Episode 19 discussion?

[nayami.livejournal.com]

Since the last episode discussion post went so well, I figured why not give it another go-around? My original plan was to post these on Saturdays so people had a good day to check out the raw and track down summaries and the like but since I enjoy the discussions myself and won't be around much Saturday, this one comes a bit early.

I'd also like to point out that I am extremely biased in what I talk about to start the discussion so if you have characters/topics you're more interested in, feel free to thread about them as well.



I knew the island arc would be entertaining, but I was hardly expecting it to be good. I love that Euphemia knew who Zero was the entire time but never told Cornelia because she didn't want to cause her sister any more pain by knowing it was their own brother fighting against them. I love Euphemia in general now. The scene where Lelouch and Suzaku are facing off and Kallen's basically calling Euphemia a vapid princess just before Euphemia tells Suzaku to forget about her and kick Kallen's ass, that was the first sign of Euphemia's edge that I've ever seen. I liked it. Not as much as Lelouch totally failing at survival life, unable to even dig a hole. Why were you born a man, Lulu? It was hilarious of the writers to continuously compare Lelouch's failures with Suzaku's leet fishing skills.

Though I agree with the anime bloggers that the Euphie/Lulu parts were hella better than Suza/Kallen. Suzaku and Kallen were just a world of bitchery, while Euphemia and Lelouch had connection and understanding, at least in part. I wonder how the knowledge that Cornelia is investigating what happened to Lelouch's family will affect his thirst for vengeance. With his family members each revealing themselves as decent human beings, Lelouch is losing more reason to hate them. What does this mean for his purpose in the Rebellion?

People say that because Lelouch showed friendliness to Euphemia, he's all up for siscon. I point out that Lelouch is generally nice to girls, and I think the flashback revealed that Lelouch's family had always been close to Euphemia. I think this was another reason he stayed his hand back during the hotel incident, the exact behavior that led Euphemia to believe he was Zero. I didn't pay much attention to other aspects of this episode until the surprise attack at the end because I think I need to really know what's being said in the Gawain and Black Knights scenes to truly appreciate them. Summaries are not going to do it.

I hope we get more of Suzaku's reaction to the whole "live" incident next week since he didn't have any character-revealing moments in his time with Kallen, aside from his telling her he killed his father. I think this is a big step for him. Words cannot describe how much I adore the way Lelouch GEASSed Suzaku. When I first saw the shot of Suzaku with the red-rimmed eyes associated with GEASS, I was sad because I thought Lelouch was finally favoring the Rebellion over Suzaku. I was extremely relieved to learn his GEASS command to Suzaku was simply "live." Others are talking about the command having a lasting effect, which I think would be smart of the creators, but I'm not sure if they're going to do it. In the past, we've seen the GEASS can last for an infinite time when a non-descript command is given. People ask why Lelouch didn't use multiple commands at once such as "Fight your way out of here. Leave Britannia. Join the Black Knights." I think the most obvious reason is that Lelouch wanted immediate action. He knew Suzaku was going to sacrifice himself to ensure Zero was destroyed, and had to revert that decision immediately. He probably didn't have time to evaluate all the possible commands. He never intended to GEASS Suzaku in the first place so it was a spur-of-the-moment thing.

I think the command itself shows Lelouch's continued loyalty to Suzaku, although I fully admit it also allowed Lelouch the opportunity to escape himself. But that was a gamble, and we're not even fully sure how that happened; it's hinted it has something to do with the unseen GEASS user. It seems to me Lelouch was more focused on getting Suzaku out of harm's way than escaping himself -- He could have told Suzaku to simply "Get us out of here"-- but I'm an optimist when it comes to them so I could be wrong. I wonder if the GEASS user zapped everyone to the island to simply put the Gawain in Lelouch's possession or if they know about Lelouch and the royals. I'm also unsure why Suzaku freaks out when the whole group is controlled by the GEASS teleportation at the end of the episode. Is he recalling what happened with C.C.?

Comments

Re: tl;dr

[(Anonymous)]

I so totally agree with your analysis. Throughout the series Lelouch has been compared to Light but this episode clearly showed that Lelouch is not all head but he still has a heart unlike Light. With Light my approval went down as time went on with him utter cold-bloodedness but with Lelouch even though he is becoming more cold-blooded he still retains kindess to those that REALLY precious to him.

When I found out that Lulu told Suzaku to "live" my heart melted. True he was saving himself too but he could have said "evade". This shows that he was following his heart in the spur of the moment instead of using his head. As stated by Mao, wording of the commands are everything.

I was so afraid because the spoilers say that he was gonna become more and more cold but its this far down the road and he still at least has people that are important to him. I really didn't want him to turn into his dad.

Re: tl;dr

[verity-isle.livejournal.com]

People are still comparing him to Light? While that couldn't be helped early on, I think it's obvious by now that Lelouch is quite different from Light. Lelouch's problem is in perception, he's partly Suzumiya Haruhi in that he views people he doesn't know personally as potatoes/chess pieces. It's the way he's raised and the way he's survived his 'dead years', I suppose, which was why CC needed to reality check'd him that they are people. Even then, he avoids 'tactically unnecessary casualties'. He simply has something he has to do that justifies everything. ('They killed Mother/Japan/destroyed our lives, it doesn't matter' which is quite human really)

I know. ;_; Plus, it's how LL thinks Suzaku wants to die, too, so that could be just "Stop hurting yourself so much, you idiot" in less verbose terms. Most moving use of Geass ever.

Something drastic would probably happen to him later. Not sure when, though.

Re: tl;dr

[nayami.livejournal.com]

I'm still impressed Lelouch used his one and only trump card against the person he *knows* can and will easily kick his ass. That's a sacrifice in of itself, especially since he's been somewhat more cautious with the Geass since Mao.

Re: tl;dr

[verity-isle.livejournal.com]

Does he really consider Suzaku his enemy right now, though? Since he just pwned the Lancelot, I think LL views Suzaku as something of an "I can deal with it without the Geass" problem, which may or may not be an accurate assessment of himself.

Re: tl;dr

[nayami.livejournal.com]

I don't think the problem so much is Lelouch's viewpoint as Suzaku's, as we've seen Suzaku is pretty adamant about catching Zero. But you could be right about Lelouch thinking he has the upper hand now that he knows Lancelot's tricks. But I think it's still pretty risk on Lelouch's part and shows part of him is dead set on seeing he wins over Suzaku by safer means.