romance in geass

[rosangela.livejournal.com]

Do you think that Lelouch loved someone romantically in the end?There have been hints with C.C., Shirley and Kallen.Personally i think that the staff was going with C.C. and Lelouch in the first season and in the second they took the route for Lelouch and Kallen.Shirley was in school and it was hard in the first place.
What is your opinion?

Comments

[darksage29.livejournal.com]

Okay, asexual and homosexual comments aside, here's my trying-my-best-to-be-objective-even-if-I'm-a-LuluCC-shipper commentary.

Euphemia: can't say Lulu cared for her THAT deeply. Sure he may have loved her, but given the fact that she was killing everyone on plain sight, he had to do something. I don't see killing her as the ONLY way to resolve the crap that went on... But Lelouch had to do something. I don't think he was too much scarred with her death. So, scrap that.
Shirley: killed, goes on a rampage. Lelouch didn't want her to die, and was in a total wreck when she did. I, however, don't see this as love. When Nunna got FLEIJA'd, Lulu was pretty much had the same reaction. I reckon Lelouch's "guilt" over getting-a-friend-involved-in-all-this-crap pushed him off the brink.
Kallen: Fanservice girl. Pretty much a quarter of R2 was sexual tension between the two. And yeah, you have all that material going on offscreen. So yeah. Basically a good candidate (at least, better than shirley). But I don't see Lelouch caring for her (heck, even shirley trumps kallen in that department). What was Lelouch's reaction towards Kallen's kidnapping? There wasn't much response in the part of Lulu, even to "oh hey, they got our ace pilot. Now what?"... My view is, that kallen loved Lulu very, very deeply. It's just that lelouch was too confused to reciprocate it.
C.C.: my bias. But I'll try my best to be objective. Initially, there was little to no "love" between them. I think they became fond of each other up until the end of S1. Kinda like getting relationship points in a VN, LuluCC had moments that made them grow closer together. And I think C.C. did have feelings for Lelouch, but showed too little of it. Lelouch might have reciprocated, but it's a little too iffy to say how much he did.

...but you all know what happened in Canon, right? RIVALZ.

[kiraya.livejournal.com]

Euphemia: can't say Lulu cared for her THAT deeply

...despite him calling her 初恋 (first love) and breaking down crying in C.C.'s arms after he killed her?

[darksage29.livejournal.com]

well, my gauge is Lulu's reaction compared to Suzaku's reaction. Suzaku went "OH SHIT F U ZERO! RAWRGH!", Lelouch broke down, yes... but acted pretty much "I'm okay now" afterwards.

The first love thing... I see it more as a joke or a "LOL-I-had-a-crush-on-you-once" moment. Plus, Lelouch didn't seem to have a clear-cut concept of love in S1, let alone when he used to hang out with euphie.

[kiraya.livejournal.com]

Suzaku had that extreme reaction because Euphemia had been his best ticket to redemption for the sin of killing his father (as well as someone he was starting to fall for), and Zero took that away from him in the worst possible way -- by making it seem like he was going along with her ideals of peace and then brutally sabotaging them.

And yeah, Lelouch picked himself up and moved on afterwards -- because after something like the SAZ massacre it would've been suicide for the Black Knights for them to not take advantage of the situation (and you can make a similar case in the situation of Kallen's kidnapping) -- but the whole "I'm pretty much okay now" thing was almost certainly a facade. You could see how fond he was of Euphie in the way he admitted his defeat, in how she's the first person he actually explains his Geass to -- at that point he's never trusted anyone with that information, and for someone who holds his cards close to his chest as Lelouch does, that's huge. (That degree of trust is some of the biggest support for the Lelouch/C.C. 'ship, imo.)

We see over and over again how, despite the fact that he tries to act all dispassionate and logical (very Schneizel-like, quite honestly), Lelouch is a person of very intense emotions; he just buries them deeply as much as possible (quite understandable, considering his strong emotions were what got him kicked out of home in the first place). Of course, being so self-repressed, he seems to lack a clear-cut concept of love. One thing's for sure, though: he certainly isn't the type to joke about it.

I really feel that in many cases Lelouch doesn't realize the depth of his attachments to the people he cares for until they're in "oh shit" situations -- Shirley and Rolo in particular are perfect examples of this. And again, because strong emotions caused such difficulties for him in the past, because he's so used to relying on himself now, it's easier for him to push people away than to confide in them and grow dependent on them and thus allow himself to be hurt again (a large factor in why he deliberately acted unresponsive to Kallen's kiss, imo, and why he said those hurtful things to her when the Black Knights turned on him).

(Nunnally's something of a different story, since he seems to view her almost more as representative of the ideal he's working towards than an individual -- the rock he's built everything on, the reason he's fighting this fight. That's why, in contrast to Euphie (where he had to keep going or blow it all) or Shirley (finally losing it because he'd been trying not to get innocents involved and now this, for the SECOND time no less), he can't just pick himself up and keep going after she's FLEIA'd, because without Nunnally what is he doing this for? His inaction costs him dearly, but in the end -- once again, despite the obvious heartache he's suffering -- he picks up and keeps going, because he's got to fix the mess he made. He's got to -- as Suzaku says -- keep the lie going till the very end.)

I really, truly think Lelouch loved all of them -- C.C., Kallen, Shirley, Euphemia, Nunnally, Rolo, Suzaku. The exact expression of that love may have varied, but privileging one of those relationships over the others, saying that he loved one of them more than the others instead of simply differently, or that he didn't love one (or more) of them at all, has never made much sense to me. Even though I have my own preferences in my Lelouch 'ships, I'm fully willing to acknowledge his other relationships. Ship and let ship, you know? :)

sorry for the tl;dr there, ahaha.

[anaakin.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, ya know, subjectivity can make you say weird things :P