Spoilers for Boukoku no Akito 4 Nikushimi no Kioku Kara Its at this point that I realize that theres no hope for this subseries whatsoever. Theres no way it can salvage its convoluted and contrived excuse of a story nor can it salvage many of its generic and poorly written characters. Both this film and the last film did things that jeopardize R2s ability to canonically exist and the series as a while as inadvertently damaged the integrity of the franchise with its terrible main character awful new script and lack of charisma. It doesnt really feel like Code Geass nor does it feel like a worthy entry to it. This is the second to last film in the subseries and nothing aside from the CGI animation and OST has improved to any significant degree. Its cheesy trite and laughable. So why does it have a higher score than the rest of the films? Yet like the last one at least the ride was entertaining in how wrecked it was. Basically Akito and crew end up in an abandoned ship in which they are attacked by Ashley and his drones except Ashley cant shoot for shit despite having 6 giant machine guns strapped onto his Knightmare. For some reason he wants revenge for Johanna a guy that not only get bullied by Ashley but sacrificed himself for him in the name of war and saving his superior officer. Obviously revenge is moot in this case and obviously Akito takes him down but not before the bloodlust geass effect controls him and the others before they somehow snap or of it and make him stop via cheesy images of them hugging him. Already I wanna give up taking this seriously because its just plain laughable. We get multiple plot twists and betrayals that lead to nothing a scene in which after Shin meets ghosts in the woods somehow as if the only reason is to add to how he values death he gets fouled on his attempt to kill himself a scene where Lelouch and Suzaku are in the brig for seemingly no reason which should mess with his title of Knight of 7 that was both in here and R2 and Leila somehow activating her weird geass that we dont know the effects of to not only stop Shins geass from making her kill herself because this film confirms thats what it is but hurts his eye temporarily. There are some rather generic greeting and emotion scenes as well and all the while Akito Ashley Yukiya Ayano and Ryou are trapped in a sinking airship that had inexplicably placed bombs on it. Then they make it out some bad slapstick between Ashley and Jean the girl who betrayed him for Shin and then our heroes prepare for a new battle. Again it damages the story of the main series and it still has plenty of issues but its not as horribly written as the last two films albeit that doesnt say much given how trite this is. I know development doesnt necessarily matter but that being said we should know more about these onenote cardboard cutouts than we do by this point. We are four movies in and at best we got backstories and onenote traits that get contradicted or abandoned. Shin isnt fleshed out that well either and ultimately remains a horribly generic character with the only interesting quality being how he seems to value death. As for Ashley I already addressed why his character falls apart here wanting revenge for someone you didnt previously care about sacrificing himself in a battle to save you while the one who killed him fights someone else and he later goes to being a hyperactive character when rescued but that doesnt really affect anything. The two traitors Warrick whose attempts literally amount to nothing and Smilas arent good either and their betrayals are not foreshadowed whatsoever. Honestly I really dont have much to say here about them as Ive already spelled it their personalities and they havent really grown so Ill leave it here and move on. Remember the improved CGI from the Suzaku fight in the end of movie 3? Well its here to stay and thank the maker for that. The fight directing is still borderline incomprehensible but at least the mechs look better especially the modified version of Ashleys knightmare with the amazing level of shading put into it. There isnt as much movement with the characters this time around but its not as static as the first two films at least. Also theres this one greatlooking scene with Shin in the forest where it all changes to some interesting colors and angles to show this ghastly setting the ghosts that haunt Shin and the universes logic and how warped his psyche is. Again moments like that look awesome and are signs of good direction On top of that despite my gripes with it the combat is at least better than the other films even if it doesnt beat the main series. Its a shame since the rest of the visuals would at least be on par if not superior in terms of model quality. I just wish the action direction would improve so that the fights are more comprehensible and that there werent moments of bad airship CGI. While the OST still isnt memorable Im at least glad that we got some new tracks as well as a brand new and superior ED theme even if some of the tracks get replayed here more than ever namely the one with the flaring trumpets which is still not fitting with the scenarios they put it in. Im still glad that its hanging on less and to the shadow of the Kotaro Nakagawa OSTs of the main series even if it still only barely works. At this rate this subseries has done a bit too much harm to Code Geass and some of its concepts to really warrant being considered tactful at handling the continuity of the main series. Its also too deeply flawed to be considered a narratively sound series if you havent figured both of these things out by movie 3. At this point youre probably continuing on because Code Geass like I am and already know that this is a bad set of movies even if these last two have been enjoyable both ironically and unironically. Either way cant wait to see how the last film screws things up since people keep saying thats the worst one of them all. With all that said I bid you adieu.