Character Discussion - Lelouch

[yvj]

Originally Posted by Rising Dragon

I keep forgetting that its utterly pointless to try and discuss any aspect of R2 with anyone that isn't Kaioshin on this forum.

LOL

Awwww Bad Code Geass is still better than lots of anime. It just fell way short of the bar it raised.

[Rising Dragon]

You wouldn't know it when it comes to you people though. Seriously, this is, quite possibly, the worst sub-forum I've ever been to. You guys complain more about Code Geass R2 than anyone else. I've been to forums where people complained less than you guys, about Gundam SEED Destiny while it was airing.

[azul120]

So it's basically a my anime right or wrong type deal then?

I wouldn't be here if it weren't for season 1 and the cast at large to make the show worth attention. R2, specifically the second half, squandered a lot of that in its execution. If you can't see where I'm coming from there, then I don't know what to tell you.

[yvj]

Originally Posted by Rising Dragon

You wouldn't know it when it comes to you people though. Seriously, this is, quite possibly, the worst sub-forum I've ever been to. You guys complain more about Code Geass R2 than anyone else. I've been to forums where people complained less than you guys, about Gundam SEED Destiny while it was airing.

Here's the problem when something starts off excellent and then peters in a number of unsatisfactory ways its human nature to sit around drinking sake and lamenting on what could have been.

I don't think Seed ever came close to reaching Code Geass' highs so its drop off wasn't that hard felt.

[snowdevil_crow]

You know, I kind of agree. R2 was something of a trainwreck.

But at the same time, it was so entertaining of a trainwreck that I ended up enjoying it anyway. It was far from the worst an anime could be. I think a lot of R2 hate goes a bit overboard in depicting all its flaws. Let's be honest with ourselves, the first season was far from perfect. Neither were... fff screw it, I'm gonna copypaste my review of it from tvtropes to get my thoughts on it across. That's easier than basically retyping it. >_>

In an alternate universe, a Britannian prince and princess are exiled to Japan, where they become friends with the Prime Minister's son. When their home country invades and renames it Area Eleven, they fake their deaths and go into hiding.

Seven years later, the prince, named Lelouch, encounters a strange green-haired girl who gives him the power of Geass. Using this power, he becomes the masked terrorist Zero, setting in motion a rebellion that will eventually embroil the entire world in chaos!

... that's the basic premise, anyway. It also involves lots of mecha fighting, funny school council hijinks (he and his sister are pretending to be ordinary high school students), angst (his friend Suzaku is fighting for the Britannian army, not to mention most of his friends are Britannian students), drama, fanservice, xanatos roulettes galore, chess-master shenanigans, witches that like pizza, product placement, and a copious amount of Large Ham-ing.

All in all, it's a pretty fun show. It manages to be funny, bad-ass, and heartstring-tugging all at the same time. Some of the plotlines and mysteries have a little too much build-up for their conclusions, and there's some haxing of the characters and their mecha (Kallen and Suzaku, most notably). Just suspend your awareness of logic and disbelief, and you'll enjoy it fine.

Fans/critics tend to complain about how the series went downhill in the second season (often attributed to the fact that the original plans for R2 were scrapped), but while it's true that R2 suffered a lot from pacing issues and plot-holes that weren't present in the first season, not to mention some bad animation, the first season wasn't exactly perfect either. Code Geass was never very logical or believable, but it's fun and crazy enough that most of the time it's easy not to care.

The characters are largely sympathetic, and the show manages to portray no one as an absolute villain or hero. It's all about grey and grey morality, and though often the main protagonists (Lelouch and Suzaku, especially) stray into hypocrisy, they manage to be sympathetic and interesting nonetheless.

So yeah, it's a trainwreck, but it's a pretty darn fabulous one. Watch it for the characters and their relationships, the crack, the mecha battles, and the drama, not literary value.

[Betteroffer]

Originally Posted by yvj

Here's the problem when something starts off excellent and then peters in a number of unsatisfactory ways its human nature to sit around drinking sake and lamenting on what could have been.

I don't think Seed ever came close to reaching Code Geass' highs so its drop off wasn't that hard felt.

It's even deeper than simply "R2 didn't deliver the quality I was expecting from season one." We know for a fact that deviations were made from the original plan for the second season that weren't originally planned by the writers, and this leaves us with an even bigger case of the "What Could Have Beens."

Yes, the end result would be the same, but the journey would have been different, and that is where the frustration/hate/butthurt/whatever comes from.

For all we know the original second season would have been about the same or worse than the R2 we ended up with, but the knowledge that there were changes "frees" us to believe that the "real" R2 would have made Guren Lagann look like Tayutami. We are allowed, indeed tempted, to really poke at all the little inconcistencies and things we didn't like about what we got. We are "free" to be ungrateful, since we won't be saying "You suck, Okouchi/Taniguchi!" but rather "You suck executives! You ruined poor Okouchi/Taniguchi's hard work!"

Hell, for all we know, R2 is a secret metaphor for it's own creation: The writers just petered out and said "We've got nothing good for follow up." so the executives said "Throw something together for primetime. We'll say we forced you to scrap the original idea for a time change, and the fans will blame us and buy it anyway to show support to you guys."

I personally believe that we are justified in a level of disappointment at what R2 was, and when we find like-minded individuals we might get a bit carried away with agreeing with eachother, but we still liked what we got. We wouldn't be here if we didn't. R2 was fun. It could have been epic (or so I admittedly like to believe), but it was at least fun.

[synaesthetic]

Originally Posted by bladeofdarkness

magnificent bastard
key word being magnificent
if all he is is JUST a bastard, then there isnt anything about him to like or admire
show me a magnificent bastard who'd still be "magnificet" after telling his soldiers to go get killed on mass until his enemy runs out of ammo
lelouch crosses the moral event horizon during the last arc ten times over

Ali Al-Saachez has done much worse and arguably he has a much higher percentage of fangirls among the Gundam 00 fandom than Lelouch. Everyone loves Prince Ali, even though he's a complete monster that gives fucking Johann a run for his money.

He's not a magnificent bastard, but he's definitely evil and a good example of how someone can like a character who is utterly evil purely because they make such a great villain.

A Magnificent Bastard as described by TV Tropes is not a good guy. They are definite bad guys. Grand Admiral Thrawn was definitely a magnificent bastard (hell, he was the trope's example picture for a while) and he killed millions more than either of the two sibling magnificent bastards of Code Geass.

Body count does not negate magnificent bastardry. There are plenty of reasons to dislike Lelouch, and there are plenty of reasons to like him. I happen to like him because he's an enormously savvy villain protagonist with a flair for the dramatic, a large ham on par with the hammiest of them all. And his BSODs are epically narmful.

Edit: It's also important to remember that Lelouch's mistreatment of, well, everyone during his reign as the 99th Emperor of Britannia was part of a massive Xanatos Gambit to wash away Euphemia's misdeeds with blood, unite the world in hatred for him and then die. He was acting the part of a generic evil overlord as part of the Zero Requiem. A dizzyingly complex Thirty Xanatos Pileup that requires him to die at the end of it.

As far as I'm concerned, there is no questioning Lelouch's magnificent bastardry.

[Nobodyman9]

My two cents: yeah, I think magnificent bastard suits Lelouch pretty well. He is both magnificent and a bastard (not in the literal sense of course) He did many things throughout the show that I very VERY much did not approve of but...dammit if he didn't look so goddamned cool doing them. As I've said before, he's all flash with questionable substance.

[synaesthetic]

Lelouch is actually a more heroic take on the magnificent bastard. He does a lot of good, especially early on. It's a shame his Nunnally-triggered not-so-heroic BSOD pretty much made him go batshit insane and wind up having to perform the Zero Requiem.

Schneizel is more of a traditional cold-blooded, calculating, manipulative evil mastermind, a very lawful evil type who uses the rules and the system to his advantage.

[bladeofdarkness]

Originally Posted by Rising Dragon

I keep forgetting that its utterly pointless to try and discuss any aspect of R2 with anyone that isn't Kaioshin on this forum.

Kaioshin seems to be following the "as long as i had fun watching" or "as long as its exciting" school of thought about whether he likes something or not
and as long as he DID like something, who cares if its intelligent or logical or well written
"the importent thing is that its fun and exciting"

the problem is that this is a pretty slippery slope
and the bottom of it leads to Michael Bay movies

@synaesthetic
lelouch was always a magnificent bastard
you mentioned the TV tropes site
there are actions that called "crossing the moral event horizon" (used to be called "rape the dog"
a point where a character does things that are so severe that its almost impossible to like him again after them
and i'm not talking fangirls who like someone because they are "cool" or "so dreamy"
i'm talking the general viewers who actually pay attention to whats happening on screen

and lelouch commits several actions that count as CLEAR moral even horizon type
1)using "we have reserves" as a PLANNED millitery tactic
2)massive mind rape
3)use of hostages as human shields
4)PLANNED mass murder

even the "awesome" moments of the final arc fail once you give them some thought
look at the way he beats the OOBK in ep 23
it LOOKS cool
but its horrible once you give it two seconds thought
he didnt beat them because of stratigic thinking, or a stronger army
he beat them because he was willing to sacrifice his entire front line and ground troops to lure them into a trap
its like an enemy commander sending his troops into the battle field and then once the enemy engages them, he nukes both sides
the earth forces commanders did a very similer trick in SEED with the whole cyclops system (hope you watched it)
would you be willing to call them awesome for it, or would you be more likely to call them ass-holes

xing-ke says it best
he beat them because they underestimated just how little he valued the lives of his own troops
even cornellia showed concern for her own troops
even Schneizel was shown to be less ruthless (in that same battle)

[Rising Dragon]

Originally Posted by bladeofdarkness

Kaioshin seems to be following the "as long as i had fun watching" or "as long as its exciting" school of thought about whether he likes something or not
and as long as he DID like something, who cares if its intelligent or logical or well written
"the importent thing is that its fun and exciting"

Actually, he does acknowledge the flaws of R2. Its just that he doesn't incessantly whine about them like everyone else, and allows himself to enjoy the show.

[bladeofdarkness]

and thats a slippery slope

[Nogitsune]

Originally Posted by bladeofdarkness

and thats a slippery slope

I call it fun.

You can see and acknowledge that something has flaws and still like it. This goes for Code Geass as a whole as much as it goes for individual characters.
Lelouch was a bastard... so what? He was an awesome bastard. I fangirled him until the end, and it was always clear to me that he wasn't just being an evil tyrant for the heck of it.
You can point out his flaws over and over again, and I will still love him and feel that it doesn't make a difference if he lived or died, except that the latter is canon. Had he become immortal without his knowledge, it wouldn't diminish his resolve.
If I was a consequentialist, I'd probably say Lelouch was the most horrible character in the show (or the closest to being a saint, seeing how he achieved world peace). If I only looked at intentions guiding certain actions, I'd have to be appalled by Clovis.
But I do neither. I look at the whole picture and then fall for whatever character it is that strikes my fancy. Is that subjective? Yes, quite. But that's what liking or disliking a piece of fiction is supposed to be.
It's fine as long as you don't ignore the bits hat don't suit you.

[bladeofdarkness]

Originally Posted by Nogitsune

I call it fun.

You can see and acknowledge that something has flaws and still like it. This goes for Code Geass as a whole as much as it goes for individual characters.
Lelouch was a bastard... so what? He was an awesome bastard. I fangirled him until the end, and it was always clear to me that he wasn't just being an evil tyrant for the heck of it.
You can point out his flaws over and over again, and I will still love him and feel that it doesn't make a difference if he lived or died, except that the latter is canon. Had he become immortal without his knowledge, it wouldn't diminish his resolve.
If I was a consequentialist, I'd probably say Lelouch was the most horrible character in the show (or the closest to being a saint, seeing how he achieved world peace). If I only looked at intentions guiding certain actions, I'd have appalled by Clovis.
But I do neither. I look at the whole picture and then fall for whatever character strikes my fancy. Is that subjective? Yes, quite. But that's what liking or disliking a piece of fiction is supposed to be.
It's fine as long as you don't ignore the bits hat don't suit you.

..................................

[Nogitsune]

Ah, why do I even bother?
Then again, I would quote myself, too.

Edit:
But because I'm in the mood...

It would be less random to accuse me of having no moral standards than claiming I'm ignoring things.
I know Lelouch did some big shit. It just doesn't make me like him any less - quite the opposite, in fact.
It's even worse with Clovis. I don't think I'd adore him as much if he hadn't turned into a bastard after three years in Area 11, even though I would still have liked him.

[incorrupts]

Originally Posted by Rising Dragon

I keep forgetting that its utterly pointless to try and discuss any aspect of R2 with anyone that isn't Kaioshin on this forum.

Lol, i am actually with Kaioshin on that one and i have discussed this with him, R2 is getting TOO MUCH shit, while it does not deserve it, just because it did not meet certain individual criteria.

@blade: if you want to to bitch about Lelouch, then bitch about Kallen, Suzaku, BK, even Nunally that was nuking bombs are crazy and pretty much everyone else. The point though is, what kind of selfless-selfish-outlook those actions do have, to make them more tolerable than clearly self-actions, or not.

[Kid Ying]

Originally Posted by bladeofdarkness

Kaioshin seems to be following the "as long as i had fun watching" or "as long as its exciting" school of thought about whether he likes something or not
and as long as he DID like something, who cares if its intelligent or logical or well written
"the importent thing is that its fun and exciting"

And that's a problem? I mean, i watch animes to have fun, not to have a transcedental experience that will change my life. If it's nice and exciting, i'm on it, and R2 was not only nice and exciting, but veeeery fun.

I mean, by reading some posts here, it look like R2 was written by a bunch of retarded monkeys, when, beside it's flaws(and it got a lot... Just like the season 1 and pretty much every other series written by humans, nothing is perfect after all), it was a hell of a enjoyable experience.

And i don't think you can even mention a Michael Bay movie in a discussion about R2. The first reason is because they normally suck(when they do not, they're just average), second is because they're not that fun and third because Code Geass got an actual story. I would say R2 is more like Die Hard. Veeery fun, nice characters, some hawt girls(hey, John's daughter in the fourth movie was veeeery nice) and a hell of a nice movie. Learn how to do it, Bay!

And that's why even to this day, R2 is totally on my mind. I like it so much that i want to buy the japanese blu rays, with the season 1, i'm already satisfied with the episodes in divx in the worst quality possible in my HD.

[bladeofdarkness]

Originally Posted by incorrupts

@blade: if you want to to bitch about Lelouch, then bitch about Kallen, Suzaku, BK, even Nunally that was nuking bombs are crazy and pretty much everyone else. The point though is, what kind of selfless-selfish-outlook those actions do have, to make them more tolerable than clearly self-actions, or not.

and now remove lelouch's self sacrifice from the table
and what are you left with ?

Originally Posted by Kid Ying

And that's a problem? .......

i didnt compare R2 with Michael Bay movies
i said that the "its ok as long as its exciting" mind frame is a slippery slope that ends up leading to piece of shit works of fiction like Michael Bay movies that focus ONLY on the exciting part and completely LACK anything else of value
the moment you ONLY judge something by "was it exciting" is the moment you open that door

[Kid Ying]

And you think R2 is like that?

And hey, Michael Bay movies sucks for me too, but for a loooot of people they rocks and there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, people can have what they want after all. Maybe they lack value(again, it's subjective), but not everything needs to have this value in the first place.

Better to have the usual rice and beans in your table than trying to make a filet mignon and burning the steak, Blade.

[bladeofdarkness]

the LAST arc is like that
just think about the way he takes shnizel out
the man is suppose to be the one person who lelouch could never beat in chess
the reason being that in chess you have to be able to predict what your enemy is thinking (which lelouch could never do)

and yet in the last arc shnizel become SO predictable, that lelouch actually has him having a deep philosiphical debate about the nature of man - with a recording

this isnt a MINOR detail, this is the way that the "hero" defeats the final "villain" of the show
even if i could just ignore every other wall-banger in the last arc
that alone is un-forgivable


"Better to have rice and beans in your table than trying to make a filet mignon and burning the steak"
but if i settle for rice and beans, i'd prefer NOT to have someone rub their balls all over my plate