Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion

[VivisQueen]

Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion


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Site Reviews: VivisQueen ~ vivafruit 

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This series exists as a site review. There's also a review by vivafruit which I hope he posts in here, since his opinions are pretty much the exact opposite to mine. Might make a good discussion? Of course, any critiques of the review are much appreciated.

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[vivafruit]

Moderator Note:
This review is linked in the thread header. If you'd like to discuss it, please do so here. Thanks!

[sothis]

i agree with viva's review, heh... did not enjoy the 12ish episodes i saw :/

[VivisQueen]

Viva's review gave me a heart attack. The difference in views seems largely to be due to interpretation, so nothing to be done about it, but there were two points I wanted to pick up on.

1) While each episode has powerful moments, the impact they leave is inevitably dampened by the schizophrenic cutting. The moment you begin to follow one plotline, the series has immediately cut to a different one happening simultaneously. There are simply too many characters doing too many things at once, and the result is a discombobulated mess.

I rewatched a few of the episodes whilst reviewing in order to refresh my memory and the cutting seems no different than what you'd find with any other kind of intrigue based show. Also, whilst there is a large cast, there are at most two stories running at the same time in an episode. Lelouch's and a less important character's like Kallen's. Unless of course it's an episode where the plots meet in some climax - in that case, it's cutting between scenes that all concern the same problem. In some episodes they switched focus from Lelouch to the minor character in order to provide characterisation, but that happens in almost any show you can name. As a whole, you have Lelouch's part of the plot, Suzaku Kururugi's, C.C.'s (which is dealt with mostly in separate episodes from the main plot), that Japanese resistance faction, that silver-haired woman and one of Lelouch's fighters, and... you can maybe count the Suzaku and Euphemia's sort-of-romantic subplot. Really doesn't sound like a ludicrous amount for a story that's about political strategy and will span at least two series. This is especially true when you consider that none of the plots happen independently but actually feed directly back into the dominant one.

Even for someone like me who is a fairly average viewer of anime, it seemed the plots were interwoven in a way that was crystal clear. More often than not, the cutting enhanced the emotional impact with bloody agonising cliff-hangers. Is there a concrete example you could give me to help me get what you mean?

2) One complaint is that, in spite of fact that a huge number of people die, there is a noticeable lack of gore. The show seems a little self-censored to be able to air at prime-time, which takes away some of the punch of the more violent scenes.

My argument is gore works well if you need it in order to make your point. Death Note is not exactly gory and its primary concern is death. In fact, there are loads of shows that maintain a sense of peril or tragedy without making us wince. Besides, whilst a show may necessarily be violent e.g. its about military conflict, it may want to avoid the problem of gore being taken for granted. Also, gore can be distracting when you're trying to make a political/philosophical point. There is

Euphemia's killing spree

, when Code Geass does use blood to give the scene more oomph, and it works very well in an amusing sort of way (for me). But overall, can you really say any story with violence in it is by default served better with more guts flying about? Especially when violence itself is not the primary source of entertainment in the way it is in things like Claymore.

[vivafruit]

1.

Really doesn't sound like a ludicrous amount for a story that's about political strategy and will span at least two series.

It's not the number of subplots that really bothered me (you're right, epic series like these need to be complex), it was the lack of focus from episode to episode. Most political epics that I've seen (for instance, Legend of Galactic Heroes, Juuni Kokuki, Crest of the Stars, etc.) focus on one faction for a few episodes, then cut back to another, and so on. On the other hand, Code Geass assumes you don't have the patience to follow just one faction for even five minutes.

Unfortunately, I can't really give any specific examples. For shows I didn't like and watched more than a few months ago, I find it very difficult to remember specific details.

2.

Claymore is actually a very good example, in my mind - that series was very much about how fighting evil directly often resulted in losing your own humanity, and a kiddiefied, Code Geass-esque look would have hurt it tremendously. I also completely disagree that the gore was the main attraction of Claymore - for me, it was very much the tightly wound narrative that kept me watching. In fact, I thought the gore was actually poorly animated for the most part. However, while the gore wasn't particularly enjoyable by itself, it was absolutely necessary for the story to function properly.

You've said yourself that you need gore if you need it to prove your point. One of Code Geass's points is that oftentimes achieving "justice" comes at the price of shedding innocent blood. The key word here is blood.

...and while we're on the topic of

Euphie's night out on the town,

I would have almost certainly mentioned it in my review if there was any way to do so without spoiling it. I consider that episode to be one of the most aggravating of the entire series - the plot device used is contrived and manipulative to the point that it feels like cheating.

[Kastrophee]

Originally Posted by vivafruit

1. I also completely disagree that the gore was the main attraction of Claymore - for me, it was very much the tightly wound narrative that kept me watching. In fact, I thought the gore was actually poorly animated for the most part. However, while the gore wasn't particularly enjoyable by itself, it was absolutely necessary for the story to function properly.

Poorly animated or not I don't remember any gore in Claymore, it was more of lights amount of blood. And that alone was not even close to being what made claymore enjoyable. (As what vivafruit said) I personally thought it should have had a lot more actual gore.

Onto the topic at hand, I think both reviews sound good (Vivafruit makes his point very well, but it seems lower quality compared to his other reviews), but not having seen Code Geass yet I can only make suspicions. That being said, I think I personally will enjoy it as much as Vivi's Queen did and agree with the flaws that Vivafruit pointed out, but that is all personal opinion.

[Cetonis]

I think I agree with Vivi on this one...

I never really had a problem following what was going on; it was certainly fast-paced, but as said it's not like they follow ten different things at once or anything like that. Then again, part of my ease of understanding may have come from the fact that I watched the whole thing over a few days rather than trying to keep up with it on a weekly basis. I've found it can be difficult to recall things that happened several episodes (weeks) ago, or even sometimes one episode ago, if they didn't get some significant amount of time spent on them, so I imagine the kind of pacing in Code Geass has the potential to make things confusing when watched over time.

I'm also not of the opinion that gore is required to give violence impact... Aside from being somewhat difficult to do in mech battles, I felt that the integration of school-life scenes did a fine job providing a contrast to the violence that would have otherwise become sort of monotonous.

As for the (spoiler), while I also thought it was kind of forced initially, it kind of felt like it made more sense to me when I thought/speculated about it a bit.

As in, what if we were to assume there was an explanation for why geass went auto when it did, rather than thinking of it as some convenient device solely existing to trigger a plot twist? There are some possibile answers. Putting his actual words and actions at the time aside, there had to be some level at which Lelouch knew exactly what he needed to do to come out 'victorious' over Euphemia. He may have used logic/morals to determine not to consciously do so, but if you think of victory as his 'true' wish, what wound up happening might be explainable. Whether it was simply his subconscious acting out, or geass attempting to fulfill his will on its own, or something else, is not clear, but I imagine this will be explained in season 2. I believe there is logical backing to what occurred, and also that the writers knew what the reasoning was at the time and simply opted not to explain yet, rather than leaving it to find some cheap excuse for later.

[ReturnofFruitbasketbob2]

I thought Code Geass was the best anime of its season. Every episode is a cliff hanger leaving you wanting more.

[vivafruit]

It's not like I had a problem following it; it's that there was just no narrative focus and the plot felt sloppy and patched together. I might need to revise the review a bit, as it doesn't seem that I really made this clear.

[bah]

I agree with the plot feeling sloppy and patched together. They make a guerrilla attack and there are a few action scenes. Then they withdraw, nobody can track their huge mechs and they go back to their civilian lives. Then they attack some arbitrary target anywhere in Japan again. There's a military attack which suddenly transitions to the characters walking around on some semideserted island. Characters can fly away from the middle of an important battle to have a personal confrontation elsewhere.