Code Geass R2 04, Are you serious? A decorative plate?!
April 27th, 2008 by Shirukii
Guilford, please deposit your pride and penis at the door, your manhood license is hereby revoked
Now…I want to praise this episode, because the development was rather good, seeing as they managed to take the more difficult road of making Lelouch absolutely mindfuck Rolo instead of going for the infinitely easier “LOL, gun is empty” route.
But that golden sticker is immediately revoked by another glaring problem we’re facing. Sunrise, it was cool that you decided to mirror the episode of CG R1 in episode one, I didn’t even mind when you did it again in episode two, but please stop. Pulling this kinda of thing once is neat, twice is gimmicky, any more than that and it’s evidence of uncreative writing.
The episode starts with some background on Rolo and his traumatic, neglected childhood. His geass is a flawless tool for assassination, but little else beyond that. So with neither family nor friends to call his own, Rolo becomes nothing but an emotionless attack dog for the Britannians. When presented with the task of following Lulu and killing him should Zero ever reawaken, he was reluctant at first, due to his inexperience with anything you could call a family, but eventually accepts it as just another mission.
Afterwards, we’re back to the confrontation between Rolo and Lulu. Without skipping a beat, Lulu brain gets to work once Rolo reappears and he deduces that Rolo’s ability is not to stop time, but to stop others’ perception of time. Despite knowing that, it won’t allow him to beat Rolo, but that’s okay, beating him isn’t necessary. Lulu goes on to explain that Rolo won’t kill him, he can’t, for he won’t be able to achieve his greater goal of capturing C.C. and the new sense of life he might gain after doing so. Assuring him that C.C.’s life isn’t more important than his own, Lulu promises to deliver her to Rolo.
Having gained some time to think, Lulu begins to devise a plan to avoid his pact with Rolo and rescue the members of the Order of the Black Knights being held by Guilford. Meanwhile, some unexpected events are unfolding at the Chinese Embassy, Li has turned on the ambassador, and with the permission of C.C., kills him, using the Black Knights as a cover up.
Elsewhere, the surveillance team is beginning to question Rolo’s position in the team, having killed so many of their own for seemingly trivial reasons. Rolo overhears them and reminds them that the team is of little importance, the completion of their mission is to be put above all else.
All the while, Guilford hounds over the Black Knight prisoners with a watchful eye, revealing that his reason for taking over command of this mission is more personal than political. Whether Zero shows up to his challenge or not is of little consequence, if he doesn’t, they’ll be killed and the public’s faith in Zero will extinguish, if he does, he’ll die in combat with him. But more importantly than that, he seeks revenge for Cornelia, his princess who has been missing for over a year now.
As zero hour on Guilford’s challenge comes, Zero shows up to the showering praise of the local elevens, but of course he comes prepared with a plan, as does Rolo, who has snuck his way onto the scene to ensure Lulu keeps his promise, or dies trying to weasel out of it.
Zero’s approach to the scene is telecasted and is caught by Lakshata, Kaguya and Diethard, who I’m surprised didn’t cream his pants. Lulu nonchalantly asks if Guilford wouldn’t prefer to settle this in person, but is turned down, Guilford wanting to settle this in Knightmares. Lulu sets some rules for the fight, one on one, one weapon each. Guilford chooses his spear while Lulu makes an odd choice, a riot shield being held by a mob suppression officer nearby.
As Lulu retreats to the Embassy, Rolo is hot on his tail, using the Lancelot mass production model and his geass hax to catch up quite rapidly. Just as he’s about to strike down Lulu for betraying their agreement, a sniper fires a shot at Rolo, who can do nothing but watch as it speeds towards him, his geass unable to protect him from his certain death. However, Lulu jumps in the path of the bullet, deflecting it and saving Rolo’s life, telling him that he hasn’t forgotten about their promise and the new future he promised him. As a last ditch effort, Guilford launches his spear at Lulu’s downed Knightmare, only to have Rolo stop it dead in its path.
In the aftermath of the battle, Kallen and the rest of the Black Knights enjoy their reunion while Rolo has a mental breakdown in his cockpit, unable to comprehend how he landed himself in his position, with his sworn enemies and even C.C., within an arms length, being welcomed to their side, his rightful place, by Lulu.
Meanwhile, we see a breakdown of Lulu’s plan, geassing the sniper who shot at Rolo so that he could set up his noble speech about giving him a new future. Lulu has never thought of Rolo as anything but a fake, an implanted spy who took away his Nunally, he swore to use Rolo as a pawn to get her back, and everything went just as planned.
Thoughts
So again, while Lulu’s plan was quite ingenious and impeccably timed, the fact that it was a throwback to a previous CG episode kinda ruined the originality, and therefore the shock factor, behind it. I realize it’s hard to think of the sort of insane plans that Lulu pulls off on a weekly basis, but recycling old ideas is hardly a substitute, I don’t want it to come to the point where I just print off a list of all of Lulu’s schemes in R1 and have to check them off one by one as we go through R2.
Character wise, we saw the relationship between Rolo and Lulu evolve. Rolo, having never experienced what it’s like to have a family, has been completely drawn in and manipulated by Lulu, once he realized the delicate nature of Rolo’s past. Going as far as killing his team mates when they so much as touched the locket Lulu gave him, I wonder if he would have shot Lulu had he not offered the deal he did. But in any case, Lulu has him wrapped around his finger now, making good on his promise to use him as a pawn to find Nunally.
It’s actually quite nice to see Lulu harbor so much animosity for Rolo and so much devotion to Nunally, it -ALMOST- justifies Lulu abandoning his army in the midst of their most important battle back in the dying episodes of R1. I just hope Lulu keeps his promise to discard Rolo when he’s finished with him, I’ll rage if he cops out and befriends him for real.
We also saw some subtle Villetta development. Her warm and fuzzy recollections to her carefree days with Ougi and the brief show of relief when he was rescued. I guess this is some not so subtle foreshadowing that she’ll turn at some point down the road? Rather than that I’d prefer if she were forced into a position where she had to fight Ougi and either kills him with tears of anguish pouring out or gets lets herself be killed in the name of love. Though…given the history of Code Geass, it’s a safe bet she’ll just end up double crossing the Britannians.
An odd lapse in the perfection that is C.C., fumbling her gun away as she tries to clean and reassemble it. I love how she just played it off and kept on talking. Also, her outfit is massive amounts of win, combining short shorts, draping skirt-esque parts and delicious zettai ryouki.
On the note of deliciousness, STILL NO PIZZA?! It’s been four episodes, poor C.C. ;_;
Oh, and the faggot is back. Not that anyone cares.
Another wild card character in all this is Li, whose motives are thus far unknown. I’m sure Lulu didn’t factor him into the equation as much as he ended up affecting it. It remains to be seen whether Li’s actions are out of personal aspiration or for more political reasons, as well as where his allegiances lie.
Finally, another week, another Rolo geass nitpick. I’m now almost 100% sure that Sunrise just screwed up in the second episode when Rolo’s geass didn’t cause a discontinuity in radio transmissions. The area that he’s able to expand his geass’ field it to is undeniably limited. When he was chasing down Lulu this week, we saw him jump about the map on his approach. If his geass had the ability to expand to the size of a building, as would be necessary to explain the no delay radio transmissions, he would have just warped in front of Lulu in one go, rather than hopping all over the place. Quod erat demonstrandum. Well…failing retcon.
Next week looks like it’ll be an Ashford episode, which is a mixed blessing of sorts. On one hand, it gives the scriptwriters another week to think of Lulu’s next big scheme and not have to resort to copypasta (unless they do the cat thing again, at which point I’ll drive a truck full of C4 into Sunrise’s hq). On the other hand, Ashford episodes tend to suck, containing far too much Shirley and…that blue haired guy. Also, Suzaku is back, which is never a good thing.
Not one for subtlety, are we Sunrise? Might as well have had the headset and accompanying “Keikaku dori”
~ Shirukii ~
25 Responses to “Code Geass R2 04, Are you serious? A decorative plate?!”
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Suzuku never annoyed me that much when I saw him so many times in R1, but I found the guy unbelievably annoyin in R2, to the point that I want him DEAD and someone else, more charismatic but villainous nevertheless, to take his place.
Damn it, there is no Kallen’s fan-service this week.
Nice analysis about radio transmission thing in 2nd episode. I didn’t even think of that. They screw up or not. I don’t think that’s a big thing. It’s all about the excitment and I think they done pretty good job so far.
As I remembered that ep. 6 of season 1 was the light-head episode. So next week is ep. 5 for season 2. I guess every one quarter of entire series, Code Geass needs to take some action break and go with some humor stuff XD
yeah, I don’t care about Suzaku that much either but it will be interesting to see Lulu’s reaction and how he gonna deal with the whole thing.
Better question is that since the Empire didn’t kill Lulu and said that he still has the use for Lulu. I just wonder what could that be? and how Suzaku will be part of that plan since he is the only one that has been follow closely with the Empire.
“…with his sword enemies and even C.C., within…”
Did you mean sworn? =p
I enjoyed your summary almost as much as I enjoyed my own, though. :)
Suzaku, the hypocrite pacifist is back, well, not that I really care. Next episode will be a laidback one I see.
w00t! Kallen and Li lols :D
She is not Villetta, but Deretta.
Well, if you’re a total noob like me and haven’t seen the first season yet, then the rehash of all the crazy strategizing will seem like new
Wait, on the polls, why is there no
loliciousKaguya? That’s.. that’s..!Viletta is such a fairweather GF! Once it is ok to be Japanese again, she’ll be back in Ogi’s arms.
Also, Rollo wasn’t using his Geass, Lelouch was just lagging.
Am I the only one who doesn’t HATE Suzaku with the fiery passion of a thousand suns?
*silence*
…Guess so. -_-
@ Dima: Excellent, welcome to the club. You can pick up your complimentary t-shirt at the reception desk.
@ kenshin514: The reason that Lulu isn’t dead yet is because they’re trying to use him as bait to lure out C.C.
Suzaku probably knows of this plan, but most likely does not know that Lulu has reawakened as Zero, since he’s been off conquering Italy or something.
@ Nagato: Yes…yes I did, thanks for pointing that out.
@ Jutlanders: Yep, which means that I probably won’t have much in the area of continuity criticism and plot speculation to do next week, darn.
@ blissmo: Whoa, that’s an odd pairing, where’d you conjure that one out of?
@ barosl: I don’t see what you did there, explanation. Nao.
@ ItAintEazy: Wow, I commend you for watching R2 without having watched R1, most of the plot lines are carry overs, don’t you find yourself a little lost?
@ albert_2mb: Because…uh, she’s not eligible for a LuluX____ pairing?
Ok, actually, I just forgot ;_; I’m sorry
@ Kabitzin: And Ougi will welcome her back with open arms, pussywhipped wimp that he is.
@ Randor: Yea, pretty much. Though, feel free to argue for his cause, you’re entitled to your opinion!
Rolo should use his geass on Suzaku, then bury him alive some where… or give him a tatoo on his forehead reading “I hate Britannia”
@ Randor: No, you aren’t. He’s not my favourite character and I think he’s flawed (well written flawed mind you), but I don’t hate him in the sense of blind hatred. Rather I think it’s reasonable to look at him as an anti-hero like Lelouch albeit with different motivations and beliefs. Likewise I think Lelouch is a flawed character (again in the sense of he actually has personality flaws and not poorly written flawed like say Shinn Asuka from Gundam Seed Destiny), but I don’t hate him blindly.
So yeah….you aren’t alone
@Shirukii:
Feh, R1 has been spoiled for me countless times, so I’ll just catch it on Adult Swim or something. I just didn’t count on them taking the Sailor Moon approach this far, though.
@Shirukii:
lol that’s fine. A pizzabutt is fine too XD
On the episode, Moe Villetta is moe, and I wonder how Suzaku deals with his returning back to school with the memory of the school formatted. Geass is definitely one of the highlights this season, along with Kurenai and Toshokan Sensou (”lol I don’t know how to scan~”)
>>> containing far too much Shirley
But what if it’s MAID Shirley? Which looks to be in store for next week.
With all this plot recycling, I almost wonder if we’re being set-up for a Groundhog Day ending.
@albert_2mb: Someone likes Library War? Seemed hopelessly generic to me. Mind, I haven’t had a chance to see the subs.
And I can get a free tshirt just for hating Suzaku? Well heck, that’s good enough reason for me. Do I get anything for hating Rolo as well?
ps. LOLed at Charlottesville getting a mention as one of Rolo’s missions. Go Hoos!
Tsundere + Villetta = Deretta :P
@Runningkid
lelouch already used geass on suzaku, rember when they were trapped in the sand pit, with the field that immobilizes knightmares around them? lelouch used geass on suzaku and told him to “stay alive”. and then thats what led to them all being stranded on that island, right?
I sure hope I remebered that right.
anyway, point is he deffinitly used geass on suzaku, and I wonder if thats going to factor in later.
Redmist, yeah that’s exactly what happened. The army was planning to have Suzaku stay still while the heavy fire poured down and killed Suzaku and Zero, but Zero forced Suzaku to skedaddle. So Suzaku is now (supposedly) immune to Lelouch’s Geass.
>>”When he was chasing down Lulu this week, we saw him jump about the map on his approach. If his geass had the ability to expand to the size of a building, as would be necessary to explain the no delay radio transmissions, he would have just warped in front of Lulu in one go, rather than hopping all over the place. Quod erat demonstrandum. Well…failing retcon.”
o_O, Did you know you just dig your own grave?
1. Wasn’t you the one who said this in ep 3 “Rollo’s geass does -NOT- stop time.”
2. Rollo said in this episode himself “I can’t stop physical objects.” or you can say GEASS is only affect Human brain (at least 2 people do not).
3. At 17:15 the screen said “Lost Target” there is noway Rollo’s geass can do that, unless he is able stop time and stop everything to makes the radar lost track of him. In other word, this is the ability of his Mecha which is similar to Miria’s image(Claymore).
@ Runningkid: The thought of that last one almost made me inhale the water I’m currently drinking.
@ Kaoishin Sama: Guess I spoke too soon. You two are a rare breed.
@ ItAintEazy: Ah, ok. As long as you have a general idea of what’s going on, that’s all you really need. CG isn’t that deep anyways.
@ albert_2mb: How is Toshokan Sensou? I haven’t started watching it, I have the episodes on my HDD, I just need some incentive to watch them, lol.
@ Telliamed: If they reset at the end of R2 again, I vow never to watch another Sunrise anime ever again. They really pushed their luck with Mai HiME, I almost gave up then.
For hating Rolo you get entered in the “Guess my geass” game show, the prize is self satisfaction and bragging rights.
@ barosl: That was surprisingly obvious, I’m kinda disgusted at myself for not picking it up.
@ Redmist/Kabitzin: I’m betting Lulu gets an upgrade which lets him geass people more than once. It’s too obvious for it not to happen.
@ Siva: Not really, that analysis doesn’t imply that he can stop time, if there’s anything that remains consistent in my Rolo rants, it’s that. I didn’t notice the “Lost Target” though, which is interesting…I can’t think of any explanation for it that doesn’t already break a pre-established “facts” about his geass
About the lost target thing, It’s either the Vincent’s ability….or Sunrise is crapping up again.
On the note of Suzaku….have any one of you ever noticed that Zero just bloody shot his lover in front of him? I’d bet that’s enough to drive anyone crazy. Plus now that he knows about the geass, he probaly knew that Lelouch ordered her to kill all the japanese in the stadium, even if he doesn’t know the full story. You can’t exactly blame him for turning in Lelouch to the emperor. It’s probaly something like cold revenge for him.
Rolo can not stop time nor the time is actually stop, it just that Rolo’s geass freezes your brain while you stay in his area of effect. We have seen 4 geass users already and using geass is only have effect with your brain and nothing else. Rolo didn’t use his geass at all while chasing Zero otherwise Zero and the other two guys would have stop their robot in a place for a period of time instead of keep moving. As for “Lost Target” in Mecha battle it is just a common sense when a high-tech robot fights against low-tech robot.
@Randor: you’re not the only one, lol. I, too, dont hate Suzaku. I do like him as a character but people hate on him so much, it’s unbelievable.
People have been saying that Suzaku had become more annoying in R2, but, lol, he hasn’t done a lot yet to be hated. What, he appeared at the end of the first ep and then in the second he turned Lelouch in. That’s it. LOL. How’s that annoying?
And Alias, I so agree with you.
About Rolo, I feel sorry for the guy, cause I am pretty sure Lelouch is not gonna be all like “Yes, you are my friend now”. If he says he’s gonna backstab him later, I am pretty sure he will. He’s known for being ruthless.
Saw the first 5 eps of CG r2, pretty good, up to the bit where lelouch is in a pinch
@Hotarubi: i agree with everything u said… i mean there are just alot of fan girls who like lelouch that’s all so they hate suzaku caz he’s hurting their precious lelouch or sth like that =.=”
Lelouch is an interesting character but i can never can over the fact that he shot Euphie in front of Suzaku and blamed everything on her when literally it is his fault…i mean i doubt that Lelouch actually wants to save Japan, but i liked how he used all those foolishd people (especially Kallen) for his own needs… but that cost him quite alot..
i don’t hate Suzaku at all, i actually liked him in the start of season one but man i have to agree he’s rather annoying in season 2… how could he use Nually… dam
Yes i do feel sorry for Rollo but he’s kinda annoying… i mean he was manipulated so easily…..
lol and C.C never changes… she didn’t get the pizza again LOL
Li is such a cool character =), we need more sword action from him
and why do so many people like Kallen, i absolutely hate her… i mean she is reckless, stupid and naive. Oh well i mean she’s just a pawn, her life really has no value, she can just be continously used over and over again until she wears out and dies..i bet her mother meant nothing to her =)
the character i want to know most about is V.V and he is apparently my favourite character mainly because he is mysterious and all the characters rite now are pretty screwed up