:| lol, you're kidding right? they are not really that similar O__O and lol at "simply added giant robots for action"
that's the same like saying Naruto is rip-off of DB (which it is actually)
That's exactly how I felt when watching it. The writing didn't impress me very much considering how it doesn't really go into any major depth, the story was far more juvenile and less sophisticated then other mangas i've seen. Especially since at the end Lelouch comes out the victor and his plan to create a better world has been realized. Making it look like a kids show.
And by "simply added giant robots for action" I meant that the writer didn't have a significant synopsis so he just added giant robots to draw your attention from it. And when I first saw those robots the first thing that popped in my head was "Gundam". I didn't find anything great about the characters in the story, not bad, but also not good.
I didn't like how the characters just new the answer to something: for instance; lelouch could make a pre-recorded video of himself answering questions and having a discussion with someone else perfectly, and I did't like that since it's virtually impossible to do that and made it less believable. You could say that it's do to his intelligents, but they could have at least explained how he knew all that, but the writer didn't because he couldn't explain it, and just gave the main character the ability to do that so he could win, showing me that he really wasn't that great of a writer.
whereas in Death Note, no one could act or do anything without clues and deductive reasoning and that the characters couldn't just "know" the answer; they had to explain it. I geuss that's because Death Note is a detectiuve anime and detectives need to figure things out through clues and such and other animes writers probably feel it's unnecessary to explain.
And their are alot of similarities between Death Note and Code Geas: Both animes have a extremely smart main character who trys to use a power that was given to them by someone to change their world that they feel is inadequate and turn it into a utopia by sacrificing various pawns. Both of them even lose their sanity as the story progresses. And i'm sure their is more. but that's just off of the top of my head.
Overall, Code Geas doesn't seem very authentic to me. It's very interesting, intertaing and addictive, but that's as far as I would go.