It's been over a decade since Sunrise's original Anime screened. The show wrapped up well with season two but also left fans wondering if that was all there was to it. Now we have a film trilogy that both re-tells the story and gives fans the long awaited "season 3" in the form of a film.

For those unfamiliar with the story, Lelouch Lamperouge is one of the princes of the Great Britannia Empire. One day, when his mother is assasinated and his sister Nunnally is both wounded in the process, he protests how to his father how uncaring he was. Lelouche gives up his right to the throne, fed up with the internal fighting and as a result, both he and Nunnally are sent to Japan as political hostages. Not long afterwards, Britannia invades Japan for its rare resources of Sakuradite renaming the country as "Area 11". When Lelouche and Nunnally are both caught up in the attacks, Lelouch vows to bring down the Britannian Empire so that his sister can live in a world of peace. Some years later while out for one of his regular chess matches, Lelouch finds himself caught up in a terrorist attack which is when he meets a green-haired girl named "C.C." who grants him the "Power of Kings, Geass" that allowed him to command anyone to do whatever he wishes. And so, Lelouch rises as the masked man "Zero" leading the Japanese resistance as "The Black Knights" to achieve the dream he had long been waiting for.

The first movie "Awakening" is a re-telling of R1's 1 - 17 with quite a lot of content removed. A number of scenarios both minor and major have been excluded such as how Mao doesn't make an appearance, the amusing filler scenarios that take place at the academy such as the stolen mask are gone and Shirley loses her tragic role. Kallen also gets less of a reason to be fighting Britannia compared to the TV series since the scenario that introduces her mother hasn't been included. Even C.C. has less of an active femme fatale role she had in the original.

That said, the drama, action and pacing is still really good with the odd changes and new scenes introduced to help continuity. The main element that made fans rate it as one of the best shows at the time along with Death Note is all the scheming and grand stunts Lelouch manages to pull off which is mostly all there. It doesn't deviate from the key parts of the story and I think it chose the right scenes for the approx 2 hour movie considering that's only enough time for around 7 episodes worth. The exact episodes used were 1 - 5, 8 (start), 10 - 12 (start), parts from 14, 15 (midway) and 17.

Presentation wise you can see a bit of 3D CGI introduced and fans of the classic will have a blast from the past hearing familiar theme songs again including OST tracks such as Hitomi Kuroishi's "Masquerade". I think one major difference will be Pizza Hut's brand no longer makes an appearance so I guess Sunrise lost their sponsor - at least on the blu-ray release. Not that they need them any more with the success of the franchise... It's also very odd hearing Yukana as C.C. but also as Tessa from Full Metal Panic. I'd say there's pretty much none of the fan service from the TV series too such as shower scenes which makes sense considering the already tight time constraint they had to re-tell R1.

While the first movie was a great re-telling, the second movie, "Rebellion" wasn't so great covering episodes 17, 21 - 24, parts of 25, parts of 27, part of 31, end of 37, 39 - 41. Again, some scenes were cut short while a one or two were extended.

After the first third of the movie. There's the big twist which came from the the TV series but then events afterwards just felt pointless. Other than the fan service episodes being excluded, nearly all the episodes with the Chinese Federation, missing memories, battle with the knights have been excluded and it feels like there's a sudden big rush to give the viewer as much information as possible. In the first movie, Shirley hardly got any focus and her tragic experience from R1 was excluded but then they hint something did happen to her in this movie so, unless you watched the TV series you'd have been left wondering what happened to her.

It felt like they went about too leisurely with the first movie and had to make up the pacing here with a poorly organised and selected scenes. It was fairly much a sleeper unfortunately...

However, sacrificing the second movie seemed to worth it since the pacing and drama is back up to pace for the third and final movie "Royalty". Probably because it only had 10 episodes left to re-tell. It's good to hear my favourite Code Geass theme song playing again.

I'm going to have to put the trilogy under a miss because while the selection of scenes chosen for the first and third movies were well done, it still can't beat watching the 50 episode TV series. R2 pretty much wrapped up the story well as tragic as it might be as Lelouch achieved his objective so, it was debatable whether Sunrise could continue it or not. In the end, there is nothing new.

So if you've already seen the TV series but want a recap, you might like the movies but you know how it'll end and no, there's no new material afterwards - slightly different scene with C.C. but nothing major. You're not missing out anything. Otherwise if you haven't seen the TV series, I suggest spending your time on those instead. It's an epic show.