Wait, we’re not in sad girl in snow land anymore, Totoro. Er, Toto.

Ah, where to begin? Such a scope really begins to overwhelm me, sort of like how power (and revenge, and table-humping yuri urges) did to many of the characters in Code Geass. And I’m only halfway home so far – somehow I imagine the brokenness level only to exponentially increase from here on out.

In case the stage is not properly set, I have just completed a near-marathon run-through of the first season of Code Geass, watching 20 episodes in 2 days, broken up into shorter stints by such trifles as sleep, meals, and being locked out of one’s room.

And now, I’m here to explore my feelings regarding the show, much in the way a Renji (ef) or other dramatic VN character monologues regarding affection they hold or others hold toward them, and whether they are ‘right’ or not.

Code Geass is rather funny in that it probably doesn’t make very much sense, viewed in retrospect. We keep bouncing from one topic to the next, chasing after cats with masks one day, fighting drug addictions another day, and the next thing you know you’re watching high school girls threaten the military with nuclear bombs and you’re wondering what went wrong.

Whether such a thing is ‘wrong’ or not probably lies to the judgment of the viewer. Certainly, maybe some of the week-by-week viewers – and god knows how they could stand some of the plot twists, especially of what I have heard in R2 – had time to exercise common sense and judgment, but in a marathon, you’re getting slammed from one side to the other fast enough that sometimes you just accept things and hold on to the roller-coaster.

Certainly, my hindsight is not perfect and I tend to be very forgiving in regards to plot ridiculousness, so Code Geass worked, somehow, in a sense. Maybe it’s because all my cheese radars are trained towards the harem, so that while the slightest bit of ‘tripping and falling on top of someone’ makes me twitch, things like an off-kilter joke leading to the complete eradication of a stadium full of people doesn’t even register on the non-believability radar.

I’ll admit that my implausibility meter bumped up a bit, but was quickly slammed back down by the raw voices in my head screaming “WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT”, drowning out any logical reasoning with sheer emotional reaction as if millions of metaphoric baby seals were being clubbed.

Certainly, Code Geass was a bit of a shocking show even in its stupid moments, due to my soft background. In a sense it, and probably most mecha, trivializes even trainwreck kingpins like School Days, by dealing with problems on a much larger scale than school life drama. When you screw up in Code Geass, you screw up in real life. A tearful apology scene isn’t going to bring back all those people.

So it’s almost fitting that all the characters in Code Geass are almost gripping in their sheer outright insanity. Somehow it feels like the application to star in this show features categories for 1) extreme outlooks on the world, 2) dead people important to them, and 3) more power than their body has room for. 2 out of 3 for most characters isn’t that bad.

And on a wider scale, the passive people naturally get affected by the powerful such that, as I found, ninety-nine percent of the characters in Code Geass are either screwed up or just outright screwed. (You may decensor those words as needed.)

You can almost imagine the Shakespearean collapse of mentality and of character that occurs to Lelouch and Suzaku (among others). It transcends levels of angst achieved by that even of the most unfortunate of harem leads. You break down inside until you can’t anymore, and then you convince yourself that you’re a giant siscon, the ends justify the means, and the world be damned if it gets in your way.

Somehow it works, simply because like most of the main characters I do cling on to the few innocent or not-completely-insane people we have left (which I imagine is a losing proposition), glancing desperately around the proverbial green room of characters, hoping somebody has some sense left and can knock that sense into others.

Perhaps it is because of the amusing way in which Code Geass establishes everything as a series of shipping relationships in the beginning, firing off an initial squad of three girls all targeted on Lelouch in one way or the other and pairing off other people as we go. It’s a direction that one doesn’t expect from a show like this (at least, I didn’t), and in the end CG skips a lot of that melodrama of falling in love, and just sort of accepts it, in a whirlwind romance of boy meets girl, later on they realize they get along well, ok, now kill one of them.

It’s cheap, it’s easy, and it’s brutal. One wishes for someone not to get mind-broken horribly in this anime but the ranks of the candidates are slimming faster than a girl on a crash diet and heavens knows Nunnally is a priceless vase just asking to be broken.

The other angle one can take is to hope for some sort of justice on a macro level. The ol ‘how are they going to get out of this one now?’, except by they I mean ‘the world’, and by this one I mean ‘being launched into war and turmoil by a siscon and his squad of tragic heroes’.

It’s a simple wish and one that a lot of dramatic roller-coaster shows take, and the more interesting question here is whether Code Geass in its second season is going to roll more towards being a ‘good end’ story or a ‘moralistic’ story. And I say this knowing just what happens in the last minutes of R2 (well, y’know, I have been around the otakusphere in the last year).

Is Lelouch too crazy to be a good person any more, or too bishie to fail? That is the question.

So the appeal of Code Geass is half shock value, half shipper action (slash the ever-old tradition of fourth wall moe), half pew pew machine guns mecha-ballet, and half tragic. Does that sound about right? It’s appeal would mathematically be 200%, but what use are numbers and logic in a show like this? It seems like a big number but the next thing you know, you’re excavating a bigger number with wings and pew pew laser cannons out of some mysterious island and 200% is pitiable.

Code Geass is a pseudo-futuristic show where a small quantity of people have unusually shiny eyes that allow them to do particularly crazy things. If I were feeling particularly philosophical I’d bring something up about the “great men” theory and how Lelouch has pretty much been granted that position (as exemplified in the episode where he forgets that leaving his army to go save his sister isn’t exactly a morale boost). It seems cheating to just say “oh, it’s unrealistic, so it’s OK”, but I’m thinking it’s right that my standards for plausibility are set pretty low here.

After all, we’ve been to this point probably a couple dozen times, but it’s not about whether something is realistic or not, but whether you can empathize with the characters in one way or the other. And on that front, I suppose Code Geass wins because I still pray for Nunnally, shift alignments on Lelouch and Suzaku constantly, and want to kick Nina in the face. (Oh, yes, I can shun a meganekko too.)

The characters are at least to some extent interesting and Code Geass manages to run the spectrum of Exciting Genres well enough that my attention is kept. It could have fallen into a pit of angst but managed to save itself, at least by throwing itself into the pit of insanity or the pit of exploding things. It got a bit gratuitous in its Bondiness or JUST-AS-PLANNED-itude, what with all the Sakuradite bombs and games-of-chess bombs and nuclear bombs and … uh … bombs, did I mention that … but one derives a source of pleasure and entertainment in alternatingly wanting to adore and abhor Lelouch and the plans that constantly surround him.

You should know from my grounding in GARmbling that I like thinking games. Code Geass perhaps doesn’t wield its Checkov’s guns very well but it keeps one drawing up new possibilities and constantly recoloring everything and everyone (or at the least, readjusting the upper bounds on how much can hit the fan), and I appreciate that in a show.

If you go to a theme park and ride roller coasters, you expect a ride. I slammed down that safety bar over my lap and held on, and I got a ride. That’s all I really ask for.

Perhaps due to its ’short’ duration mentally (as opposed to a weekly anime viewing) it doesn’t get a crowning moment of awesome, or leave much of a mark on my mind or heart, but I’ll still be covering my right eye with my left hand in an awkward pose for weeks to come and gratuitously wielding my Nerf gun regardless.

It’s difficult in the end for me to truly discuss Code Geass because there was hardly much to discuss – at least until I get to that moment in R2. Character motivation, tempting, but either not clear enough or too clear. Plot twists, what use is there out than shouting in disbelief and shock? The point of a review like this is to recommend whether a show is worth watching or not and I don’t have a good gauge for Code Geass.

I feel like it was a good use of my time and on my completely irrelevant scale it got an 8 (which is quite above average). There’s no real reason for such, other than it kept me interested. Therefore, I say to you, without question, if you can accept an action, strategy-packed show mixed with a half-tragic, half-manic collapse of Shakespearean size and a dash of pseudo-romance, Code Geass will be a lot of fun. Perhaps why it works at least on some basic level, is because it does a lot of things.

It’s a melting pot of genres, a jack of all trades, and while it fumbles a few of the balls it juggles, no one is paying attention because there are still six other balls in the air, one of which is shiny enough to appeal to you.

Well, now for me, it’s just a matter of seeing how this legendary second season changed things…

-CCY

(Finally, a protip: if you want someone to die, shoot them in the head. Not the stomach. The stomach does not work. OK?!)