[Commander 598]

Originally Posted by bladeofdarkness

the tech thing is not the real problem

its possible the damocles began construction even before they perfected the float unit tech (it was being developed for years before it was implemented) with the intention of having it use the float unit tech once its completely effective
and even without the flejia's, an untouchable fortress filled to the brim with the most advance weapons in the world (imagine an army of KMF's on par with the lancelot) while the rest of the world is stuck using 4th and 5th gens is still a VERY good way to establish deterrence (its only rakshata's tech that levels the playing field)
its less effective then the flejia, but still a very threatening proposition

What weapons? It didn't have anything else! It really falls under poor animation as actually putting weapons on it and the airships is too obvious to have been ignored thus it was just a matter of no one bothering to show anything. For example, dialogue indicates that all the airships have shields while all the visuals completely contradict this by both showing us shields on two of them and no shields on the rest of them.

the air fleets on both sides are understandable once you remember that you had none-float-unit based air weapons before the float units became so readily available

Huh? Having aircraft does not equal the ability to spawn fleets of flying battleships a year after the tech that flies them is actually made useable.

it could be that the OOBK's float units are old models retrofited with float units (like the land based pyramids the CF uses)

And the point is that if the floats are this widespread now why were the Chinese supported Japanese troops crossing the straights by boat only a year ago?

the 9th gen isn't that hard to believe once you remember that aside from the energy wings, the albion is practicely the exact model as the original lancelot

There's not even the remotest indication that he original Lancelot could survive accelerations required to break the sound barrier or in the case of the Gurren's unveiling, a not insignificant portion of c. This is especially problematic given that all the 7th gen flyers are generally portrayed as rather slow as far as aircraft are concerned and if you can pack the energy for that much speed into something that can practically crouch down to the size of a VW beetle why wasn't everyone just dropping large blunt objects on each other from from a now easily accessible Earth orbit, and this isn't the first time technological screwups in a series have made me ask this question.

but the REAL problem lies with the fact that the entire nature of the ending depends on an absurd series of fortunate events that are entirely a result of blind luck

<snip>

even lesser ones bring about a downer ending

I never even thought of that before. Also I'll pose another question: What if Schneizel's geassing doesn't work as planned? He was geassed to follow Zero (IIRC), he knows Zero is Lelouch, he knows Lelouch pretty well, he knows Suzaku, Suzaku probably isn't a very good actor, Geass does funny things some times, and Schneizel probably is a fairly good actor by most standards... Amusingly this would continue the tradition of Geass screwing him over.

Given that his chief opponent was an empire on par with Nazi Germany, how can you say that?

Eh? S1 Britannia was only slightly worse than the US in Iraq (Clovis and Cornelia's Ghetto purges were almost carbon copies of a few IRL operations, at least going in) and it definitely did nothing as bad as the Russian Federation either in Chechnya or in it's infamous handling of hostage situations.

The whole thing with Lelouch being secretly evil comes down to Alternate Character Interpretations. Maybe Lelouch is just a prick, or maybe his obsession with seeming so evil is a result of him deluding himelf rather than others in regards to his nature. Perhaps Lelouch wants to believe he is evil because otherwise, the things he does would have a measure of good in them. Perhaps for all his brilliance, Lelouch doesn't want to accept that a person like Zero is the only way the world can become a better place, so Zero "has" to be a Villain With Good Publicity. It's similar to how Suzaku believed he was seeking death in order to atone for his mistakes, when in reality it was simple escapism.

For all his declarations of evil, sinister smirks, and references to battles as 'games', Lelouch was still disgusted by what happened in Shinjuku, Saitama, Kawaguchi, Shirley's father, and Euphemia, while someone like Light wouldn't care, or be laughing hysterically.

His pastime was taking over matches for people who held debts to noblemen, he tried to help the truck drivers even after they almost ran him and Rivalz over, he saved an old couple from a hussler and didn't even brag about it, he didn't keep Euphemia as a hostage or Geass her to perform any acts of sabotage, his is voice carried clear concern when he realized who Kallen's mother was, he ordered a retreat in Narita precisely because the battle had become "a war of attrition", he was shocked by C.C.'s asking if he planned to kill Shirley if she was the one who uncovered who he was, and still tried to save her even after everything, and regretted the trauma he caused her, he refused to Geass or assassinate Suzaku and even stopped Kallen from trying, he ordered Suzaku to "Live" rather than just save him on Shikine, he comments at the Giant Pizza festival in the first season where he says in a relieved tone "No one will die here if I make a mistake", decides to join the SAZ even if it will hurt his own plans, and tells Rolo not to kill Suzaku.

A villain shrugs of collateral damage. A villain does not hunch over in a bathtub forcibly remembering the worst moments of his life to keep his resolve up, just because his not-girlfriend's father ignored a government ordered evacuation of a combat zone.

Lelouch is no saint, but he isn't nearly the villain some think he is...until the last arc.

Nothing you said there actually stops making him a villain, it just makes him a well written villain. Poorly written, two dimensional, cliched villains shrug off collateral damage and do things like Lelouch at the end of R2. Well written villains actually act like human beings as opposed to robots of blind rage.

Just because "the villain" has a crippled child sister and expresses feelings of remorse over the innocent bystander doesn't mean they're suddenly good because at the end of the day after he's put his crippled sister to bed and after he's spent his time hunched over in a tub thinking hard about what the hell he's doing, he still puts on that mask and still leads his private revolutionary army. In the case of case of Code Geass, this villain is the main character so we are blessed with a normally out of the ordinary amount of development on him as opposed to the usual version of following "the hero" and only seeing the villain when the hero sees him.

How did Suzaku see Zero? How did the average Britannian see Zero after Narita?

Now as far as the story is concerned he's the hero, because he's the main character and that's how stories work, but in the sense of the "universe" he is leading a violent uprising that ultimately isn't popularly supported against a government that isn't leading people into gas chambers and ovens, appears to have a damn healthy GDP, and seems to have majority popular support.