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Originally Posted by Xander
And well...what characters aren't archetypes when you first meet them? It's almost impossible to completely avoid such similarities, on paper, but what makes each of them different is a combination of their own circumstances, motivations and actions. You could also say Heero, Setsuna from Gundam 00 and Chirico from Votoms have comparable basic personalities, on the surface, as "young soldiers with a serious/silent attitude" and so on, but once the story moves forward and you learn enough about the context that starts being less and less true. Going by what little we've seen so far, I'd like to think that will apply to Akito in due time.
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Well for one I just feel that archetype is really played out and uninteresting. Not to say that a soft-spoken, emotionally distant warrior can't be interesting, but there was really nothing in the first episode that made me feel for him as a character and first impressions are important. I guess I just don't have much hope for him becoming fleshed out; he just sort of screams "I'm a quiet, focused, emotionally distant soldier; I'm such a badass;" and that archetype really does nothing for me. As I said I like Leila and the Japanese expats may prove interesting; I just don't have much faith in Akito developing a strong character.
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I would agree with the first part of that argument, though not so much with the second. While there is some clear idealization at work, Lelouch is very much human in my opinion. I think the universe often screws him over in areas that are vulnerable precisely because of his own flaws, like not taking into account that people like Suzaku or even Nunnally would dare to disagree with what he is doing, or that his other acquaintances would end up being involved.
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But to me they never represent a real 'fault' on Lulu's part. Choosing between his loved one's and his Grand Plan is something the universe sort of imposes on him and so whatever he chooses it sort of puts him beyond reproach, which it honestly shouldn't. To me honestly Lelouch just feels really 'calculated' on the part of the production committee; he doesn't feel like the product of a single mind wanting to tell a strong narrative but by a design-by-committee approach which tries to incorporate a bunch of marketable characteristics into single character. He's dark, and ambitious, and dispassionate but also loving and caring to certain people, and it's not that, in theory, this is a bad setup for a character, but it's where it comes from and how it's actually presented. Lelouch's presentation seems more interested in presenting the illusion of depth and complexity to elicit a certain response from the audience rather than an actual exploration of how ambition, however Nobly intended, can tear into a man's psyche. Instead of that Zero Requiem malarkey, for example, I would've much rather had a Macbeth style descent into madness.