This Week in Anime

Why Was Code Geass Such a Big Deal?

Chris
Steve, I believe you might be able to convince those kids above that our subject for today could teach them to play that most classic of board games, but come on. The grown-ups who watched Code Geass can all remember at least one thing about it.

Nobody in this show knows how to play friggin' chess.

There's a comparison to bring Code Geass back for the modern era. It's even appropriate given both it and Birdie Wing indulge in their iterations of Gundam homages. In the case of Geass, that's at least partially structural, including some streamlined recap movies, a future-framed follow-up, and now a whole new side-story series due to start airing this month!

Fans of extra-noodly CLAMP designs fighting in giant rollerblading robots never had it so good.

It's appropriate that Lucas and Nick kicked off their column earlier this week by referencing Death Note since its anime started airing at the same time as Geass. Both shows becoming such hits in their own right indicates that maybe we were just primed by that point to enjoy Machiavellian teenagers with magical murder powers.

I think there were a lot of factors that made Code Geass such fun to watch at the time that might not align with it today, and part of that is admitting that adult me likely wouldn't be as immediately into all this edgy absurdity as teen me was.

Right after Fullmetal Alchemist (the original, correct 2003 version) Code Geass is a prime example of what I'd come to regard as a Watercooler Anime. Do jobs still have water coolers? Aw, jeez, I'm showing my age even more.

Regardless, the idea is Code Geass' appeal as a show was intertwined with the communal act of experiencing it with others. Talking about each episode after it aired, reacting to plot twists, throwing out theories, and, yes, reveling in the memetic ridiculousness of a series that just barely seemed to be hanging onto being taken seriously by a single long, lanky limb at all times.

There's seriously no shame in a series finding success in being fun to watch with a group. That is, in terms of simple numbers, more entertaining than something you enjoy watching yourself. And that great group-watch methodology has been proven plenty of times over, from Samurai Flamenco to the recent Gundam: The Witch From Mercury. But like a pizza that pleases the whole crowd at a party, it's something you can only bake if you have the right ingredients.

You know, I could make a pithy comment here about the statute of limitations being far up for Code Geass letting us go hog-wild with spoilers, but the fact is the memetic status of the show did that for us back during its inception. Like the inability of its cast to play chess, there are other major things that it feels like even people who have only heard of the show are still wholly aware of.

You couldn't swing a runaway cat in an AMV Hell compilation back in the day without a questionably tasteful Euphenator bit.

Man, I think about that line once a week. Like Lelouch's magical mind control, it's all a neat spell to be put under. The weekly, episode-to-episode way of watching the series back in the day was critical to its cred and a prime example of why that structure is essential to building these sorts of swerves. Code Geass is a series that would fall flat on its face if it were released altogether as a binge-model dump.

Reinforcing that, I watched the relatively recent compilation movies as a refresher for this column, and even as someone who remembered all the pieces on their own, seeing so many episodes of Geass crammed together with no breathing room resulted in what felt like a hell of a lot of noise much of the time.

I don't know if I'd have the ability to go through the whole thing at that rate, but I'd be lying if seeing the truncated version of Geass didn't make me want to go back and review all those bits of scaled sensationalism. Perhaps while showing it to someone who hadn't seen it before, for that full vicarious experience.

The movies' cuts are also odd in that they almost feel like they're trying to rewrite the tone of the series' legacy. Like I'm not saying they were intentionally removing all the most meme'd on bits of the show, but a non-exhaustive list of what they leave out includes:

Bunny Kallen The cat chase The hat chase Suzaku pleasuring himself with that fish Table-kun The million-Zero march Schneizel's illegal chess move And everything involving Mao and thus the scene that was the basis for the infamous soup store sketch

Okay, I'm remembering some of the other reasons people tuned into this show week after week.

Sadly, yes, though the menu items themselves are still rendered accurately, and C.C. still uses Lelouch's Amazon Prime account to order a mascot plushie.

Look, when we say Code Geass is cheesy, we mean so much it's filling the crust with it.

I need my mass murder and megalomaniacal manipulation sponsored by a wholesome family restaurant, dammit!

The legacy of the original must linger. While plenty of other series like those I mentioned before can pull off the same sort of collective hit status that Geass did, just as many, like you said, have tried and failed. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't have trepidation that might extend to the forthcoming nu-Geass itself.

Case in point, they tried a return, a resurrection, if you will, a few years ago off the back of those recap movies with a new movie that pretty well proved that Code Geass doesn't work as well consigned to a story that can be told in just an hour or two.

Okay, maybe it also didn't help that they were trying to do a continuation to one of the most gleefully, brazenly, absurdly self-satisfied endings out there.

It's amusing to me that they had to reverse Shirley's death to make the resurrection happen, especially since the clipped content of the movies means she barely does anything in those despite her importance!

I've always described Code Geass' approach as being akin to a stage play, with elements like Lelouch's posing and proclivities playing into that. When it tries too hard for the straight geopolitics angle, it just proves how much it was never meant to be something like Gundam, and you wind up with less-fondly remembered stretches like the China arc.

Lelouch of the Re;surrection seems to understand that Lelouch's ostentatiousness was a huge draw of the story's presentation, and that's almost a justified reason for bringing him back. But it just can't properly recapture the ridiculous magic. Even the absurdity of the main villain repeatedly killing herself to reset her evil plan isn't played for all it's worth here.

If this had been in the show, it would've had a montage of people posting edited gifs.

I can still remember major plot points and minor goofs from the TV series I watched over a decade ago. That's the staying power you hope for from something like this.

Look, we all remember Suzaku's pilot suit. Leaving out details on guys' groins is arguably part and parcel of the legacy of Geass. Certainly, it is an area where it should have evolved over ten years later.

Say what you will about them; those guys know their way around appointment television. Taniguchi collaborated with all-timer Kazuki Nakashima on Back Arrow, which not a ton of people watched, but me and the bruhs on my feed had a blast with it.

Meanwhile, Okouchi was responsible for Witch From Mercury, which might as well be Sunrise's true successor to Geass in terms of modern social media shockwaves.

That's all to say that the staffing is my biggest concern, too, least of all because I've already experienced a 1:1 comparison for it. I had a great time with Ichiro Okouchi's Princess Principal a few years ago and was jazzed for a follow-up. But when I finally settled in to check out the Crown Handler movies, they felt lacking in the same zip, at least partly down to Okouchi's writing duties being taken over by Noboru Kimura.

The same Kimura who's now inherited Geass from Okouchi for Rozé of the Recapture.

Look, I don't want to be too down on Rozé ahead of its streaming premiere (though not for nothing, the first part of its movie cut didn't even crack the top 10 in Japan's box office during its opening week). At the absolute least, one of the newer trailers shows the marketing team behind it knows how to appeal to me specifically.

Though she really ought to be taking that with one of Geass' famous fucked-up skinny side-flip phones.

Either way, I'll reserve judgment until later this month, but I know you can't go home again. The good news is that even a new Code Geass that doesn't set my timeline on fire can't use its powers to erase the only partially ironic fond memories I have of the original. I mean, even all this has only reinforced my desire to go back and rewatch the real Code Geass myself. Last of all, because the recap movies were never dubbed, I missed out on reliving some all-timer lines.

There's plenty to criticize about Geass overall, but as an experience, especially in a group, there's nothing else like being on that ride. Huh, that reminds me, not knowing how Rozé of the Recapture will turn out means this column is technically stopping on a cliffhanger, so there's only one way to end it in this case.

STEEEEEEVE!!!!

bang

See you in eight months, everybody! We'll be right back in school, acting like nothing happened!