It is the year 2017, and Europe is being invaded by the forces of the Holy Britannian Empire. In an
attempt to combat the opposition's overwhelming pressure and put an end to the massive casualties, the
army forms a special unit called Wyvern, or W-0, composed of former Japanese citizens referred to as
"Elevens." Recruited from ghettos, these young men and women pilot Knightmare frames—humanoid war
machines—into dangerous operations where death awaits, hoping to make a name for themselves.
When a European regiment attempting to recapture a crucial city is pinned down by the enemy, it's up
to W-0 to bail them out. Among those selected for the rescue operation is Lieutenant Akito Hyuuga,
known as "Hannibal's Ghost" due to his prowess on the battlefield. However, the supposed rescue
mission becomes suicidal when, in an attempt to take out as many Britannians as possible, the
commanding officer initiates the Knightmare's self-destruct sequence. In its aftermath, Akito finds
that he is the last one standing…
(Source: MAL Rewrite)
Note: The film received a special pre-screening on July 16, 2012 at theatres in Shinjuku Ward 9 and
Ikebukuro Cinema Sunshine.
As some of you may already know, I'm a big fan of Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion. Season 1 remains my favorite television series to date, and R2 was still pretty fun and equally ambitious. You can imagine how intrigued I was when I heard that it got a sub-series that was meant to explore some new territory in the lore of the franchise. After all, there is so much we don't know, like the origins of geass or what exactly happened between the 1-year gap between the events of R1 and R2, or even delving into the EU, which was never actually shown in the main series. Unfortunately, as you will see throughout this review, I was disappointed by it, in part due to one reason: Akito the Exiled has no ambition. This film has no drive. It simply feels like an addition to a franchise rather than a brand new installment that explores uncharted territory. Whether or not you liked the original series, you have to admit that it had a lot of ambition. It tried to be fun, humorous, and nuanced at the same time, and it balanced each part well. Whether or not you think the attempt worked is up to interpretation. This doesn't have that, and it shows given how boring this slop is. If there's anything I can compliment about Akito, it's that it treats the franchise with respect. It never does anything to jeopardize the continuity of the main series, and it expands on one key thing I wanted to know about: the EU. Also, the first half doesn't have many story issues. Simply, after a battle in which the only survivor is Akito, he needs up with one of his superiors, Leila (the one in charge of her main crew and the operation), and they head to a party in which he threatens a scumbag who was mistreating the one he is meant to guard (Lelia). Little goes on here aside from an action scene but that's alright; it's just the first 24 minutes. The second half is what really killed the story. There’s this rebel trio who blows up their douchey superiors for seemingly no reason. I mean it, we don't know why they did that aside from possibly not wanting to take orders. Then, they attack or protagonists for seemingly no reason. Did they believe they were defenseless officials? Did they know those guys were armed and ready? We sure don't know what was going through their heads. They get captured by Leila (she never explains why she spared them), and then a guy killing his boss and potentially becoming an antagonist in the future. He grasses him, but we don't know what it does aside from the boss killing himself afterward. The lines of taking a trip don't help matters either. We end on Akito being edgy and saying “I died once” and that's a wrap. I know you can't really get much out of 50 minutes, no can you always put a lot into it, especially when it's introductory, but that's hardly an excuse for what happened here. Let’s start with Leila since she’s the first MC we see. She's a bland “righteous princess and poor people activist” archetype that happens to know some self-defense techniques. Conversely, Akito is surprisingly malevolent, even by Code Geass standards, with his first scene showing him in a bloodthirsty rampage and many subsequent scenes having him sport the most wicked of evil grins. Other than that, he’s pretty standard, and the last scene really paints him as edgy. Neither of these two really have much to them, but they're better than the other characters who are literally archetypes as nothing else, like Leila’s older “brother” or the geass guy towards the end who makes his master kill himself. There’s also the heavily enteric rebel trio who apparently want a place to belong, but their actions are clearly not indicative of that. What a dimensionless bunch. As for the character art, while it is missing the shine that the characters in the original do, making these guys more akin to what comes out of Light Novels, their designs feel strictly “Code Geass” with the even more exaggerated version of the already exaggerative CLAMP style. Unfortunately, unless someone is disarming someone hand-to-hand, don't expect much to any movement with these characters. The most you'll usually get is a little bit of walking. Calling this animated is a formality at this point, at least for the characters. Now for the elephant in the room: the CGI. The CGI Knightmares tend to look terrible here, and are equally poor in terms of integration; some of the background vehicles aren't an exception either. The mecha designs mostly remain the same, but the new ones from the first battle are awful, especially the eyes that make the Knightmare that Akito pilots look non-threatening. I appreciate the detail that went into the mechs of the first battle, but it doesn't work that well. The mechs in the second battle look like they were ripped from a cel-shaded GameCube game from 2003, and it is also poorly integrated, chief among them being what one of the rebels fights to take out most of the soldiers surrounding Leila before Akito steps in. The CGI explosions look hideous as well. Hopefully, the subsequent films improve the CGI integration and Knightmare designs. The directing in this film is also pretty terrible, especially for the action scenes. The camera looks like it was operated by a schizophrenic cameraman, which makes it difficult to process what's going on at times. Even outside of battle, sometimes the camera doesn't keep up that well, notably in one instance in the beginning before we heard back to the first battle. However, I do like the cockpit screens. Still, all in all, whenever there is actual animation, it's done with poorly integrated CGI mechs that we can't properly see fighting due to the camera, unlike in the original series. In fact, you'd think they'd be able to make even better fights on a 50-minute film than on a 25 episode television series (applied to either season of Geass) but I guess not. The music was not done by Kotaro Nakagawa this time around, and it honestly shows. Someone else was in charge, and while the music does feel reminiscent of the feel of the amazing tracks of the main series, it's shockingly bland. There's this one piece with the crazy trumpets used in an action scene, but it doesn't fit well at all with either the action of the scene or the atmosphere surrounding it. The ED theme is also pretty bland, but EDs aren't really the franchise’s strong suit, unlike the OPs and OSTs, so I guess that's to be expected. Ultimately, this was an unremarkable and poorly executed project, and I desperately hope this sub-series doesn't get much worse. Its characters are as dull and lifeless as its narrative, the action is terribly handled, and overall I'm left without a reason to care. Say what you will about the original series (and I have), but it always tried its damnedest to give you a reason to be engaged, whilst this right here is the epitome, nay, the embodiment of being sub-par!
I came to this show after my 3rd rewatch of the main series, I had consumed all the specials, movies, picture shows and any content the original series had to offer and I was hungry for more. I hoped this would quench my thirst for the high-quality storytelling in the original show and I was woefully disappointed, please allow to elaborate. The biggest downfall of this movie was its length, it was simply too short for the vision the writer had intended. We are thrown into this new unexplored part of the lore with brand new characters that we need to care about before the end. And this show fails in so many ways, the introduction was fine, but compared to how Lelouch was introduced this is an utter failure. The main character's key character traits were never highlighted, you have no sense of who these characters are. What they care about and in turn you cant care about what is happening. The only key character traits displayed were very generic, like the general who cares about her subordinates despite their social standings. And the edgy emo boy who has a secret no one knows about. Almost all of the characters share this problem, the show never gives time to show interesting character traits and just opting for the most uninteresting options. This show tries to introduce you to so many characters that are useless to the plot of this movie that it makes the length problem even worse, it also doesn't help that the story jumps from group to group out of the blue. Making it even more boring as you are forced to watch some random dude do stuff you don't even care about. The world-building is probably the best part of this movie, it was organic and interesting. But it feels like the movie definitely focused on this a bit too much, they tried to flush out the world as much as possible as if this was the whole reason this show existed. Useless details are expositioned to us in dialogue scenes when it wouldn't matter if it was never mentioned, this makes the aforementioned problems even worse, as time is spent on things that are definitely interesting but they do not contribute much to the story. And the compilation of these problems makes the ending the most boring ending ever, the main story never was given enough time to properly develop so you don't even know why you should care or what's going on, you don't care about the characters and what happens to them, making this the most mediocre anime I've seen in a while. In short, if you want to experience the great storytelling of the original this is not for you, but if you simply want to see more of the world and fill in the gaps in the lore the original series did not explore this is the only place you can go.