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NEWS: Code Geass: Over One Million Discs Served

lol Geass
Why does this not surprise me? It's a pretty popular series...and it'll only gain in popularity as time goes on.

Onsokumaru wrote:

lol Geass Why does this not surprise me? It's a pretty popular series...and it'll only gain in popularity as time goes on.

except that it nearly went to a trainwreck <_<

episodes 19-24 of R2 = bad bad bad. 25 - okay wrap-up but this series could have been 20x better had they paced it better and cut all the "filler" or random and unnecessary junk

R2 managed to do something that VERY few series have ever done before by being simultaneously terrible and yet jaw droppingly awesome. I loved every second of it for what it was, but I don't doubt that if it had continued the way R1 had started, it would have been just as good.

shipping and selling is not the same thing incase people have forgotten...

Kougeru wrote:

shipping and selling is not the same thing incase people have forgotten...

Japan isn't that big...

R2 managed to do something that VERY few series have ever done before by being simultaneously terrible and yet jaw droppingly awesome. I loved every second of it for what it was, but I don't doubt that if it had continued the way R1 had started, it would have been just as good.

Jaziek wrote:

R2 managed to do something that VERY few series have ever done before by being simultaneously terrible and yet jaw droppingly awesome. I loved every second of it for what it was, but I don't doubt that if it had continued the way R1 had started, it would have been just as good.

That's a great description for the show. It's full of ridiculous plot twists (about one every 10 minutes) ridiculously cheesy lines, people switching alliances at the drop of a hat, and a 16 year old who is somehow smarter than the entire military of the world's most powerful nation.

And yet, it all works. I think the sheer audacity of the show, the willingness to try out plotlines and twists which have such a huge potential to crash and burn in spectacular fashion, are what give Geass its charm. Like Lelouch, the show's writing smacks of gutsy, sometimes reckless risk-taking. Also like Lelouch, it's so totally convinced of its own brilliance that it manages to convince viewers of it, too, through sheer bravado (as opposed to actual quality.)

It's a fun show, but what makes it a landmark is that it's so darn insistent on itself. It won't even entertain the notion that the latest crazy twist might not make any sense, and by the time you realize it didn't, you've been distracted by three other twists/character deaths/betrayals and don't care anymore.

Wyvern wrote:

Jaziek wrote: R2 managed to do something that VERY few series have ever done before by being simultaneously terrible and yet jaw droppingly awesome. I loved every second of it for what it was, but I don't doubt that if it had continued the way R1 had started, it would have been just as good. That's a great description for the show. It's full of ridiculous plot twists (about one every 10 minutes) ridiculously cheesy lines, people switching alliances at the drop of a hat, and a 16 year old who is somehow smarter than the entire military of the world's most powerful nation. And yet, it all works. I think the sheer audacity of the show, the willingness to try out plotlines and twists which have such a huge potential to crash and burn in spectacular fashion, are what give Geass its charm. Like Lelouch, the show's writing smacks of gutsy, sometimes reckless risk-taking. Also like Lelouch, it's so totally convinced of its own brilliance that it manages to convince viewers of it, too, through sheer bravado (as opposed to actual quality.) It's a fun show, but what makes it a landmark is that it's so darn insistent on itself. It won't even entertain the notion that the latest crazy twist might not make any sense, and by the time you realize it didn't, you've been distracted by three other twists/character deaths/betrayals and don't care anymore.

And the fact that they even bothered to take risks with the story is what makes me think rather highly of the production behind the series. What a lot of people don't seem to realize is that they've been watching such safe, arguably go nowhere series, that follow strict formulas of story telling for the longest time now that when a show comes along that says "to hell with all that, we're telling this story our way", their first instinct is to call it poorly written.

Though pretty much every story element or plot twist actually does makes perfect sense if you actually gave the show the time to see them out and were one of the group that was actually paying attention instead of whining about how it's wrong to take the time to try and make sense of the show (for all the 5 minutes it arguably took) when the time came for the scene that was intended to make the audience go "Oh I get it now".

Unfortunately that didn't happen with many people so we're left with two crowds. The people that insist it doesn't make sense because they were to busy insisting it didn't make sense to follow the story, and the people that actually watched the episode with an open mind and a willingness to entertain the shows lack of playing by the regular rules of anime storytelling and ended up getting it in the end. Count me among the latter.

Also need I mention that aspect of the average dissident who will talk about "quality" as if theirs is the sole definition of what makes a show have or lack it. That wasn't helping R2 either. For a show that had so many cards stacked against it by the end though I'm still glad to see that it's doing well. It hardly deserves half of the criticism it constantly gets now considering that so many shows are guilty of the same things that only became issues of contention once they came up in Code Geass.