Code Geass: Boukoku no Akito 2 - Hikisakareshi Yokuryuu

Code Geass: Milking the franchise 2 - Hikisakareshi Yokuryuu is yet another story which is titled under Code Geass so people would watch it. The story is about that one guy who has nothing to do with Code Geass. He fights mecha and gives his fair share of logic to the series by being alive despite being dead. The story and characters are useless and you should watch this for the mecha fights and conclusions which will rape R2. This movie will finally answer such questions as "Did someone stole the code?" and "Who was driving the cart?" and "Am I supposed to take thisseriously?" It is very funny. I especially recommend this to people who hate Code Geass and the fandom. The voice acting was pretty terrible. Especially with some of the side female characters. I had to check twice whether the audio was on sync or not since it looked and sounded more unfitting than anything. So very often the voice acting doesn't match characters body language in any way whatsoever. It was cutely awkward. The animation was pretty neat if you ask me. Same with the mecha design. Action scenes were watchable and smooth, even entertaining, possibly the best thing in this movie. The art gives Code Geass feel even if the series had little to nothing to do with the franchise, if anything. I did enjoy watching this. At least it didn't annoy me or make me bored, but I'm afraid that this is just another thing which Sunrise did dollar signs in their eyes, or yenswhatever. Not that anyone was excepting anything else.

*SPOILERS FOR CODE GEASS: BOUKOKU NO AKITO 2- HIKISAKARESHI YOKURYUU* Improvement is something that deserves recognition. When a series improves over time, that means that it is being written better, or that it was planned to reach higher levels of greatness as it went on. When a person improves, his attitude or actions change to be kinder, less self-centered, and less destructive. When art improves, that means the artist or whoever crafted the art honed his craft more so that everything would blend well with each other and look visually pleasing. When a film improves, that's because there is a new, more competent writer at thehelm who can look at what happened and where best to go from here, or that the same writer as before did that exact thing. Sad to say, nothing about what I just said applies to Akito the Exiled 2, with a minor exception to the third statement. In fact, practically everything regressed in this film. This film, while it feels more effortful and more driven than the previous installment, it somehow manages to be the dumbest installment of the franchise so far. It's full of edge, awful decision-making, and a lot of idiotic and plot-hole driven moments, and raises a potential knock against the continuity of the original (lest that one gets explained in later films). It offers nothing else, and I'm almost out of hope for this sub-series. So, what made this such a mess? Who do people praise this as the best film of the series? We both know you'll only find out the answer to the former question, but, well, let's find out, shall we? Taking place not long after the rebel attack in episode 1, Leila is assigned a new mission. Before that can happen, the rebel trio, once again, in fact, twice again (once during he mission) tries to kill her and Akito. By this point, any reasonable member of the military would either put a harsher restrain on them, punhsih them heavily, or flat out kill then. None of this happens because of course it doesn't; did you expect these characters to have brains? Shame on you. Afterwards, the crew launches into space to drop to their next mission. How they all managed to deal with the launch and being out of Earth's gravity for a while perfectly, without prior training for such an action, is beyond me. We also see enemies doing douche you things and coronation things while prepping for their mission, but who even cares? Still, that's only the first half; the second half is where things really hit the shitter. Prior to the mission, Leila tells the rebel 11's that she'll fight with them, and she even suits up. That makes it all the more damning when she literally does nothing the entire time. She doesn't shoot anyone or provide help for her allies. That's not the worst of the mission. You know how Akito has his bloodlust moment that is related to a geass? Well, somehow this links with the other members of the team aside from Leila. One, this was never shown to be possible in Code Geass; for the effects of one's geass to sync with others' minds through some crazed pseudoscience. Two, why isn't Leila affected? Theee, this geass came from Xin, and it makes people die, but now not only did Akito survive it (begging the question of how he died if he's alive right now, over 10 years after the incident of his "death"), but that's what infects the others, again, excluding Leila. None of this makes any remote sense whatsoever, and I could go on and on about some of the other dumb things like how Xin doesn't bother finishing Akito off when he wants to kill him, but you get the point by now and then it would just resort to bloated nitpicking. Whatever; both sides retreat and no one remotely important died or had any reason for us to care even if they did. The end. Leila, while beautiful, is both better and worse in this film. She's better in the fact that she is being a bit more than a typical "righteous princess who sympathizes" and is actually trying to fight, even though some of those in that archetype do that as well. Problem is, she basically lied about that since she doesn't even fire a single bullet in the fight against the enemy, producing next to no support for her comrades. The most infuriating part was when she had Xin in her sights but didn't bother shooting him or his knightmare when he had Akito effectively at his knees. Also, I wonder if she ever found her car that she was looking for during the first half of her film. Akito is the same as ever, but we get to flesh him out a bit more in the fact that it was his brother that told him to die, somehow giving him this bloodlust geass effect. Other than that, nothing else was done with him aside from having a new rival, who I'll get to. Now we actually get to talk about the rebel 11's trio and mention them by name! Ryou and Yukia are generic crazy evil people who have different skills but that's really it. They keep trying to backstab our protagonists and don't face any punishments other than "foiled again". Ayano at least had the fact that she does things out of anger and revenge, but that's the entirety of her character. This reminds me of the Trinity trio from Gundam 00, only a million times worse since those guys had a personality that went beyond one trait. For the real villains, the only two of note are Ashley (yes, that is a guy but he has a girl's name), who is Akito's bloodthirsty rival from this point onward who rags in about luck on the battlefield, and Xin, our generic antagonist in every way imaginable. We saw glimpses of that in movie 1, but it's all but confirmed here that he is one of the most generic villains ever conceived. Also, Suzaku from the original series makes a brief cameo in this movie, along with Julius Kingsley, who we all know is basically Lelouch except dehydrated and with new memories. They obviously don't salvage anything from this disaster of a cast. Remember when I said the designs didn't have that sleek shine to them in movie 1? Well, they luckily brought it back, though the completing last time was pedantic if nothing else. Either way, there's somewhat more movement this time around for the actual characters, but that's about it. The CGI Knightmares are as bad as ever but with noticeably worse framerate this time around. The direction is just as awful for action scenes with the camera, too. The design for Ashley's knightmare is pretty cool, especially with the swords, but the one for Xin's is an abomination, excluding the ridiculous horse. It's a shame the detail on these goes to waste with poorly integrated CGI anyway. CGI explosions and smoke don't help matters either. Effectively, only the most minuscule of improvements to elevate the loom from terrible to regular bad. Also, the knightmares that Akito and co. pilot are still hideous as sin. There's little to speak of in the music department either. The OST is literally the same and with no additions whatsoever, and we even got the same ED. It's all just as generic and poorly integrated as ever and there is literally nothing to say about this OST. You'd think they'd put at least 1 new track for us to notice but I guess not. At this rate, I'm just showing a filibuster because I don't want this section to have less than 5 lines of text. Let's just move on, this review almost over anyway... This was strike two for the Akito the Exiled sub-series. The characters nonsensically regressed, nothing made sense, almost nothing improved whatsoever, and I'm basically repeating myself at this point. I've covered just about everything from this 1-hour film that was remotely worth talking about. "Best in the series" my ass!

The second episode of Code Geass: Akito the Exiled was a wonderful addition to the growing collection of the Code Geass Universe. Honestly, I hope they build several other series based on this universe, but I digress. The character designs, animation and soundtrack were all stellar. The art in each frame? Sublime. Best art I've seen on an anime, and I've seen a lot. Not in terms of art style, but in the general quality of the art. I especially remember the breathtaking scene near the middle of the episode; it was reminiscent of the recent critically acclaimed film Gravity. Beautiful art, plain beauty. The storywas quite lacking, just like the first episode. And that is why I would have liked this series to be twenty four or twelve episodes; it allows for more story development. However, it doesn't really take away from the enjoyment of this highly alluring anime. They seem to have made this quite action centric, even though three quarters consisted of heavy dialogue between the characters. I can't quite explain my dilemma. In short, when this series is completed, everything should fall into place; just like Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion. Thus, despite the unsubstantial plot, this anime is sure to fulfil your hunger for enjoyment. With the marvellous mechas, competent characters and brilliant animations, what is there to not blissfully enjoy this great work? I guess you could think of it like the summer blockbusters of the Western film industry: amazing on all departments except for the story. But I do believe that by the end of this wonderful set, the story would come full closure and it would be great. Personally, I enjoyed it immensely and dubbed it the best anime of 2013. It made my whole year, and imagine if I'd watched it tomorrow, the first day of 2014. I would've been disappointed until the next instalment of the series. Hopefully it won't be delayed again. Probably will.

What an episode this was, objectively better, but also downgraded in some respects. This episode expands more about Akito and his relationship with his new comrades, it spikes interests to see how it all concludes, will he switch sides? Because that’s the feeling I get from him. The character that appeared accompanying resembles Lelouch so much that it could actually be him, so much resemblance that I can’t ignore it, maybe it’s somebody else, but the fact he got an eye patch on the same eye Lelouch had his Geass is also bugging me. I’m loving the Suzaku and Lelouch cameos, I hope for a Suzaku vs. Akitoand his crew fight, it would be such a bomber to pass on. Akito’s Geass or whatever his neuro-related power is very intriguing that it does not have the traditional Geass pattern, maybe it is but an effect from his Brother’s Geass? I don’t know. This episode/movie was better than the last one in terms of hype and action, however, I felt like the visuals have gotten a significant downgrade. The movement is kind of clunky, the CGI is very exposed and sometimes out of place and jugged and the colors don’t tend to match the lightning on the backgrounds.

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