I’ve never been much of an anime person. This is something I like to think comes as a surprise to people, but that might be wishful thinking.

Don’t get me wrong, I very much enjoy hearing about anime and learning what the most popular members of the genre have been getting up to. I love a giant spectacle, ecclectic animation and larger than life characters as much as the next person with functioning eyes, ears and a soul. I just haven’t actually sat down and watched that many.

I think this is mainly because there’s a lot about anime that I don’t like, which tends to get in the way of all the good bits. Things such as overly convoluted plots, character motivations that make no sense and its fetishistic attitude towards women with varying degrees of subtlety. Well, not much variety actually; mostly on the far end.

I, of course, do not want to apply this to the entire corpus of anime. I am certain that there are exceptions to this decades-old genre that defy these generalisations. However, I know a pattern when I see one.

These preconceptions were why I was originally nervous when I was held against my will and forced to watch both seasons of Code GEASS by a much more anime-enthused friend of mine. Just the preconceptions, nothing else about the situation. So after watching the whole thing I can safely say that my generalisations were not beaten in the slightest. In fact, the show seemed to treat them as a checklist with the grand prize for completing it being my exasperation and none of my opinions on the genre having changed.

The plot? Convoluted. Character motivations? Nonsense. Message? All over the place. Female characters? I suggested a drinking game for every time the show gave us a gratuitous bum shot, but I was turned down over concerns for our health.

In spite of all this, I still managed to have fun and actually wanted to get to the end of both seasons. This has caused me slight alarm and called assumptions I hold about my taste into question, so I will now regail you with an analysis and explanation of how this show managed to defeat my sensibilities.

To be transparent, this was not in fact my first encounter with the source material. I watched an abridged version of the anime when I was younger, and still do whenenever the creator feels like releasing a new episode. Abridging, for the unenlightened, is the practice of taking a show, usually an anime series, cutting it down to its essentials and re-voicing it to make it funnier. Popular ones include Yu-Gi-Oh! Abdridged, Team Four Star’s Dragon Ball Z Abridged, and of course Code MENT, the abridged version of our subject matter.

I really enjoy these series, primarily because they are passion projects by fans who are far more talented than me and make me jealous, but also because they strip away a lot of the fluff from anime or directly make fun of it, resulting in a show that’s much more palatable to someone not as engrossed in the medium such as I.

So I was going into Code GEASS with all my biases from the abridged Code MENT, fully expecting a more padded and less funny version of a story I had previously enjoyed. And wouldn’t you know, that’s only sort of what happened.

To finally give a summary and help illustrate my point about nonsensical plots, here’s what I understand about Code GEASS’ setting.

The year is 2017 and Britannia (not Britain, it’s actually America) has subjugated most of the world, including, most recently, Japan. The Japanese are now being treated as second-class citizens in their own country, while Britannians immigrate in and take all the good jobs and comfy chairs. We follow Lelouch Lamperouge, who is masquerading as an ordinary Japanese highschool student while secretly being the son of the King of Britannia. He feels the burden of your average Japanese teenager: getting schoolwork done, juggling his exceptionally good love-life and dressing up in a mask to lead a terrorist organisation to overthrow the Britannian government in Japan. Reminds me of my school days.

The show primarily focuses on Lelouch as Zero, the identity he adopts while wearing his mask, gathering allies from a ragtag groups of revolutionaries/terrorists and the remnants of the old Japanese government. We also follow the son of the last Japanese Prime Minister and Lelouch’s childhood best-friend, Suzaku. For reasons the show never adequately explained to me, Suzaku decided to join the Britannian army and help in their mission to oppress his countrymen. In the abridged version this is played off as a joke, but the actual show provides just as little reason for him doing this senseless betrayal of his people and his father’s legacy, and instead tries its best to make him a morally complex person who genuinely believes he is doing the right thing. I was never able to take the character seriously. It would’ve been more interesting (and frankly, logical) if they’d just made him a complete bastard instead.

However, alongside all of this political intrigue is a magic, green-haired, immortal woman named C.C., who grants Lelouch the ability to control people’s minds by making eye contact with them. The other half of the show is dedicated to finding out what that’s all about and how it can be relevant to any of the war and terrorism the rest of the characters are preoccupied with.

You see, this is my main issue with Code GEASS. It sets up two interesting, albeit ridiculous, plot lines, yet they never feel particularly well integrated. We learn towards the end of the show that Lelouch’s father, the Emperor of Britannia, had planned to utilise C.C. and the ghost of Lelouch’s murdered mother (long story, the Emperor did the murder) to recreate the world and establish peace by essentially preventing people from lying.

Ah yes, the man who ordered the conquest and subjugation of numerous nations and peoples, killing millions, annihilating cultures and creating countless marginalised groups. You see he’s just really misunderstood because he actually just wants everyone to stop being so mean! It’s honestly the stupidest part of the show, which is impressive given that Suzaku is also in it.

They provide the minimum explanation by telling us that much of the conquests were to gather the rare resources and secure access to the ancient ruins necessary for the big magic mind control thing. But he could’ve just… bought the resources or hired the ruins. He didn’t need to conquer anywhere and doing so is counteractive to his supposed ideals. He’s also portrayed as a raging racist and Britannian supremacist, which is never shown or even suggested to be an act to help fuel the imperialist spirit of his nation and make them more effective conquerers. Because that would be too sensible for this show.

To top it all off, the Emperor is completely divorced from the main plot of Japan Vs. Britannia. We find out that he is entirely uninterested in the war effort to keep Japan under heel and quite happy to let his numerous children handle it for him. What this gives us is two different plots joined at the hip, rather than a single, multifaceted one. Which is a shame, because the main plot utilises all of its anime flair to great effect and even has very fun characters. My personal favourites being Lloyd, a Britannian scientist with a mind so singularly focused and driven that I cannot help but respect his hustle, and the one and only Jeremiah Gottwald. My appreciation for the latter was initially just due to his portrayal in the abridged version, but only grew when I found out that his unmatched bravado in that parody was barely an exaggeration. The man came back from the dead to murder Lelouch, fully equipped with a counter to his psychic powers, but switched sides almost immediately and became one of the biggest threats to the Empire. While all that is about as ludicrous as the Emperor’s motivation, this turnaround did not have the main plot hinging on it, and was actually fun to watch.

Speaking of the main plot, it gets the brakes applied to it whenever we have to look away from all of these fun antics and go back to the green-haired girl’s psychic business, which all eventually gets resolved with one final confrontation between Lelouch and his parents, where he wipes out their plans and his childhood trauma in one fell-swoop via deus ex machina. As if the show itself wanted to be done with this part of the story as swiftly as possible too.

So what have I learned here? Well, I expected a more padded and less funny version of Code MENT, and it was certainly more padded. There were characters and plot lines included that I did not care for, or outright hated, but I still enjoyed it for the reason I like any anime at all. It takes itself so seriously that, despite its numerous flaws, it’s very difficult to not get swept up in the hype. It delivers its lunacy with such genuine passion and flair that I’m able to temporarily forget about everything I complained about for over five paragraphs and enjoy the spectacle. I’d only recommend the show if that’s something that works on you too, but it’s a fun timekiller with some gems hidden in the mess.

Oh yeah, all the fights also involve house-sized robots, and they’re pretty cool.