Funny Little Men

Right, before we get on with some more earth-shattering revelations about the anime watching habits of the Funny Little Men crew, a little update on our overwhelming web-presence. Like every good website owner, we like to check our statistics and see who has been visiting us, what they looked at and if they left us any candy.

Turns out that our little FLCL-contribution is one of the most viewed parts of this website. It has even overtaken "Boxing Kitty", which until recently was the most popular item on this website. In fact, it's the first time "Boxing Kitty" hasn't been on the number one spot. This puzzles us, it's not as if our FLCL write-up gets 5 or 10 percent more hits than the other blogs, it's more than double. Maybe it's our witty, concise writing style? But surely that applies to all our blog entries. Or maybe FLCL is such a popular topic to search for? Anyway, it seems websites take on a life of their own once they're out there for a while.

So, how about the actual subject of this entry? Anime Animal 2.5 ? Well, we have a little confession to make. We didn't tell the whole story last time, so this is really an addition to Anime Animal 2. A post script if you like. There's a tiny little television series we're following right now, but we sort of "forgot" to mention it.

Allow us to explain. There's a drought of interesting stuff in the world of anime at the moment. Nothing to worry about. The whole point of classics is that they only appear once in a while. You can't expect there to be an absolute unforgettable series every season. So, it's a drought, what do you do? Move on to other forms of entertainment? You know, music, television, film... Or maybe we should start participating in this thing called "real life"?

Yeah right.

We watch rubbish anime of course. And Code Geass season 2 fits that bill exactly. Naturally, we're a bit embarrassed about it.

Usually we start summing up lots of adjectives when trying to describe a series. For Geass, those would be: Pompous, contrived, theatrical... There's probably a few more we can't think of but maybe we should find a different approach to explain this beast. Maybe we should tell you what it isn't. Because there isn't much that it is not (still with us?)

Let's just sum up everything it is trying to be:

It's a high-school drama with the usual boy/girl antics. It's a geopolitical story about warring empires. It's a story about revenge and family feuds. It's about big fighting robots. It's about psychic powers. It's about large breasts... You name any genre or any storyline ever used in anime, Geass will most likely contain it. The whole thing is like staring at the stomach-contents of a person who just ate a ten course meal of anime's. Just picture bits of cheese-cake swimming alongside coque au vin and gazpacho. We compiled the sidebar to see which cliches we could detect. The list is by no means complete, it's just to give you an idea.

If Wagner could make an anime, Geass would be the result. It gives a new meaning to the words ridiculous, pompous and theatrical. As you would expect, the music is very Wagnerian. The size of the cast is very Wagnerian. The amount of references to Nordic and Celtic mythology is very Wagnerian. Yup, we think there's a Wagner thing going on in Geass. Every gesture is big and drawn with over-the-top perspective, eyeballs bulge, faces contort, voices tremble. Every instrument is made of brass, every building is build by Albert Speer. The whole world looks like Louis XIV's court.

The main character is Lelouch Lamperouge aka Zero, leader of the rebellion. He is a student with a name that sounds like a poodle and a voice that resonates like the inside of an empty super tanker. He struggles to balance his life as a student with that of his life as the leader of the Black Knights, a terrorist group dedicated to overthrow his estranged father, the emperor of Britannia who is conquering more and more territory in this parallel universe that is the world of Geass. And that's before things get complicated.

We hope that gives you a feeling for the size and scope of this series.

So why the embarrassment, oh Funny Little Men, you may ask. Well, there are a few reasons: First of all, in case you hadn't figured it out yet: it's pompous to the Nth degree. We don't agree with that sort of aesthetics, and yet, here we are, watching it as faithfully as the dogs in the "101 Dalmatians".

The scripts are about as contrived as you can get. It's funny in a "but hat wasn't supposed to be funny" sort of way. Quite frankly, the writing is awful. It's clearly designed by a commission, the way it's desperately trying to touch on all genres at the same time. It's a cacophony of designs animations, storylines, characters, moral ideas, military strategies, fan service. All played back at volume 11, because more is better.

So why not ditch this series, oh Funny Little Men, you may ask. You may even find some time to make more "Boxing Kitties" and in doing so, make the world a better place, you may say.

True, true.

But here's the snag: Code Geass uses cliff-hangers, and it uses them quite well. So we simply have to keep watching, we cannot not watch the next episode. It's compulsive viewing, like Jaffa cakes for the eyes. Put simply, cliff hangers work. And we are suckers for cliff hangers. That, and the fact that we have a soft spot for "CC", the mysterious, cold-hearted, green haired chick whose real name we don't even know. Will her name be revealed in the next episode? Ooh, it's another cliff hanger.