First off, sorry for the lack of posts lately, a week without a Code Geass R2 episode certainly didn’t help that, and life outside blogging has been eventful as of late, so that contributes as well.

Awesome episode, even if any throwbacks to Macross Zero flew completely over my head. There wasn’t much in terms of plot development, but character progression took quite a leap forward, Ranka especially.

Miran Mary, the winner of the year’s Miss Macross competition is to star in a movie called Bird Human, a lucky break thanks to Ranka’s promotion CDs lands her a small part in it as well. She calls Alto to tell him the news, whose advice doesn’t help much at first, but he eventually spits out the insight that forced acting will look unnatural and she shouldn’t think about the role and act with her true feelings, only then will her acting be beautiful. Ranka thanks him for the great advice, but her enthusiasm is dashed when she hears Sheryl calling Alto back to work in the background, part of his help for the military commercial.

When Ranka shows up on the island where filming is set to take place, she’s surprised to see the SMS there as well, who were apparently contracted to assist in the filming. Alto isn’t around at first, but shows up soon after as Sheryl is discussing the use of one of her songs as the film’s theme, which wasn’t written with the film in mind. Sheryl offers to write a new one just for the movie, but the director asks for some more time to think it over. Shortly after, Sheryl is approached by Miran Mary, but Sheryl all but ignores her, talking to Ranka instead.

In the midst of things, the director overhears Alto’s name mentioned and springs at the chance of getting him to act in the movie, having seen his kabuki performances before. This is the first time Ranka had heard of his past as an actor and she finds out from Luca that Alto didn’t want to continue the family kabuki tradition and ran away to become a pilot instead.

Sad for having not known a part of Alto’s past that everyone else seemed to have known, Ranka heads off to a nearby cliff and starts to sing. Her singing gets the attention of the director who is fishing below, who has an epiphany of sorts when he sees Ranka singing on the cliff.

However, in addition to garnering attention from the director, her singing also happens to attract a griffin like beast, who proceeds to attack her. Alto quickly comes to her rescue, trying to fend the beast off with his handgun, but it proves too powerful and agile, and ends up batting him aside. Luckily, Brera intervenes, dispatching the beast with relative ease, before disappearing once again. Ranka faints during the ordeal and awakes on Alto’s back, being carried back to camp, she assumes that he’s the one who saved her, and Alto, not being able to explain Brera’s identity or reason for intervention, lets her think that.

Back at camp, the crew has run into a snag, unable to find the actress who was to play Mao, another lucky break for Ranka, who scores the part in her stead. This makes for an interesting situation, as one of the scenes involves a kiss between Mao and the character that Alto agreed to play.

The two of them dwell on it for a while, Alto having a talk with Sheryl where he plays it off, trying to appear calm and collected by saying “it’s just a kiss”. To test the sincerity of his words, Sheryl kisses him, joking about it afterwards, “just a kiss”? Right? Ranka catches a glimpse of the kiss between the two, and after a moment’s thought, marches over to the the director to accept the part as Mao.

Ranka goes ahead with the on screen kiss, and it’s only at the film’s premiere where she blushes profusely, seeing it projected on the big screen. After the movie ends to a roaring ovation, Ranka is announced as the actress of Mao and the vocalist behind the movie’s main theme. The crowd cheers as the director congratulates her, for yesterday she was an amateur but today she is a legend. She climbs the stairs to the stage, the same stage Miran Mary and more importantly, Sheryl, stand.

Thoughts

There were some other plot revelations in the episode as well. Leon reported the findings on Brera’s VF-27, citing its speed and accuracy in flight to be far too great for unmanned operation, but that the movements it displayed are far too much for any normal human being to pull off. And of course we saw that Brera is anything but a normal human being, mechanical parts lurking underneath his skin were revealed in the griffin attack. Basic foreshadowing suggests that he’s Ranka’s brother, the one who supposedly died in the Vajra attack during her childhood.

But more importantly in this episode was the character development of Sheryl and Ranka, namely their kisses with Alto-hime. Ranka’s kiss is pretty straightforward to analyze, it shows her overcoming the inhibitions she was showing towards Alto, I can only assume she’ll give it everything she’s got to win him over.

Far more interesting is Sheryl’s kiss. She did it in response to Alto going on about how he’s fine with the prospect of kissing Ranka, a test of sorts, to see if his sentiments were genuine or if he was trying to cover his embarrassment up. After the kiss, she plays it off the same way Alto does, but at the same time it’s pretty clear by now that Sheryl has a thing for the guy too, so it was anything but meaningless.

Yet another aspect to consider is whether or not she intended for Ranka to have seen the kiss. I’m going to assume she did, given her attitude towards Ranka thus far, trying to push her to be true to herself and her feelings. Sheryl wants Ranka to try her hardest to succeed, both in her career as a songstress and in her bid to win over Alto. Why? Because Sheryl sees potential in her, potential for decent competition in both fields, she probably wants to duke it out with Ranka on a level playing field, so she can be satisfied no matter what the conclusion. The only way to do that is to pressure Ranka into being true to her desires, even if that means toying with her emotions from time to time. I think it’s rather admirable that Sheryl wants a fair, may the best woman win, fight.

Aside: Many thanks to a certain someone who had a part in coming up with that analysis, you know who you are :3

And a fair fight it’s shaping up to be. It may not have been through the Miss Macross Frontier competition, but Ranka finally stands on the same stage as Sheryl. While not nearly as well known, she’s got her foot in the door now, and as the director succinctly put it, her legend begins now. I can only assume that many trials await Ranka and her newfound stardom, as well as her relationship with Alto, she has a lot of catching up to do to reach Sheryl.

Next episode looks like it’ll cover just that, Ranka’s rise to stardom. However, we won’t be seeing this until two weeks from now ;_; No Macross F next week, losing its time slot to Euro 2008 Soccer.

Oshi-, side ponytail Ranka <3

~ Shirukii ~