[Xander]

Originally Posted by azul120

Don't mean to get nitpicky, but a lot of it was either highly incidental or just plain contrived. I mean, the "I will be the one to kill Zero" line spoken by Suzaku? That was because he was against what he was doing at the time.

Then just allow me to return the favor and nitpick you back.

I'm talking about carrying out an analysis in terms of themes and motifs. What does that mean? Looking at the different ideas, symbols and other recurring elements introduced or developed throughout the entire narrative by the creators.

Fictional stories often have two layers. You can take a series of events purely at face value, understanding them by using logic and only being interested in their direct cause-and-effect relationships. But you can also look beyond that first layer and carry out a completely different analysis, taking into account the presence of ideas and symbols that were employed by the creators in order to create a certain mood, develop a certain theme or provide foreshadowing for what would eventually happen.

The relationship between those ideas, themes and symbols isn't inherently limited to logic and causality but, on the contrary, can be far more flexible and may often involve feelings or experiences instead. For instance, a character may see a black bird or black cat long before he or she dies. That's obviously not going to be the direct cause of his or her doom (many other people would have seen that black bird or black cat and they never died) but it is, in terms of storytelling technique, an element with several possible implications and a way to gradually or suddenly make certain suggestions to those who might care for such things among the audience.

If you've seen some of the other shows directed by Goro Taniguchi, though he's certainly far from being the only director who does stuff like this, and apply such an analysis you'll eventually notice that he often introduces certain ideas and themes into his series to set up a given mood or provide foreshadowing, regardless of whatever happens to be their immediate impact or relevance on the surface. In other words, incidental or circumstantial elements in a story can easily play more than one role in retrospect.

But to loosely paraphrase another Taniguchi interview, if you use too many words to explain what a theme is, you're turning it into logic and missing the point. It's a bit like having to explain a joke. In the end, all of this is open to different interpretations and depends on what sensibilities are already present among the audience.

Just as someone can be accused of reading too much into a given show, someone else can easily be accused of reading too little.

Of course, it's better to have a story that works equally well in terms of both themes and cause-and-effect relationships, but that's not always going to be the case. More often than not, most works of fiction tend to focus on one instead of the other. We can, at the very least, partially blame Taniguchi and Okouchi for placing a lot less importance on carefully building up the show's cause-and-effect logic during R2, despite understanding they had to deal with many difficulties and competing interests after the time slot change, but I find myself having to recognize they still continued to work towards many of the same themes even if their execution turned out to be sloppy.

Let's take a look at another example from Code Geass.

The idea that if Lelouch and Suzaku ever worked together they would be able to overcome any obstacles comes up several times during the story and it's even directly stated once or twice. A very incomplete list of relevant elements includes: teaming up to save Nunnally from Mao, defeating the invading Chinese forces, the implicit result of Lelouch accepting Euphemia's plan, Suzaku agreeing to let Zero and a million people escape to China and, for that matter, even Zero Requiem itself.

Is there a logical relationship between the causes and effects of those events? No, not much of one. But the underlying thematic relationship is hard to deny. Instead of thinking that's a mere coincidence, there is enough evidence to argue the opposite and say it was intentional.

And while it's true that Lelouch was tortured, just as much of it was due to him getting hit by Diabolus Ex Machina, particularly in the latter half of R2. Heck, the Zero Requiem could have been averted had either of the following two circumstances been reversed: 1) Nunnally apparently getting lost in the FLEIJA blast and hidden from Lelouch until after he was already Emperor and she had been used against him by Schneizel, and 2) the Black Knights turning on Lelouch, the latter of which happened on spurious bases. (Not to mention that the two people responsible for the latter, Ohgi and Villetta, get away with their hypocrisy with the happiest ending.)

Before saying anything else, even actual history is full of specific circumstances that could have been easily avoided in order to change the fate of humanity in ways both small and large. Fiction may choose to exaggerate this for dramatic effect, yes, but the basic principle is far from being unknown or impossible. Bad things can happen for little or no reason.

Still...what you have said is more or less true, if you only care about isolating and dissecting the short term logical flaws involved in those two events, but that's not everything we should be taking into consideration here. Both in terms of logic and in terms of themes, I believe it's absolutely possible to step back, look beyond that and follow a more comprehensive approach.

Lelouch had a lot of bad luck since day one of his rebellion. There is no shortage of precedents for it throughout the entire show. Long before the second half of R2, it would be very difficult to argue that he wasn't born under a star of misfortune, which contributed to aggravating the direct and indirect consequences of his own cynical and questionable decisions. Not to mention that Lelouch was also partially responsible for both of those circumstances as opposed to being a passive actor who did nothing wrong.

One, he didn't trust the Black Knights enough, put his personal interests before theirs during key moments and absolutely refused to defend himself from the accusations. The hypocrisy of Ougi and the spurious nature of Schneizel's dialogue doesn't change that, structurally and thematically speaking, the Black Knights weren't a healthy organization and Lelouch was far from being an ideal leader. The details of the betrayal could have been rewritten to feel more convincing but it was already a predictable conclusion.

Two, Lelouch was too obsessed with his own sister. He broke down when it seemed that Mao was going to kill her, he was willing to sacrifice the rebellion when Nunnally was kidnapped by V.V., he refused to consider her true wishes and didn't take the proper measures to protect her. To say that Nunnally was Lelouch's main weakness would be an understatement. In addition, Lelouch also failed to listen to Suzaku's explanations after Schneizel had sprung his trap and he didn't heed the final warning about FLEIJA.

And about the "those who should be prepared to be killed..." line, the likes of Cornelia should be dead by all rights.

Most certainly, if you intend to apply that as an universal logical principle meant for every single character in the show...but in this case, that isn't necessary at all. The world isn't fair and this fictional story isn't fair either. The line represents part of Lelouch's moral code, not Cornelia's, and it is thematically fitting for the protagonist of a story to die by following his own moral code, even if it is morally incorrect for others like her to survive. Killing her would provide a sense of Solomonic justice, I guess, but it simply doesn't serve the same purpose from a literary perspective.