NOTE: This review applies to the first 2 seasons of Code Geass. I do not plan to watch and review Season 3.
The Positive Side: Code Geass takes place in an alternate future, wherein Britannia (Great Britain with mechs and Nazis, basically) has conquered Japan. Lelouch, an exiled Britannian Prince, seeks to topple the Britannian tyranny to avenge his mother and create a kinder world for his blind younger sister, Nunelly. He is aided by a mysterious power called Geass, which allows him to give irresistible orders and bend other people to his will.
Code Geass has an intriguing premise and some very strong portrayals of war, racism, colonialism and cultural disenfranchisement. One of my favorite details of the setting is that under Britannian rule, Japan and the Japanese people have been stripped of their name, and live under the designation, “Area 11.” It’s a brilliant detail that shows the lengths to which Britannia goes to destroy Japan’s sense of identity.
Through the first season, Code Geass exhibits strong characterization on all sides of its conflict. Lelouch’s friend and archrival, Suzaku, opposes him throughout the first season, and while we are inclined to root for Lelouch, given the horrific atrocities of the Britanian’s, it easy to understand why Suzaku is on the other side, and hard to blame him or dislike him. Another excellent addition to the supporting cast is Kallen Kozuki, a daring young freedom fighter and half-Japanese Britannian student who joins up with Lelouch’s rebellion on behalf of her abused and down-trodden Japanese mother. The brilliance of Kallen is that she is able to maintain a kind of purity of character when Lelouch begins to slip morally ambiguous behavior. While Lelouch embodies the duality of war—noble intentions with seemingly unavoidable, evil methods—Kallen embodies the courageous patriot, and as long she remains in the focus of the narrative, she ensures we have someone to root for.
War is an immense and difficult topic to handle in anime, and it’s rare to find a Shonen series that doesn’t reduce it to a conflict between obvious heroes and uniformly sadistic and irredeemable villains. Code Geass refuses this simplification, and for that at least, it deserves a little respect.
The Negative Side: Like its protagonist, Code Geass starts off full of promise and blazing ambition, but loses its path, and ultimately, seems to forget what it was trying to achieve in the first place. Code Geass should have been one of the greatest anime ever made, but its faults are so numerous and distracting that it’s often irritating to watch, and ultimately, very hard to take seriously.
Let’s begin with the artwork. While the mecha are well-drawn and have intriguing designs, and most of the action is very fluid, the artists flounder any time they’re required to draw a person. Nearly every member of the cast is suffering from Terminal Anorexia, Chihuahua Head Syndrome and Early Onset Yaoi Hands. Even the girls have yaoi hands. There’s a few martial artists and soldiers in the cast, but the quality of the mecha fights makes every fight not involving a mecha look even more ridiculous. Everyone moves like they’re filled with helium instead of blood. Supposedly human characters leap five times their height, defy gravity and inertia and spontaneously spin with nothing to draw traction from but thin air. If this was explicitly a supernatural martial arts anime like Ranma ½ or Fist of the North Star, I’d have no problem with this kind of silliness, but Geass’s efforts to feel grounded and real are shattered in nearly every hand-to-hand fight.
Even more irritating is Geass’s insistence on cramming fan-service into scenes where it has no business being. There’s a moment late n the first season where Kallen and Suzaku become mysteriously stranded on a tropical Island. Kallen, in a complete defiance of the concept of logical priorities, decides this is the perfect time to take a shower. Suzaku stumbles on Kallen while she’s naked and bathing in a waterfall. Kallen immediately recognizes Suzaku as an enemy, draws her knife and charges him.
This should have been one of the tensest and most dramatic scenes in the series. Kallen and Suzaku have both been built as sympathetic and complex characters, and without a moment’s warning, both are thrust into mortal danger. In that moment, I was afraid that one of them was surely going to die, and I was unsure of who I was rooting for. Sadly, the animator’s insistence of baring Kallen’s breasts, coupled with Suzaku’s subsequent take-down (which puts Kallen in a position far too reminiscent of being raped) ruins the tone of the scene. Instead of witnessing two noble characters in a struggle for their beliefs and their survival, we witness a display of the creator’s own bad taste. The fanservice is almost invariably of the creepy variety, either nonconsensual ‘accidents’ or used as a point of shaming the girls. Roughly half the battle-scenes are ruined by pointless close-ups of the girls’ breasts and rear-ends. There are moments when Code Geass feels like it was created as a guide on how not to use fan-service.
Despite the writers’ knack for characterization, Code Geass degrades its strongest women to a disgusting degree. Kallen, a fearless revolutionary who has been fighting against Britannia even longer than Lelouch, is forced to wear playboy bunny suit, to her own shame and humiliation. She is later captured and strapped to a table with what is quite obviously bondage gear, forced to wear a dress that exposes a solid fifty percent of her breasts, and is nearly raped by one of her captors. C.C. spends most of the series as a stoic, mysterious ally with her own agenda and desires, and is one of the only characters in the series who calls out Lelouch on his stupidity and immoral hypocrisy. Following a convenient memory lapse in Season 2, C.C. is reduced to a cringing slave-girl, perpetually terrified of being beaten and eagerly subordinating herself to Lelouch, even when asked to remove her clothes.
Code Geass often uses chess motifs to support its themes of clever planning and manipulation. This would probably be a lot more effective if anyone who worked on the show had ever learned the rules of chess. Every time a characters busts out a chess board, you can count on hilariously stupid and illegal moves. At one point, a character moves his king into check. Amusingly, his opponent is horrified.
Speaking of clever planning… despite the fact that Code Geass puts focus on tactical intelligence, many of Lelouch’s decisions are mind-blowingly stupid. He walks into obvious traps even he knows they are traps, and is unnecessarily hostile and paranoid towards people who ought to be his allies. Britannia is not exempt from this, as we see in Season 2, when they dismiss the idea of multiple countries working together in a military campaign laughable, and claim that the result would be ‘an unruly mob’.
…Hey, Britannians? Remember that whole “World War 2” thing? You know, the one that both Britain and Japan fought in? Turns out countries can actually work together pretty well when they have a common enemy.
Despite the strength of the characters, the dialogue is frequently hammy and ridiculous. Sometimes this is justified by Lelouch’s fondness for theatrics, but sometimes, it’s just plain stupid. There is no context in which the words, “Attention, people of Japan. Could you all just die, please?” will not be ridiculous.
I really wish I could separate seasons 1 and 2, because season 1 is vastly better, but unfortunately, season 1 ends on a total cliff-hanger that demands I take both seasons as halves of the same story.
Code Geass’s death blow comes near the end of Season 2. I will refrain from giving spoilers here, but will say that the strong characterization given to the main characters is wasted, as they seem to forget their own defining motivations. When characters stop behaving in a way that makes sense for who and what they are, it’s simply not possible to believe in them the way we believe in all the characters we love most dearly. Where there were once compelling and complex characters, there are now puppets, spouting nonsensical monologues about vague ideals and coldly marching through whatever actions the writers thrust upon them. No matter how many convoluted schemes or dramatic twists Code Geass hurls at you, the entire effort ends up feeling hollow and pointless.
Final Verdict: Code Geass is riddled with obnoxious faults in taste and style, but beneath these faults, there’s artistic ambition, moral insight and a cast of memorable and exciting characters. It’s truly a pity this show was less than it could have been. If you’re curious as to why this anime is so highly rated, feel free to check it out. Otherwise… I, INKSPIDER VI BRITANNIA, COMMAND YOU… to go watch something better.
