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Originally Posted by Xander
I have to completely disagree with you there.
I thought the ending was, by far, superior in execution to a lot of the episodes that preceded it and, thankfully, it's not just little old me who thinks so. Even a lot of people who have bashed R2 to hell and back liked the end, so at least the staff did something right by them there. Numerous things in R2 were "horribly executed", but the ending is, at worst, only a little rushed. The last episode also had some of the best moments in R2, including a great battle, and was executed in such a way that I am glad to see the end of Lelouch's story. If that's what you call "horrible execution", I seriously wonder what you think of Destiny's ending (or Claymore's or Gantz's).
I understand you've been repeatedly pointing out your disappointment with how Britannia was presented throughout the entire show, in other words that's hardly a problem with the ending itself, but I also think you read way too much into this issue, above and beyond what is necessary. I definitely did not come off the show with the impression that Britannia was inhumanly evil from top to bottom and that nothing could redeem them, forever and ever.
You keep making that point but I don't see it. The average Britannian citizen is not focused on at all, only soldiers and nobility, so I prefer not to make such leaps. This is far from the first, or even the last, show where an army and ruling class are presented in a mostly negative light. I don't want to bring real politics here, but even the Nazi state was not entirely made up of devils and Germany could be redeemed. Not every single movie about WWII makes this point explicitly clear but that doesn't change reality. I'm only saying this since you brought up the Nazis.
I've seen the ending to Turn A, at least, and I think saying the ending of Code Geass R2 is a copy is a huge and unwarranted exaggeration that doesn't do justice to either finale. There might be similar themes, since as you pointed out the writer is the same and it is absolutely natural for writers to have a certain style and re-use some common ideas, but for the sake of fairness let's not throw the differences out the window. I haven't seen Gainer though, but I doubt that will support your statement either.
I can see how Code Geass, as a whole and not just R2, could have benefited from a more balanced and nuanced treatment of Britannia by spending episodes showing us dissent on the mainland or something to that effect, but I don't see Britannians as demons from hell nor do I think the show makes that the only option. I guess we'll never agree about that.
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I didn't say that the ending to Code Geass and Turn A was the same, I stated that it was an attempt to recapture Tomino's ending for Turn A Gundam that made no sense.
In Turn A Gundam, the Moon Race are generally good people who just want to live on the Earth because of the wide open space. The Earthlings where simply paranoid that the Moon Race would take over. The ending where the Moon Race and Earthlings make sense, since several episodes where made concentrating on how good the moon race was (my personal favorite of these was the cow one) it was just a battle that could have been resolved more peacefully if the Earthlings had cooler heads.
On the other hand Code Geass shows Britannia as some combination of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany, both of which had to be reformed by the Allies. The ending makes no sense because it ignores what happened after the War especially between Japan and the rest of Asia.
South Korea, and China still despise Japan due to the atrocities commited by the Japanese after World War II, and no reason was given for why all of a sudden that's different in Code Geass.
I mean World War II, had Tojo, Hitler, and Stalin, are you saying that Lelouch was somehow worse than all three of them combined?