It's at this point that I realize that there's no hope for this sub-series whatsoever. There's no way it can salvage its convoluted and contrived excuse of a story, nor can it salvage many of its generic and poorly written characters. Both this film and the last film did things that jeopardize R2's ability to canonically exist, and the series as a while as inadvertently damaged the integrity of the franchise with its terrible main character, awful new script, and lack of charisma. It doesn't really feel like Code Geass, nor does it feel like a worthy entry to it. This is the second to last film in the sub-series, and nothing aside from the CGI, animation, and OST has improved to any significant degree. It's cheesy, trite, and laughable. So, why does it have a higher score than the rest of the films? Yet, like the last one, at least the ride was entertaining in how wrecked it was.
Basically, Akito and crew end up in an abandoned ship in which they are attacked by Ashley and his drones, except Ashley can't shoot for shit despite having 6 giant machine guns strapped onto his Knightmare. For some reason, he wants revenge for Johanna, a guy that not only get bullied by Ashley, but sacrificed himself for him in the name of war and saving his superior officer. Obviously, revenge is moot in this case, and obviously, Akito takes him down, but not before the blood-lust geass effect controls him and the others before they somehow snap or of it and make him stop via cheesy images of them hugging him. Already I wanna give up taking this seriously because it's just plain laughable.
We get multiple plot twists and betrayals that lead to nothing, a scene in which after Shin meets ghosts in the woods (somehow, as if the only reason is to add to how he values death), he gets fouled on his attempt to kill himself, a scene where Lelouch and Suzaku are in the brig for seemingly no reason (which should mess with his title of Knight of 7 that was both in here and R2), and Leila somehow activating her weird geass (that we don't know the effects of) to not only stop Shin's geass from making her kill herself (because this film confirms that's what it is) but hurts his eye temporarily. There are some rather generic greeting and emotion scenes as well, and all the while, Akito, Ashley, Yukiya, Ayano, and Ryou, are trapped in a sinking airship that had inexplicably placed bombs on it. Then, they make it out, some bad slapstick between Ashley and Jean (the girl who betrayed him for Shin), and then our heroes prepare for a new battle. Again, it damages the story of the main series, and it still has plenty of issues, but it's not as horribly written as the last two films, albeit that doesn't say much, given how trite this is.
I know development doesn't necessarily matter, but that being said, we should know more about these one-note cardboard cut-outs than we do by this point. We are four movies in and at best, we got backstories and one-note traits that get contradicted or abandoned. Shin isn't fleshed out that well either, and ultimately remains a horribly generic character with the only interesting quality being how he seems to value death. As for Ashley, I already addressed why his character falls apart here (wanting revenge for someone you didn't previously care about sacrificing himself in a battle to save you while the one who killed him fights someone else), and he later goes to being a hyperactive character when rescued but that doesn't really affect anything. The two traitors, Warrick (whose attempts literally amount to nothing) and Smilas aren't good either and their betrayals are not foreshadowed whatsoever. Honestly, I really don't have much to say here about them as I've already spelled it their personalities and they haven't really grown, so I'll leave it here and move on.
Remember the improved CGI from the Suzaku fight in the end of movie 3? Well, it's here to stay and thank the maker for that. The fight directing is still borderline incomprehensible but at least the mechs look better, especially the modified version of Ashley's knightmare, with the amazing level of shading put into it. There isn't as much movement with the characters this time around but it's not as static as the first two films at least. Also, there's this one great-looking scene with Shin in the forest where it all changes to some interesting colors and angles to show this ghastly setting, the ghosts that haunt Shin and the universe's logic, and how warped his psyche is. Again, moments like that look awesome and are signs of good direction On top of that, despite my gripes with it, the combat is at least better than the other films, even if it doesn't beat the main series. It's a shame since the rest of the visuals would at least be on par, if not superior in terms of model quality. I just wish the action direction would improve so that the fights are more comprehensible and that there weren't moments of bad airship CGI.
While the OST still isn't memorable, I'm at least glad that we got some new tracks as well as a brand new and superior ED theme, even if some of the tracks get replayed here more than ever (namely the one with the flaring trumpets which is still not fitting with the scenarios they put it in). I'm still glad that it's hanging on less and to the shadow of the Kotaro Nakagawa OSTs of the main series, even if it still only barely works.
At this rate, this sub-series has done a bit too much harm to Code Geass and some of its concepts to really warrant being considered tactful at handling the continuity of the main series. It's also too deeply flawed to be considered a narratively sound series if you haven't figured both of these things out by movie 3. At this point, you're probably continuing on "because Code Geass" like I am, and already know that this is a bad set of movies, even if these last two have been enjoyable, both ironically and unironically. Either way, can't wait to see how the last film screws things up since people keep saying that's the worst one of them all. With all that said, I bid you adieu.
