Sometimes there are shows or games that I really don't know what to make of. QED, the harrowing tale of Lelouch vi Brittania and his single-minded quest to overthrow the empire that bears his family name.
As the story goes, the Britannia empire, which is apparently full of power hungry crazies, decides they want to take over the world again (see Colonialism), and successfully does so, annexing the entire of Europe and continental Asia, as well as Japan(not without a fight, but the walking "knightmare frame" mechs they have do kinda of make it one sided). This is where the fun begins. The Area formerly known as Japan is known as Area 11, and all of Japan's former citizens are forced into slum-like housing and conditions, while the new overclass live it up with opulent style and safety (think Dickensian era class struggle difference between the two lots of people).
Lelouch lives an almost double life. Having had his mother killed by his father(at least that's who he suspects planned it), he removed himself from association with his family and all chances to take throne of Britannia as default heir, and escaped to Jap..sorry, Area 11 to plot his revenge. Years later, he and his mentally scarred-so-now-she-keeps-her-eyes-closed younger sister Nunally are living and being taught at the Ashton academy, being looked after by the Ashton family, under the assumed names of Lelouch and Nunally Lamperouge.
Turns out, Lelouch is somewhat of a master tactician. During his lunch breaks, he and his lap-dog best friend Rival escape on a sidecar to dual some of the best minds in the empire at Chess. On the return from one of these chess getaways, Lelouch gets caught up in a vehicle hijack by some Nippon liberation front type people (they get bumper shunted by a semi trailer that's been nicked from a Brittanian research facility), Lelouch gets all messed up in their escape, is accidentally targeted as being one of them. While on the lamb in this small crisis he discovers two things - firstly, his childhood friend Suzaku (who is the son of the former Prime Minister of Japan), and secondly, that what the terrorists stole, wasn't in fact the Poison Gas WMD they thought it was (or rather its hard to explain what it really IS). Instead, it's a Green-haired girl (later revealed to be named C.C (pronounced Shizu)) that has the power to give special almost magical powers (called Geass). Suzaku gets shot for disobeying an order to shoot Lelouch( he gets better), and Lelouch and CC escape, to find the true face of Britannia, mass-murdering shock troops willing to destroy entire cities to suppress an opposing view or to cover up things they don't want seen. He binds a contract with CC and she gives him a Geass power, the power to unwaveringly command people he makes eye contact with. From this point, Lelouch begins his anti-Britannia campaign, starting with the ordered suicide of the squad which caught him.
He takes on another alter-ego as Zero, leader of the Black Knights, a highly organised force of people who want the destruction of the Britannia empire. Of course, this is intermixed with his high school life and on more than one occasion through the season he has hi jinx which almost spell his true identity being revealed.
TL;DR - Lelouch becomes Osama bin Laden, only more successful.
The show is highly schizophrenic in it's direction. First it plays the high school card, then it plays the Byronic hero card, the LOYALTY card, the FAMILY Card, Jesus it plays almost a new card every episode, it's that mind-numbingly complex. The show has so many bloody characters too, 4 real primary ones, and about 20 secondary, and maybe another 30 supporting. The fact they try to give them all a fair dose of airtime doesn't help it. You know what? Thank bloody god the main story arc is rigid enough to keep it mostly in order, or this would be a real mess. To Sunrise's credit, largely they pull off most of the stuff they pull works enough to not be something to bitch about, if at times it really does seem quite off the wall.
The Characterising is a pretty large part of everything in CG, and for the most part the characters are all individual. Lelouch is a Byronic anti-hero with a heart of ice, who I found I really didn't like much. Suzaku is full of love, Gottwald is full of LOYALTY, and Euphemia is full of innocence. the characters get their motif across fairly transparently, and you don't need to wonder too hard about if they're hiding something.
Now to get into the technicals of the show.
The character art is HIGHLY stylised, with most character proportions easily defined as Noodle people. That isn't to say it's bad, but they are quite narrow and thin, with LONG arms. The animation is pretty good, with a fair few scenes with quite high frame counts (inversely, there are a few where they did just did a 2-frame talking heads thing).
Colour is vibrant, and I'm especially liking the royal purple color + crests and laurels they've given as the livery for the Britannia empire. It works, and isn't too far off the real world's British royal family livery.
Visuals overall are pretty good, but nothing that really breaks away from the norm.
To the audio side of things, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Some of the effects are pretty nice and well mixed, but some of it (like some of the gunshots) seem really piss weak by comparison. The soundtrack's not bad though, and however the first intro ( Colors by Flow) was so out of context and catchy that it became one of 3 big memes that came out of the entire Code Geass. JIBUN WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The voice casting was somewhat more optimistically done, and by and large, it's all good with Jun Fukuyama as Lelouch, a few other names as other characters, and NORIO WAKAMOTO as the Emperor of Britannia.
If you are all about mechs, terrorism, Pizza Hut or deep,broad and complex stories, CG is for you. If you're not too keen on any of that, I recommend a return to normalcy and to pretty much go do something else.
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