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Wednesday, April 6, 2011

The Stories of the Top 80 Anime: Code Geass

Code Geass is the incredible story of a lone boy conquering the world and reshaping it in his image. It is a deeply political story, which is fascinating, because most art steers away from politics to avoid alienating its audience. This one dives right into the middle of it, its politics is the story of Code Geass. This is just one of many things that sets Code Geass apart from all other anime.

What is the politics of Lelouche Lamperouge, the eventual conqueror of the world? He makes many speeches in reference to it, but his basic idea is that the government should be the ally of the weak and the enemy of the strong. He wants a world that is safe for his younger sister, Nunnally, a girl who is both wheelchair bound and blind. For this reason, he rejects his political enemies, social darwinists who believe 'might makes right' and weak people who can't defend themselves have no value, who therefore can be abused by the strong in any way they please. This is strikingly parallel to capitalists and materialists, who wish to reduce everyone's worth to how much money they make, and laughingly ignore the suffering of the unemployed, the minimum wage workers, the exploited and the debt-ridden. If it's possible to put someone into financial straits, and they're too weak to prevent it, then it is our moral right to do so. This is the basic stance of Republicans and Libertarians the world over. It is not the stance of Lelouche Lamperouge, who loves his sister and thinks she is quite valuable, weaknesses and all. Nunnally's value comes from her kindness, her gentleness, her gratitude to those who help her, the love she has for her friends and family, her physical and spiritual beauty -- all things you simply can't quantify according to 'might makes right,' or 'productivity makes right.'

Lelouche personally leads lethal raids on drug dealers and uses his 'rebel' forces to kill them. He considers drug dealers as a type of exploiter who preys on the weak. It doesn't matter that the weak are willing to take the drugs -- that is just their weakness speaking, not their true souls that are still worth saving. Rather than allowing people to buy drugs to seek escapism, Lelouche wants a world that is so good no one feels the need to escape it. Rather than legalizing drugs for the sake of 'freedom', Lelouche wants a world so free that everyone can do better than get high.

Lelouche is willing to cause collateral damage, but he does not target civilians as a method of war. He considers it pointless, counterproductive cruelty to kill civilians of the 'opposing side' in his war. There is only one way to defeat an enemy, and that is to defeat their military. The killing of civilians is just an act of desperation and hatred, an acknowledgment that you can't actually win the real war with the real enemy. He isn't interested in the 'rules of war' however. He is fine with using any tool he has, including mind control and kidnapping, for the sake of victory. This is because winning is too important to worry about scruples that could lead to defeat. Code Geass explicitly states that "Only results matter," the ends justify the means. Again, this statement is a bold philosophical step no other anime even touches. The entire series is a syllogism that proves the stated point. Lelouche does all sorts of things, like betrayals and city-wide mayhem, to get his way, but ultimately he sacrifices his own happiness, his own reputation, and his own life as just more pieces on the board he is willing to toss into the fire for the sake of victory. The one thing he never loses is his ideal, which after his death, is finally realized in a peaceful world where the strong no longer prey on the weak.

It is the politics of Code Geass which lend it its greatness, a politics so far from the mainstream of the world today, but displayed masterfully as a counter-cultural rebellion. But there are other good things about Code Geass too. The art is done by Clamp, which of course sets the standard for perfection. The voice acting, especially of Lelouche, is absolutely marvelous. The size and quality of all the mecha battles, the heavy reliance on intelligence and not brute force as the keys to victory, the complicated relationship Lelouche has with his friends, allies, and enemies, the double nature of the curse and blessing of his Geass power, and most of all the amazing speeches the various characters make in the course of the series. . .everything comes together to create this masterpiece.

There are various speeches that you never forget, like when Euphemia, a naturally kind and tolerant princess, is mind controlled by Lelouche into someone who seeks to genocide all Japanese. Even though her personality has been completely hijacked, she still goes about genociding the Japanese in her own Euphemian way. First, she asks the Japanese if they please might kill themselves. Then, when they refuse to do so, she says that regrettably figures, and then asks her own army to start killing them, and as encouragement, says, "Let's make it a massacre," in the same way she would have encouraged a sports team to achieve victory. When all is said and done, and Euphemia lies dying from Lelouche's bullet wounds, she meets Suzaku, the boy she loves, who loves her, who is an 'honorary Brittanian' but ethnically Japanese. When she starts talking to Suzaku, she is still under the mind control to kill all Japanese, and she says to him, "Come to think of it, you're also Japanese, aren't you?" But then shakes her head, and through force of will banishes her compulsion, with the loophole that he's technically a Brittanian, and that "I mustn't think of that," so her mind control doesn't figure out what she just did. Then she talks entirely lucidly in the same gentle and caring style that Euphemia always had, hoping everyone has gotten along and her plan to bring peace to Japan has succeeded. Suzaku assures her that she has succeeded, that she was brilliant, and everything is fine now. She dies thinking that's how her actions played out. Suzaku believes it's okay to lie to Euphemia, because he has grasped the essential principle of morality: the ends justify the means. Why should he torment Euphemia's soul with the knowledge of what she's done, against her own will? What would be the purpose?

There is another speech, when Lelouche asks his ace pilot, Kallen, why she fights for the rebellion. She answers with a simple declaration: "Because I am Japanese." The insane amount of meaning such a response carries, the number of ways you can interpret such a loaded statement, is magnificent. Even the fact that she has no interest in explaining herself further, and demands such a statement is a sufficient answer, is itself magnificent. Later, when Lelouche asks Suzaku what it means to be Japanese, whether its geographical, or racial, or some other category, Suzaku says, "No. It's the heart!" IE, if you love Japan, and if you share the core beliefs and values of the Japanese people, that's what makes you Japanese. It is a powerful affirmative for proposition nations, but it demands not people 'seeking economic opportunity' who want to do 'jobs we won't do,' but people who are Japanese in spirit, if they want to be called Japanese in fact. Japan is not a flophouse for migrant laborers to shack up in. It is a soul. The Japanese are the collective soul of Japan. If you aren't part of the world-soul, get out! That's what it means to be Japanese. We would do well to listen to Code Geass in this, as well as all other things.

Even Lelouche's enemy, Charles vi Brittania, ends up being better than 99% of most anime's heroes. He is someone who has promised, along with his brother Vivu, to banish all lies from this world. Part of banishing all lies from this world was abolishing all fanciful and ridiculous doctrines about human equality, that are clearly disproven by the theory of evolution, and all pitiful pretenses that people are not selfish and motivated by self-interest. Rather than trying to paper over human nature with a series of pious frauds, he accepts it head on, and embraces it as how life should be -- anything to stop the sickening habit of humanity to lie, and lie, and lie about everything they see and hear.

Code Geass is unique in all ways, but the surprising popularity it has, while carrying almost the exact same message as the far-right, espousing violent revolutions as morally acceptable, mocking democracy and embracing virtuous dictatorships, rejecting the farce of human equality, having collective pride in the organization you are a part of, and so many other features that are supposedly 'radical' and 'extreme,' shows just how close we are, philosophically, to a breakthrough back into power. People don't think Lelouche is entertaining, they love him. They cry for his passing. They rejoice in his victory. Lelouche is the vehicle of a large portion of society that is discontent with the modern world. He is our voice. Like usual, anime leads the way.

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