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

[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.

Re: Spoilery comment

[snowdevil-crow.livejournal.com]

he remembers finding her shot-up the next morning with Nunnally shot beneath her

I could have sworn he said he remembered watching her die right in front of him. Maybe that's only the novels...? Or a bad subtitle.

I suppose one could argue that Charles was lying out of his ass when he said VV didn't want him to know about it and he was actually in on at least part of it from the very beginning.



Wellwellwell wait. Maybe VV actually intended to kill Lelouch as well, and leave only Nunnally alive for... whatever reason... but he couldn't because suddenly CC!! And then Charles came back and was like *sigh* *memory rewrite*

Okay that's probably stretching it a bit. TBH, I think the only logical answer to all of this is basically "Sunrise fucked up and none of this made any sense whatsoever"

Re: Spoilery comment

[megalomaniageek.livejournal.com]

TBH, I think the only logical answer to all of this is basically "Sunrise fucked up and none of this made any sense whatsoever"

*siiiiigh* Yeah, probably.
See, I could've actually bought Charles being in on it if they had set it up or if it was only him telling this to Lelouch, but the thing that drives Charles and V.V. apart - what makes him kill V.V. and take his code, what makes him sadly accuse his brother of breaking their pact - was the Marianne incident and cover-up. Kinda important.
Sunrise done fucked up.

Re: Spoilery comment

[snowdevil-crow.livejournal.com]

Turn 21 was basically just twenty minutes of "WTF" and "QUALITY" ending with overwhelming chanting. The ending of it was really just Sunrise's way of trying to make the audience stop thinking about what the hell just happened and how on earth it was supposed to make sense and just go with the flow of cheering.

Re: Spoilery comment

[kusaja.livejournal.com]

The way I see it, both Turn 21 and a few of the surrounding episodes (or, more to the point, several of their scenes) all come across like glorified summaries and somewhat disjointed recaps of what was supposed to happen.

In this particular case...instead of explaining something in, say, two or three episodes they pushed everything into just one and didn't mind taking any shortcuts in the process.

All of the practical details don't necessarily make perfect sense,no, but the general ideas involved do follow a certain logical pattern from the point of view of the creators, which can be more or less reconstructed.

Generally speaking, I don't assume that the staff didn't put at least some genuine thought into things. Say, there are mild but clearly intentional pieces of foreshadowing for a few of the things that happened in R2 21 itself, throughout the second season. It just wasn't nearly enough to cover all of the necessary ground.

Because of whatever factors...the staff chose to compromise, didn't have enough time to edit the scripts into something workable in X number of episodes and failed to keep all of the details straight in the process, things didn't work out as well as they should have.

Re: Spoilery comment

[snowdevil-crow.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I could definitely go with it being a result of shitty compromise. I do think at least some of it was foreshadowed, but there were also things that were foreshadowed that just... didn't go anywhere. Like Suzaku's connection to Geass, or that thing with CC's impression of a cliffside sea village... also, how old is VV supposed to be, when and where did he get his Geass and later the Code, and what about the rest of the Code-bearers? There have to be more of them. SO MUCH POTENTIAL WASTED ;_;

R2 should really have been 50 episodes rather than 25. Or, hell, they could have spread it into three seasons! I would have gone for that, if they stopped with the shitty animation.

Re: Spoilery comment

[kusaja.livejournal.com]

I was specifically referring to foreshadowing during the second season itself, mind you, but I also share your frustration about those other plot points from season one being left behind.

It's always been a pet peeve of mine that Code Geass didn't get the chance to have a sequel movie like Gundam 00 did. Say what you will about that film, but at the very least the staff were able to wrap up a couple of loose threads and subplots in it. If R2's Zero Requiem arc was made into a movie and those four or five episodes had been used to smooth things out instead, the result would have been quite a bit better. Oh well.

Nonetheless...I do think there are still other opportunities to elaborate on C.C.'s past and even Geass-related affairs in general, such as the history of Code-bearers, depending on how the Code Geass property develops in the future. It's not unlikely that some questions may eventually be answered at a later time.

For example, as crazy and as blatantly "shounen fighting" as the current Renya manga is right now, sooner or later it might provide some useful information. It's also not impossible that the upcoming Code Geass Gaiden, despite its apparent focus on military affairs, won't try to indirectly address other forgotten aspects of the overall story.

Re: Spoilery comment

[rainbow-cnxn.livejournal.com]

I think something that we have to remember is that the Charles-Marianne-V.V. trio probably shares quite a few similarities to the Lelouch-Suzaku-C.C. trio from Zero Requiem. And we must keep in mind that just as the latter suffered their dysfunctions, latent tensions, and concessions, the former probably did, too. I agree that Sunrise did a bad job explaining it, but I just assumed it was something like Charles realized that he needed V.V., and that required making concessions, no matter what shit his big bro pulled.

There was a fic written by realms_of_fic (I think) that explored the idea that Nunnally was the one who was supposed to be groomed for power. She is the charming, popular one with loads of potential, while Lelouch was the frail, timid, irascible prince who spent all his time playing with girls and mulling over board games. (Of course, this is all fan speculation, but as there is relatively little material about pre-assassination Britannia, I feel justified in speculating, lol.) In short, who knows? Maybe Nunnally was more "valuable", and making her politically worthless would make them safer. V.V. is always dangerous, and his assassination of Marianne demonstrated that he will go after Charles' family in order to get what he wants, and Charles was not dumb enough to not realize this. If the vi Britannia family is at risk, the children are also at risk. As crazy as Lelouch's value system got at the end, I don't doubt that Charles' was similarly borked. I truly think that Charles thought that crippling Nunnally and exiling his kids to Japan was what was ultimately best for his kids.

Re: Spoilery comment

[snowdevil-crow.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I remember that fic. Flash in the Pan, right? I hadn't thought of that, but it would make sense.

Also, good point about the Charles-Marianne-VV trio.

Re: Spoilery comment

[kusaja.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think most of us wish they had. It would save us a lot of headaches.

Not sure if I really want to make my own rant about it here though, but still...I'd say Sunrise absolutely fucked up the execution, in the rush to explain as much as possible in a single episode, but I don't think it doesn't make at least a limited amount sense.

There's a whole range of values between 0 and 100, you know? I think the gist of it can be reconstructed to some degree, even if it requires stretching things a lot more than what good storytelling would recommend.

The main issue wasn't that V.V. kept the murder a secret from Charles, but that he lied about it to his face.

For instance: You know someone killed your wife, yes, but he gives you his condolences anyway, smiling and trusting that you can't or won't do anything about it. After all, they still had to work on Ragnarok anyway.

Charles didn't lash out against V.V. then and there but never forgave him for it. He cooperated with the messy setup out of convenience and for the sake of keeping up appearances in front of the rest of Britannia as the Big Bad Emperor Who Doesn't Care, but still continued to hold a grudge and waited for a chance to get back at his brother.

Not to say that this -and what's left- isn't contrived though.

Re: Spoilery comment

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

Not sure if I really want to make my own rant about it here though, but still...I'd say Sunrise absolutely fucked up the execution, in the rush to explain as much as possible in a single episode, but I don't think it doesn't make at least a limited amount sense.

Honestly, that's how I feel about a lot of the flaws in Code Geass, when it comes down to it. The plot points themselves are for the most part decent, they just suffer from sloppy execution (poor pacing/rush job). Having to reintroduce stuff at the start of R2 caused a bunch of problems further down the line.

Though occasionally the show does skim over internal logic in order to set up things for thematic points - the fact that Charles didn't kill Marianne, but that the two were working together being what they were aiming for in this case, to parallel Lelouch's own situation.

Re: Spoilery comment

[megalomaniageek.livejournal.com]

The main issue wasn't that V.V. kept the murder a secret from Charles, but that he lied about it to his face.

This is the part that confuses me. How and why is V.V. lying to Charles about Marianne if he's also using Charles in the cover-up plan? If Charles helps him with the cover up, that means that V.V. must acknowledge to Charles - either implicitly or explicitly - that he is the murderer. If he lies about being the murderer, even if Charles knows the truth and even if V.V. suspects that Charles suspects him, then Charles can't be part of the cover-up.

The only way I can see it - and this is HUGE generous stretch - is if Charles is actually the one who lies, in the way that Lelouch lies to Rolo after Rolo guns down Shirley.

Re: Spoilery comment

[kusaja.livejournal.com]

This is the part that confuses me. How and why is V.V. lying to Charles about Marianne if he's also using Charles in the cover-up plan?

Because V.V. didn't care one single bit about explaining his twisted reasons for murdering Marianne nor did he explicitly acknowledge his responsibility. That's the lie, even if it's a transparent one. It's not a lie that's meant to hide something from Charles, but simply to mock him and evade any honest discussion about the truth between the two brothers. In essence, V.V. was being a jerk and a hypocrite by lying through his teeth to his younger brother...on purpose.

Why? Because V.V.'s too overconfident. V.V. probably didn't think Charles had any alternative but to cooperate, cover everything up and continue working on the plan, so he didn't even try to excuse or justify his actions. So what if it's implicitly clear that he's the murderer? He's not going to be sincere about it.

When V.V. expressed his "sorrow" for Marianne's death, that was almost sardonically mocking Charles about it: What was he going to do, call off Ragnarok or take the Code (if Charles could even do so at that time, which is unknown)? Charles just had to bite his tongue and went along with whatever needed to be done without really addressing the underlying issue. They just covered up the event, but the two brothers never had a frank discussion about the murder itself. That's the root of the falsehood.

I'd say it mainly requires a boatload of overconfidence on V.V.'s part and a lot of hypocrisy/cynicism from both him and Charles alike. After all, the Britannian family doesn't seem to lack a history of lying siblings and backstabbing, both from what we've actually see and what is implied.

Re: Spoilery comment

[otakukeith.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.)

I'm glad I'm not the only person who thought of this and went GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. There needs to be more fanfic where Nunnally finds out that her mommy and daddy basically had her F*&^ING KNEECAPPED for their own f*&^ing convenience (no, it wasn't to protect her, because V.V. KNEW SHE WASN'T THERE) and goes totally berserk.

(Why yes, this will happen in at least one of my fics.)

More calmly, the horrible cover-up was probably intended to fool people like Schneizel and Cornelia.

Re: Spoilery comment

[megalomaniageek.livejournal.com]

When you write that fic I will read it.
It is unbelievably horrible that they shot up Nunnally's legs and blinded her for a cover story. That's just, like, the most awful thing I've ever heard.

Yeah, I can see the cover-up being aimed at others both inside and outside of the royal family, but my point of contention there is the thoroughness. You know, guys, you can set up an alibi that doesn't involve shooting children and raping their minds. Just a thought. Maybe plant some fake DNA evidence, a gun with fake fingerprints, and a few hairs.

Re: Spoilery comment

[otakukeith.livejournal.com]

I think the thing about Charles and Marianne's attitude is that they think their plan will make everyone perfectly sparkly happy in the end, so any misery along the way doesn't really matter. It's a very ideological-fanatic-like way of thinking, like a suicide bomber who thinks any 'good' people who get blown up with his target will go to heaven, so what the hell.

Re: Spoilery comment

[nayami.livejournal.com]

I am a bit confused. I always thought it was V.V.'s idea to cripple Nunnally to disguise what he did to Marianne as an assassination attempt. He targeted Nunnally because Lelouch reminded him too much of Charles and he could not do that to him, at the time. While Nunnally was in the shock of having her mother dead and her legs shot out, Charles did his whole Geass thing to her, Lelouch and Anya to arguably hide them from V.V. (Yes, this gets wonky.) Nunnally probably SAW who shot her so he took that memory away from her, and he didn't want Lelouch to see the incident as anything more than a freak assassination attempt because then Lelouch wouldn't be in danger from V.V.

I am not of the opinion that Charles was in on the shooting of his daughter but more that he was involved in damage control after the fact. He stayed with V.V., despite the death of Marianne because V.V. was his brother and that's what he knew to do. After V.V. tried to kill Lelouch AGAIN in R2, Charles realized V.V. could never cooperate like they needed for Ragnarok so he killed him and took his Code.

Anyway, that's the way I always sorted out that mess. I think the 'Charles in on it' takes the conspiracy a bit further than the indication of the vi Britannia family dynamic actually allows. The indication is that Charles was very close to the vi Britannias, closer than he was to any of his empresses and their children. This is what brewed resentment, alongside Marianne's commoner background. The reason Lelouch gets so devastated at Charles' lack of response to Marianne's death is that he EXPECTS his FATHER (whom has loved him) to show the same love he has in the past, and Charles refuses. It becomes UBER BETRAYAL in his eyes, and one he cannot cope with. For this reason, I don't believe Charles was involved in anything more than a cover-up to protect both his children and V.V. from the implications of what V.V.'s jealousy had done. It's a very Lelouch reaction of trying to hold onto his two worlds.

Re: Spoilery comment

[megalomaniageek.livejournal.com]

See, I was thinking like you, that it would be OOC for Charles to be complicit in the harming of Nunnally.
As such, it would make SOOOO much more sense to have V.V. be working alone entirely.

After hashing out the mess with kusaja I guess it seems like maybe V.V. never really planned to cover it up, and Charles took it upon himself to clean up his brother's mess and do it in such a way that would keep his children and Anya as safe from V.V. as possible. Especially since he was still close to V.V. and needed him for his plan (basically the only way I can make it work is to go Shirley=Marianne, Charles=Lelouch, Rolo=V.V. and think of it playing out basically the same way).

I still think it's really badly put-together though. I mean, V.V. even says (iirc) "We'll set Nunnally up as a witness." Well the only way to do that is to re-write her memory, and the only way to do that is to make Charles complicit in the cover-up. Which takes us back to square one of NO NO THAT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE DAMMIT! You see where I'm coming from?

Re: Spoilery comment

[kusaja.livejournal.com]

I still think it's really badly put-together though.

Tell me about it. XD

The same goes for so many other things in R2 that it's not funny.

In any case, I agree with nayami in that it makes more sense if we separate the act of setting up the fake murder scene and crippling Nunnally, which apparently was the hasty dirty work of V.V.'s faceless underlings, from the actual memory rewriting, which obviously did require the full participation of Charles himself. Both are part of the cover-up but they're two distinct actions that didn't take place simultaneously.

In other words, Charles didn't have much of a choice. Marianne was already "dead" and Nunnally had already been crippled, so he had to go re-write her memories (plus adding blindness), which simultaneously protected her and completed the task of making her a "witness" as V.V. had wanted. I guess you could say V.V. expected that Charles would be forced do something like this by himself?

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).