I love my manga and anime. I think the first manga that I ever read was Death Note, and it got me hooked. It was such a drastic change from the usual good guy vs. bad guy routine that you often find in Western comics, though I love those too. Granted, there is an antagonist and a protagonist in the series as well, but the line between good and evil is so blurred that you can actually relate with the characters on an entirely different level. From Death Note, I moved on to School Rumble. Another great series – a little girly, but that’s Shoujo after all. I started reading Kingdom Hearts but quickly lost interest. Playing it would have been more interesting. Then came Fairy Tail, Cardcaptor Sakura, Naruto, Fruits Basket, Ouran High School Host Club and so on.
Recently I was introduced to an anime called Code Geass. After seeing the first episode, I assumed it was a mech anime, which was not really my preferred theme. By the end of the episode however, I was hooked. Yes, there is a lot of mech in the anime, but it is so much more than shiny robots battling it out in the Heavens. The anime captures almost every human emotion and posts the difficult questions that we often ignore.
The main protagonist is a person named Lelouch Lamperouge. Lelouch is a castaway prince of Britannia – the British Empire in a parallel Universe – who seeks to overthrow the King and in so doing, put an end to his philosophy that the world is contingent upon the law of survival of the fittest. Throughout his quest, Lelouch has to make many hard choices and sacrifice many relationships. Oftentimes, you actually wonder whether Lelouch is any better than the King because he comes off as extremely prideful. We eventually find out that he stayed noble to the very end however, making him one of my favorite characters.
The story covers the oppression of war and racism, displaying a stark contrast between those that have morals and cannot exercise them; and those with no morals but all the capability in the world. Many innocent people died during this war and it is precisely because of this that Lelouch believes that he cannot give up.
Lelouch gets far by masquerading as Zero, an anonynmous symbol that serves as a symbol of justice, much like Batman. Though he had the brains, Lelouch probably would not have gotten very far had it not been for the Geass granted to him by a mysterious girl named C.C. The Geass is an ability passed down from person to person that manifests differently in different people. For some it can be mind-reading, for others it can be thought manipulation. Lelouch’s Geass allowed him to put people into a state of hypnosis whereby they follow his every whim. So here, you have a young super genius with the ability to make you his bitch. The Britannian Kingdom was fucked from the beginning.
Anyway, I’m not going to get into the details of the show. You have to actually watch it to be able to appreciate the intricate plot and detailed artwork.
