mild spoilers for Dakkan no Roze and inherent spoilers for everything leading up to it Nothings gonna stop Code Geass from being successful. Not even being given a proper studio until well into production didnt stop S1s team from launching an instant hit back in 2006. Significant content changes and omissions didnt stop the original writers and directors and their team from making Fukkatsu a success to launch a 10 year plan off of back in 2019. The abysmal quality of Dakkan no Roze isnt gonna stop a different pair of writers and directors from making it part of the brands continued success if the myriad character trailers and episode trailers are anything to go by. Whenever we reach the end of this 10 year plan there will probably be another big and successful project to cap it off. Geass may not have the staying power overseas that it once held and Disneys absolute lack of marketing has only further damned Roze into being a legacy sequel only a fraction of the original fanbase has even heard of prior to its conclusion. However Geass is still a massive franchise in its home nation and Roze is just another cog in the machine. A rusty cog with cracks everywhere but a cog all the same. That doesnt mean its not an abysmal legacy sequel and a worse followup to Fukkatsu no Lelouch than imagined. They managed to make the premise of a future conflict set in Japan a nonstarter in such a way where the UNJ established by the Zero Requiem of R2s/Movie 3s finale looks completely inept for years. Upon Year 3 of the postZR Kowa period a surprise attack is launched in Hokkaido taking it over and quickly establishing NeoBritannia and a series of EMP defense towers that keep enemy Britannians and whatnot at bay. These unprotected towers that seemingly nobody has attempted to target. If the mere conceit of this show is a nonstarter how is the show supposed to function? Technically its not impossible but after more or less nullifying any actual effectiveness of the original ending or more pertinently its movie timeline counterpart which is 99 the same put charitably its gonna be a hard sell. There are a few other overarching issues with the show which compound with oneanother. First off the show feels roughly half its length especially with the first quarter and last quarter. As such most of the characters dont have much time to breathe as the gigantic cast of protagonists and antagonists cannot begin to flesh out even half of the survivors to any meaningful degree. Its hard to say if the NeoBritannian officials have it worse or if the Black Knier sorry Seven Shining Stars have it worse. The issue of unoriginality will be covered later. The most immediate example that comes to mind is Heath Lott a NeoBritannian official introduced at the start of episode 3 as he confidently challenges the SSS. The next time we see him not 5 minutes later the battle is skipped and the officials report of his failure as he is hyperventilating before their leader Norland kicks him out. He blows his brains out immediately thereafter. An entire story that could span at least an episode reduced to 2 minor scenes just to add another body to the pile of corpses. One of his more successful cohorts Christoph Scissorman makes a point about how Heath wanted to fill the shoes of the guy who seemingly died in episode 2 and yet despite being the first antagonist to have a remotely engaging motivation and sympathetic demise hes snuffed out in two quick scenes. The NeoBritannian forces have it arguably even worse on the whole than the Knights of the Round back in R2. Its almost as bad as how the majority of the Seven Shining Stars have next to no personality or detail or anything for the entire run. The only minor exceptions are Haruka the Kallen expy and Kensei Kuroto who is rescued in episode 2. We have the mechaloving Tamaki expy in Oda the nice girl with a giant rack in Youko and you have the rest. Thats all we have as far as personality or any personal details or chemistry beyond the mildest of teasing towards Oda for being an upstart. The Black Knights back in the original only really had 3 notable starting members in Oghi Kallen and Tamaki but even back in the first few half or so of S1 those 3 alone had more going on than every SSS member put together. Main leads Ash and Sakuya do have compelling backstories and character arcs respectively and certain NeoBritannians such as Narah Catherine and Walther do have something going on to keep them mildly interesting. However the show rarely has enough time to make the most out of them let alone other SSS members or NeoBritannian officials. That is except for Norland who is a vacuous waste of space with a boring borderline nebulous kill humanity cuz theyre disgusting motivation after being an apathetic killer for most of the show. The less said about him the better at least for now. You may have caught on by now that this legacy sequel has a habit of sucking on the original series teet. The premise is a variation of what the original show started out with. We have a new take on the Black Knights complete with them being apprehensive of working with mysterious outsiders such as the main duo. The main characters have to stop the Damocles from firing FLEIJAs at a city. The Lelouch expy Sakuya interrogates the starter villain for information and gets him killed after revealing themselves and geassing him following another bout of him exterminating the Japanese. An ambitious official seemingly dies before getting turned into a cyborg with a Geass canceller and an obsession with one of the main characters. Dakkan no Roze frequently remixes elements from the original usually to terrible results since the pacing is so blitzed and the characterization is so threadbare aside from around 6 characters in a roster of around 20 notable new entities. The worst example is in how it handles violent discrimination. Code Geass wasnt subtle about displaying Britannians violence and bigotry towards the Japanese. However it had a level of depth and gravitas that this show lacks. Geass S1 doesnt start with casually shooting a guy off a pier during target practice and slaughtering a bridge full of Elevens. The first onscreen slaughtering comes when Clovis a novice trying to snuff out the local resistance gives the order and its treated with some actual weight. Geass went in some level of depth about even workplace bigotry with how Suzaku and his team were sometimes barred from missions because being an Honorary Britannian was a social playcating move that didnt actually mean anything for Japanese folks who joined the Britannian military. They were frequently gossiped about as well. Dakkan no Roze has 1 minor gossip scene and at most Catherine berating Sakura Sumeragi for being a halfEleven figurehead with no actual power. Both shows do have random Britannians harassing or beating up Elevens for existing or for the most minor slights but the original series has more than the most surface level atrocities and Roze has fucking murder roombas. You read that right. Towards the last of the show the audience is introduced to giant robots that suck people up shred them and spew out blood geysers that turn into blood mist across the globe while cutting off all nearby surveillance and communication. The concept is beyond over the top and schlocky just like the shows handling of discrimination is sometimes. Its almost impossible to play this for any legitimate horror not that the show tries to since the concept isnt exactly grounded or easy to take seriously. It would be easier to do so if most of the cast had stuff going for them but they dont so atrocities such as this and the multitude of adequately animated fight scenes are hard to get invested in. It doesnt help that the show doesnt have much in the way of exploring themes or advancing what the original explored. Sure there are multiple NeoBritannian officials such as Natalia and Sakura who are working from the inside. Walther and Narah also think about their original good intentions and what they can even do beyond fighting enemies. They do comment on how its still difficult to get any kind of positive political policy going by working from the inside or trying to help outsiders from the inside. However none of that broaches the depth of Suzakus rise through the ranks and how multiple systems in a totalitarian government make such approaches difficult longterm games. The original also ended on conflicts between people stuck in the past people focused on controlling the present and people trying to create a better future for others to have agency over. This show ends with we must stop the guy who hates everybody otherwise world peace will have officially gone out the window along with Earths population. Riveting. Its hard not to compare Roze with either season of the original series when Roze itself insists on aping them and adds so little to the table. That being said there are some decent things it does on its own like the shared connections between Ash and Narah and how their trajectories have affected them despite the fact that they would rather not fight each other if need be. Ashs backstory was surprisingly compelling especially when his younger self interacts with Jugo Sumeragi who was killed before the start of the show. Theres a scene where the latter breaks down at the fact that while death doesnt scare him he wont get to see his daughter again and Ash who recently lost a loved one relates and soon breaks down himself. Roze aka Sakuya who had Geassed Ash into obeying her and believing shes his brother via a fake identity starts regretting her vengeful actions towards him the more she learns about him. There is a good and compelling series somewhere with plenty of characters who have moments that elevate them beyond the vacuous entities they appeared to be at the start and other engaging moments not described here. Its all just buried underneath all the shows stupid decisions rushed pacing and plenty of woefully underwritten characters. Thats to say nothing of how Ashs and Sakuyas stories end which are about as bad as Lelouchs and Suzakus endings were good. With all that said do the audiovisuals at least come within striking distance of what came before? Yes but at best theyre closer to the level of Fukkatsu. Kenji Kawai is one of animes most acclaimed composers working on the Ghost in the Shell movies of the 90s 2000s the DEEN adaptation of Fate/Stay Night Mob Psycho 100 and Higurashi among a sea of other notable titles such as Ranma and Gundam 00. His pedigree perhaps even exceeds that of the original Geass composers including its most prolific one Kotaro Nakagawa. Unfortunately none of Kawais contributions to Roze are nearly as memorable or bombastic as the sweeping scores of the original series. The tracks are often spammed ad nauseam such as the plethora of bagpipeheavy tracks and the buttrock that plays whenever Ashs mech goes turbo. There are some solid orchestral tracks and mildly emotional pieces but while the OST is solid its not filled to the brim with memorable tracks that move or excite. Also the OP and ED are fine? Not notably good or bad enough to really discuss. As for the visuals theyre solid. Surprisingly theres a lot of 3D CGI Knightmare Frames that practically feel 2D to the point where the average viewer may not even notice. The mecha designs are fine enough and they animate decently well with no frame rate clashes with the frame rate of the 2D assets. A variety of fighting styles are used such as fencing CQC and more with the shows decision to return characters to largely groundbased combat and weapons. It has none of the flippydippy breakdance type evasion combat of S1 unfortunately with barely any moments where the fight choreography even comes close to having moments nearly that engaging as far as mecha combat is concerned. Oftentimes characters just zip and zoom about or refuse to shoot until its too late. The only notable exception is the final battle having a fair amount of tracking shots as Sakuya and Ash weave through Norlands attacks without giving the audience motion sickness. The characters are generally drawn consistently with hardly any egregiously offmodel moments. Takahiro Kimuras final set of character designs includes some standouts such as Scissorman Ash and Sakuya including her Roze disguise. Redesigns of returning/cameo characters were also generally nice particularly Cornelias redesign. Some designs such as Catherines are really pushing it in terms of being able to take them seriously in a remotely grounded military show especially when this one is far less comedic or filled with fanservicey romps than S1 or especially R2. That being said hardly any are particularly bad even if the SSS members often look as plain as the characters themselves are in practice. There arent any noticeable animation fuckups either aside from a few awkward shortcuts like in Ash vs Narah in episode 5 just having the characters border on becoming lines slamming into each other. That being said there are some scenes where the lighting filters become absolutely garish for no real reason namely in some scenes where the SSS members and the main duo are making plans. Still the show overall looks good even if it doesnt have any of the over the top facial expressions editing choices or overall style of the original. At the end of the day Roze is a terrible legacy sequel. It apes from the original without adding much worthwhile to stand on its own or advance what came before. Several decisions actively and needlessly undermine the ending of the recap trilogy which is almost identical to the original when there were easy ways to avoid that. Most of the new characters are featureless planks of wood and the ones rising above dont get dealt the best hands either. The show does admittedly do a tasteful job with its many cameos across the entire Geass pantheon and somehow Nina gets some agency as the shows resident remorseful Oppenheimer. However just because some old and new characters get some decent material to work with doesnt mean that the shows overarching narrative isnt broken. It may have started going somewhere decent towards the middle but it started off as a derivative mess and it ends in a similarly dire place. There are rumors that the shows episode count was cut in half which probably explains some of the more egregious issues with much of its new cast. However nothing could have saved the shows beginning and end. If the culmination of the 10 year plans front half is a dumber edgier Geass Greatest Hits compilation thats as rushed as it is hollow what hope is there for the next 5 years? Also insert obligatory Geass girls are hot and the camera really wants you to know that here.