Japan is know conquered territory, denied even its own name, it is simply known as Area 11.

A young boy swears that he's going to destroy Britannia.

A conventional opening follows: action shots of a large number of characters.

Opening subtitles move the timeline up to 2017.

Lelouch Lamperouge is busy wasting his brain on hustling noblemen in chess matches instead of studying.

Prince Clovis, ruler of Area 11, gives a televised address decrying the recent terrorist attacks.

Some terrorists in a stolen truck are thrown off their original plan.

The terrorists swerve to avoid hitting Lolouch and his friend and crash. Meanwhile Clovis has scrambled a force to retrieve whatever was stolen.

Officially, it's medical equipment. Obviously, that's a lie.

Lelouch comes over to check on the accident, and gets trapped inside the rig when the terrorists decide to retreat.

Kallen, one of the terrorists, has a Knightmare in the back of the rig and takes it out to fight off the military pursuit.

She draws off some pursuers.

The rig gets stuck, and a Britannian soldier mistakes Lelouch for a terrorist. Luckily, he's an old friend, but before they can get reacquainted, the stolen capsule opens.

It contains, not poison gas as rumored, but a girl.

The soldiers who arrive get it all wrong.

Before they can kill Lelouch, the actual terrorist blows a bomb he had hidden.

Prince Clovis, fearful that he's lost control of the situation, orders a purge of the ghetto that the terrorists were fleeing towards.

Lelouch and the girl flee, but there are soldiers waiting.

The soldiers capture the girl, and make to kill Lelouch, but she breaks free and blocks the bullet.

As the soldiers invent an explanation for their superiors, she offers Lelouch a deal: he will get The Power Of The King, but it will isolate him. He can use it to escape.

When he comes to, he orders the soldiers to die, and they all willingly commit suicide.

A Knightmare arrives. Lelouch orders the pilot to turn it over to him.

Too bad his power only works on people he can look in the eye.

But a careful deception get the pilot out, and Lelouch steals the mech.

Now, Lelouch stole one of the terrorist's communicators, originally intending to turn it over to the authorities, but now he uses it to rendezvous with the resistance.

There's no news of what's happening in the ghetto, which means they want to keep it quiet.

This means they can't call for reinforcements. Lelouch helps pick off Britannian Knightmares, and rescues Kallen. Conveniently, there's a train full of spare Knightmares. Lelouch makes an offer to the resistance: do what I say, and you can win.

Lelouch's Knightmare is still connected to Britannia's coms. He has the heading and location of all the other Knightmares on the battlefield. It's easy to set traps that way.

They break ranks to fill the gaps and get sucked into an even nastier trap.

Meanwhile, Lelouch's childhood friend Suzaku has miraculously survived the earlier fracas and has been recruited by Lloyd Asplund, head of special weapons engineering for Britannia, to pilot the experimental Knightmare, Lancelot.

With the ordinary Knightmare's losing to Lelouch's sigint advantage, now is the time for Lancelot to enter the fray.

And it's a monster. Suzaku has a massive hardware advantage. Worse, he thinks that if he defeats the terrorists and stops the fighting, he can rescue Lelouch.

Kallen buys Lelouch time to get away and eject. Suzaku stops his pursuit to save a woman falling from a collapsing building.

The soldiers close in on the resistance, but just as they're about to win, Prince Clovis calls and end to hostilities.

Wait, what?

He moved his guard Knightmares out to fill holes, letting Lelouch get close enough to speak.

Game over, man.

But here's the kicker: Lelouch is a lost prince. 17th in the line of succession. He tells Prince Clovis that he has returned... to change everything.

Lelouch wants answers. Specifically, who killed his mother? He suspects assassination.

With use of the power, Clovis gives up that it was masterminded by Prince Schneizel and Princess Cornelia.

Lelouch kills Clovis. Can't change the world without getting your hands dirty.

In the second largest piece of tonal whiplash ever, we jump to school where the student council president is chewing out Lelouch for his absence yesterday.

And look who's come back to school! It's Kallen Stadtfeld, daughter of a wealthy family.