Code Geass season 1: episodes 1-5

[edenfalling]

I have now watched the first five episodes of Code Geass.

Overall impression: this series is on crack.* And it is awesome.

Lelouch is a bastard. And a melodramatic little shit. I love him to pieces. Funny how he's so sweet with Nunnally, but doesn't even blink when taking advantage of her blindness to get CC out of the room. Such a manipulative bastard. But we see inside his head, so we know why he does what he does, and I love watching him think his way out of problems.

Kallen is fucking awesome. I love how she's the most competent person in her little rebel cell, and her willingness to go out despite her doubt and nervousness, to take crazy risks, and to pull them off through sheer force of awesome.

Suzaku is adorable and principled and he is just going to get ground into the dirt, isn't he? I can feel it. (Also, damn he looks good all scruffy and in his long coat and bad-ass shades.)

No real opinion on CC yet; she hasn't appeared enough. Though I do rather like her ability to effortlessly get under Lelouch's skin. (That boy needs to be taken down a notch now and then, seriously.)

Hmm. Also, I really like the mirroring that's done with Lelouch and Suzaku, where they keep thinking about each other and saving each other's lives and interfering with each other's plans, and half the time they don't know that that's what they're doing. They both have points, you know? Suzaku was absolutely right to go back and face trial, I think, but Lelouch is right that the empire is too corrupt for Suzaku's approach to do any good in the foreseeable future, and also Lelouch sees perfectly well that Suzaku's approach is going to destroy Suzaku. (I think, based on stuff I've read, that Suzaku may know that too, and be counting on it in a way.) But anyway, I love the little picture drama thingy where they meet as little kids and the first thing they do is get into an argument that degenerates into a fight. Boys.

(Tangentially, why do fics tend to gloss over Suzaku's motive for piloting the Lancelot that first time? He was trying to save Lelouch. That's pretty important, don't you think?)

Come to think of it, pretty much all the main characters are the sort who pull off the impossible through sheer force of awesome. The show seems to be going for the same effect.

So far, it's working. :-D


*The show is on crack except, of course, for when it's deadly serious, at which points it is sometimes even more shocking than the crack. The massacre in the Shinjuku ghetto is pretty sobering. It's also necessary to set the tone -- to say that in this world, awful, unspeakable things really do happen. The cold-blooded murders and the utter contempt and dehumanization displayed by Clovis and his commanders put Lelouch's actions into context, so to speak, and also make Suzaku's insistence on noble means come off as an even more dramatic moral stand.

But mostly it's still on crack. I mean, honestly, giant robots on rollerskates? Yeah sure, and I have this nice bridge downstate that I'd like to sell you...

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My DVD came with both sub and dub options, which I think is very nice. I've been using the original Japanese soundtrack with subtitles. I may watch the episodes again in the dub version just for curiosity's sake, unless general consensus is that it's awful.

Is there a general consensus about the Code Geass dub?

Comments

[branchandroot]

Giant robots rollerblading down the highway, no less. Yeah, total crack.

And, um, yeah with the Suzaku angst. Just when you think it's all better, too.

[edenfalling]

I think one of them even rollerblades up the side of a building at one point in episode one or two. *rolls eyes* At least it looks cool, which is the main point.

*gets very worried for Suzaku and the people around him*