (for enhanced Japanese nationalism), "JoJo, Part 3" throwbacks (toki wo tomare and bread-counting), tree-jumping ninja-maid as if from Naruto's universe, more tone-deaf fan-service, waxing false-dichotomy poetics on extreme naivete versus extreme cynicism, melodramatic inner thoughts of worthless scum, plans of supposedly clever (yet perpetually bloodthirsty, insubordinate and loosing all their wits at fits of rage) men ruined by stupidity of impulsive airheaded women (the queen of which is meek Nina, suicidal WMD-building mass-murder-fetishising terrorist ... as well as world's biggest racist and sexual deviant), convenient magical bullshit, grandiosely absurd villain-whitewashing attempts and random plot-sharks jumping to the moon.

Apparently, this world of advanced mechs and supersonic hands have not invented jet-engine planes, hypersonic missiles and wide-area warheads. Somehow even mecha-battles turned into stereotypical magic-beam overglowing and overdramaticized yelling, suicidal propaganda, maximum hypocrisy and the power of friendship (especially if it's friendship with psychopaths who were directly or indirectly involved in mass murders of civilian population for shits'n'giggles). Music still kind of sucks too.

Whole thing feels like a giant trolling shitpost of "we've heard that you like political global/space operas, so we've made one that you'll never forget… for… some… reasons". I especially like the "because we're slightly grumpy, let's just give up and give in our lives to our slavers that were introduced killing our elderly and children for fun and we spent all this time fighting against" part of the story.