Complicating it is that Japan is under occupation by a brutal occupying force, and the protagonist and his best friend have opposite opinions on how to deal with this: he wants to overthrow Britannia; his friend thinks fewer people will die if you never try to overthrow an oppressor but be honourable and work towards changing the system incrementally. And... both of those viewpoints are hard to refute.
One of the things Code Geass is very much doing, as I understand it, is taking the kind of somewhat hotheaded character full of warrior spirit who is in an awful lot of anime unexaminedly expected to be heroic and sympathetic, and putting him in the position of antagonist, and giving Lelouch contrasting character traits that are much more often associated with empathy-lacking villains. Which makes it very much more to my taste than those tropes normally are, I really can't think of anything quite like it (though I have just started watching Valvrave the Liberator and that seems to be in an appealingly similar space.) I look forward to seeing what you think of season 2, I am right in reading this as meaning you intend to do so soonish?
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Date: 2018-04-19 01:46 pm (UTC)One of the things Code Geass is very much doing, as I understand it, is taking the kind of somewhat hotheaded character full of warrior spirit who is in an awful lot of anime unexaminedly expected to be heroic and sympathetic, and putting him in the position of antagonist, and giving Lelouch contrasting character traits that are much more often associated with empathy-lacking villains. Which makes it very much more to my taste than those tropes normally are, I really can't think of anything quite like it (though I have just started watching Valvrave the Liberator and that seems to be in an appealingly similar space.) I look forward to seeing what you think of season 2, I am right in reading this as meaning you intend to do so soonish?