Code Geass Episode 5: Discussion!

[gods-debris.livejournal.com]

Episode 5: 皇女と魔女
The Imperial Princess and the Witch










We begin by seeing Cornelia taking control of Area 18 with her army. For whatever reason I always somewhat felt that Lelouch had some sort of a similarity with her. Well, at least for this episode they were both introduced with a fiery entrance (at least Zero was shown to the public that way in the last episode). Cornelia has decided to take control of Area 11 and avenge the death of her brother, Clovis. Her goal? To find Zero!

Lelouch returns home to see a familiar face of someone whom he thought died via bullet to the brain. I guess I'd be a little surprised too. I mean, he did watch her die in front of him. There was a bullet in her head, after all. She survived and there's not even a scar to show she was ever shot. At any rate, it's nice to see that Nunnally and C.C. are getting along pleasantly—except she's under the assumption that Lelouch is marrying her. I gotta say, though, I didn't get the feeling that Nunnally really believed the breaking of that cup was legit. Unfortunately for Lelouch he doesn't get to have a lot of his questions answered by the mysterious C.C..

In other news poor Jeremiah has lost his leadership due to the whole "orange" incident. No one trusts him after he let Zero escape and even attacked his own men claiming they were disobeying his orders. For those wondering what "orange" meant, Lelouch claims it was just a casual remark that some people will want to know the meaning of and others will begin to analyze what it does mean. Suspicion. Luckily for Suzaku, due to the whole ordeal they acquitted that there was not enough evidence to charge him with the murder of Clovis, so he was found innocent! Other than that other terrorist groups are making a ruckus because of the whole Zero thing, thinking it's time to revolt; even the Japanese that Toudou is a part of wants to act now, but Toudou seems to be very patient and he wants to wait and not get caught up in the whole Zero thing.

Anyways, is it just me or is this entire anime built on lies? When Suzaku meets Euphemia for the first time one of the first thing she says to him is a lie. She's being chased by bad people? Moreover she lies about who she is—well she omits the fact that she's the princess Euphemia and just tells Suzaku that she's Eufie. However, I get that she did that so she could see who he was on a different level. For example when Suzaku stepped in when some Britannian soldiers were creating a ruckus with an Eleven. He took a lot of heat from the Britannians. Later he stepped in when there was a coup d'état against Jeremiah, which later caused Euphemia to step in and stop the fight using her royal power. Maybe it was a test for Suzaku because she knew who he was when they met, I believe. Either way, Lloyd knew the entire time, that bastard!

I gotta hand it to Lelouch, though. He put Geass on a girl to test how long Geass stays on a given person for. Every day at the same time she goes to the same spot and carves in the wall the same image. Even C.C. is impressed.

Suzaku is attending Ashford Academy! :D

Next time: 奪われた仮面
The Stolen Mask

P.S. I will be deleting previous image batches from my flickr account within the next week, save for this one.

Comments

[kusaja.livejournal.com]

Actually, we do see a lot (and I do mean a lot!) more marks on the wall in one of the R2 school episodes...even if she's no longer there to continue the task.

Also, I remember reading about her being institutionalizing or something along those lines, like you've said, but nothing about a recovery. Not sure, either way.

Though this girl's situation is a bit...different from the example you've mentioned, since the specific kind of Geass used in both cases wasn't identical. Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if it could be resolved off-screen anyway.

spoilers

[megalomaniageek.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, forgot about that. But I think that's the only other reference to her in the show.

I recall a mention that she's getting better, but I don't know where, so I can't cite or anything.
I've been wondering if long-term Geass effects weaken slightly over time, and that's why Nunnally is finally able to overcome her blindness after years and years but Euphemia was not able to in the short term (and she did manage to fight it for a few seconds).

Re: MORE spoilers

[kusaja.livejournal.com]

Who knows...time might be a factor, but the way I thought about it at the time, was something along these lines:

Nunnally's mind overcame the lasting effects of false memories that had been implanted and/or rewritten by Charles in order to keep her blind through some sort of psychological trauma (ie: "remember, you were traumatized because X happened in front of you like this...and it made you go blind!").

In other words, she got over the fake trauma since nothing was physically wrong with her eyes. But Nunnally wasn't directly contradicting an absolute command dictating her behavior like in the case of Euphemia or anyone else under the effects of Lelouch's Geass (ie: "do this or do that"). She went around the command, so to speak, instead of against it.

In fact, not even Nunnally's strong will was able to counter Lelouch's order to hand over the key to Damocles...though I realize this could also be explained, yes, by taking time into consideration.

So we do see that willpower can try to resist, successfully or otherwise, Geass commands...but it seems a lot harder to go against "pro-active" effects of an order, as opposed to the more "indirect" ones stemming from false memories.