Code Geass Stops, Excited and Satisfied Kids Get Off the Rollercoaster
I’m not a big theme park person but I’ve been to a few of them. At one point in my life I used to go every year. In a way, big-budget mainstream anime are a bit like amusement park rides.
At least in the US, where land is plenty and people pay an arm and leg to go to them, theme parks attract goers through new and exciting advertisements of their new (well) attractions. They are aptly called attractions because when you see this single rail that goes up and down like a graph of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in recent years, plus those loopy things, you get this feeling of excitement. No fancy ads or viral marketing necessary.
In a way that is basically the experience of Code Geass, I think.
The first season is a well-packaged, top-of-the-line Sunrise TV anime. I think the story made sense and people liked the sporadic moments of “JUST AS PLANNED” Lulu had. The heroics and scheming were entertaining, even if hollow by more sophisticated standards. And the CLAMP characters are always the rage. The gut-wrenching plot twists towards the end of the first season gives us a taste of what kind of an experience Code Geass was set out to deliver. The non-ending, and aptly announced sequel at the time was just the period (or better, semicolon?) that punctuates the point.
For the most part the second season started out without much issues, but at some point we realized something was different. Goro Taniguchi himself, supposedly, confessed regarding the reworking of the second season due to business constraints that lead to a lot of lost labor in working on the second season. I think the fans would take kindly to that position as Code Geass R2 does look somewhat derailed from the original ride.
But as a packaged experience, in a lot of ways R2 supersedes the first season as long as you don’t look too deep. And for experienced viewers, anime of this type is more of an experience than a work in itself so we’re trained to not poke where it doesn’t look like you should be poking. Looking too deeply just makes you hate it more. It isn’t to say you ought not to analyze Code Geass or shows like that, but that was one of the main ways how R2 fell apart from the expectations viewers had from the first season. It’s safe to say many of us have mixed feeling about Code Geass R2, even if it was highly entertaining.
I guess, to go back to the Goro Taniguchi thing, things are rushed. And it clearly shows.
Unlike the typical rushed production, however, it seemed Code Geass R2 actually has a destination in mind, and a destination that isn’t made of fail. The last episode delivered a reasonable conclusion that few anime of this kind of dynamic amplitude could even hope for. What’s more, it got away with the degree of open-endedness that characterizes the usual rush job, and a fair amount of both plot hole type things and thoughtful, canonical conclusions that will give all of its riders something to think about once they step back onto the platform and head out to the parking lot, elated.
And just for the record, I could care less if Lulu is dead or alive at the end. Color me in for the “Requiem of Nunnally” camp as the heart of the second season of Code Geass, although it seemed easily that Goro wrote the story for the C.C. “good” end. Like UBW or Fate. Maybe. Meanwhile curious minds can listen to the kids as they look up at the telecast replay of their best impression of the emoticon “\o/” while walking down the ramp from the ride and towards the exit.
Yes, R2 was rushed and as a result comes across as messy, fairly enough, but it was definitely entertaining and some parts were genuinely effective, like the ending itself. All in all, it has its ups and downs, but works. That much is hard to deny, at least for me.
I’ll just say I’m assuming Lelouch is dead until proven otherwise, but the opposite is fine too.
And sorry to go off on a tangent, which you might already know about, but there’s also a direct translation of the Taniguchi interview, hosted on the same website (miasmacloud’s blog). The content deals mostly with the end of season one and only briefly with R2’s time slot change -which did, unfortunately, alter the original plans- and a few other things. Who knows how it could have turned out, for better or for worse, but I get the feeling we would have seen many of the same elements, just with a different presentation and perhaps better pacing.
“different presentation” is a big deal. I think the ending would be less controversial if not for that :)
But yes, I found out about the other, better translation.
I think the Chinese Federation saga would’ve either been extended or omitted if R2 had gone as planned.
It just feels really abrupt and short and didn’t really do much for the overarching plot of the story.