Okay, so whether you are an anime veteran or virgin, one can appreciate genuine originality in a medium that isn't afraid to go at anything. I mean, general plots for anime involve incest,giant robots, pop bands, westerns, samurai duels, crazy dances, bombastic humor, and genuine what the hell moments. The plot for R2 tries to be original, by striking a balance between eccentric twists and down to earth qualities to no avail. Most of the main characters are just anime iconographies that try to act like they aren't by being unpredicatable and contradictory to what they believe in.This sort of left me thinking after every line "oh, well she is probably lying to make a moment more dramatic down the road". This sense of manufactured, maliable plot is interesting at first in R2, because it lets on that the plot might be heading somewhere worthwhile, but it doesn't. The show doesn't really "do" subtle. This next part is a spoiler, but it proves my point. Consider the character Shirley. Her mind is erased to protect her from danger. Then she finds out it was erased and realizes who did it. This was worthwhile because it set up a stronger bond between herself and Lelouch. It seemed realistic in a non realistic universe, which is what epic (large) animes do time and time again. However, in R2 her mind is wiped again and then she finds out who it was again. Great, we are back where we left off. Then she dies and Lelouch couldn’t give a damn. All of that seemingly original and shocking plot development for nothing. This pattern is constant in R2 and gives the viewer the sense that none of the characters mean anything more than dramatic payoffs to Lelouch or Suzaku.
For the most part I didn't seize violently from actually watching the second season. The art was to be expected from such a big budgeted series. It gave the stereotypical, polished, anime good looking characters justice. All the characters were made to look appealing to viewers, male or female. Except when some were made to be ugly(very few) in which case they were automatically killed off. This ode to perfection in beauty only made Sunrise's anime/mtv aspirations more apparent to me. The art played no other role than "pretty" and shed no light on character development at all.
What can I say about sound? This is the highpoint of sound in the series, “pew, pew, yargggh”. All of the openings get you more pumped up than when listening to the Jonas brothers make sweet love to their synthesizers. The tracks for the plot are more transparent than Casper on a Sunday and they let you know it time and time again. If something is bad, you better bet on some tense overtones, if a big plot twist occurs (about every 5 minutes) you better bet some fluttery instrument is going to be played. Basically, the producers said “we don’t want to leave anything to interpretation, I mean, these anime freaks want to escape their sad pit falls known as their lives, so just get them turned on and play the appropriate f**king music.”
It’s a letdown when these high priced shounen campaigns come out because they often give the general non-anime populous the wrong idea concerning what anime can achieve in art. People flipping channels only to see someone like Lelouch cackling like a mad man might think A) this is cool!, B) wow, anime really is just weird Japanese cartoons, or C) This is sort of like mtv. What I mean to say is that R2’s characters do absolutely nothing to redefine anything in the medium. The girls look good and are subtlety subservient to the guys. Even Kallen and Cornelia. Kallen is a tool for Zero, no matter how strong she is and later a larger tool for Schneizel. Cornelia was actually great at first but then she became grouped in with the sort like Villeta and becomes one of those people who wait for their men to come home from war. If the main characters are considered, things get a little different. Lelouch has to question his reasoning many times over and is actually believable when he acts ruthless. I mean, most people are like that but just don’t have the balls (or in this case Geass) to back up their claims. He is a pseudo anti hero in that regard, but the producers always flipped him back to “good Lelouch” to make him likable at school. I thought that was also believable at first since one would most likely lie at school if they were a terrorist. But when he started speaking with sympathy for his friends it just didn’t seem justified. The only thing that really validated his motives as a character came at the end of the series, which was ironically helped by another character, Suzaku. I'm not even gonna go into Suzaku, because, he is the walking epitome of what the show tried to be and failed at. A genuine contradiction.
Watching R2 is like watching a show because you feel like you'll miss out. Its like high school. If you want to be and see a part of anime hype, this is the anime for you.. Want to kill some time after working? great. Sunrise put this little mellow-dramatic action piece that will take you out of your life for 30 minutes, check it out. But please, please, I cant stress this enough. Don't call up a friend and say "ah man, I just watched this show called Code Geass and its the best anime ever". Because you will have just fulfilled Sunrise's shadow Nazi corporation agenda.
