Behind The Nihon Review

I find it very difficult to write anything meaningful or intelligent about Code Geass.  (Some would argue it’s got something to do with the lack of meaning or intelligence in the show itself).  I think most of its viewers have accepted for a while that Code Geass is little more than a rollercoaster ride.  You get on, get taken for a wild ride consisting of the most obvious of suspense builders followed by random, violent turns, tossing its occupants from side to side.  You don’t learn anything from it, be exposed to a new take on a social phenomenon, or come to appreciate the moral complexities of something you previously thought of as black-and-white.  It’s an entertainment thing, pure and simple (and, no, this isn’t just a throwaway cliched phrase, both those words aptly describe Code Geass if you think about it), and afterwards you go to the souvenir shop and collect the photo they took of you as you go down the steepest slope, inevitably catching you making an awkward, embarrassing facial expression.  Maybe Code Geass is on that slope at this very moment, because that awkward, embarrassing expression has been frozen on my face for the last couple of episodes.

Michael from anime|otaku wrote a very good article (aptly entitled “Code Geass Sucks“) on Code Geass’s excessiveness and lack of subtlety and moderation with regard to the plot.  When I read it, I didn’t really agree at the time… well, I did in the respect that most people accept that Code Geass is over the top and unrefined, and hardly a piece that deserves “critical” acclaim, at least from the critics that value artistic merit above enjoyability (that’s probably about half of our reviewers, and you probably get a fair idea which ones by looking at the reactions in our Code Geass thread).  And I did agree that, as crude as it is, it’s a ruddy good time.  But excessive?  If you put it to the very criteria by which it was intended to be judged, ie, enjoyability, then a reasonable conclusion would be that it isn’t excessive provided it remains enjoyable.  “Excessive” kinda implies that there’s a tipping point, and at that stage, as unrelenting and extravagent as Code Geass was (and always has been) I didn’t think it had crossed it.

But the last couple of episodes have been whacked out.  The show has outdone itself for the nonsensical.  Code Geass is a transparent work in a sense. The philosophy behind it is fairly simple: cram as many plot twists in as possible.  There’s also (what I believe is) a self-imposed added pressure that the show is always trying to outdo itself which is why we have possibly reached the tipping point (it’s a credit to the show that it’s maintained at least some credibility for this long).  The show is paced like a bullet and the little reflection we get is confined to Lelouch weighing up his options to make his next move (or other characters like Suzaku or Nina angsting).  The Emperor’s plans, Lelouch’s mother, the way he defeated his father, Suzaku’s changing loyalty, Nunnally alive (this was probably inevitable), everything involving Schneizel.  There’s quite a lot in these last two episodes that challenge believability and fall short in the logic department.  But I’ve made two assumptions here, the first that a “tipping point” exists, and the second that Code Geass has crossed it.  We could debate until the sun comes home (to mix my idioms) about the second point (it’s not finished afterall) which is why I’m only going to tackle the much less controversial concept that there is a tipping point.

Anime is largely melodrama and excesses aren’t all too unfamiliar to fans of the medium.  All plot twists have some value, particularly when you can’t predict them, but the danger with plot twists is that the “thrill”, the emotional pay-off the audience gets for seeing the plot twist, is short lived.  A completely different genre, but Sola and Myself; Yourself were two series that were particularly bad with this.  Towards the latter part, both of them threw a crapload of curveballs at the audience, but once you got over the shortlived shock of a revelation, you quickly realized that what just happened was either ludicrous or nonsensical.  All plot twists have to go through logical scrutiny, they have to survive at least a reasonable amount of suspension of disbelief to be credible and they have to add something to the plot that lingers longer than a momentary shock.  Many of the plot twists in Sola and Myself; Yourself failed to do this.  If a plot twist undergoes logical scrutiny and the result is raised, open hands and shrugged shoulders, then something is wrong.  The priceless, jaw-on-the-floor reaction is all well and good, but if there’s nothing meaningful after that, then it becomes clear that the momentary surprise was the only point of the plot twist.  When you get too many of these in a short space of time, that’s when things become excessive.  Because then it’s just plot twists for the sake of it.  That’s when we reach the tipping point.

Has Code Geass surpassed its tipping point?  In my opinion, probably, but only time will deal a more concrete answer.