Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion II - Transgression

Lelouch is growing the rebellion. The organisation called the Black Knights is now a serious military force and the Britannian administration has to put it down. He hides his identity: an ordinary student at school, a commander behind a mask. But the people closest to him keep ending up on the other side, and where anyone stands, his own siblings included, becomes uncertain. Goro Taniguchi directs. It is the second of the three films assembled from the television series of the same name. The compilations do not simply repeat the series. Some events were changed, some characters removed and the timeline partly rearranged, in order to prepare the ground for the new film that followed the trilogy. The subject is the distance between an aim and a method. Lelouch wants to bring down an unjust order and uses people to do it; the film does not build him as a hero. The power called Geass is at the centre: with a look Lelouch can give one person a single command, which that person must obey. The power is limited, and those limits determine the plot. It was prepared for viewers of the series; roughly a season is covered in two hours and the pace is very fast. Who it is for: viewers of Code Geass and anyone who likes politically grounded animation. Who it is not for: the characters and events are compressed for a newcomer, the transitions are abrupt, and the film does not complete itself.