Anime Review: Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2 25

"Re;"

Review
Holy crap! That was a hell of an ending. With how season one and the early parts of season two (R2) went I never expected it end like how it ended. Even with how rushed everything started to feel during the latter part of R2 I did not see this coming. But now that I think about it, with how these last few episodes went buy I feel like I should have seen this coming.

All the problems that have been hampering my enjoyment for these past few episode still exist with this episode as there were many parts that felt rushed. But for me I will over look these problems as this show did an excellent job with the overall character growth of Lelouch, Suzaku, CC, Kallen, and a few others that I became emotionally invested with the characters and really cared what happened to the characters at the end. And that is the true testament of how good a show is when all is said and done.

Over the past few episodes one of the things I have noticed that I have not mentioned before is that the mecha fighting since the fight between Kallen and Xhing-Ke has been sorely lacking. While Code Geass has always made it clear that the mecha battles are always just the backdrop to the true war going on between Lelouch, his father the (former) Emperor, and Schneizel there have been times I wished we saw more intense mecha battle.

With this episode I got just that with the final battle between Suzaku and Kallen that had been building up to since the beginning of the series. From how cool the battle look it seems that the team behind this anime used up all of the animation budget they had been saving from the last few episodes for this specific battle. It was a great battle though I wish it would have lasted a bit longer.

For the conversation between Lelouch and Nunally even though I thought there was a possibility that Lelouch would use his Geass on his sister. I actually thought that he would use some sort of emotional brother/sister talk to get the control from the FLEYJA from her. But the moment were he does use his Geass on her and then tells her that he loves her I did get the feeling that things would not turn out good for our hero.

And as Lelouch declared himself the winner and was about to execute all of the Black Knights I knew something was going to happen. When Suzaku appeared as Zero I said out loud "Oh shit! They are going to kill Lelouch." At that moment I was couldn't believe that this was the ending that our hero got.

Still when I started to think of this ending more and more I found it to be the logical move and that the death of Lelouch is a nice commentary of what a world needs to right itself from the chaos of war. Lelouch's plan draws a similar to what Adrian Veidt did in Watchmen, without the plan being revealed to the public. In the end sometimes the world's population needs a person to blame for everything, which is what have been doing with the current war and economic disaster. It is really hard to blame something on a non-living being. But if we have one person to blame for everything wrong with the world, no matter how screwed up it may be, it is much easier to do.

Before coming into this review I actually went on around to different reviews for this last episode of Code Geass and there seems to be a lot of arguments going around in the bloggesphere about the finality of the death of our main character Lelouch . In my opinion it is much better to think that Lelouch is dead as his death is the price that he had to pay to make the world in his image. And for him to still be alive due to getting the Code from CC or some other way kind of cheapen that sacrifice Lelouch made. I do not think Lelouch is the type of character to fake his own death and leave Nunally alone. What Lelouch did in the end showed that he was a true hero because he does not care if he is seen in the history books as it is something he had to do in the end to change the world for the better.

Now was R2 as good as the first season of Code Geass? I would say no. Did the creative team rush the ending? Yes they did. But even with all that Code Geass did an excellent job making me, and a lot of fans, emotionally invested in everything that happened. And Code Geass was a great ride and I hope we do not get a sequel. I highly recommend anyone that did not watch this show to go out and watch it as this is one anime that I sure many people will love.

Episode Rating - 8.8/10