Disclaimer: This review covers the three "Code Geass" films: "Initiation," "Transgression," and "Glorification," retelling the story of the television seasons "Code Geass - Lelouch of the Rebellion" and "Code Geass - Lelouch of the Rebellion - R2."Almost a decade after "Code Geass - Lelouch of the Rebellion" finished on television, an anniversary project was announced, with the theme of "resurrection." This stirred some concern with fans: the original series ended perfectly, because of a key character's death. Would the project, later to be revealed as a film sequel, really go so far as to ruin that ending? And would it ruin it, or could the original creators (both the director and writer returned) be able to justify it? The film's plot was kept under secrecy, so perhaps we were just jumping to conclusions about what "resurrection" really meant.This is not a review of that movie. Instead, it is a review of the trilogy of recap films that were released shortly before it, which would make up a tetraology when combined with the new movie. Recap films like this aren't unusual for popular anime. In fact, "Code Geass" already had two recap films, one for each season, the first being to excite fans for that second season (these films never released outside of Japan). This time around, the original story is extended to three movies, hopefully to better serve that complex plot.At the time of this writing, March 2019, the trilogy of films was released by Funimation in a single set, WITHOUT an English dub. Funimation also announced that the important fourth movie would be released in American theaters in May, just months after the Japanese premiere, WITH an English dub. Recap films lacking a dub isn't always a big deal, but fans already knew the rumors that certain changes to the plot were made, such that viewing the new trilogy before the fourth film was essential. Given that the original series' English dub is one of the better dubs in the industry, this was a major disappointment. When Funimation announced this release, they cryptically mentioned the sub-only release being an issue with "timing of materials," which could mean a few things: most likely, Funimation wanted to release the hyped fourth film quickly, but needed to make the trilogy available in some form first, and the original studio was unable or unwilling to provide the film materials to dub three movies fast enough, forcing Funimation to make the tough choice. Or possibly, since the Japanese Bluray only came out less than a year prior, the studio didn't allow a "more complete" version to be released so quickly. Whatever the reason, I am certain the fourth film's home video release will be delayed, if only slightly (to keep Sunrise happy), and in that time, Funimation will return to redub these recap films... I hope.Anyway, not all recap films turn out well... how does "Code Geass" turn out? I had always wondered what the story would be like as a trilogy, suspecting it might best be done with the first two films covering Season 1, and the last covering Season 2. Instead, the trilogy splits the story fairly equally, covering most of Season 1 in the first film ("Initiation"), most of Season 2 in the last film ("Glorification"), and a bit of both in the middle film ("Transgression"). Each movie is an even 2 hours and 10 minutes (or 2 and 20 minutes for the final film). The content is mostly directly taken from the origina series, re-edited: I'd estimate about 5% of the animation is new. The new content doesn't really deliver anything new, only helping transition between moments in time, or allowing an excuse to skip large parts of the original story.Yes, at about 1/3 the amount of time as the original series, it's evitable that some content would be cut. And probably for the best, too. "Code Geass" had a massive story with a huge cast of characters, and not all of it is really essential. In fact, some elements worked against the story's favor. That's where the film trilogy mostly succeeds... certain subplots or character interactions are cut all-together, making for a slightly more focused, and more consistent, story. All the school-set-comedy, and sexy fanservice? That's gone. This is solely about the political motivations, Japanese pride, and the dynamic between Lelouch and Suzaku, each with their own mindset about how to save Japan from a world-conquering Britainian nation. For the stories that do remain, much of the content is actually unedited, leaving most of the pacing of the original series, without feeling rushed. A couple scenes in the first movie better introduce certain side characters that become important much later, something the first season wasn't great at. It's easier to appreciate this as the best unofficial-Gundam anime story.
... except when the editors don't commit to those better changes. During one of the opening-credits, when old ending art cards flash on the screen, we see the school club members in sexy cat outfits grabbing each other's breasts... a bit out of place, since no such thematic content exists any longer in the movies. And Season 2, the most problematic of the story and best suited to gain from large cuts, still takes up most of the content. One of the only noticable changes in the story involves Shirley, Lelouch's well-meaning girlfriend. At a risk of a spoiler, she dies twice in the original series (permenantly the last time), but here is kept perfectly alive. Which is fine, but the film does a poor job establishing she has any relationship to Lelouch, making it confusing when we keep seeing scenes of her wandering around town looking for him while he's out working as a terrorist. This and other minor scenes most certainly plant seeds that will be relavent to the final film, but are otherwise minor enough to be easily ignored. Finally, there are definitely a few key emotional scenes that ARE edited down, feeling noticably rushed, only to save a couple minutes out of the entire runtime.Therefore, I'm a little torn about how the story is presented. Admittedly, it's much better than it ought to be, and a perfectly fine way to relive the series, or even to introduce new viewers. But for all the improvements it makes, it isn't as good as the original series, something that probably couldn't be fixed without a full rewrite and full re-production.Speaking of that, the animation and visuals... they were pretty great when the series originally came out. The action and mech animation was a bit better than average, and CLAMP's elongated and expressionistic character designs looked great. That's all still true today, but it doesn't hold up quite as well as it used to. More noticably, the original shots vary wildly in sharpness at 1080p, most of it being rather blurry, arguably worse on Bluray than the original DVDs (if this is a sign of what the series' Bluray looks like, I'm not upgrading). The new scenes do a good job matching the style of the old series, enough so for new fans to have no idea which scenes are new... unless they pay attention to the big difference in HD sharpness. On the other hand, not using more modern production values, like "Code Geass - Akito the Exiled," feels like a missed opportunity. The Japanese dub is good, and for some characters, better than the English dub, but too often I missed those English voices, and with 95% of the dialogue having already been recorded for the series, it couldn't have been too hard to finalize a full dub... the way it is, I kept remembering English versions of each scene in my head, even when I didn't mean to.While there are a couple key differences from the original series, I don't think they are important enough to make this film trilogy essential to see the final movie, and instead could be established with a quick Wikipedia read. But despite that, the trilogy does a much better job retelling the story than most other recap movies. Even if it isn't quite as good, it reminds me of recap films from decades ago, the movies that represent "classic" anime when the original shows either disappeared, or weren't in high demand for being too slow. I could see "Code Geass - The Movie Trilogy" becoming that type of movie series, the kind fans will watch decades from now, should they not want to watch 50 episodes of complex story. And that story is still great in either form.