Anya Is Missing Again So Now I’m Forced To Use My Substitute Source For Pictures. This Guy Sucks…..
Because of the nature of this episode coming across as more of a two parter that is going to require the next episode to draw any real conclusions from, I’ve decided to forgo any sort of review this time around and just try to focus on what happened. Also no captions this time around. Sorry, but I just don’t feel like it this week because I feel like I still haven’t seen the end of this episode.
Thoughts:
Anyway because of the nature of this episode coming across as more of a two parter that is going to require the next episode to draw any real conclusions from, I’ve decided to forgo any sort of review this time around and just try to focus on what happened. Still I swear I just watched an entirely different episode from what every other blogger seems to be describing. The episode was confusing, but that was almost certainly the point and people must have chosen the weakest examples of character animation in this episode to use as screenshots because for the most part I found it more expressive, vivid and realized then it’s been in a very long time. There were few inconsistencies in character design compared with previous episodes, but I’m almost convinced that this is what they are actually supposed to look like since the previous episodes have been animated in Korea and frankly looked budgety and like short cuts were being taken constantly. They also suffered from talking head syndrome where almost every shot was a static angle still of somebody talking or they were viewed from behind. This episode features our characters from all kinds of angles, distances and locations and frankly it’s a breath of fresh air.
That and the music was awesome this episode and evoked the right feel for just about every scene. It was ominous during the part where the Geass ruins were being activated and we saw people reactions all over the world, it was whimsical during Lloyd’s scene of refusal to give Suzaku the Lancelot Albion and Cecile rocking at pool and it took on an epic and frantic feel during the beginning of the coup d’etat. Sorry guys, but I don’t know what the people who complain about the audio-visual aspect of this episode are on about. Then again that’s not surprising and I’ve long since stopped trusting anything but that which I can confirm with my own eyes with regard to this series. Mostly because there are just way to many loud opinions, false rumours, trolling attempts and unsubstantiated theories going around all over the internet. Gotta take necessary precautions if I’m to get any enjoyment out of this series.
Anyway, so first of all the battle for Tokyo is over and appears to have ended in a stalemate, but the results have had lasting repercussions. Suzaku seems to believe this now more than anyone and we now get confirmation that his laughter last episode was more than likely him finally realizing that he’d been played for a fool all this time. To him, and frankly in general, the Geass is the root of all evil in this series up to this point and the source of everyones misery. The fighting even broke out as a result of it. Now Suzaku seems to believe in nothing but getting results, just like Lelouch, and his immediate allies don’t seem to like it, specifically Gino, Cecile and Lloyd. In this episode Suzaku is the most honest he’s been since he killed his father in order to try and stop the war. He’s always been solely about the results even if he tried to care about the process by which he got their, otherwise he wouldn’t have sold out his best friend to the Emperor, become a traitor to his people, and essentially forsake any honor that his father Genbu had tried to retain in being Japanese.
It’s ironic that this episode he finally gets his wish of becoming Knight of One, after all of this he has it and all he had to do was kill 10 million people. Yes he is now……Schneizel’s Knight of One. The Shadow Emperor who is now putting it all on the line in his coup d’etat. Perhaps it’s frustrating to some that even now it’s impossible to see whether Schneizel is a villain or not. His reasons for rebelling against his father are in principle just. Charles has shown a lack of desire to assume the responsibilities of his office as Emperor and to be the political leader of Britannia. Locked away in his science experiments instead of sitting on his throne, Charles certainly hasn’t been the ideal emperor and is no longer working in the best interests of his country. As such Schneizel has a valid point that he is no longer fit to govern and sends Suzaku to try and get rid of him. Should Suzaku succeed he would become the true Knight of One and since Schneizel would more then likely have Oddyseus installed as a puppet emperor while he called all the shots.
As for Anya having Marianne’s memories, well I can’t say I’m terribly surprised nor that I agree with any sort of sentiment that this was an out of nowhere plot development. It’s been hinted at and foreshadowed since the China arc that she has had deeper ties to the royal family then just plain knowing of them and now it all sort of makes sense albeit once a few more explanations fall into place. Firstly the reason Anya knew about Lelouch while not knowing why she did was probably Marianne’s subconcious memories trigging at the mention of his name. I’m kind of curious to find out how exactly they share the same body and what Geass C.C was supposed to give them or even what they are planning, but that is why we need the next episode. As far as I can tell Marianne, V.V, Charles and C.C are all on the same page with whatever plan they had, judging by how we’ve seen them hanging out together on the day that Charles became Emperor. Killing the gods, I’d like to have a hint at what that means. As for C.C sealing her code, as far as I can guess Marianne was referring to the personality she’d developed while carrying the Geass and not the sigil that symbolized her immortality. Somehow she was able to preserve it when Charles was about to help her die. Why? Well look at the hint Marianne gave about whether she was still on their side. Whatever plan they had C.C probably decided to break from it, and probably for Lelouch’s sake.
It also appears that we might have our explanation behind Marianne’s assassination now in that she probably faked it to go into hiding. Anya as a little girl must have been a victim of chance and Marianne used her as a conduit to preserve her memories. Why, I can’t speculate on without more information but it seems that her presence overtook Anya’s body the moment Charles started linking up the Geass ruins, which apparently forced her to act as part of some plan she and C.C have in mind. Again whether she’s on Charles side, Lelouche’s side or even her own is uncertain, just as who stands with Schneizel in his rebellion other then Suzaku, Nina and the Black Knights in a half assed sort of way. Although from the looks of it Kaguya, Tian Zi and Li have no intention of committing their U.N forces to Schneizel’s cause, which effectively makes the Black Knights a consolation prize in comparison to what he could have. Yes indeed this episode is quite confusing, but deliberately so as we are currently in the middle of a coup d’etat where even the players at the highest level such as Bismarck can’t tell what the factions are or who belongs to each.
Speaking of Bismarck, he was pretty darn manly this episode and apparently is quite the sword fighter. His duel with Suzaku in order to protect Charles (who amusingly didn’t need protection anyway) felt like something out of Escaflowne or Dunbine and was pretty neat if short lived as well. It seems that Suzaku is building up a tolerance towards his Live Geass now as well, which was telling him to run in the face of Bismarck who also seems to have a Geass hidden under his sewn eye. Either we have our answer as to how he was able to attain the title so easily or he was given it as a gift by V.V for earning the title.
Lelouch actually had very little screentime this episode, which was mostly spent forgoing any humanity that he tried to invoke when he refused to use his Geass on Li and Tian Zi to seperate them. Both he and Suzaku have thrown away any ideals they may have had at this stage and are now once again repeating the mistakes that resulted from Euphie’s death because of Nunally’s apparent demise. I guess this just goes to show that not everything always work out as people plan it to in this series, which sort of gives it a touch of realism I suppose. It also makes the opening theme highly ironic in it’s positive message of everything being honky dory which it most certainly isn’t. So anyway Lelouch just Geassed an entire sub division of the Britannia army to do his bidding and has made his way to where the Emperor is and sealed himself in to square off with him face to face. I’d like to remind people of the Chess game early on where Schneizel forced Lelouch into backing down while implying that he had to much humanity to face the emperor. Well now it seems he does and is more than ready to take the check by sacrificing himself with an illegal move. Forgoing the rules of war to win at all costs.
I’d like to point out that at this point I don’t believe there are any stritcly good characters in this series. It is all shades of grey and darker grey since good already died once at the end of the first season and again 2 episodes ago. At this point I’m going to leave any further speculation up to other people since as I said I’m not going to count this is as full episode nor try to rate it until I’ve seen the next one.
Just one rule though, no bringing up the Taniguchi interview as I’ve already read and discussed it to death. Sorry but people are delusional if they think there’s any information in there other then the fact that he had to readjust the first episode to meet the demands of explaining the backstory to a new audience. How we got to the point where people legitimately think that Taniguchi’s true vision isn’t being realized or that the series they are watching is some sort of phony is beyond me.
When Anime Past Meets Present 
“Sorry guys, but I don’t know what the people who complain about the audio-visual aspect of this episode are on about. Then again that’s not surprising and I’ve long since stopped trusting anything but that which I can confirm with my own eyes with regard to this series. ”
Hopefully that belief lasts more than a few days.
Mwahahahaha!!! My prediction about Bismarck having a Geass underneath the sewn eye back in Episode 12(Paro Paro Geass) was correct!!! I agree with Kaioshin on the two parter thing, I thought the end was more like a cliffhanger till the next episode.
Haha, my prediction of a few weeks back, that although Kaioshin probably had a fairly good prediction of the greater Code Geass plot, something extremely silly would come along.
Anya = Marianne! Although there is plenty of time left for a good explanation, I find the idea of Lelouch mother living on in the body/mind of Anya extremely silly.
… Confusing? Actually some of the things in the episode made sense (indeed, for the careful viewer, the proverbial Chekhov’s Gunman was there since early on), but one does get the feeling of a LOT of plot threads colliding in a single outing, instead of being spread out across two or three episodes.
As for the interview: it’s true, and the Japanese transcript is VERY telling, but it’s the sort of thing that can spawn a veritable gamut of interpretations. I’ll share one thing about the translation though — it’s a little off.
Take that as you will.
This episode was quite interesting, though slightly rushed at the end. It happens almost every time in anime. I didn’t find it confusing either; I get the feeling that people do tend to shut their brain off while watching this, leading to clamours of “OMG, WTF, ANYA IS MARIANNE!”, which is sooo not true. Anya is possessed by Marianne, dammit! Pay attention (or stop reading of those biased blog summaries and actually watch the episode!).
Curious how all we see is that particularly part of the Taniguchi interview. He probably said much more than “Geass didn’t turn out as expected”. I also think that it didn’t turn out as expected, but I struggle to believe that he is so unhappy with his own creation. An anime not turning out as expected is another ubiquity in the anime industry. An example I recall being the start of the first Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann episode. In that we saw a humanoid version of Boota serve as a kind of assistant to Simon during the space battle. Yet, in the end, all that Boota did was evolve, punch the anti-spiral and turn back to normal. Simon never even got to meet his humanoid version, if I remember correctly. Unexpected, eh?
I would love to know how Code Geass would have turned out if it would have gone according to plan. Perhaps then we wouldn’t have an episode like this one, with a lot of good plot threads coming together, but all feeling a bit rushed at the end. It definitely did well in raising my anticipation for the next episode.
@Aabo0: Well actually it’s more like Code Geass R2 is a 25 part episode.
@Gideon: It’s probably a Geass. And since this is a Sci-Fi/Fantasy anime they can sort of do what they want with the Geass as long as they explain. The problem is that they haven’t yet, which is why so many people are confused. Though I think many people are jumping the gun on this one. I always sort of suspected that Marianne was going to be a part of this story.
@Kurogane: I kind of get the sense that they have convinced themselves that paying attention would somehow hurt their enjoyment of the series. I also notice that any time you get a 100% negative article on the episodes (which is like 50% of animeblogger articles in and of themselves) the same 5 or so names keep showing up to echo it.
Anyway people, literally all that interview can tell us is that the first few episodes were rewritten. And I don’t really want to discuss it like I said. As far as I’m concerned it’s long since been blown well out of it’s original context and screwed over many fans impressions of the series. It’s other people’s problem now if they want to be that gullible and I don’t want to propogate the myths here.
Excuse me if this one ends up being a double post (I don’t know if there is something wrong with my pc), but I have the feeling that that quote at the end of the preview (if it wasn’t just made up) might have come from Dante’s Inferno. I haven’t read the entire poem and I certainly don’t remember exact passages but I just can’t shake the feeling that this is where it might have come from…..
For the record, I think the ‘right to rule’ thing is pretty silly anyway. For a nation that covers half the planet to be intimately controlled by one man is pretty impossible no matter how much Schniezel wants to say that. Even Franz Josepf wasn’t able to turn around his empire working from 5am to late into the night every day of his life. It’s a pure power grab plain and simple.
@kurogane: The Gurran Lagann thing you’re talking about is actually an add on for the DVD. It wasn’t in the original opening. It was just a ‘possible’ future that could have evolved if Simon decided to use his powers for evil as the anti-spirals predicted rather than give up his power and step down.
To me Code Geass share a lot of theme with Berserk, I won’t make a list right here but there are a lot of parallels. I think I’m starting to understand what Charles mean by killing the god : V.V. stated that a physical God is not what they are talking about, meaning it’s a concept (singular not plural), Charles’s Ragnarok screen mention a mental network and finally Scnheizel talk about how people seek to yell to a higher power. My point is that “God” as describe by Charles and V.V. is (like in the REAL world) a result of mankind’s insecurities, the part of the human soul that needs to believe in a higher power and to create lies in order to protect ourselves (in Berserk the fears of mankind gave birth to the Idea of Evil, the Ideal God who manipule the course of human history through the unconscious of people). Charles probably want to destroy that part of us, creating a new kind of human society (I sense an Escaflownish ending). This bring forth the role of Kallen and Schneizel in R2, the former trying to overcome her own fears and giving up on her higher being (Zero), the latter accepting to become the concept of higher being. Back to the episode, they don’t have enough time and too many characters/subplots, they stuffed and patched together everything they could and while it develops the plot, the pace and the presentation were unpolished.
Incoming… Gsus Spam.
Well, my Schneizel prediction was pretty much on the mark.
I still disagree with your assessment of Suzaku: his most honest moment was confronting Lelouch about his Geass command and admitting that he actually wants to die. Enrolling into the Britannian Army, ‘betraying’ the Elevens, becoming a Knight: He’s trying to get people to hate him until the point they would want to assassinate him or die on the battleground, and by achieving that, atone for his Original Sin of patricide.
The “Live” Command isn’t an affront to him because it robs him of his free will, that’s just an excuse. The real affront is robbing him of his redemption: his ‘good’ death, being murdered for all the right reasons instead of taking the easy way out through suicide. And even that has been robbed.
That’s why he’s laughing, the battle in episode 18 made him realise that his ‘morals’ (the most recent example being not firing FLEIA when it could’ve saved his life) were, like Lelouch / Zero, were a sham. Hence the bold proposal of the suicide mission of killing Charles: failure would be high treason, success would be setting yourself up as the main target for anyone trying to get to Schneizel. It even shows in his ‘confession’ of firing FLEIA: “I did it, judge me, sentence me, kill me.” Lloyd, Cecile and Gino see this and try to stop him from, basically, killing himself.
Phew. Tidbits now, honest:
I’m not sure if Code isn’t actually referring to the final stages of Geass: after getting smacked around by Lelouch the wound doesn’t heal up as fast as you see earlier or, in an extreme case, with V.V. catching a sword with his head.
As for the whole contract breaking: I’m pretty sure Marianne is the one who broke the contract, since it’s C.C. who mentions that. My guess: Marianne was supposed to kill C.C. once her Geass was fully developed, stopped by Marianne’s murder. After that a plan was hatched to stop Charles from killing “God”, ie the source of Code Geass, and making himself the sole Code, ie. God, and putting Lelouch in his place.
Killing someone of C.C./V.V.’s level requires two fully developed and ACTIVE Geasses, or in other word Codes.
– I might be remembering this incorrectly but somewhere we see a dying Marianne staring Nunally in the eyes. And for all we know, there is at least one person who has been Geassed by Marianne. I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination.
@kurogane: I’m pretty sure it’s “Abandon all hope ye who enter” which, of course, is the sign that greets visitors to Hell. Considering that in the Divine Comedy, Lucifer is trapped for all eternity in the lowest layer of Hell, that’s a pretty spot-on description of what will happen to Charles.
(new name to avoid any more confusion) Yes, The Divine Comedy! I keep referring to it as Dante’s Inferno (which is more like a nickname). My tutor would beat me senseless if he heard me referring to it as such, lol.
I never suspected… a MILF who looks like a loli or DFC
Does anyone know the name of the song tht plays while C.C. and Marianne are talking in the world of C?
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