Code Geass: Hangyaku no Lelouch R2 23 + 24 “Towards the Never Ending Tomorrow!”
September 22nd, 2008 by Jay
Freedom Lancelot: Full Burst Attack!
Apologies for the lack of a Geass post last week, writer’s block is a killer (even more so when all you do is review stuff T_T), so much so that I needed Shirukii to help me on a part of this post. While most of this has to do with 24 more than 23, I hope the extensive analysis makes up for it.
Note: Since R2 is hitting it’s end, it seems like Bandai won’t stop dubbing Geass at Stage 25 of Season 1. They’ll be continuing the series after that as well. Fancy that. Means we can buy the DVDs as an entire 50 episode set! You know…buy anime?
…No?
As much as the Kuro no Kishi-dan hates Lelouch for apparently using them all as pawns in his game, in trying to avoid that happening to them, they foolishly revert to positions in worse conditions under Schneizel’s command. Putting aside Schneizel’s lies regarding Lelouch’s Geass activities, though Lelouch sometimes let his emotions affect his actions and ability to lead (such as his statement that he could replace Ougi when the latter was shot, and the raid on the Geass order), he’s never been one to sacrifice them or use them as bait in order to defeat an opponent, not more so than sending one’s troops to attack anyway; as opposed to Schneizel, who could care less about their trust, and would gladly sacrifice them in order to use FLEIA to win a battle.
Figures that the best way to rush an underdeveloped romance is to have someone knocked up. We’re only given a vague hint of this during Viletta’s decision to stay onboard the Ikuruga, and even then I was expecting some tsundere action with conflicted feelings. Hell, at least give us some hawt secks (R2 could use more nipples). Nope, fast forward montage, Ougi tells Viletta he’s going to war and makes her sit her ass at home, presumably to make sure the baby doesn’t become born on the battlefield like Revolver Ocelot, and have a pie ready for him by the time he gets back. Mmmmmm…pie…
Nina’s feelings regarding Zero’s murder of Euphemia is finally resolved. Having created the ultimate weapon of destruction, I think Nina’s constructing a counter weapon goes a long way in redeeming her, and ultimately finding her own answer for carrying out peace. In my eyes, she’s definitely earned the right to live.
As his ambitions and thoughts were stated one after another, it’s finally explicitly stated that Schneizel is just one big emotionless robot who calculates everything by logic. From his “I’m gonna show people the fear of war and make them desire peace” reminiscent of Zech’s drop Libra plan from Gundam Wing, to his “Peace first, Nunnally second” copy pasta’d from Spock, the guy makes himself to be even more so of a prick than Charles with none of the awesomeness, which makes it even more delightful when he’s finally beaten by Lelouch (using the same video trick that Mao fell victim to in Season 1). While it could be argued that Schneizel wanted peace as much as Lelouch did and that it was only his way of thinking that resulted in differences in execution, he makes the mistake of forcefully enforcing a peace in a manner people don’t want; in this case, Suzaku’s old philosophy that the ends don’t justify the means would apply (this is, however, biased since we have no idea what Lelouch’s plan exactly is, but it doesn’t seem to involve nukes). A part of me wonders if, in the space of 1 episode, Schneizel will be able to break the Geass, or maybe had a backup plan to carry out should he fall to the Geass, maybe through Kanon. Seems unlikely at this point, but I won’t be surprised if that’s the case.
As much as I’ve liked Nunnally, upon her recent return, it seems her character has changed a bit, and not for the better. Her declaration to Lelouch that she knows “everything” ironically reveals how much little knowledge she really has; while being led to believe time after time to finally have the power she can use to help the world gain peace, in reality she’s been nothing but a tool throughout the entire series, only given whatever knowledge her manipulators want her to have at the time, whether it be Schneizel, Charles, or even Lelouch. It also seems unnatural for her to want to shoulder the responsibility of ending lives with FLEIA when in the past she’s always shown to have solid morals. I don’t care if Schneizel’s lies about Lelouch being evil or even Lelouch’s lies about himself being evil were the cause, the fact that she is willing to stand up to Lelouch and instead cling to Schneizel, especially when she was trying her hardest as Governer to be independent for Lelouch’s sake, is infuriating. You don’t need a Geass to lie and manipulate, honey, that’s something you really need to open your eyes to-
Oh shit…
C.C.’s gotten awfully sweet all of a sudden, showing as if she regrets giving Lelouch a Geass, making his life turn into something like this, and questionning if what he’s achieved now is enough. She asks if Lelouch hates her for changing his fate, which he states is not the case, since she enabled him to take the first step. C.C. explicitly shows that she cares for Lelouch, acting as his shield as Suzaku asked her to be, and fights for a reason other than the salvation of death: her promise to Lelouch. She’s even questionned by Kallen if she loves Lelouch, to which she herself doesn’t have a clear answer.
Kallen, on the other hand, I have a hard time liking right now. According that recent interview with Koshimizu Ami (thanks to Kris for bringing it to my attention), the motivation from Taniguchi during the kiss scene would be Kallen’s realization of her feelings of love toward Lelouch. At this point, there’s not much those feelings will do for the LuluxKallen shippers, other than the whole “I’m crying, but I’ma kill you anyway” part. There’s not much satisfaction to be had either way this goes: if this isn’t taken into account at all, I feel it was a big waste of time, the interview shouldn’t have been posted, and if Kallen hooks up with Gino to top it all off, I will carry a deep hatred for Sunrise’s romance properties (…at least, until Tales of the Abyss starts airing). If it is, then it’s likely to be rushed, and I’m sure to feel cheated if they handle it the same way they handled Ultimate Attack and his preggers woman. Short of an h-scene with moar Kallen nipples, I expect to be disappointed in this department.
I had been wondering since Lelouch’s takeover if Suzaku has really commited in aligning himself with Lelouch or if he’s using him to achieve peace through the same means thanks to Suzaku’s change of philosophy. I don’t thinkI have that question anymore: while harsh, his words for Lelouch to continue their plans for Zero Requiem seem to be more of a reinforcement to keep fighting rather than a selfish desire to keep the promise they made in regards to the future. While his actions for helping Lelouch get into Damocles and find Schneizel may be seen to be the most logical method in achieving their goal, the teamwork they carried out when getting through Damocles’ shield truly outline the often stated words by Lelouch that together the two can achieve anything. He just as well is fighting for his desire for tomorrow to take place.
Finally we get to Lelouch, who at this point has solidified himself into the light in doing things for the greater good, despite him being the cause of countless Geass-puppet soldiers deaths in using them as meat shields against FLEIA while the Avalon retreated (but hey, plot characters first amirite?), and being motivated by Suzaku to keep fighting even if Nunnally is on the enemy side. I especially adored his analysis of the ambitions of himself, Charles and Schneizel, and how Lelouch still desires tomorrow. Unlike Schneizel, Lelouch has mingled and observed the actions of the common man, and knows their pain and suffering, as well as their own desire to fight for tomorrow as well. The only thing left to wonder is what exactly the planned Zero Requiem actually does, and if he will live to see the creation of the future he desires.
Now that the main character analysis is done, let’s analyze some of the minor boobs, shall we?:
Diethard dies rather quickly, though fitting seeing as how he was one of the few characters in the series that changed sides depending on the conditions of victory on one side. R.I.P. Diethard, I’m glad I never tried bonding with you in Lost Colors.
“I’m here to kick ass and chew bubble-”
“!”
“…gum…” ;_;
I guess Tamaki is the only other candidate that sorta fitted with Diethard in sidding with Zero, though as hard as it is to believe, Tamaki’s a lot more noble in that sense. ^^;
Oooooooh, Orange-kun and Ninja Meido talk chivalry. Could we potentially see a JeremiahxSayoko END? Ninja-kun? Orange Meido?
Oddly enough, Chiba still isn’t dead, even though I had thought she set herself up by retrieving Toudou’s cockpit. Guess Nina’s survival means that everyone a chance…
Hell, even Cornelia made it, after being mowed down by Schneizel’s machine guns. Though relieved, I’m sure a lot of us can agree that randomly killing off characters just to bring them back seems unnecessary, especially considering all this suspicion of Cornelia’s death was resolved in two episodes…
“…It didn’t work when Char called himself Quattro Bagina, so take em off.”
Yup, a lot of this shit seems unnecessary.
Then there’s Kanon…seriously, there’s probably enough yaoi of Kanon and Schneizel stemming from that little comment to Milly way back when Tian Zi was getting married to manage a small booth at Yaoi-con, and Kanon in ecstacy while looking at his superior’s Geassed form isn’t going to help much…
And while I just bitched about Ougi and Viletta only getting vague hints before some offscreen ass-tapping took place, the sudden implications of Milly wanting Rivalz (as awesome as he is ^^;) in the span of about a 10 second scene takes the cake as far as rushed relationships go.
PREVIEW SHOTS:
…How do you pronounce that?
Yep, there’s only one since the previews show scenes of the first episode. At least we have a few things to look forward to: we’ll see if Lelouch can convince Nunnally in time to carry out Zero Requiem, if Lelouch can gain the favor of the world once again, and the final battle between Guren and Lancelot! Oh, and hopefully there’s a new OP too, maybe! Tune in next week to see the final battles played out! Jikai! Code Geass Ar Tsu: Re semi-corin. o.o
Tobe! ORANGE-KUN!!!
Use your chivalric powers to save the world from exploding Mt. Fujis!
-Jay
15 Responses to “Code Geass: Hangyaku no Lelouch R2 23 + 24 “Towards the Never Ending Tomorrow!””
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Hey, I buy anime all the time. I just don’t want anything to do with season two of Code Geass.
Nice post, again quite close to what I thought of the fast-paced crap Sunrise threw at us this time. If anything, you can say that it’s all going quite fast and it makes me wonder just how much faster they need to go if they want to actually wrap the whole thing up properly. But off course the odds of that are pretty low.
RivalzXMilly?
YAKK DECULTURE!!!
…All I can say is “WHAT THE HELL!?” I really have to catch up on ths show. Gotta say though, Nunally’s cute with her eyes open. ^-^
Don’t count out Diethart just yet. As we have seen with Cornelia, even if you see the actual corpse, Sunrise will still be able to magically bring the characters back to life.
I was surprised that the key that Nunally had was for real. I was certain that it would be a fake.
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t hate the current Kallen, and can sort of see where she’s coming from…provided she is given one last chance to talk to Lelouch and clear everything up, even if he’s most likely going to end up with C.C.
Wouldn’t mind if she beats Suzaku either, though I say that mostly as a fan(-boy) and not much else…he could easily win or tie.
ItAintEazy: “Don’t count out Diethart just yet. As we have seen with Cornelia, even if you see the actual corpse, Sunrise will still be able to magically bring the characters back to life.”
This made me laugh, but honestly…I am definitely going to count Diethard out, while I wasn’t entirely convinced Cornelia had died last time and posted about it.
We saw her being shot from a certain distance, but no extreme close-up to the moment of her death or anything. Silly to expect realism here, where theatrics rule. Mao had a more convincing “death”, and he still came back for one more fight.
Still a little cheap though, and her character was severely misused for most of R2 in any event, but at least she didn’t go out like that. Now, Guilford’s return *was* outright unnecessary, unexplained and cheesy, I’ll give you that.
Wow, thanks for the shout out there. I also make Code Geass 4komas based on the episodes. You can see them on my devArt page http://foxxfireart.deviantart.com
Though right now they are suspended till the end. If they screw up Kallen’s character I will never forgive this series.
I completely agree with what you said about Kallen’s VA interview. What is the point of telling us through that interview that Kallen realized she was in love only for her to be the odd girl out of all of this? Even more so when pretty much all Kallen did this season was learn about Lelouch and become closer. Even to fall in love with him. Even having those two near kisses. Teasing us with them all the way to episode 22.
Why would they waste her entire season’s development.
I can understand where Kallen is coming from. She may be in love with Lelouch, but all she sees him doing is acting like some kind of psycho. She knows the war can’t go on. It’s not like Kallen knew what Schneizel had planned. I’m ticked they are keeping her out of the loop.
Now in the latest episode of Animedia there are these snippets of conversations with characters. It’s really unsure if these are canon, or made up by the magazine. It’s really an open question, because they did post the argument Cornelia had with Schneizel. The problem arises, because the conversation didn’t go just like it was printed, but it did show basically what was said and this was out before the episode.
There is another conversation posted in the same magazine between Kallen, Gino, and Anya (Lelouch and Suzaku seem present) that went like this.
Show ▼
Many are questioning if this can even happen now, but I don’t see why this can’t take place. No one in this conversation is dead. Kallen did finally hear about this “promise” from C.C. I can still see this happening in the last episode. If it does happen it’s interesting that Anya, who’s never really been around Kallen personally, is able to see her emotions for Lelouch in the scene.
There are also the Gum Card Lines seen here (as well as the magazines that published the conversations)
http://koshimizu.livejournal.com/5842.html#cutid1
These are cards that show certain characters and quotes from each character. Out of these 4 girls only Kallen’s is left. C.C. said her line in the most recent episode.
Kallen:If you say something like “I love you (or him/her/someone)”, I won’t forgive you.
The kanji that shows who she is addressing was left blurred out to hide who she’s talk to is hidden.
I don’t think this will be addressed to Anya, in response to her comment in that conversation. This card Kallen says “ai” for love and not something one will say easily or to someone they don’t know well. Anya says ’suki’ in her line.
Re… set?
Oh hell, I hope not.
And how many damn times to we have to see Xing-ke coughing up blood in his cockpit before he finally gets the message and dies? Srsly, there’s like a dozen clearly defined death flags that Sunrise is blatantly ignoring here.
@Linall: ;_; I’m telling…
@Vadigor: Faster…well they could either not kill off anymore characters, or kill them off extremely fast against minor enemies while Lelouch is talking, so that may be one way. I’m not expecting a satisfactory ending, but this is anime, and how often do we see those?
@Omisyth: I dun git it. ^^;
@Kari: She does, but when I first saw it, it was a big change because you usually get accustomed to how characters looked. Eyes suddenly being open takes a bit more time to get a accustomed to than a new haircut and outfit (a la Talho from Eureka 7)
@Diethard: At this point, I doubt Diethard really could come back to do any more harm…but I’ve learned my lesson with Mr. Mu “I can make the impossible, possible!” la Flaga, so I’m not holding my breath.
@Kabitzan: She already fired it once at that point. But yeah, I’m sure Schneizel knew he had Nunnally wound up around his fingers that she would carry out with the FLEIA launches, even if she did so semi-reluctantly.
@Camario: I don’t hate her so much as I’ve realized how much PMS-ish she can be.
If all goes as planned, I think Suzaku will probably win again, seeing as how much he got trounced the last time he went up against Guren. Perfect chance for revenge, I’d say.
@Kris (toallie din’t see ya dere bra!): Once again, thanks for all these interesting tidbits on Geass. Though that spoiler might make me regret reading if does take place (^^;), as Shirukii said about Shirley’s death, I’ll be interested in the “how this came to be” aspect. If Lelouch is there, then it doesn’t seem to occur during the final fight…
@Telliamed: Meh, I like Re-semi colin better. Makes less sense. ^^; If Xing Ke doesn’t go into combat and instead sticks to protecting Tian Zi for the remainder of the last episode, than I’m sure he’ll survive. A disease and a one armed Shen Hu doesn’t help combat scenarios much, it’s just a matter of whether he’s foolish enough to not realize that or not.
Welp, you tell whoever you need to.
On the other hand, I’ve finally come up with a reason to read your posts Jay. Most of my friends who like anime refuse to give up on the second season of Code Geass not matter how bad it gets, but they aren’t watching it right along because stuff like Xam’d is airing. So I read your posts and then drop spoilers into casual conversation.
“So Linall, what’d you think of the game last night?”
“I couldn’t believe New Orleans came back as much as they did. Nunnely gets her sight back. I mean what were the Cowboys, half paralyzed on the field? It was like 3 to 26 at some point for chirst sakes.”
“Yeah… wait, what?”
I do this because I am a jerk.
e: Also, thanks to Telliamed for graciously showing me how to use blockquotes.
Wait, you can use quotes on this thing?
*attempts HTML*
Oh puh.
So it’s a choice between a noble death in battle, or being arrested for contributing to the delinquency of a minor… hrmm.
Semi-colons are so last year. 2008 is the year of the ? (pronounced “hatena”)
And what do you mean “graciously”, Linall? You’ll be receiving an invoice in the mail soon.
I’ve been amazed just how many characters seem to be surviving this last battle. So far out of the named characters the only one that’s died is Diethard.
There is still a fight left between Kallen and Suzaku, but most everyone who goes into combat was taken out. I guess there is still XingKi, but I doubt he’s going to leave TainZi. They have also been hinting at XingKe’s death for a long time.
Also look at the people getting the ones they love in this series. Chiba/Toudo, Ougi/Villetta, XingKe is still alive so far and with TainZi, and Rivalz is starting to shine with Milly all of a sudden. It’s even starting to look as if Jeremiah has feelings for Sayako. Maybe not love, but admiration is a pretty large step for someone who was once a purist. After all the horrid things Rolo did he still got a heroic death. Why wont Kallen get some love? It just better not be Gino.
i really love lelouch till the end he kept his promise t CC i felt sorry for him though coz many people hated him and had no idea what he had to go through just to achieve his goal. Which is to give peace t he people.this the best strategic anime ive ever seen..