Code Geass - Lelouch of the Rebellion

Information of Anime

The Empire of Britannia invaded Japan using giant mechas called Knightmare Frames.  Japan is now called Area Eleven & the people are referred as Eleven.  Born from the Britannia kingdom, Lelouch Lamperouge witnesses the war & promises his Eleven friend, Suzaku Kururugi that he'll destroy Britannia.  Years passes & Lelouch is in high school.  On his way to school, he encounters some Eleven terrorists that stole some top secret military equipment.  The secret turns out to be a young girl named C.C. who grants Lelouch the power to make obey to his order.  Using this power, he secretly becomes Zero, a marked terrorist that will overthrow Britannia.  However, his friend Suzaku is part of the Britannia army & pilots a new powerful prototype Knightmare Frame.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  This section does contain some spoilers.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

Using his new powers, Lelouch (or Zero rather) controls a group of Eleven terrorists to take on Britannia like a game of chess.  Sometimes he's successful & sometimes he's not.  This is mainly due to the group of people he's control.  Some of them don't trust him since he doesn't reveal his face to them & have doubts on his trust.  Because of the ability to use his powers once, Lelouch uses it with caution.  As the story progresses, we learn that Lelouch is defeating for his own personal reason.  He & his sister, Nunnally Lamperouge, were thrown out of the Britannia palace when their mother died.  Their father, the Emperor of Britannia, never considered them as his children in the first place which was why he never saved their mother.  Lelouch basically wants to overthrow Britannia for revenge.

Suzaku, a son of the last Prime Minster of Japan, joins Britannia to overthrow Britannia as well.  However, he wants to change it.  Even though he & Zero have the same objective, their ways of doing it is different.  Not knowing Lelouch is Zero, Suzaku considers him as an enemy.

C.C., the girl who gave Lelouch his powers, stays around him due to the contract they made.  Although he's cold to her, she reminds him that she gave him his powers & is required to work for her.

Lelouch decides to take his rebel army to the next level as they use the opportunity to make a name of themselves by rescuing Princess Euphemia Li Britannia from the Japanese Liberation Federation.  He calls his team the Order of Black Knights that will help the weak from being overpowered by the strong.  He uses the king of Britannia as an example.  Because of his team's actions, the Black Knights become very popular to the Elevens to the point where they want to join or help them.  But some of them stay quiet because of the power of Britannia's laws.  However, Suzaku sees them as a group doing this for self-satisfaction as Zero leads them to a one-minded track.

As the Black Knights fight for justice, Zero's actions would later lead to problems that he didn't expect such as killing Shirley's father by accident.  Not only does it pain Shirley to lose her father, but to discover that Lelouch is Zero.  Lelouch's action would cause problem not only to her, but to himself.  Aside from Shirley & another person knowing his secret, another person named Mao with the power of Geas as well would be a threat to him.  When Lelouch manages to get rid of Mao, he learns Suzaku's dark secret from Mao before he dies.  It turns out that Suzaku killed his father to for the sake of Japan.

The show continues as the Order of Black Knights gets bigger with outside members joining the team, including JLF's Four Blades.  Meanwhile, Princess Euphemia elects Suzaku as her knight during an art award ceremony where the reporters were bad mouthing Suzaku during a live broadcast of a Britannia base being attacked by the Black Knights.  Upon learning this & discovering that Suzaku was the one in the Lancelot all this time, Lelouch tries to have him join on his side by trapping him.  However, Britannia issues an order to Suzaku to hold down Zero as they try to launch a series of missiles on them.  Seeing how Suzaku refuses to leave go, Lelouch uses the Geass on him.  This would send them along with Karen & Euphemia to an island.

On the island, Suzaku ends up with Karen as they search for help.  He takes her as hostage & tries to make her leave the Black Knights.  On the other end, Lelouch is with Euphemia who immediately knows that he's Zero.  The odd couples spend their time together helping one another in order to survive.  In the meanwhile, Britannia is searching for Euphemia while investigating an ancient ruin on the island which is call the Island of Gods.  When the couple manage to met each other, Zero takes the opportunity to get Karen back from Suzaku by using Euphemia as his hostage in an exchange.  However, the floor below them collapses when Lelouch's Geass reacts to something.  There, the Britannia army sees them & tries to capture Zero.  Seeing a Knightmare nearby, he takes it as he escapes with Karen. The Knightmare is actually a prototype of future Knightmares as it has some powerful elements in it.

After that incident, Euphemia begins to see how weak she is.  Shirley begins to recall her memories as she finds a note where she wrote that Lelouch is Zero & is confused about it.  Things tie together when Euphemia meets Nanaly & Lelouch at their school festival.  Euphemia enters the school in secret until the media spots her.  Here, she uses this opportunity to announce the formation of the Special Administration Area of Japan where Sevens will be called Japanese again.  She believes this will help Lelouch, but he thinks this will destroy his purpose of what he has accomplished up to now.  This makes the Japanese happy again & the Britannians shocked.

The Black Knights don't know whether apply to be Japanese again or go against it as a lot of Elevens are applying to be Japanese again.  On the day of the ceremony, Zero appears & wants to talk to Euphemia one on one in an area without cameras.  Trying to shoot her, Lelouch learns that Euphemia is doing this for Nunnally to live in peace & for her to be with Lelouch again.  Understanding her motives, Lelouch is happy about it & jokes around about how she should kill all Japanese people.  However, it turns into an order as his Geass is turned on by itself.  Because of this, Euphemia goes into a killing spree in killing all the Japanese at the ceremony.  This shocks Britannia & Lelouch is left with no choice but to kill her & use this chance to have the Elevens think that she had tricked them all this time.  With the death of Euphemia, the Black Knights gather a large crowd in helping them take out Britannia once & for all & form their own country.  Now they enter into the final battle with Lelouch vs. Suzaku.

Lelouch gets the upper hand in the fight as he plans his tactics wisely & using the Geass to launch a huge battle against the Britannia Empire with many supporters.  He uses the school grounds as a command center for the war.  However, things take a turn when some people that he used the Geass on is starting to or have recovered their memories.  What's worse is that Suzaku learns about the Geass does from a mysterious girl who would take Nunnally with her.  When Lelouch learns of this, he leaves the battlefield & leaving commands to some of the leader members.  This creates a confusion & a drop in morale in Zero's army as they somewhat lose their trust in him as they can't understand why he suddenly left. They start to think that Zero has abandon Japan.

The show ends with Suzaku & Karen learning Zero's identity as he is on his way to rescue Nunnally.  In frustration, Suzaku & Lelouch shot each other with a cliffhanger where the viewers don't know what happen.  Near the ending credit, C.C. talks about how humans exist to pursue happiness & a message about a second season appears.

My Personal Review

Code Geass - Lelouch of the Rebellion is surprisingly a great series.  It's got an interesting storyline involving politics & war.  Plus, it's got your internal family conflicts.  I highly recommend watching this.  However, the ending will disappoint you.

Animation

The character designs are designed by CLAMP.  So, you will see their traditional long body & limbs.  Plus, the faces maintain that usual CLAMP touch.  Not close to their manga designs, but pretty good.  As for fashion, the men don't have much as you will mainly see them in uniforms most of the time.  The women have that CLAMP touch as well which made them famous for their unique female fashion appeal.

The Knightmare Frames are quite impressive.  They are beautifully designed with all those gadgets & weapons.  Even the movements are very swift.  They mainly done in 3DCG & it's quite good as they don't look out of place in the show.  I'm not sure if CLAMP did the designs, but I don't think they did.

The backgrounds are pretty nice & detailed.  Pretty dull in the colour, which is pretty good as it gives of that elegant & crumpled appearance of the buildings in different areas.

The animation flow is pretty smooth.  Not much jerking, but it's got those high jumps from certain characters.  So, not all the movements are your standard realistic ones.

Sound       

The sound effects are pretty good & clean.  Not much silly sounds, but they do appear at times.  At times, they don't seem to be on cue such as the footsteps of characters walking.

The seiyuus aren't too bad in my opinion.  They role play their characters well in terms of their emotions.

The music contains mostly orchestral style themes.  They create the mood well for the show, but it's not memorable as they go into one ear & out the other quite easily.

Story

Along it's pretty much your typical two best friends fighting against each other idea, it's somewhat done well.  You have a main character that wants to overthrow his father for his personal revenge.  You don't see a lot of that anger in shows today.  Plus, the character traits are unique as a lot of them are fuelled by emotions.  You get that lot in many shows, but the way this show presents it is different.  You can pretty much feel for the characters in terms of sympathy or hate.

The battles are a bit questionable in my view.  The way Zero plans his attacks does look complicated, but for some reason it's a bit easy.  Although he controls his team as chess pieces that may or may not follow his orders, they don't seem to be intelligently done.  But, it's pretty good to see some of his strategies don't good the way he wants them to.  Good for interest & character development in terms of his growing anger & self-hate.  Since Lelouch can use his powers only once per person & have used it a lot on many people, it will be interesting to see how he will get out of trouble when he meets the same enemy again in the next encounter with them.  Also, the story gets a bit darker along the way with appearance of new characters & Suzuka's secret.

One thing I would like to note is how this show does a lot of advertising for Pizza Hut.  The logo appears once in every episode in the first few episodes& it's not one of those misspelled or altered things.  I don't know if Pizza Hut is sponsoring the show or one of the staff has something for that restaurant.  But it stops after a while & continues again later.

As for the ending, it seriously is a cliffhanger.  After a long wait for the final two episodes to air, the viewers are left to wait again for a second season to continue with the story.  The drive to that point is great, but the ending result really leaves you hungry & mad.  It leaves too many holes as most of the conflicts & story elements are left unfinished.

Overall Conclusion

Code Geass - Lelouch of the Rebellion is a must watch anime show for the Fall 06 lineup.  It's got action & a good storyline.  Although it's got mechas as well, I think of them as side bonuses really since they don't appear that much as I thought.  I truly highly recommend putting this on your "must watch" list.  However, the show will disappoint you at the end.

Code Geass - Lelouch of the Rebellion gets a 8.5/10.  It's really a great anime series.  The storyline is well written & the characters are playing their parts well to make it interesting.  The battle strategies however seem to be too simple, but still creates some suspense.  However, the ending is a major upset where you are left waiting once again to finish the story with many mysterious still not yet solved.

Last updated on December 26, 2007