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With the terrorist Zero reportedly executed and many of the Black Knights arrested, the Holy Britannian Empire has once again taken complete control of Area 11, formerly known as Japan. Without Zero to inspire them the Japanese people have resigned themselves to their fate and do nothing while the Britannian Empire imposes its will over them. However, the Black Knights have not given up on their cause and seek to find the missing Zero, whom they still believe to be alive, and once again take up the mission of freeing Japan from its oppressors. Suzaku continues his plan to bring peace to Japan and secures a position as a direct subordinate to Empreor Charles Zi Britannia to further his goal.
<o:p></o:p>The plot of R2 picks up one year after the end of R1 and throws enough confusing elements out there to make you wonder if perhaps there were a few episodes before this one that you missed. Characters are behaving differently, or are entirely absent, along with a new character who everyone seems to know already. Thankfully all of this is explained by the end of the first episode, and the confusion works well to grab your attention and make you curious as to what exactly is going on. <o:p></o:p>The plot isn’t completely free of problems though. One issue I had was with Suzaku, who seems to have done a complete about-face personality wise. He now has no problem selling out his best friend to further his own goals, and where as in the past he was against senselessly killing people he now has no problem slaughtering whole armies. Another thing that seemed completely out of place in the series was Lelouch’s short stint in substance abuse; it just came off as more silly than deep human drama, and for a series that tends to make a spectacle out of nearly everything, seeing a Knightmare Frame snowboard down a collapsing structure on a shield still comes across as completely ridiculous and out of place. Even so, the main draw of the series, Lelouch’s meticulous planning and master strategizing is intact and done just as well as it was in the first series. <o:p></o:p>R2 uses the same art style as the first series, so you already know what to expect. Every character has lanky arms and legs that wouldn’t be able to support their body if they weren’t all unbelievably thin, and you’ll get to see plenty of faces contorted into ridiculously detailed, exaggerated expressions. The series also introduces plenty of new, interesting looking mech designs for the Knightmare Frames. It’s fairly good quality animation and it manages to maintain that quality throughout each episode.<o:p></o:p>The only noticeable changes made in the translation are the names of C.C. and V.V., changed to C2 and V2 respectively. Other than that the dub script has only minor variations from the subtitle script, and much of the time lines are spoken verbatim as they appear in the subtitles. Johnny Yong Bosch does a good job as Lelouch, able to perform the characters trademark theatrics perfectly and giving a good overall performance. Kate Higgins also does an excellent job voicing C.C., making her sound bored with everyone and everything around her. Most other characters voices are done well, with my only real gripe being Nunally’s voice, which I found to be irritatingly high pitched. Like the first series though, R2 isn’t free from a few cheesy or awkward sounding lines. Even so, the dub is well done overall.<o:p></o:p>Extras include the common textless opening and closing themes, along with commentaries and key animation galleries. One other extra is the ‘Extra Flash: Baba Theater Redux.’ These are short, comedic animations, which unfortunately aren’t really all that funny. The extras on the disc aren’t really anything spectacular and are pretty much the standard fare at this point.<o:p></o:p>If you’ve watched through the entire first series than you’ll be glad to know that R2 maintains the same quality as before, albeit with a few minor hiccups along the way. If you haven’t watched the first series than you won’t understand anything going on with this one and there’s really no reason for you to watch it, but if you’re interested you can go watch the first series and then check this one out.<o:p></o:p><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=anthsrevi-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0028X6L0K&fc1=D5D3D3&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=060606&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>
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