Ah, Rozé of the Recapture a 300-hour psychic mugging, an abomination upon the sacred grounds of mecha storytelling, a soulless cash grab masquerading as a continuation of one of the greatest anime ever made. If the original Code Geass was a grand symphony of political intrigue and bombastic spectacle, this atrocity is the equivalent of a toddler banging a tin can with a rusty spoon while screaming about how deep they are.
I went into it with hope…foolish, naïve hope. Code Geass was a masterpiece, a work of brutal cunning, razor-sharp strategy, and characters that burned their way into your brain like high-grade acid. I was there at the height of the fandom, I ran the damn fansites, I had multiple cosplays ranging from a Ashford Academy Uniform to a Black Knight’s Uniform. This was sacred ground to me. But Rozé of the Recapture? No, this wasn’t a worthy successor—it was the mad ramblings of someone who heard a drunken, half-remembered retelling of Code Geass in a bar after Anime Expo and decided to turn it into a script.
And who did they get to write this disaster? Noboru Kimura. A man who once crafted the chaotic brilliance of GXP: Galaxy Police Transporter, but now, it seems, couldn’t narrate his way out of a wet paper bag.
The premise? A limp, sagging retread of the original plot, just with fewer brains and more corporate interference. The remnants of the old Empire—because of course, needing an Empire again—seize Hokkaido and set up a new regime. And our new protagonist, Rozé, doesn’t even get the dignity of an original power. No, she’s handed Lelouch’s Geass—straight from L.L. himself, who has now become a grotesque parody of his former self.
Even C.C.—the immortal, pizza-loving queen of cryptic monologues—calls it out. Episode 4, subtitled version. “Why did you give that girl YOUR Geass?” That’s not meta-commentary, that’s the creators accidentally admitting their own lack of creativity. At this point, I was already gripping my chair like I was being forced in a Ludovico Technique torture, my hopes shriveling like salted slugs under the blinding light of mediocrity.
Then there’s the voice cast—oh, the poor, suffering voice cast. Dan Green. YES THAT DAN GREEN, the man who roared life into the very soul of my childhood, the voice of Yugi Mutou, who retired from voice acting after personal tragedy—dragged back into the booth for this? They pulled this man out of mourning to voice Norland von Lunebelg, a cardboard-cutout villain so bland he makes Britannian bureaucrats look nuanced. And James Urbaniak, the magnificent jaded scientist Dr. Venture himself, wasted on a discount Lloyd Asplund? A psychopathic scientist named Christoph Scissorman? I would have set myself on fire if I weren’t already burning with incandescent rage.
And where the hell is Lloyd anyway? Or Rakshata Chawla? The original Code Geass gave us this fantastic dynamic of a morally dubious Britannian scientist versus a chaotic-good Indian tech genius—both creating machines of war, both reveling in the arms race. But Rozé of the Recapture can’t be bothered to bring them back. Not even Villetta Nu—who got a beautiful arc in the original, who had a child with Ohgi, a family dynamic worth exploring. Nothing. Not even a single, lazy throwaway line about her.
But oh, they brought back Cornelia li Britannia. Not the ruthless, battle-hardened princess from the original, but some neutered, desk-bound “General Commander” who, in some spectacular feat of brain damage, decides to send Nina; yes, that Nina to the wolves to help the resistance. Because when you think “reliable war asset,” you obviously go for the table humping lesbian who once had a full-blown psychotic breakdown over a crush and nearly nuked an entire city. Brilliant strategy, Cornelia. You’ve outdone yourself.
By this point, my soul had left my body, clawing at the walls to escape the sheer idiocy of what I was witnessing. Rozé of the Recapture isn’t just bad it’s insulting. It’s a Disney+ exclusive, and that alone should tell you everything you need to know. A Code Geass sequel, dumped unceremoniously onto a platform that couldn’t care less. It reeks of contract obligations, of executives ticking checkboxes, of passionless, joyless mediocrity.
Would I recommend it? Only if you’re interested in performing a psychological self-destruction experiment. Otherwise, burn every copy of it you find, salt the earth where it was discussed, and pretend it never happened.