It's good but is it great? not really. giving it a 7/10 is pretty generous, because there's a lot of specific things i love, including the ending, and the main character, who i didn't get the hype for at first, but he really grew on me, especially in the final episode where i fully understood his motivations. it's hard to talk about the stuff i like without mentioning what i didn't, so i'll just talk about everything briefly, as spoiler free as possible. - the world building is pretty good but honestly nothing special, just a generic 'empire takes over world with an evil dictator', but the more intricate details, like the knightmares and the production of geass users are great but it feels like a lot of missed potential bc the power systems are never fully explained, and 'the order' is such a small part of the plot - the pacing is honestly shit, the overall pacing of the show is way too fast with too much time wasted on mid minor plot lines, causing pretty much all the side characters to not be interesting, and character dynamics are constantly changing and sometimes just don't make sense, and it all feels rushed. the story is so massive and needed maybe even double the time to tell. on a smaller scale, this might just be a personal thing, but the way they structure episodes where they're always flipping from scene to scene gave me no time to breathe or think about what's happening, and it sometimes feels like a bunch of information being thrown at you, instead of you being immersed into the story and characters - the characters are good, if they have enough time put into them, and if the writers care enough. i especially liked in season 1 we got some more character focused episodes which all really added to characters' depth, but since the cast has probably like 50 side characters, and the show spends a lot of time with them on screen, but not enough per character for me to ever be invested, they're all just pretty forgettable and boring. i only really cared about maybe 5 characters in the show. lelouch is amazingly written, and just gets better the more i watch, but even he is slightly flawed and a lot of his 'smartness' which people talk about is often just the writers wanting him to seem smart by saving him with a new knightmare or new technology at the last moment, instead of actual smart writing. he's still a great character tho - the episodes are pretty consistently entertaining and keep you entertained, but if the story was more focused and spent less time being led astray by inconsequential side quests, maybe some of the episodes would have hit harder. there are some pretty high peaks before 2x25, but i wouldn't say there are any 'perfect' episodes before then - there's too many plot holes which aren't explained or just don't make sense, and a lot of them aren't major ones, but in almost every episodes there was something small that i thought just didn't make sense and it bugged me a bit Top 10 episodes: https://srlzd.com/l/37ad1 Favourites characters: 1. Lelouch 2. Kallen 3. Suzaku 4. C.C. 5. Nunally Overall, i wouldn't do what i did and watch the whole show for the final episode (even tho it's really good), but if you ignore the plot holes, the lack of character building for some characters and the pacing issues, there is truly something amazing beneath it all, but taking everything into account i can't help but feel like there's a lot of missed potential here. still really good as much as i've said bad things about it top 30 show i've seen top 10 anime i've seen top 15 highest peak in fiction decent 7/10 edit: strong 6/10