Not a bad review. I would largely agree with it myself.
I would want to comment on one thing though. The show was aiming for a combination of comedy and drama, not just one or the other, and this applies to both serious and non-serious sequences. Calling a lot of that "Narm" seems overkill, since it tends to miss how the creators themselves found a lot of the silliness and craziness to be rather funny too, and put it in the show for that same exact reason.
Yes, even during dramatic moments. Take Emperor Charles. To Lelouch, he's a deadly foe and he takes him seriously at all times. But to the creators and the audience, Charles can be rather funny due to his character design, expressions, voice and so on. If you check out the numerous behind the scenes materials and other side contents, you'll realize the Code Geass staff were far from being overly serious people.
In fact, they had a whole concept known as "Lulu Quality" to describe how much they enjoyed mocking Lelouch's serious attitude towards everything, whether comedic or dramatic, and they introduced many other in-jokes along the way.
Madonis:
I guess that is true. I guess the Narm thing could be listed as a personal flaw then because I still feel that it kinda ruins dramatic moments for me.
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Code Geass R1 review
A great season that involves deception, mechs, and all different types of moralities.
Pros:
Lelouch is an engaging protagonist and Suzaku is a great foil to him. And they are both three-dimensional characters.
The plot moves at a natural pace (at least for me it does) with plot points gradually coming up to bite Lelouch's ass.
The cliffhangers do their job.
The politics are done really well in my opinion.
Lots of plot twists.
Lelouch's plans are well thought out.
The characters (well most of them) are well written.
The soundtrack is nice.
The animation is great.
The art style is unique.
Voice acting in English for the most part is good (but Japanese captures Lelouch's Large Ham moments better.)
Cons:
(Minor and a personal con) Nina. I didn't mind her at first but I know that she can get a bit annoying for some people. (I'm not that bothered by her but I admit some of her scenes just make me really annoyed with her.)
(Minor) Some of the English dub voices are annoying.
Why would you end the season on a cliffhanger (and I heard that the second season has a timeskip too. Easy set up for disaster)
(VERY MINOR and just for fun) How come Mao shows up in the episode after his introduction just fine after getting shot by a bunch of gunshots. But in the next episode he explains this by saying: "Brittanian medical science is amazing". Then towards the final episodes when Euphemia gets shot.......she just dies...even though it was one gunshot and Mao got shot with like twenty to thirty gunshots. What.
The Narm during dramatic moments. Nothing else has to be said on this matter. (This series has it's own page)
(Minor and personal opinion) A previous review said that this show has poor choice in dramatic music. I don't disagree. The soundtrack for the most part is good but one of the scenes has Lelouch and Suzaku invading a Japanase compound (I think...correct me if I am wrong) and the BGM has some dude singing in the background and it was SO out of place. (In my and my brother's honest opinion)
Overall: As you can see the Pros clearly outweigh the Cons. This season of Code Geass gets a high recommendation from me (not that it will mean anything) for the great plot, characters, animation and soundtrack (though its choice of music can be pretty bad). But nothing is perfect.