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This is a show I started watching with little knowledge and no real expectations, having been vaguely attracted by some of the talent involved - director Goro Taniguchi and scenarist Ichiro Okouchi worked on some excellent earlier shows, including RahXephon, Planetes and Eureka Seven. On paper it appeared a standard second-division TV anime, stuffed with cliches: handsomely tormented boyish male leads, saccharine girls, poorly defined psychic powers, inch-deep evil empires and clunking mecha combat; better still, it'd been hyped to the heavens on both sides of the Pacific, received slavish and uncritical adoration from fan communities, and came loaded with horrendously intrusive corporate sponsorship. That whole negative impression lasted three or four episodes, by which time Code Geass had shifted into high gear and begun to reveal itself as an audacious, brilliantly executed, Frankenstein's monster of a pile-up between Alexandre Dumas, Mobile Suit Gundam, V for Vendetta and Death Note. I haven't been so surprised by a show in ages.
The scenario is ridiculously epic. On a near-future parallel Earth, Japan has been conquered and subjugated by the fascistic, social-Darwinist Britannian Empire, renamed 'Area 11' and its people 'Elevens'. Exiled Britannian prince Lelouch Lamperouge lives under an assumed identity in a privileged colonial community in Tokyo, attends private school with his beloved sister Nunnally and fritters away his prodigious intellect with gambling and chess, distracting himself from the unsolved murder of his mother years before. His childhood friend Suzaku Kururugi, son of the last prime minister of Japan, serves in the Britannian military and endeavours to change the system from within, driven by guilt stemming from the death of his father who refused to surrender during the invasion. Caught up one day in a skirmish between Britannian troops and Japanese guerillas, Lelouch opens a capsule aboard the rebels' stolen truck to discover a witchlike girl named C.C., who in return for his allegiance offers him the 'Power of the King' - Geass, the ability to make any person obey him without question. Reigniting his ambition to destroy the Britannian Empire, Lelouch assumes the identity of the masked revolutionary Zero, uses his strategic genius to transform the ragtag Japanese rebels into his personal army, and publicly declares war on injustice and oppression. Suzaku, meanwhile, is put to work as the pilot of the newest Britannian combat mecha, Lancelot - and ordered, naturally, to hunt down Zero....
Code Geass is a harder anime to love than something like Eureka Seven or Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann. Despite the creators' best efforts to use the school backdrop as combined soap-opera venue and light relief, the emotional content isn't as heartfelt or well-developed as it is in E7;the victories the characters are allowed against their enemies aren't heroic or unambiguously triumphant, but generally at the cost of intricate planning and heavy sacrifices. Lelouch's Machiavellian brilliance is occasionally overdone and Suzaku's white-knight rigidity annoying - for the first portion of the series, until their determination to see through the paths and identities they've chosen begins to really take its toll on them and everyone around them. Whether or not you buy into the central dynamic of these two will heavily influence your enjoyment, but there's many more spoils to choose from. The extended action set-pieces are stunning - the battle of Narita is probably the best single action-based installment of an anime series I've seen - the music, design and animation are all first rate, and there's a vast array of stellar voice acting on display: Noriaki Sugiyama and Fumiko Orikasa from Bleach as the class clown Rivalz and tragic Shirley, Ami Koshimizu (E7's Anemone) as Starbuck-esque mecha pilot Karen Stadtfeld, and Jun Fukuyama as Lelouch himself, effortlessly slipping between the personas of airhead dilettante, kindly big brother and megalomaniac insurrectionist. The secondary cast members are something to savour too, notably Diethard, the cynical Britannian TV producer who becomes entranced by Zero's theatrical genius, and Euphemia, the naive princess whose determination to do right by the downtrodden Elevens spells disaster for Lelouch's plans.
It's been licensed already, so I won't tell you how to find it, but the DVD release is to be recommended over the TV version - this is a show that deserves to be seen in the best format you can manage. Oh, and the twenty-five episodes to date are only season one - renewal came only at the last moment, and so some of the later episodes may seem a little busy as the creators try to draw together the myriad plot threads. It doesn't matter; season one is still some of the best anime you'll this year. |
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