I was pretty biased against the series from the start, but since I apparently need a reason to hate it.. it involved CLAMP
Fixed.
On to the discussion, though, the first episode was pretty poor. The series should not be confusing in any way (if you're actually confused by it, then go back to watching DBZ and Yumeria), though as much as I loved the series, it does have many, many flaws. Firstly, the coincidence factor is quite excessive at times, especially with
Euphie's death; it seems really contrived how the most important plot point in the entire series boils down to a random coincidence. It's like...representative of Kanon or KimiNozu or something. If Euphie needs to die, it would be much better if Lelouch consciously decided that his revenge is more important than his sister/lover. I shouldn't need to mention the other instances where coincidence ruins everything.Second, the story's pacing is only average.
Mao was completely unnecessary, episode 6 with the cat is horribly placed, and even the critically acclaimed episodes 24 and 25 feel like random scenes moving about in a 1 hour time frame. The interactions there were rather unnecessarily forced, not to mention that V.V.'s appearance is not only unexplained, but fely completely wrong and unnecessary no matter what explaination they might end up giving 20 episodes later in the second season.Third, the series should have ended at around 30 episodes.
Lelouch's rebellion is the centerpoint of the story; a second season where he's brainwashed and starts back from the beginning is not needed, and so far, the episodes within the second season are not much different from the first, excepting the Emperor's GEASS and explainations. Adding the trouble of rescuing Nunnaly also adds nothing to the premise of the show and is used entirely to add rehashed episodes and production value. LOL cash cow.Fourth, Rolo sucks. Period.
Fifth (does that even make sense), Karen's character gets worse by the minute
(I think I remember one of the anime review sites parodying the "Lelouch, tell me the truth" scene with the caption "Lelouch, I will be your sex slave." Strangely, that complete misquote is not entirely off basis given that Karen's quote in that episode was basically "Lelouch, did you use your Geass on me? Oh, you're laughing uncontrollably at me and seemingly belittling my freedom. Well, I guess that's okay, since you did say something amazingly inspirational to one of my comrades. I would love to continue to serve as your sex slavepawn."). Many of Lelouch's minions were great in the first season because of how fresh their personalities are, and yet, by the second season, Deidrich's insane desire to see the world change is no longer fun to watch. Lelouch's uber-pwn landscape-included uber-complex cless-like strategies are no longer fun to watch. Todo never was much of a character in the first place, and the Japanese peoples' unconditional will to gather outside of the execution scene and scream in support of Zero just shouts "WTF" to me.So why do I still love GEASS even given the above reasons? It's simple - Lelouch and Suzaku are awesome. Lelouch is a perfect representation of an imperfect hero with a partially selfish, partially emphasizable, and humanistically flawed and scrambled dream, and is willing to go above and beyond to achieve it. Suzaku is a hypocritical version of the conventional anime hero, with his "I will do this without bloodshed. I will change everything from the inside and ignore the fact that without Zero, I would have been dead. I will stop war without caring about the peoples' pride. I will bow down to Euphemia and serve her hand-on-foot and pile all of my freedom and dignity on her shoulders and let her change the world and thus gain momentum with my argument of changing Britannia from the inside. I will oppose Zero because he kills soldiers, and my ideals are justified just because I tell people to put down their weapons before every battle. If they actually have pride then they deserve to die and my ideals of still stopping the war without bloodshed will still be upheld," which NO anime that I've seen so far will even dare portray. If it was not for these two main chars, then Code GEASS would be just another Samurai 7 with fanservice and random silliness.
