Everyone talks about their favorite anime, but I think one person in passing mentioned Code Geass and I finally checked it out. I didn't get 3 minutes into the first ep before I figured out, "This is in my top 10 of all time, easily." It has shocklingly high production value, the story is very well presented (a pitying of doves (if they were sheep they'd be a flock) taking flight took the place of a trigger fully being pulled, which is a John Woo directing aesthetic if I've ever seen one), the pacing is LIGHT SPEED. I actually felt like I couldn't breathe at certain points because I kept thinking, "Huh? That's such a twist and we're only 6 minutes in." It's almost like cliff notes for the manga, if there is one. I also like the way the story unfolds. You don't get exposition dumps continuously, there's no exposition dump character that spoils the show either. Drip fed is the story, and it's better that way.

The battles are ideological as much as they are physical, such as, is it better to live in a happier past or the miserable present, who writes your stories [the victors or the freedom fighters? For that matter, are freedom fighters terrorists or not?], can you really change a corrupt system or should you just burn it to the ground? It really has you thinking.

And the action. Can we talk about the action!! Of all the aspects of the anime that I mentioned, the action might be what it executes best.

I'd go as far to say that it's hard to come back to modern anime, Frieren aside, when you have animes like this to fall back on. This is half of the season and it has 24 eps. That's 96 hours of fast paced, well directed content.