Code Geass Hangyaku no Lelouch first impressions

I didn’t think I’d be able to cram this series into the very limited amount of free time I have between work, school, and keeping up with the other anime I’m watching. But everyone says it’s good so I decided to check it out(and I now officially have no more room for any new series’ until I finish one I’m currently watching, LOL.) Luckily only 11 fansubbed episodes have been released so far, so I’m not too far behind(I just finished watching episode 6.) To tell the truth, I’m not that thrilled with the series so far. But it has been getting progressively better since the first couple of episodes, so I’m willing to give it a chance…

I wasn’t really sure why I didn’t like the first few episodes, but after reading ANN’s Fall 2006 Anime Preview Guide, I found that the issue they had with the beginning of the series was the same as mine:

“…the characters and settings fail to hold much interest. Political dealings involve too many references to people and places that haven’t been explained yet. Lelouch’s childhood friendship is the only thing that makes sense—everything else is foreign-policy hand-wringing and dense military talk. Like many stories based on a complex alternate world, this one makes the rookie mistake of trying to introduce too much about that world. The result is an overloaded blur of ravaged urban areas, fancy-dress imperialists, rollerblading mechas, terrorist hunts, and oh yeah, “Nippon banzai!”

After I marathoned episodes 1 through 3, although I definitely didn’t think the premise of the series was boring, it just felt like they tried to cram way too much information and events into those first few episodes. The background of Britannia and all its political and military figure heads, the different mecha, the 11 rebels, Lelouch’s school and classmates, the mystery of C.C. and the Geass, the assassination of Prince Clovis, the conviction of Suzaku…all of these things were interesting, but they were thrown at you way too fast. We had all this major stuff happening in just the first three episodes. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I felt like it all went by too fast without giving much needed focus and attention to any one of these events. And with all this stuff going on, time for development of the (many) characters introduced was pretty much zero(no pun intended.) Also, Lelouch and Suzaku’s relationship felt way too similar to Kira and Athran’s from Gundam Seed.

Anyway, although I wasn’t very impressed with the first three episodes, I like episodes 4 through 6 a lot more. The series is finally starting to slow down and take its time; there was a lot more character interactions and development and less vague military/political happenings. More on the plus side of the series is nice, sleek animation(love the CLAMP character designs!) and awesome opening and ending songs.

Anyway, it’s probably too early for me to judge Code Geass any further. For most mecha series’ I’ve watched, like Gundam Seed and Eureka 7, I didn’t really get into them until at least halfway through the episodes. Then I loved them…they’re slow starters, but once they get going, they can totally blow you away, so hopefully Code Geass will turn out the same =)

Code Geass Hangyaku no Lelouch first impressions

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