Japan is a country that I value as a fellow Otaku, one of the rare attributes/characteristics that encapsulates Japan as a culture is their honour. Even though a lot of it was lost after the second world war, they still hold on to the nostalgic ideology. To an extent the racism found in that country toward immigrants is founded upon honour toward their country, there is an understanding that their traditions need to be held pure especially from outsiders. After WWII the drastic cultural influence from the west tainted a lot of the Japanese culture, so this reaction is absolutely understandable. Code Geass is the epitome of honourable and dishonourable actions. It questions ideologies from both foundations, one for the sake of achieving a goal no matter the cost, the other upholding certain standards perhaps even to the detriment of their goal.
Story:
If you consider our world and see the darkness within its institutions the destruction that they need go through for the sake of freedom and hope - yet at the same time there is the hope within the human race, which runs particularly deep. We want to see the beautiful the optimistic outcome, this is what we see in a lot of Hollywood and what is deep down a desire in our hearts. Code Geass is fantastic in its story because of these contrary ideologies, it has a focus within a particular world where one nation rules majority of the world. A one world order, one might suggest. The outcome of this is the predictable, but it doesn't leave you with that as the continuity of the show. Instead it is filled with fantasy and mystery. A mystery that won't let you down, filled with thrills and adventure yet not without thought provoking conversations and plot driven outcomes from those conversations. It keeps you on your seat as you wait for the next amazing or tragic outcomes. But what it achieves is a battle of ideologies, and one that seems impossible to decide. Story - 3/3
Character:
If you have ever played chess against yourself you will realise the difficulty involved in attempting to be both your enemy and your ally at the same time. The characters in Code Geass is in experience of them, very similar. You get to know the characters very well because there is a lot of time passing and they do a good job involving you straight into their lives. The characters pull you into their world, their past and what they want to push toward in the future. I want to clear a stigma you might have heard of the show, that this show has characters that just want to take over the world. This is a over-complication of a really simple character drama. The characters love to flaunt ideas that are sometimes philosophically appropriate other times just feels a bit much. But there are some great quotes that can be grasped well according to context. Some of them you won't understand at all if you don't understand what is going on in the characters hearts. Code Geass challenges you to look further than surface level character, and it doesn't always help you get there. The characters can sometimes be so mysterious that a lot of the time subtle hints will be your only open door into their heart. Other times its written on their forehead. The characters are good and enjoyable, sure there are flaws when comparing to some aspects of the story building but the experience overall is fantastic. Character 2/3
Art / Animation
If you like pointy chins this Anime has the perfect character design for you! But don't worry they not only have pointy chins going for them, abnormally long legs are the thing these days and to accompany the legs we have long arms to balance things out a bit. But in all honesty the character design for this show is not that great, but the eyes are really well done and you know what they say "The eye is the window to the soul". The soul of the characters are really expressed well in the animation, and eyes take a big focus in Code Geass, for various reasons including the saying I gave. However bad the character design may be, the rest is not at all comparable in quality. The action scenes, are smooth and interesting they keep you on your seat with the world design - which is simply a Japan that has advanced in certain ways and stayed the same in others. If you like sci-fi then you will particularly appreciate the world architecture aesthetically. Art - 1/2
Music
Straight out of the bat, the music was good and only good. What to expect from the music is not much more than this. I have a big problem with classical style of music within Anime. The reason for my critical view on classical style is that its not memorable, tracks often fade into the background way to easily and is perhaps one of the charms of it not distracting from what matters in the scene. I enjoyed particular tracks in action scenes and there is a lot of variance in style, even though its all instrumental - excluding the opening and ending tracks. There were certainly some scenes that gained a lot of value from the tracks, especially emotional scenes. Overall the music was just, good. Nothing special but not bad either. Music 1/2
In the end what you should expect from Code Geass is simpler than most people think, yet it is presented with characters that are reasonably human (Speaking in regard to realism). The story allows for a good foundation for these particular characters to be played with as a writer, and was utilised well. In the end if you can't relate to the main character, in some form or another eventually, then you won't enjoy this show. But keep in mind that the soul is a complicated space, a character can be presented as simple on the surface (first episode) but really most people are complicated. Even a written character.
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