*** 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.
