Code Geass: Episode 3 Discussion

[gods-debris.livejournal.com]

Currently not at home and I’m using my mother’s laptop. I was unable to take screenshots. I apologize! I’ll add them on Monday/Tuesday.

Episode 3 Discussion!

Finally we understand why Lelouch has such distaste for Britannia. Clovis tries to talk Lelouch into returning with him but Lelouch is certain that, if he does, he’ll be taken advantage of and used for political gain. But Lelouch’s main reason for approaching Clovis is about his mother’s death. After not getting much of an answer out of Clovis besides hysteria and claiming he didn’t do it Lelouch finally uses his Geass on his half-brother only to find out that Clovis doesn’t know much about that day and gives us two new names in the Britannia family: Schneizel and Cornelia. And, just like Lelouch, after getting the information he needs he’s completely done with you. Bwah! Poor Clovis. I wish we had more time getting to know his character because he seemed such short lived. Did anyone else notice Lelouch’s full red eye? Does that ever happen again; because I don’t remember him ever being able to “end” his Geass spell to return the person back to themselves. Even later in the episode when he finishes asking Kallen about why she’s a terrorist his eye doesn’t repeat that same action. I wonder if it was something Sunrise thought about using and then decided it wasn’t worth keeping it around.

So back to normal school life. Being VP of the student council must be hard work! Lelouch doesn’t seem to do much haha. It is nice to see Lelouch as a normal student and not the killer he became the night before, but it does seem to have gotten to him. After watching part of a news broadcast and avoiding Shirley’s curiousity he almost throws up. It’s just as Lelouch has said: His nerves aren’t cut out for this just yet. And, what a coincidence, the terrorist girl that he helped is actually a student that attends Ashford! Immediately he knows he has to confront her, but he has the anonymity of Geass. Too bad for Lelouch, but great for us: we find out that he can only use his power once. Nice awkward moment between him and Kallen—immediately she suspects him. I mean, how would he know about Shinjuku? Why tell her not to say anything about it?

C’mon, Lelouch. The terrorist you helped were semi-advanced, right? They had their own Knightmare, right? You’re telling her to do something that requires little to no common sense. Only an idiot would mention Shinjuku—and what’s more, Lelouch, her “school character” is obviously totally different from whom she really is. I think this part is hilarious because anyone would be smart enough not to mention Shinjuku. If anything Lelouch was the stupid one lol. He mentioned Shinjuku! Granted, he thought that Geass would save him again.

Yay, Nunnally is so cute. It’s refreshing to see Lelouch and his sister together. He cares so much about her… He’s willing to lie to anyone but her, how sweet. But also somewhat naïve… But I guess his motivation is to create a world for Nunnally to be safe in. Also, we find out that the girl with green hair from the first episode was an experiment. Apparently she’s been around a while (judging by a WWII-like image). It can’t get out that they were running experiments on that girl which must mean that she is important in some way.

The rest of the episode seems to focus around Lelouch and Kallen and the whole Shinjuku incident. Is that him? I can’t tell from a memory. If it is him… blah blah blah.

Anyways, we do get to see the side of Lelouch that is great with planning. He just knows what that person is most likely to do. The whole bathroom scene is a perfect example. How did he know Kallen was going to try to make him stay? How did he get it down right? If she didn’t stop him would he try to buy time? My question is why the phone in the bathroom? How would you explain that? When the knife came out I got the impression that Lelouch didn’t really plan for that but nevertheless everything played out in his favor…

And the bastard got to see a nice view of Kallen.

Oh, and Lelouch. It seems Suzaku is still alive! And they’re charging him for the murder of Clovis. What are you going to do, Lelouch!

Comments

[megalomaniageek.livejournal.com]

This is the first episode with a lot of school time, and it's really apparent that the writers of Code Geass put absolutely no effort into making anything about the Britannian school system seem anything but Japanese. Not to mention that Kallen bows when she's introduced to the student council. Anyway, without further ado…

Code Geass Points
R1 Episode 3

+1 Good point, Jeremiah
+2 Thanks for giving Kallen your jacket, Ohgi
-5 This scene doesn't really look like how it looks like in R2…
-1 Seriously, Lelouch, you think CLOVIS did it?
+2 I don't care if it's heartless, this scene is SO BADASS
+5 Milly being Milly
-10 Nina's first appearance >: (
+3 GUUUUUTS
+2 Oh Milly, you pervert
+1 Rivalz wants to join in
-10 SHUT UP NINA
-2 Yeah, Lelouch, I don't believe that lie about "hearing it in real time from a friend" for a second
+1 Aww, delayed reaction to the trauma…why is this endearing? ("I guess I'm not as tough as I thought I was")
-2 This Jeremiah/Viletta thing never goes anywhere
+3 Killing a bee with her BARE HANDS
+1 Aaaaaand Lelouch geasses Kallen!
-3 Oh no, Lulu, she's on to you! You should've tested this more first!
+4 Doting-older-brother Lelouch
+6 Oh right, Lelouch actually has a reason for doing all this!
+5 Oh my God, Nunnally, you are so cute
+4 "Teehee, then you better not tell any lies big brother!" AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
+1 And Lelouch actually thinks he won't lie to Nunnally…seriously, he keeps this pretense up throughout the series but he lies to her all the time!
+5 Good idea to actually TEST IT eh Lulu?
-8 Kallen, you can't just murder students with no consequences. THINK!
+1 Moet Chambon XD
+3 Champagne shenanigans
+1 Suggestive imagery!
-1 Super-random THIS IS WHY I HATE BRITANNIANS
-10 OH GOD THE PURSE KNIFE…SERIOUSLY, KALLEN, WHAT HAPPENS AFTER YOU STAB HIM?! THINK!
+5 Aaaaand Lelouch resolves the whole thing with a little Xanatos gambit
-1 Okay, seriously, the voice sounds JUST like Lelouch. It could be a coincidence, but you were just talking to him, and now you've heard the voice over the phone…before your excuse for not recognizing him was that you couldn't remember the voice!
-2 Kallen, be less obvious, Lelouch is right there!
+1 Thank you for giving her an obvious out, Lelouch
-30 Damned racist Britannians, Suzaku is innocent!

[megalomaniageek.livejournal.com]

Oh also, forgot one thing: Kallen, you JUST found out that Lelouch is Nunnally's caretaker, and that Nunnally is blind and crippled. You want to leave her with no support system? Considering that you basically obsess over your dead older brother for the entire first season? Boooooo.

[nayami.livejournal.com]

-5 This scene doesn't really look like how it looks like in R2…
Yeah...

-2 Yeah, Lelouch, I don't believe that lie about "hearing it in real time from a friend" for a second
You know for being such a great liar, Lelouch... sucks at lying.

-2 This Jeremiah/Viletta thing never goes anywhere
I think they're talking about the coup.

-1 Super-random THIS IS WHY I HATE BRITANNIANS
Yeah, I still don't get that one.

-2 Kallen, be less obvious, Lelouch is right there!
Superb liar Kallen... also fails at lying.

-1 Okay, seriously, the voice sounds JUST like Lelouch. It could be a coincidence, but you were just talking to him, and now you've heard the voice over the phone…before your excuse for not recognizing him was that you couldn't remember the voice!
LOL

Oh also, forgot one thing: Kallen, you JUST found out that Lelouch is Nunnally's caretaker, and that Nunnally is blind and crippled. You want to leave her with no support system? Considering that you basically obsess over your dead older brother for the entire first season? Boooooo.
OMG YOU'RE RIGHT. I totally missed this.

[megalomaniageek.livejournal.com]

-2 This Jeremiah/Viletta thing never goes anywhere
I think they're talking about the coup.

Oh yes, definitely. It's just that at this point there's a kind of sensual vibe going on between them, and the scenes with the two of them make it obvious that they're really close. (Not in a relationship, but close.) I'm not a Jeremiah/Viletta shipper, but I really can't not see some of their interactions as....shippy.
But Code Geass sets up potential for and then subsequently drops a lot of pairings (Suzaku/Shirley, Kallen/Suzaku, Gino/Kallen). It's no big deal and I'm not overly fond of any of them, but I'll probably still comment on it.

[m-nemonica.livejournal.com]

-10 SHUT UP NINA


lmao

[megalomaniageek.livejournal.com]

XD

[snowdevil-crow.livejournal.com]

+1 Aww, delayed reaction to the trauma…why is this endearing? ("I guess I'm not as tough as I thought I was") BECAUSE IT IS. D'AWW NOT-SO-TOUGH LULU.

Also, +1 And Lelouch actually thinks he won't lie to Nunnally…seriously, he keeps this pretense up throughout the series but he lies to her all the time!

I always found this a bit weird about Lelouch. It comes up in R2, as well, that he just can't bring himself to lie to her... but... he lies to her all the time? The very first time he meets Suzaku he was caught out in a lie to his sister. It's weird. It's like he classifies things as 'lies' and then there's 'lies', and it's only the latter that he can't tell to his sister. I wonder how he defines the difference.

But oh man I won't pretend I wasn't waiting for that "swallow a thousand needles" thing to come and bite him in the ass eventually. Eh, maybe in a more gurotastic anime than this one.

-1 Okay, seriously, the voice sounds JUST like Lelouch. It could be a coincidence, but you were just talking to him, and now you've heard the voice over the phone…before your excuse for not recognizing him was that you couldn't remember the voice!
UGH That whole thing with the phone call always seemed like such an asspull to me. I mean, okay, so he seemed to make at least an effort to lower his voice a little, but still...

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

But oh man I won't pretend I wasn't waiting for that "swallow a thousand needles" thing to come and bite him in the ass eventually.

How many needles would you have to melt together to make a sword?

I joke, I joke. It does come back to bite him, though, just more metaphorically.

[snowdevil-crow.livejournal.com]

Ahh, but he doesn't swallow the sword.

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

...It enters his stomach? (LOL, now I'm imagining sword swallower Lelouch in the circus.)

[megalomaniageek.livejournal.com]

But oh man I won't pretend I wasn't waiting for that "swallow a thousand needles" thing to come and bite him in the ass eventually. Eh, maybe in a more gurotastic anime than this one.

Since it's just a figure of speech/intentional hyperbole (like "cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye") I never thought it was going to be brought up literally.

[snowdevil-crow.livejournal.com]

I know, I know, but, but, just... it would have been fun and awesome and fucked up and creepy if he actually had to swallow needles.

[megalomaniageek.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes it would, and I am the kind of sick bastard who would watch every minute of it. But I wouldn't do anything else though because that would be weird. (http://www.picturesforsadchildren.com/index.php?comicID=167)
...write that fic plz
if you won't I will
because I can do sick guro pretty well
but i might chicken out because I love Lelouch with the fury of a thousand suns

[rainbow-cnxn.livejournal.com]

It comes up in R2, as well, that he just can't bring himself to lie to her... but... he lies to her all the time?
Well. That is how the audience is most clued into the fact that Lelouch understands himself less than he thinks he does. That and "I won't let ANYTHING (notevenmypersonallifeshhhhh) get in my way". I think he truly believes that, but he just is never able to be as ruthless as he thinks he is. It's also what makes arguing with people who take Lelouch's own words/thoughts as absolute truth so frustrating. NOOOOOO HE IS AN UNRELIABLE ANALYST! USE YOUR HEAD! D:

Also, in the aftermath of R2, every conversation between the vi Britannia siblings is heartbreaking. It absolutely KILLS me that the first thing she winds up seeing is Emperor Lelouch geassing her, to which she tells him "I HATE YOU!" ;_;

In fact, there are a lot of conversations that kill me in the aftermath of R2 and Zero Requiem, in particular.

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

It's also what makes arguing with people who take Lelouch's own words/thoughts as absolute truth so frustrating. NOOOOOO HE IS AN UNRELIABLE ANALYST! USE YOUR HEAD!

I agree with this statement so very much. It has been the source of much frustration in certain online debates I have been involved in.

[kusaja.livejournal.com]

Lelouch is full of contradictions right from the start, isn't he?

Yes, those and other statements tend to be painfully ironic in retrospect.

I think that's part of what makes him such a great tragic figure, even if he's definitely not the type of person I'd give even an ounce of trust in real life. You can't count on someone like that.

In fact, I'd despise anyone who followed in Lelouch's footsteps, consciously or not...but even this doesn't prevent me from considering him a very interesting subject of study as far as fictional characters go.

[kusaja.livejournal.com]

This scene doesn't really look like how it looks like in R2…

Eh, they actually do re-use this same footage after the "truth" of the murder is finally explained.

I have more trouble believing that the logistical side of the "truth" could have easily worked though, which is why I happen to doubt it was necessarily part of the original plans, but they didn't exactly change the entire animation of this scene in particular (or at least not when the actual explanation came around, that is. I don't recall if they went for a different angle in a previous flashback).

Spoilery comment

[snowdevil-crow.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I always thought it was pretty clear that the reason Lelouch remembers watching his mother die was because the Emperor used his geass on him...???

Re: Spoilery comment

[megalomaniageek.livejournal.com]

I figure that too. Well actually he doesn't remember seeing her die; he remembers finding her shot-up the next morning with Nunnally shot beneath her. Since Nunnally wasn't originally there, that means somebody had to shoot her legs separately (...which is...um...unbelievably awful. She was like six years old. Jesus.) and Lelouch wouldn't remember finding her in that position. Also there were the shot-up butlers who weren't there the night before; what needless sacrifice.
This part has always been a huge point of contention for me (and I've almost made a discussion post about it numerous times but I keep procrastinating for some reason): Why was Charles' rewriting-memory geass such an integral part of V.V.'s plan if he intended to keep it secret from Charles?
I can sort-of, kind-of understand Charles re-writing his children's memories and Anya's memories on his own, secretly from V.V. or at least apart from him, in order to keep them safe. But why shoot up his own daughter's legs/have somebody do it for him? Or did V.V. do that and did Charles take away the memory because it was presumably traumatic?
And why was this huge cover-up even necessary if - for reasons I've described above - Charles is ALREADY IN ON IT? Who are they trying to fool, and why spin such an intricate web? And if Nunnally was supposed to be the unfortunate witness, what of Anya?
Gah, this part of the series drives me nuts. Sorry for the rambling, but I really wish they would've made it clearer.

Spoilers and stuff

[megalomaniageek.livejournal.com]

Oh, well technically yes, the bullets coming through the window at night scene is exactly as it is shown in R2. But there were no bullets coming through the window in reality, it was all V.V. at the bottom of the stairs.
I agree with you about the logistical side of the "truth" not working, but I've complained at length in a comment above (and do not wish to double-post).

[otakukeith.livejournal.com]

-2 This Jeremiah/Viletta thing never goes anywhere

I KNOW RIGHT?! Watching R1 for the first time (having utterly spoilered myself, I didn't buy the DVDs till last January), I totally shipped Jeremiah/Viletta. To begin with, it seems like she could just be loyal to him as a means of self-advancement, but later she sticks with him even after he's disgraced. D'awww.

[spleener.livejournal.com]

-1 Okay, seriously, the voice sounds JUST like Lelouch. It could be a coincidence, but you were just talking to him, and now you've heard the voice over the phone…before your excuse for not recognizing him was that you couldn't remember the voice!

I like to think that Lelouch talks in English while Zero talks in Japanese, but the English is spoken as Japanese for the convenience of the Japanese audience, and vice versa for the dub. That would make the fact that nobody picks up on the similar voice somewhat believable, at any rate.

That said, also remember that it's established that the Geass universe has devices that can completely and believably imitate someone else's voice, so voice alone is not a reliable way to match two people in any case.

[rainbow-cnxn.livejournal.com]

It is a small (impossible) dream of mine to watch a version of Geass in which people are speaking different languages in context. Of course, Suzaku (and Lelouch/Zero, for that matter) has that whole ore-boku (and watashi, in Zero's case) thing going on, and throwing English into the mix would just be a big mess.

At the very least, I wish the show/franchise would be clearer about what language they spoke as kids at the Kururugi Shrine. Frickin' bluebloods and their multi-lingualness.

[megalomaniageek.livejournal.com]

I'd easily believe that Lelouch and Nunnally just learned Japanese because they were so young, except for the fact that we see Suzaku teaching Nunnally some simple Japanese when they're hanging out together. Maybe Suzaku was just good at English? He's almost certainly fluent by the time of the series.

But the creators didn't want to address it and have even lampshaded (in the DVD inserts) that they didn't give it much thought and don't think the audience should either. (I still think it's a huge thing to completely ignore but they're never going to give an answer, and certain scenes just don't seem to have an answer considering how many most-likely-monolingual people from different countries are speaking easily with each other sans translators.)

[megalomaniageek.livejournal.com]

Hmm, it might be a bit more believable only because Kallen is so unfamiliar with both Lelouch and Zero at that point. I know folks who are bilingual in both Japanese and English, and their voice doesn't change that much; however, I know that with, say, actors - people whose voices I've heard before but with whom I'm generally unfamiliar - if I don't know their work very well I might not recognize their voice. What really stretches my suspension of disbelief is that she's hearing one talk *right after* the other one.

As for language in Geass, I find it's a huge can of worms. I don't know when they're supposed to be speaking Japanese and when they're supposed to be speaking English (I imagine that the Japanese resistance group members mostly speak Japanese to one-another, although if Zero is talking to them in Japanese I don't know why Diethard can understand everybody). Translators are never so much as mentioned, let alone seen. In one of the supplemental materials the creators lampshaded the fact that they completely swept the matter under the rug and refused to give it much thought (and advised the audience to do the same).

Yeah, I was kinda perplexed at the Geass writers introducing technology to perfectly emulate somebody's likeness (voice changers and whatever Sayoko wears) but never actually makes them plot relevant beyond being convenient devices in specific cases.
I still don't think that excuses Kallen here, though...why would Zero seek out some Britannian school student and just emulate his voice perfectly? Isn't that a massive coincidence, that this kid who says "forget about Shinjuku" sounds exactly like The Voice? Certainly the situation would imply that this boy and Zero are closely linked even if they're not the same person (which might explain why Lelouch would let Zero borrow his voice and why he knows about Shinjuku).