Code Geass Review

Code Geass, JRPG Gnosticism, and Based Mecha World

Warning: Major Spoilers! If you’re going to watch this show, I’d recommend doing it BEFORE reading this article.

I am ready to review a show that I feel is one of the best I have ever watched. I finished it about a week ago, but was busy with other stuff so I couldn’t complete the review. Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion. The story of a jilted prince, who turns to a liberator of Nations, then to a tyrant, and finally a sacrificial lamb who takes on the sins of the world, to create it all anew. Along the way there is love, loss, war, peace, and the question of why we must live in this flawed world.

The show starts off, in both seasons, kind of slow in my opinion. He has to spend more time in both distracted with keeping his “IRL” identity solid. Silly school things pester him. You can even say it starts out sort of shitlibbed. Lelouch is sort of a Rawlsian in his rhetoric, a freedom fighter for the “oppressed” Japanese, and a critic of the Britannian Aristocracy, while his father is ostensibly a caricature of a Nietzschean. However, as the show goes on, we learn that the true nature of both is very different, and yet ultimately the same up until their final encounter.

To set the scene, the world is dominated by three grand powers. The Holy Britannian Empire, which is actually centered in America, is the product of the English royal family fleeing England long before any American revolution, to America, in a similar vein to what Portugal did. They have a eugenically engineered aristocracy which has special rights over the common yoke, who themselves have special rights over the “numbers” (Britannia’s colonies). The Chinese Federation is the decrepit, confederated remains of Imperial China, ruled behind the scenes by a court of unsexed, treacherous, sniveling Eunuchs who use the young virtually imprisoned empress as a figurehead. The European Union is the one we are told least about. Ironically, but understandably, it actually controls Britain. At the beginning of the show they are shown as controlling all of Europe, Russia, and Africa, but by the end they have been reduced to fragments of Europe due to war with the “Brits”.

The story revolves around Lelouch of Britannia, the son of the Emperor, who was sent to Japan as a hostage after his mother was mysteriously killed. His three missions are to discover the truth behind his mother’s death, destroy the Britannian Empire, and create a world safe for his sister, who was blinded and crippled by the attack. He uses the powers of Geass, given to him by an immortal witch named C2 under undisclosed conditions, in order to mind control people, but he can only give one command to each person. His friend, who slowly turns into his sworn enemy, is Suzaku Kururugi. He is the descendant of Japanese aristocracy, the son of the former Prime Minister, who, out of desperation, killed his father in order to save Japan from the bloodshed that war with Britannia caused. He is sort of the opposite of Lelouch. He is undyingly loyal to the empire, an honorary Britannian, and his mission is to lead by example and encourage greater conditions for his people from within the ranks.

The show could sort of be considered the opposite of what I described ATLA as. Instead of being a pozzed show that to any normal eye is not pozzed, it is actually an extremely apolitical show hiding behind a mask of politics. No side is treated as “the good guys”. The Britannians are cruel and practice harsh social stratification both to their colonial subjects and amongst themselves, but they are also admittedly highly advanced, and they bring this advancement to their colonies. Throughout the show it is difficult to really decide who you’re rooting for, as it is apparent that the methods of Lelouch often result in disaster while the methods of Suzaku often work, and many Britannian fighters are shown in a positive light. The Black Knights, Lelouch’s army of Japanese rebels, seems sort of left-wing from an American point of view, but you must recognize that this is a Japanese show, and the only group the Black Knights align themselves with that actually resembles something real is the forces of Tohdoh (probably not coincidentally reminiscent of the name Tojo) who are obviously meant to be more classic Japanese Nationalist types. The show portrays the Black Knights as a “big tent” organization, allowing people of many ideologies and origins to join. The one time we see the recruitment process (during the time Diethard wants to join) it is shown that the other applicant is “Far-Right”. Lelouch, however, views the group as a means to an end, as a means to remaking the world in his image.

Lelouch becomes more morally loose as the first season goes on. It starts with him killing his brother, the current overseer of Japan, as well as other Japanese Rebels who he considered obstructive. Then it moves onto him erasing the memory of his girlfriend (sort of) when she finds out his secret identity of Zero (which makes him responsible for the death of her father, who got caught up in the previous battle). He sabotages Kururugi and almost gets him killed by framing him for the murder of his brother, but because they are both close friends at this point he would never kill him. Kururugi, likewise, slowly develops a less flowery view of the world, as the Black Knights cause him more and more trouble. His heart is broken after Lelouch accidentally Geasses his lady and Viceroy of Japan Euphemia Britannia into sending her soldiers on a massacre of the Japanese, a disaster which results in her death by the hands of the Black Knights. She is so helpless to the power of the Geass that she even goes out in the streets and starts gunning down Japanese herself. It is one of my favorite plot twists in Season 1. I also enjoyed when Lelouch used the Geass on himself to avoid being mind-read by another Geass user who was obsessed with C2. Lelouch is portrayed as a brilliant young man, but also quite rash and poor in judgement at times. Some of the best scenes in the show are when he messes up.

There is a decent amount of fanservice in this show. It for some reason ramps up a lot in the middle of Season 2, but then dies down in the late episodes. Lelouch has three potential love interests in the show, and all of them have some fanservice. Some of the enemies also have some fanservice, but it’s not that bad. C2, Shirlie (the aforementioned school girlfriend), and his bodyguard Kallen. C2 and Shirlie are both White, Kallen is a half-breed. Tokyo has a large Britannian population and Lelouch goes to a Britannian school. The only Japanese students are Suzaku and Kallen. Shirlie is annoying and clingy until she dies, which redeems her massively. In fact, this show does a great job at redeeming characters when they die. Rollo, the planted Little Brother of Lelouch meant to replace Nunnaly (his cripple sister) in his memories, is meant to be extremely hated. He is a cold-blooded assassin, but also gullible and emotionally easy to manipulate due to his lonely life. He kills Shirlie after she reveals to him that she got her memories back and mentions Nunnaly, which strikes a nerve. When Shirlie dies, Lelouch realizes that her love for him (unlike anyone else in his life) was unconditional, as she knew both sides of him and still loved him. When Rollo dies, Lelouch realizes that Rollo sacrificed himself for him even though he had already been told that Lelouch hates him and wants to kill him, because Lelouch is all he ever had. Kallen is kind of boring in my opinion, she is good for fight scenes but in that field she is outcompeted by Suzaku, who is just awesome to watch fight. The amount of female mech pilots in this show is probably one of the only actual truly woke things about it — in real life, the lower spatial ability, lower general variance in most traits, and lower aggression and competitiveness of wamen would make them not very prevalent among elite mech pilots just like how it makes them not very prevalent among Chess grandmasters and E-Athletes. But it does sort of seem sometimes in the show like mech piloting is 80% tech, 20% skill. People who have never piloted before become very powerful the second they pick up a powerful new mech, especially if they have prior combat experience outside of mechs.

Also, there is an insane amount of Pizza Hut product placement and it makes no in-universe sense. This takes place in a massively altered timeline. Why does Pizza Hut still exist? Pizza Hut is an American company, and there is no America in this universe. So many questions… Maybe in this universe it’s better than in real life. I have only had Pizza Hut once — I don’t really like chain Pizza. When you live in the Northeast it’s not necessary.

The plotline with the King is probably the most fascinating thing about the show, and I probably would have preferred for the show to end with the defeat of the emperor. His true goal is to “kill god”, and this is his mission ordained by his brother who gave him the powers of Geass, just as the power of Geass was given to Lelouch by C2. You see this sort of semi-gnosticism all the time in Japanese media. It is either that the enemy is god, or the enemy wants to kill god and create a “new world” free of this world’s gaps. There was a popular Xeet maybe a few months ago which noted the popularity of “god-killing” in JRPGs — they mentioned one of the Xenoblade (which does actually have strong Gnostic elements at least in some games), Chrono Trigger, and Final Fantasy. The latter two, when I looked into them, appear to just have “arch-demon” lovecraftian style enemies, they aren’t really gods in the traditional sense, and you see this in a lot of RPGs because, you know, you want the final boss to be really strong so the character feels accomplished. You see it in Sonic (Solaris), Mario RPG (Culex), Earthbound (Giygas), Kirby (Zero — not the Zero we’re talking about), just to name a few. Meanwhile the “god-killing world-recreating enemy” is seen in Neon Genesis: Evangelion, Dragon Ball Super, and Pokemon. Despite the tough guy act, Lelouch’s father really wants a world free of lies, and free of human conflict, and wants to create a new world in order to do so. It is revealed that Lelouch’s mother was in on this the whole time as well. Lelouch ultimately refuses, and believes it is necessary to live in this world of decay… Or at least, it is necessary to experience it for some time, for our allotted time. We can’t just immanentize the eschaton. There are points to be made by both sides, but it does upset me that after this we did not really learn anything more of the power of Geass or its origins, or the true nature of this world. The emperor is extremely badass every time he’s on screen, honestly. He’s massive, immortal, and has hair that looks like the wig judges wear.

After the false death of Lelouch’s sister Nunnaly via what is basically a nuke, and the ethereal encounter with his father, his worldview secretly changes as does that of Suzaku (who was there too, planning to kill the Emperor and support the usurpation of the throne by the de facto manager of the empire, Prince Schneizel).

Lelouch, Schneizel, Charles, and Suzaku appear different on the outside, but they’re all the same. They want to make a new world, and to make this new world they must rule the world, absolutely. It’s a pretty popular plot in 2000s Anime. You see it in Death Note and then in Attack on Titan. And they will do whatever it takes to bring peace, justice, or order to the world. Politics is all a show, for these great men of history, or at least in the chivalric world of the Mecha anime it is. I have come to realize that the world is lame because human capital has been massively reallocated to computer sciences over the past 30 years, while fields like robotics and biology were hampered with ethics boards and regulations. Small processors, big batteries, etc etc. instead of having mechas we have mechanical wordcels like ChatGPT who help kids cheat on their homework. I like the interior mech aesthetics of this show, but the exterior mech aesthetics look pretty generic. I am forced also to conclude that part of the Britannian genetic enhancement programs were making women’s breasts large and shapely, because most of the characters in the show have great tits. There are no fat people in the show, which is great. There is an Indian, but she has blond hair and blue eyes. I don’t know if Japanese people knew what Indians looked like in the 2000s.

Anyways… After this, Lelouch decides to break the trend, seeing that it always results in failure, by turning himself into somewhat of a Christ-like figure — a sacrificial lamb. A scapegoat, for all the worlds problems. After Thanos-snapping his old man, he becomes emperor of Britannia, and brainwashes half his inner circle to basically be his slaves. He sends a lot of these brainwashed people off to die and uses them to rule with an iron fist. After a massive battle with Schneizel, who has ironically become aligned with the Black Knights now, he even brainwashes Schneizel. Then, he has Suzaku fake his death in battle, and has Suzaku (disguised as Zero) kill Lelouch, who has made himself hated by literally everyone and has conquered the entire world. But it is impossible to revolt against him because he literally has like millions of people brainwashed. In the end, it is loosely suggested that Lelouch might have actually lived through the powers of Geass, or been resurrected (more of a christlike ending) and now wanders the earth with C2. But it can be interpreted also that he died, which I think I might prefer.

Although Lelouch acknowledges that humans will always fall back into bad behavior, unlike Schneizel who thinks nuking a bunch of cities will lead to Francis Fukuyama World Peace, he believes that the beauty of life is that people search for happiness in despair. Everyone is looking for happiness. I don’t know, I used to strongly believe in the life affirmation of Lelouch, but I’ve become jaded. I still think we’re here for a reason, I think it is necessary to descend to this lower plane to truly ascend to the highest highs. We’re here for a good reason, I know that, but I would be lying if I said that I don’t feel my soul growing weary of it all…

Overall, I rate the show a 9/10. People imagine a 9/10 is very high, but it’s really not super duper high. It’s an A-. It’s a 1290 on the SAT. It’s 6’1. But I don’t think there are much shows that exceed a 9/10. Even among movies, only a handful. It’s really hard to retain a very high score over the course of 50 episodes. Last notes, ehh… Why didn’t Lelouch just tell Shirlie to forget he was Zero? I don’t get that. We’re not talking about the Table scene, but I’ll mention that Nina is an extremely annoying and troublesome character that barely gets a redemption.