SPOILERS FOR CODE GEASS: BOUKOKU NO AKITO 2 HIKISAKARESHI YOKURYUU Improvement is something that deserves recognition. When a series improves over time that means that it is being written better or that it was planned to reach higher levels of greatness as it went on. When a person improves his attitude or actions change to be kinder less selfcentered and less destructive. When art improves that means the artist or whoever crafted the art honed his craft more so that everything would blend well with each other and look visually pleasing. When a film improves thats because there is a new more competent writer at the helm who can look at what happened and where best to go from here or that the same writer as before did that exact thing. Sad to say nothing about what I just said applies to Akito the Exiled 2 with a minor exception to the third statement. In fact practically everything regressed in this film. This film while it feels more effortful and more driven than the previous installment it somehow manages to be the dumbest installment of the franchise so far. Its full of edge awful decisionmaking and a lot of idiotic and plothole driven moments and raises a potential knock against the continuity of the original lest that one gets explained in later films. It offers nothing else and Im almost out of hope for this subseries. So what made this such a mess? Who do people praise this as the best film of the series? We both know youll only find out the answer to the former question but well lets find out shall we? Taking place not long after the rebel attack in episode 1 Leila is assigned a new mission. Before that can happen the rebel trio once again in fact twice again once during he mission tries to kill her and Akito. By this point any reasonable member of the military would either put a harsher restrain on them punhsih them heavily or flat out kill then. None of this happens because of course it doesnt did you expect these characters to have brains? Shame on you. Afterwards the crew launches into space to drop to their next mission. How they all managed to deal with the launch and being out of Earths gravity for a while perfectly without prior training for such an action is beyond me. We also see enemies doing douche you things and coronation things while prepping for their mission but who even cares? Still thats only the first half the second half is where things really hit the shitter. Prior to the mission Leila tells the rebel 11s that shell fight with them and she even suits up. That makes it all the more damning when she literally does nothing the entire time. She doesnt shoot anyone or provide help for her allies. Thats not the worst of the mission. You know how Akito has his bloodlust moment that is related to a geass? Well somehow this links with the other members of the team aside from Leila. One this was never shown to be possible in Code Geass for the effects of ones geass to sync with others minds through some crazed pseudoscience. Two why isnt Leila affected? Theee this geass came from Xin and it makes people die but now not only did Akito survive it begging the question of how he died if hes alive right now over 10 years after the incident of his death but thats what infects the others again excluding Leila. None of this makes any remote sense whatsoever and I could go on and on about some of the other dumb things like how Xin doesnt bother finishing Akito off when he wants to kill him but you get the point by now and then it would just resort to bloated nitpicking. Whatever both sides retreat and no one remotely important died or had any reason for us to care even if they did. The end. Leila while beautiful is both better and worse in this film. Shes better in the fact that she is being a bit more than a typical righteous princess who sympathizes and is actually trying to fight even though some of those in that archetype do that as well. Problem is she basically lied about that since she doesnt even fire a single bullet in the fight against the enemy producing next to no support for her comrades. The most infuriating part was when she had Xin in her sights but didnt bother shooting him or his knightmare when he had Akito effectively at his knees. Also I wonder if she ever found her car that she was looking for during the first half of her film. Akito is the same as ever but we get to flesh him out a bit more in the fact that it was his brother that told him to die somehow giving him this bloodlust geass effect. Other than that nothing else was done with him aside from having a new rival who Ill get to. Now we actually get to talk about the rebel 11s trio and mention them by name Ryou and Yukia are generic crazy evil people who have different skills but thats really it. They keep trying to backstab our protagonists and dont face any punishments other than foiled again. Ayano at least had the fact that she does things out of anger and revenge but thats the entirety of her character. This reminds me of the Trinity trio from Gundam 00 only a million times worse since those guys had a personality that went beyond one trait. For the real villains the only two of note are Ashley yes that is a guy but he has a girls name who is Akitos bloodthirsty rival from this point onward who rags in about luck on the battlefield and Xin our generic antagonist in every way imaginable. We saw glimpses of that in movie 1 but its all but confirmed here that he is one of the most generic villains ever conceived. Also Suzaku from the original series makes a brief cameo in this movie along with Julius Kingsley who we all know is basically Lelouch except dehydrated and with new memories. They obviously dont salvage anything from this disaster of a cast. Remember when I said the designs didnt have that sleek shine to them in movie 1? Well they luckily brought it back though the completing last time was pedantic if nothing else. Either way theres somewhat more movement this time around for the actual characters but thats about it. The CGI Knightmares are as bad as ever but with noticeably worse framerate this time around. The direction is just as awful for action scenes with the camera too. The design for Ashleys knightmare is pretty cool especially with the swords but the one for Xins is an abomination excluding the ridiculous horse. Its a shame the detail on these goes to waste with poorly integrated CGI anyway. CGI explosions and smoke dont help matters either. Effectively only the most minuscule of improvements to elevate the loom from terrible to regular bad. Also the knightmares that Akito and co. pilot are still hideous as sin. Theres little to speak of in the music department either. The OST is literally the same and with no additions whatsoever and we even got the same ED. Its all just as generic and poorly integrated as ever and there is literally nothing to say about this OST. Youd think theyd put at least 1 new track for us to notice but I guess not. At this rate Im just showing a filibuster because I dont want this section to have less than 5 lines of text. Lets just move on this review almost over anyway... This was strike two for the Akito the Exiled subseries. The characters nonsensically regressed nothing made sense almost nothing improved whatsoever and Im basically repeating myself at this point. Ive covered just about everything from this 1hour film that was remotely worth talking about. Best in the series my ass