Not Britannica

One of my friends told me that she'd met a dumb guy who thought that he was smart. He was denying liability for some event or another, but kept on saying:

"I'm not reliable."

This bimbo [1] was trying to impress my friend, but he persisted in stating his unreliablity after she corrected him. His attempt to impress ended in an epic fail.

That was the feeling that I got from watching the first episode of Code Geass: Lelouche the Revolution. When the Brits or many successful empires conquered nations, they often used locals to help carry out their bidding. During the heyday of the British Empire, they recognized Indian nobility, then used them to help administer the Jewel of the Empire.

Also, the honorary Britanicans should have been using at least riot gear (e.g. rubber truncheons, plastic restraints, etc.), so that they wouldn't be overpowered by the local populace. However, such details would have violated the characters' metrosexuality with its phallic cludginess. A mass slaughter of the locals would have also ignited a mass uprising in the Shinjuku slums. Afterall, this is only 7 years after the beginning of the occupation.

In the aftermath of WWII, MacArthur warned Washington: "give me bread or give me bullets." While he may have been exaggerating to get the materiel, he knew that he would have problems if he didn't feed the defeated Japanese. In Germany, groups of unrepantant Nazis called the Werewolves still fought against the Allies, despite years of war weariness.

But is it fair to fault a mecha anime for unrealism?

My criticism of the first episode lies in two lines:
1. The conceit has potential. The image of the Japanese living in their own downtown as a slum is striking. However, the first episode ham-handedly develops the world. This is disappointing considering the ambition & scope that the writers are pushing. In short, they hyped the hard-core, so they have to live up to it.
2. Lelouche's use of anime cliches hampers the development of the episode. High schoolers, dramatic idealism (Suzaku) juxtaposes discordantly with the genocidal slaughter at the end of the episode. So if you aren't dazzled by Samwise-Frodo intensity stares and girly-man gorgeous teens, this show may not be for you. In other words, this is more of a niche show, which is a legitimate business strategy, but moves away from the universal rule: "If it sounds good, it is good." And I doubt that this show is for me.

I may try episode 2 if the mood strikes me, but I have my doubts about that.

Usually I wouldn't bother to write a detailed negative review based one episode, but this Code Geass a pet peeve of mine, which I detail in criticism #1. To this day, I criticize the Segway for the same thing.

[1] Bimbo first applied to men in the '20s.