Cruel Angel Theses

About the title. This is to save some of you the effort of reading through this: there isn’t any, at least not with respects to Code Geass — if you’re one of those who think it is, excuse me while I pause to laugh and make fun of your crap anime that you think is superior to it, like Gravitation or Sister Princess, Loveless or Ichigo 100%. You can press Ctrl+W now.

To those of you who’re reading on, well, I loved it. What can I say? While my eyes were suffering towards the end (like yours would too if you’d watch 23 episodes over three days), my mind was revelling in the sheer quality of it all. As I mentioned previously I loved the unoriginal premise — an unsubtle blend of Gundam SEED and Death Note. Kira (Yamato) + Kira, anyone? It’s more likely than you think!

So after it all was done, I did a search through FeedDemon and found one, two, three articulate opinions about Code Geass lying around. Out of 35 anime blogs. No one’s to blame, really, since the summary blogs were doing their thing and the editorial ones were generally struck dumb by episode 22 — if I was lazier right now you’d be reading yet another generic opinion raving about it. Although that’s besides the point.

@TheBigN: if you never noticed this homage, change your blog name. Now.

I got the impression I had to say something about this perceived issue from the comments I read over at anime|otaku’s post here. Michael’s writing was impeccable, but there was something about the comments that made me do a facepalm. I know one or two misinformed opinions don’t an entire audience make, but assuming a sample size that is indicative, you’ve got 1 out of 7 otakus taking Code Geass the wrong way, which is “stupid and unbelievable”.

Let’s dive into suspension of disbelief for a moment. I believe this is one of the main reasons for someone growing to dislike an anime, and I could be wrong on this, but; suspension of disbelief basically is, like its namesake, the device that keeps you watching Superman despite the valid yet ignored point that his identity can’t be changed through a different hairstyle and the lack of glasses. We’ve got the same thing here — kacpy and jizz are a good example of how suspension of disbelief goes hand in hand with the opinion of an anime. So they can accept a world with Elevens, Britannia, and Geass, but not with supposedly unexplainable plot holes and corny lines (Suzaku was presumably referring to his patricide for “not being human”, Mao didn’t die because the Geass can be fought against, and the cops didn’t want to kill him, Suzaku dodged bomb particles during the hotel incident in a freaking mech, a sub-standard machinegun with a 0.7 second lag would be easy)?

I’ve always wondered at the wearing off of suspension of disbelief. I’ve found the cynical opinion never fails to surface when I’m not enjoying an anime as much as I think I should be, or when I form opinions of something even before I watch it, and then get let down by the obstacles my mind’s formed. That’s just one of the ways to look at it — another reason I thought of how people could actually dislike Code Geass is by how it might appear to be made for success. You know, the type of anime usually associated with harem and moe, the type that panders to fetishization. Then they go on to watch it, and you know how it is that people see what they want to see? So in their eyes Code Geass becomes nothing more than pre-processed rubbish, and suspension of disbelief goes. Cue ill-informed comments on blog posts everywhere.

It’s definitely inevitable given the structure of what we’re dealing with, or what it’s made — the Gundam SEED part giving pretty boys, mechs, best friends fighting against each other, factional drama; the Death Note part giving secret identities, tight plot, a genius protagonist, logic and reasoning, a power with limitations, the immortal giver of said power. I know I thought the same at first, but after the first “death” and Lelouch giving his first Geass order I threw the thought out the window.

The armchair critics go “I could do that, give me a couple hundred million yen and I’d be mixing up X and Y anime into Z for profit”, but would it be that simple in reality? I love Code Geass for being mecha yet intellectually gratifying, adding in thriller elements that weren’t a convention, not taking the easy way out by separating the impact of conflict from the characters (Shirley’s father was a welcome touch). There were numerous twists on a JUST AS PLANNED scale; zero (haha, punny) filler unless you count The Stolen Mask as one; most importantly the characters could be identified with.

I’m aware of the disagreement that comes with this one. I’ll agree, it’s pretty tough to identify with a prodigy who’s good in everything he does, who’s also in possession of a world-changing power given to him by some supernatural figure and has a pretty face to boot, but enough about Light. Lelouch was all that, yet I found myself identifying with him because he slipped up a lot, and not because he wasn’t Light’s equal.

Lelouch is — the only reason he loses in any challenge was due to how he depended on other people for his plans (Light did the same with that long-haired lawyer and… wait, nevermind SPOILERS, sorry psgels). The Geass also made him human in a way Light never was — while the Death Note had a degree of detachment to it and acted like a constant, the Geass was more variable, and personal in that the immediate effects of it could be felt, and it didn’t have cast-iron predictability. This, I feel, is what separates it from Death Note — it was easy to laugh away the murders of criminals and police happening off-screen and develop an attitude of nonchalance to it, but the Geass struck home every single time — Lelouch using it on Shirley was a powerful scene that beat anything Death Note ever did.

Have you ever been obsessed with something, or gotten involved so deep with that thing that it resulted in behavioural dependence of some sort? I don’t know about you, but I have, and Lelouch resonated with me for that reason. For every scene in which the results of his actions were revealed to him, he had a chance to stop. Instead, he reasoned with himself about how he’d come this far, how he shouldn’t turn back — “I’ll quit tomorrow”, anyone? Or “just one more cigarette”. Definitely worthy of the Best Actor in a Leading Role seiyuu award.

Going back to what I said earlier about separation from the impact of conflict — I watched Bokurano 03 yesterday, and was pleased at the result. The thing about quite a lot of mecha out there’s that the only highlighted result of all that carnage and conflict would essentially be the loss of a character. I’m looking at SEED and their tit-for-tat deaths Kira and Athrun were doing — am I supposed to feel something here, or are you trying to milk my emotions for drama’s sake? Here’s where I think the mecha genre and their much publicised character deaths need to take a hike, because if Code Geass and Bokurano are any indication, they’ve made it old hat. Bring on collateral damage.

How mecha operates when it comes to suspension of disbelief is pretty convenient: Let’s have it in outer space! Or a desert island. Or maybe Tokyo has gone underwater because the polar caps have melted, so the place’s empty of civilians since everyone’s pretty much dead anyway. I’m guessing given Japan’s heritage, mecha probably took a leaf from Ultraman and Godzilla’s city-mashing, e.g. you could wreck entire places without giving a thought to those living in them.

Real wars have real consequences. The first character death in Bokurano was one among thousands of those dead, and the impact it had served to humanise the cast in a way it never could have if the author had chose to ignore the surroundings. Shirley’s father, like I mentioned before, was a welcome touch due to how it hit home to Lelouch, how his little game had more to it than just a faceless, nameless mass that was Britannia’s army — something Death Note and Gundam SEED never bothered with.

I guess that pretty much sums up my thoughts about the show. Only problem I found with Code Geass was the first ED and second OP, which sucked, and the recycled animation/stills for both, that jarred considerably with the series’ high production values. That, and realising only much later on that Cecile’s character design was Flay Allster with blue hair Athrun with longer hair. Lloyd also bugged me as being the sum of all the meganekko guys Clamp’s ever drawn — in other words, an annoying faggot.

Oh, and did anyone laugh as much as I did at this unintentional homage?

Just like the music, which was a great throwback to Koutarou Nakagawa’s work with Scryed — he even named his preview music Previous Notice again. I realised the similarities when I heard Mikio Sakai’s insert songs, who, btw, sings in a pretty gar style, which is awesome since there’s nothing like it out there. At least not to my knowledge.