Forum - View topicCode Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2 (TV).
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Aylinn
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Nightjuan, I see now what you mean, if one focuses on intentions I can understand why Lulu can be considered ambiguous. I can see the difference now, you focus on his intentions whereas I only take Lulu’s action into consideration and I don’t take his good intentions as an extenuating factor.
I agree with this, it’s just that I’m not convinced that he was that broken to make such a decision, I mean Nunnally was always a priority for him, at the end of CG she is alive so not everything was lost. During his confrontation with Charles he is convinced that Nunnally is dead, so his decision makes sense to me, as there was no more reason for him to create a better world anymore. I have a feeling that the change of the time slot might have influenced the ending, it’s too simplistic and I think that some elements don’t match, maybe what they were going to show in the original time slot was not appropriate for the new teenage audience. Seriously, I thought that at the end of CG R2 Charles will welcome Lulu with outstretched arms and tell him that he is such an effective son of a b*tch that he is going to make him his sole heir. For me Lulu is a good example of a person that can become a pitiless tyrant in the future, even at the beginning he shows so little respect for human’s life and most of the time he shows no qualms about killing people if they are not important to him. A good example is given by Unicorn_Blade, Lulu doesn’t have problems with making security guards etc kill each other. However, the fact that he has people that he cares about makes him even more realistic and plausible and I can understand why he didn’t kill Euphy immediately during this accident, he knows her, so her death unlike a death of a random, unknown person can affect him. A good example from history I can think of is the suicide of Hitler’s alleged lover, Geli Raubal, the people close to Hitler like Göring and Heinrich Hoffmann both stated that her death deeply affected Hitler. Zaphdash the problem with your argument about peace in Europe has been pointed out by Charred Knight, so I’m not going to dwell on this.
Lulu does state that he is going to kill people to make them forget Euphy, the rumors seems to be confirmation that he carried out his plan and nothing indicates that he abandoned this plan. It’s never shown how he kills, but he is portrayed in a sympathetic way. Even though that I think CG R2 is a disappointment, I have to admit that CG creators succeeded in selling the protagonist as a good person to the audience. And I agree with Charred Knight if Lulu wanted to be seen as the most evil person in the world by everybody he had to beat Charles. |
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nightjuan
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I suppose we can sum it up this way: Moral Absolutism vs. Moral Relativism. Which do you prefer? Neither extreme is fine by me, but I think that morality is far more relative (and ambiguous) than absolute. I don't see this as a matter of extenuating circumstances, or at least not necessarily, but one of complexity. I think it's clearly a matter of degrees, which means that there is a lot more worth discussing than just the inherent "good" or "evil" of a specific action or behavior. In the case of Lelouch, what makes him an interesting character, not a "hero" or "villain" in the absolute sense, is the conflict between his actions and intentions. That said, I believe there's nothing new to talk about at this point. None of our opinions are going to change. In order to reply to, for instance, what Unicorn_Blade has written...I'd essentially end up repeating things that have already been mentioned before during this discussion. We're all going around in circles here. ![]() |
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zaphdash
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Not gonna get off too far on another history tangent, but I'm talking specifically about Europe (and haven't really been ambiguous about that), the place most damaged by the war (along with Japan, which also has stuck with the pacifistic constitution that was thrust upon it, and China). There is no danger of nuclear armageddon if France and Germany fight another war against each other, or Britain and France, or Britain and Germany, or any other number of combinations of Western European countries that have been constantly at each other's throats for as long as they've existed. The EU was born out of a desire specifically to avert another WW2. Read about the Treaty of Paris sometime. The prevention of war amongst the former belligerents through economic integration was the explicit motive behind the formation of the ECSC (which would eventually develop into the EU). Notably when the threat of Soviet attack vanished, the drive toward integration didn't -- in fact, it's only gotten stronger (actually, the formal EU itself wasn't even created until the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992, after the fall of communism). The Soviet threat was much more determinative in the formation of American policy in Europe than it was in the formation of policy within Europe between European countries. I'm obviously absolutely not saying that there was no consideration amongst the Western European countries for the Soviets, because that would be absurd. But to suggest that integration and peace in Europe is due entirely to the threat of nuclear annihilation is just as absurd. Europe already went and got itself pretty well destroyed even before nuclear weapons were a thing and saw fit not to let it happen again and it's endured since then. Moreover, even if we accept your premise that it was merely nuclear annihilation that kept everyone in place, is that not still an accomplishment in its own right? We as a global society certainly didn't shy away from obliterating every last thing we could get at if it seemed to serve some kind of military objective. The fact that the idea of a "winnable" nuclear war never gained sufficient traction for somebody to actually try it should still count for something. But here I've already gone off on a longer tangent than intended, so you can make your rebuttal or whatever you want to say on the matter and I'm leaving it alone from there. I'm not sure exactly how much Zero Requiem requires Lelouch to actually be worse than Charles toward the rest of the world. The rest of the world already hates Britannia anyway. He can't develop a reputation for being an improvement over Charles, but that doesn't mean he actually has to go out and one-up all of Charles's atrocities. His actions toward the world at large toward the end of the show -- attempting to coopt the UFN, then holding its leaders hostage (briefly, until the Britannian capital got FLEIJAed and they made a hasty exit), setting up a climactic battle between Britannia and the combined forces of the UFN/Black Knights and Schneizel, then winning and taking control of Damocles and the FLEIJA stockpile...he wins that battle and broadcasts to everyone that he controls FLEIJA and has the whole world in his hand and people are already horrified before he ever even committed whatever atrocities may have accompanied his reign. And as someone (probably nightjuan) pointed out some pages back, realistically he only reigned for two months anyway (if anything, this actually weakens whatever realism the plan has, because how much could they really hate a guy who's been ruling for two months? But we all seem to agree that the plan itself is excessively simplistic, so let's not beat a dead horse on this point). He successfully develops a reputation as a tyrant long before he ever would have massacred anyone, and then he's only around for two months during which time we don't see anything happen. All he really has to do is stoke that reputation, which may or may not require actual acts of mass murder. Hell, for all we know the whole thing is smoke and mirrors. For all we know, it's not, and he really did kill tons of people. But that just goes to show that we don't know anything.
At the very least it happened in the first episodes of each season that a bunch of soldiers were about to murder him, so it happened twice for sure. He got out of it the first time by getting his Geass, the second time by remembering he had his Geass. A bunch of bloodthirsty soldiers was the trigger each time. I feel like it happened at least another time or two that he had soldiers kill themselves when they were about to kill him, but I'd have to watch the show again to see for sure. The guards, etc that you mention were never targeted just for fun. They may or may not have been official soldiers, do we even really know? But regardless, they were playing some role in the defense of military targets.
How does he know it's going to work? Toward the beginning of the first season he Geasses some student at school to put a fresh mark on the wall every day because he wants to see how long the Geass lasts before it eventually wears off. Really the question is never answered whether Geass is truly permanent, although cases like Suzaku and Nunally eventually bear out that it at least lasts a long time. You seem to be forgetting or willfully ignoring that Lelouch is fighting a guerrilla war against the world's dominant superpower. How much do you really want him to pull his punches when the consequences of a slip-up are that Britannia will just decide to completely wipe out Shinjuku? He's killing soldiers so that soldiers won't kill civilians. It's been said over and over before, but that's the whole point of the show -- is it all right to become evil to fight off a greater evil? You seem to be firmly on the side that it's not, and that's fine -- if we're talking about the real world instead of a cartoon, I'm probably on your side. But I think Code Geass does a better job of exploring this question than most anime would so I think you're being unfair to the show and doing yourself a disservice in your analysis of it to just ignore why Lelouch does the things he does. You're blatantly recasting Lelouch as some bloodthirsty murderer when he is at worst a guerrilla who uses morally questionable tactics (and let's be honest, that's still a pretty bad "at worst" to be).
You've either got a very selective memory or you're being straight up disingenuous here. Euphemia: spoiler[How was he supposed to kill her before she gave the order? He was unarmed except for the ceramic needle gun that he had already given to her as part of his original plan to Geass her into shooting him. He didn't expect her to get Geassed from his offhand comment in the first place, then she ran off and he chased after her, but he's notoriously out of shape. He ran all the way after her back to the arena bowl, where he was stopped by Britannian guards from reaching her. He was yelling after her the whole way trying to reverse the Geass and/or talk her out of doing it. The damage was already done.] FLEIJA: spoiler[Happened the very same day Lelouch was arrested by Schneizel's forces while meeting with Suzaku. The show was not exactly subtle about the fact that Lelouch thought Suzaku had set the whole thing up and that his trust in Suzaku (and really, in all people) had been completely shattered. You make it sound like he's warned about FLEIJA and his response is "yeah, whatever, do your worst," but when he gets the warning what he really says is something more to the effect of "why the hell should I believe you?" On top of everything else, FLEIJA is a brand new weapon that he doesn't even know about, so he's supposed to trust this enemy soldier who he thinks just betrayed him an hour ago when he says stop fighting, I've got a doomsday weapon? Get real, man. Would you have trusted Suzaku?] As to the rest of your post, I think it's already been explained, particularly well by nightjuan, why you're just straight up wrong in your claim that the show portrays Lelouch as an "almost-saint." We are expressly told by Kallen that the world still hates Lelouch. We get a rosy picture of him from her because she loved him, but she's just about the last person who does at that point.
I don't think a character saying they will do something is any substitute for actually seeing them do it or being told that they did it. All we get is this vague reference to what Lelouch plans to do and later even far vaguer references amidst the murmuring of the crowd that "if you speak out against him your family will be killed" and things to that effect. Since we've been going back and forth on this for so long, I do want to clarify my position a bit here just to make sure I'm not misunderstood: I am definitely not saying that Lelouch didn't kill people during those two months he was in charge. I am only saying that we don't know whether he killed people or exactly what he did, and I think it's silly to get morally outraged about things a fictitious character may or may not have done if extremely vague allegations about him are true. Ultimately I don't really have any problem with you guys disagreeing with Lelouch that it's acceptable to become evil to defeat greater evil, or that the ends justify the means. Like I said, in practice I tend to be on your side there. But there seems to be a lot of whitewashing here, condemning Lelouch's actions as if they took place in a vacuum, utterly neglecting to consider the context. Zero Requiem after he securely controls the entire world is one thing (one thing that we concretely know absolutely nothing about), but let's not forget that the stuff he did during the war with Britannia happened during a war with Britannia. |
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Unicorn_Blade
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Lelouche is portrayed as an almost-saint. Kallen might have said spoiler[that people hate him, but she also in the same sentence heavily underlines that it is thanks to him that *world peace* is achieved. So it is kind of like saying: people hate him, but they dont know how tender and loving and caring he was, the same thing is done by Nunnaly.] Just like people back in the old day hated Jesus who died for them. The analogy is there in the series. Pointless, since Jesus did not need to butcher people to unite them, but the show still insists on this far fetched comparison. Also, the fact that Kallen, and then CC, are the last ones that speak, both being favourable to Lelouche, makes him look even better. You dont remember angry faces, you remember peaceful music and joy on everyones faces. And it is openly said that all of this happened thanks to Lelouche. I have not met a fan of the show who would have said that Kallen loved L. and her commentary was partial. spoiler[What people say is that Lelouche did such a brilliant thing and saved the world from hatred, which as I already stressed, think is quite fake. ] You try to point out that he tried to wash Euphie's crimes by being worse than her and making people forget about her. My point is, the massacre should not even have happened in first place as he could stop it before it happened. There wouldbe no need to proceed into killing more people so that people would forget about Euphemia's crimes. spoiler[As I said, if he needed to kill her, which he did, he could have done it before she gives the fatal order. But that as we know was not convenient for Lelouche, since his fame would have suffered.] Funny how quick Lelouche was in reacting throughout the whole show, but it was not in his force to stop Euphemia after all... If I spoke to an enemy that tells me he has got a superweapon that can wipe out the whole city and a few million people (and I knew he was able tu produce one- and lelouche knows what Schneizel might be capable of), yes, i think I would have given it a thought at least for a second instead of thinking that the other person is bluffing. Would you not? How often do you see people bluffing in relation to millions of lives? We are not talking about Suzaku threatening Lelouche with a little bomb in the school, we are talking about millions of lives, but hundreds or millions for Lelouche does not matter, since they are all just pawns in a little scheme. Lets not forget, Lelouche-Guerilla somehow got into the headquarters and managed to kill Clovis. I cant believe he would be unable to pull the same trick (without the killing part), to geass people not to fight. (not even mentioning the fact that apaprently there was no need to kill Clovis at all, even Schneizel did not dispose of his siblings like this). Much as difficult it was in the fist part of the show, in CG2 he had many more possibilities, but he preferred to blow peoples heads off. Finally, I dont think that Geass wears out, as you said it.spoiler[ Nunnaly breaks it with her will. Suzaku is still geassed as far as we know. If a geass can wear off, that means that one day Schneizel will wake up with a huge hangover and there goes Lelouche's plan of Schneizel's everlasting obedience to Zero... I think apart from Nunnaly and people who got their geass cancelled by Jeremiah], geass is a permanent condition. So geassing soldiers not to fight would be a more effective way to change the world than killing them. I dont think he was a blood-thirsty psychopath, i think however that as the rest of his family (except of few of its members) he seemed people as instruments and he respected only a few, he was also slowly loosing his humanity, which was never stressed enough. Although he was not so innocent to start with. I wonder, in the very fist/second episode, you say that he had to defend himself against the soldiers who were about to shoot him. But he had quick enough reflex to tell them to kill themselves. I'd say that definitely proves how he saw killing people as an easy and convenient way to make his way to the top. |
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zaphdash
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So...what? Your problem is that the protagonist of the show was not sufficiently demonized by our passive observation? Lelouch is the hero of the show (not in the sense that his actions were necessarily "heroic," but in the sense that the show is about him). The entire show is a Machievellian exercise; we're expected to be on board with Lelouch's goals but whether his methods in reaching those goals were justifiable is supposed to be left to the viewer to decide. What we get at the end of the show is one character who did in fact love Lelouch and who was in fact speaking for herself telling us that his plan worked -- including that the world at large despises Lelouch. It sounds like you'd rather the show wrapped up by ending its thought exercise by telling you the answer, and that the answer should be that Lelouch is wrong. If that's the case, I'm sorry to say, you simply didn't get the show. And I hate to say that, because it sounds like a copout answer, but it's true. At no point during the ending does anyone ever express approval for Lelouch's methods, but a character who absolutely is partial (why do we suddenly have Kallen narrating for, if memory serves me, the very first time in the entire show if we're not supposed to be hearing Kallen's own thoughts? How about am omniscient narrator instead, or no narrator at all?) does acknowledge that his plan worked and that the ultimate result was for the greater good, regardless whether or not his actual actions in bringing about that greater good were justified (a question that the show poses, never answers).
I actually never tried to point out that he tried to wash away Euphemia's crimes by being worse than her -- in fact, I have been arguing against someone else who suggests that simply because he said he would do this, it literally means he went out and killed a ton of people, even though this is never shown or mentioned. As to your second point, I already unambiguously described to you why he did not and could not have prevented Euphemia's massacre, given how it unfolded. If you see some flaw in my reasoning, feel free to point it out and we can discuss it.
Lelouch "knew what Schneizel might be capable of"? That might mean Schneizel has the will to kill tons of people, it doesn't mean he has the knowledge or resources to invent a heretofore unknown and unimaginably powerful weapon that would kill millions of people in the blink of an eye. Moreover, it was not Schneizel who issued the warning, so who cares what Schneizel might be capable of? You're speaking from the position of an omniscient observer with the added benefit of retrospect as well; you knew at the time that Suzaku wasn't bluffing because we'd seen them developing FLEIJA and install it on his machine, and you know now that Lelouch calling this non-bluff would ultimately lead to destruction. Try to consider it from Lelouch's position at the time instead. His rejection of Suzaku's threat was not unreasonable under the circumstances, even though he ended up being wrong. Lelouch is a genius, but he's not god. He doesn't know everything. His understanding, which we know to be flawed but he did not, is that Suzaku just lied to him and led him into a trap not a few hours ago. Now he's facing Suzaku with a huge military force behind him and many of the Britannian forces locked down and Suzaku tells him "oh BTW I've got this giant bomb that you've never even heard of before because we just invented it but it can wipe out the whole area in a split second" and it's not really that far out there to think Suzaku might be blowing smoke. You know better, Lelouch did not. Lelouch did lots of questionable things all on his own throughout the two shows, you shouldn't need to reach so hard to try to pin something else on him that was the result of an honest mistake/misunderstanding. I love that so much of this thread has been about "he didn't try hard enough to prevent Euphemia's massacre" or "he should have believed Suzaku even though he considered him to be completely untrustworthy" but nobody even really cares about how he had the Geass research facility wiped out or anything like that. Are we on board with that one or something?
The entire point of his conflict with Charles was that he wanted to give people the ability to run their own lives and live for the future. His plan was all about heavily manipulating the world into choosing peace, but it was still the world's choice to make. If all he wanted was to force peace on people, he could have just let Charles do his thing, or he could have let Schneizel enforce peace with the military, or he himself could have enforced peace with the military.
You might be right, but Lelouch doesn't know that, especially early on when he's trying to figure out the limitations of his powers. Frankly it's never established even by the end that it's truly permanent, we only know it'll last at least eight years (the longest-running Geass of the show). Maybe in eight years Schneizel does suddenly wake up; hopefully by that point the new world order established by Zero Requiem is strong enough not to be destabilized by Schneizel. Maybe the writers will even explore this as fodder for a future sequel. We have no idea. And what's more important here is, neither does Lelouch.
If he hadn't had the soldiers kill themselves in those two instances, after he escaped they would have just gone on purging civilians in the surrounding area anyway. Do we value the lives of the soldiers above those of the innocent civilians now? I mean you seem determined to believe that Lelouch never faced any "kill or be killed" situations, but that's just silly. |
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Charred Knight
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If you make a mistake, and cause great harm you don't cause more harm to dull the pain. If I run over some guy's dog, I am not going to then run over his kid to make me running over his dog not look so bad, and yet Lelouch does just that.
Also it's quite clear if you read the interviews Okouchi gave that he clearly intended to speak through Kallen, he has always said that lelouch made the right action. It's no coincedence that spoiler[when Lelouch dies his arms spread out making a cross shape] |
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nightjuan
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Hopefully not...but sometimes people end up doing just that, whether intentionally or unintentionally. ![]()
No, not really. I'll leave your other point alone because even repetitive debates deserve a little variety. ![]() As someone who isn't any less informed about the subject, I question your representation and interpretation of those interviews. I don't believe Okouchi ever addressed, at least in the interviews that non-Japanese speakers can look up, the issue of the moral "righteousness" of Lelouch's actions during the final part of R2. The most you can argue is that Okouchi thinks it was a "good / happy" end for Lelouch (as opposed to a "bad / sad" one) but that has more to do with his being the protagonist in the context of a story. He said almost nothing about how viewers should or shouldn't ultimately classify Lelouch's actions on an absolute moral scale. In fact, in those same interviews Okouchi isn't afraid to refer to Lelouch as "more evil than heroic" or a "demon / demon king" when speaking about his character archetype, which implies that he's not unaware of the negative moral implications of his protagonist's actions regardless of the sympathetic portrayal involved. Then again, if we're going to speak about archetypes...it's no secret that villains, antagonists and rivals have often been portrayed just as, if not more, sympathetically for a long time in anime and manga (including but not limited to mecha shows). It's just that the protagonist is usually someone who has more in common with the likes of Suzaku than Lelouch, which makes things more predictable and politically correct but perhaps less interesting. |
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Unicorn_Blade
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I think Im a bit tired of reading your 'so what?' questions. You say Lelouche is a hero of the show. And so what, I can askequally. Does this mean he must be idealised and worshipped? You abuse the word machiavellan here, as if the fact of Lelouche's questionable genious and abuse of geass made himany closer the The Prince. A lot of dictators and war criminals would be then loved to be considered machiavellan, because that sounds so much nicer than murderer or psychopath. Would you say Saddam was machiavellan? After all, he was aiming at a greater good... for his family. A hero might as well be demonised, and I think here the show would profit out of it, becoming more real, more mature and less directed to satisfy teenage girls who fall for pretty characters. Making Lelouche all pretty is a cheap way out, that's it. I didn't expect the show to give a definite answer, but I was also disappointed at the fact that he was glorified and treated as a hero, through Kallens final commentary, Nunnaly's tears and the whole cheesy ending including people with smiles on their faces. It is kind of like lets say, nuking H iroshima and Nagasaki, and later on making an American documentary about happy Japanese people because the war ended. Again, this is my remark pointed towards bad, simplified writing. I see how Lelouche had not an actual tool to kill Euphemia, although I do not believe that he would not have found something as he always did when he needed to (knocking her out would have done a trick as well for heavens sake). Here he decided to use an opportinity to kill her when it was most convenient. As for Fleia. Ok, imagine a situaton when you have a huge battle coming. And someone tells you that they have a new weapon that can make a huge whole in the ground and kill millions of people. Would you really say: whatever, man? regardless of who says it? Suzaku works for Schneizel who is not exactly known for producing lousy technology that does not work. Would you not think that there might be some truth in it? Specially being an omniscent character yoourself who can figure out what people will say before they even know thy will say anything al all? Besides, Lelouche would have known about the school incident when Nina went all crazy and wanted to blow everyone up, and he would have knowna about Lloyds reaction when she wanted to detonate the bomb (if I remember he was at the school at that point? and if he wasnt, someone would have told him). So he should have suspected that by refining the idea, such weapon would be possible to create. So it would not matter whether Schneizel would tune in to the conversation in person, or whether Suzaku told Lelouche about the danger. Suzaku did not tell him "I have this bomb than can kill your army", he said that it was a danger for the civilisation on the whole city, but as I said before, Lelouche never shown much care about people's lives, regardless if it was hundreds or thousands. He was not particularly shocked when the Imperial city was nuked either. As for the geass facility... Of course he would erase it to make sure that no one else would use it, partially I suspect bcause he did not want more people with geass to get into his way and spoil his plan. Nothing particually pacifist about this one.
Well, we have a contradiction here. On the one hand he wanted people to have free will, on the other, he forced everyone to accept his vision. It seems like he did not really know what he wanted as long as it was making sure everyone would follow his orders. He finally agreed people to believe they have freedom while by manipulting them, depriving them of dignity and confusing his closest ones. He would give them a sort of limited freedom, where they acted exactly as he wanted. In a way this is not far off what Charles and Marianne planned. What is different, is whose plan was the one that was reinforced. Lelouche was dying knowing that people would hate him, but it was all about him, that he created this wonderful world. Lelouche faced this situation twice, but the second time he regained the memory, and he was no longer scared or surprised or shocked by the power of geass. He is sold blooded about the whole thing. he knows the power of his geass, he does not need to have the soldiers killed. I think you tend to treat him as a sort of scared, innocent boy who just woke up into a nightmare, maybe by seeing yourself in his situation, which is not true. It is not a kill or be killed situation. it is: kill, or let them goand forget about the whole thing. Even when he fir st kill the soldierat the beginning of the first series, he does not look shocked. he reminds me of kids that tear off insects legs to see what happens to them, except that he does it on humans. He is cold and calculated. "If I tell them to kill themselves, will they do it. They did, my power is amazing"- which is what he says in general in the second episode. This is not what a scared student would have said, is it? And funny how he seems to cherish innocent civilians lives then, but later on lets hundreds of thousands of them get butchered on different occasions. As I said, whatever is convenient to him. |
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Unicorn_Blade
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Also, I just thought about something that bugged me for a while now.
Is there a sort of assumption that Japanese/Britanians are of different race, therefore would look different? I thought it qould be quite obvious, 1) because of geography/historu that takes a lot after the real world's one, then 2) I remember people immediately recognise Viletta as a Britannian when she hides in Ohgi's place. But then Kallen is half Japanese, and obviously no one ever notices that she might look any different from a pure blood Britannian or question her race affiliation. |
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Charred Knight
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Most of the interviews after the series ended talked about how Lelouch was heroic. I don't think I have ever seen Okouchi once call Lelouch evil or a devil. This shows up in the way his treated with Kallen, Nunnaly, and C.C always complimenting him, and never bringing up the millions of lives lost due to his actions. The show concentrates on everyone being happy including people who commited atrocities like Cornelia, and Nina. Cities and countries are rebuilt in months. Okouchi had a chance to show the horrors that Lelouch did but he chose not too. He chose to basically show a complete lack of morality in his show. He showed that everyone will forgive you if you just feel bad about what you did. |
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nightjuan
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Now you're just being silly. ![]()
The fact that you're able to say this completely demolishes your credibility. Let me quote Continue vol. 42:
This isn't without precedent either. The first DVD booklet for the original series says:
And, for the sake of completeness, let's look at the first episode titles for both seasons:
Do you want me to go and quote specific scenes and phrases for you or something? You might disagree about how they felt about Lelouch at the end of the story, that's a fair point, but introducing words like "always" here essentially destroys your entire argument.
With all due respect....are there any other straw men out there that you feel like picking up? |
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nightjuan
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Against my better judgment, I'm going to make a couple of new points here and repeat some old ones.
No, that is not necessarily the case. It is, however, entirely possible to understand or empathize with Lelouch on a certain level while still considering his morality dubious or even outright lacking. For instance, not even criminals and murderers are automatically despised by their own friends and families in this world of ours, much less in a completely fictional context, so I wonder if you find that equally repugnant or simply impossible. I would reiterate that you're trying to present a situation that is made up of shades of gray as if black and white were the only possible options for both the characters of the story and, by extension, the audience.
Do you seriously believe that there is some sort of universal agreement about hating "evil" and loving "good"? That's not even true in real life. But when we're talking about literary or fictional figures in particular, which is what ultimately matters here, this certainly isn't the case...far more often than you might think, characters who would arguably be classified as murderers or psychopaths accumulate either some sort of fanbase or even receive critical praise. That isn't without precedent. Sympathy for Machiavellian characters isn't exactly unheard of.
And, conversely, a villain might as well be sympathized with.
I won't argue that this isn't a factor. There are people who always react positively to "pretty" characters. But I believe you should be able to admit that it's not the actual reason why some of us disagree with you.
I still think you're confusing sympathy, understanding and even (for those who were close to him) love for a tragic figure with actual "heroism" and supposed "glorification" when there is absolutely no need to do so. The epilogue's biggest flaw, from the perspective of plausibility, is its failure to portray the state of the world in a sufficiently nuanced manner. It was too short and too simplified. I've always agreed with everyone else who has pointed this out. The outlook was too optimistic and a certain dose of skepticism was clearly necessary. However, I still don't see anything wrong with the reactions of those two characters mentioned, neither from the perspective of plausibility or -what I believe is far more important for this show- thematics. You might not agree with them but I believe they make perfect sense from the point of view of those characters and their emotional connections to Lelouch, not those of faraway critics who are permanently disgusted by the protagonist to the point of moral outrage. That makes it extremely hard to put yourself in the shoes of someone else.
Leaving aside the fact that the two situations are dissimilar to the point of making the comparison disingenuous...I don't know about making a documentary, but it wouldn't be impossible to make a novel or movie if you were willing to fund it. Why? Because fiction is absolutely capable of going to places where it would be too politically incorrect, subversive, biased or outrageous for those who pretend to be objective about everything when, in reality, things can be far more complex or just different enough from another person's perspective. After all, humans are both rational and irrational creatures, not just one or the other. The same thing goes for characters. Whether that is or isn't good writing depends on the specifics. If you believe plausibility, political correctness and morality are the only necessary standards, then certainly not. However, I don't think that's all there is to it. Regarding one of the two or three other issues mentioned, I've already disagreed with you about what makes Lelouch's plans different from those of Charles and Schneizel. That point still applies here so I won't go it over again. There's probably no room left for any sort of agreement about it. As for Lelouch's failure to believe Suzaku, that was clearly a foolish mistake on his part but a rather predictable one. Why? Because Lelouch had just (wrongly) concluded that Suzaku had set up a trap for him and had no reason -let alone the disposition- to trust his former "friend" anymore. Besides, I don't agree with your assumptions about what Lelouch could or couldn't have taken for granted. It's certainly debatable. |
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Unicorn_Blade
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I never said that it was unlikely, to for example Nunnaly cry for Lelouche or Kallen like him despite of what he did. I just said that I was disappointed with such portrayal. You mentioned I think somehwhere before that the author/director meant in a way to criticise Lelouche's actions or make him look like a bad character, or something along this line. However it seems he kept it all to himself, because there is no sign of critique in the show as for L's behaviour. Not one character ever points out Lelouche's hypocrisy. Except for Schneizel who gets discredited a few episodes later on by being a potential mass murderer, which makes his argument look stupid, or Nina responsible for Fleia. In other words, only those characters portrayed as to some extent evil dare to point out L's flaws, but no one takes them seriously because they are evil. Or just lost- and they need to be shown the right path. The path of Lelouche. Characters who do seem to make some sort of critique towards Lelouche all end up loving him in the end.
No, what I said is that the word machiavellan was heavily abused in this discussion in attempt to screen Lelouches actions and instead of calling them by their name call them something they were not. My point was that not all Lelouches actions can be labelled machiavellan, and not all of them all 'morally ambiguous' There is nothing morally ambiguous about mass murdering people whim you are supposed to protect. I never said I am agains any kind fo symphaty, but I think there is no counter balance for this overflowing love and admiration for Lelouche. I miss a character that would provide a real worthy opponent, rather than a bunch of characters that all in all end up being portrayed as idiots, which makes all their critique of Lelouche's actions invalid. Discredit of all his oponents make it seem like in fact there was no one worthy enough to point out he was wrong. I will once again hint at Gungrave, which succeeds in everything that CG fails at. Gungrave makes CG look like a piece of cheap propaganda really.
No I dont confuse them. I explained it above- the construction of the plot where all major characters either syphhatise with Lelouche or get shown by him that they were all so wrong is a tool that is used to pretty much say the viewer that if you criticise him, you are wrong as well.
Again, i never said I thought it was unlikely to happen. What I said is that unfortunately the love and sypmpathy towards Lelouche is all we see. There is no "maybe he went wrong' or 'he went wrong' or nothing else really. We end up with this idealised picture of someone whose achievements are questionable. Also, lelouche NEVER throughout the whole show accepts any responsibility for any of his actions, and in the end everyone seems to agree with it. I found it quite disappointing as well.
One thinag about this: Lelouche suspected the first trap which is why he called out Guillford right before it, did he not? So as I said, he has magnificent fortunetelling abilities right until and after the one point when millions of human lives are involved. |
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Aylinn
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Unicorn_Blade have you seen Legend of the Galactic Heroes? I'm sure you will like it, Code Geass borrowed some ideas from LoGH, the difference is that LoGH never becomes as simplistic as Code Geass.
zaphdash you are of course right that western Europe has been enjoying peace for a very long time, the problem is that focusing only on western Europe means overlooking the larger picture, the consequences of the Second World War were not limited to peace in western Europe. Going back to the topic I believe that Lulu did as he said and tried to wash away Euphemia's crimes by spilling rivers of blood, because what would be the point of telling it to Suzaku? Granted, it's a stupid plan Euphy would never approve of, but Suzaku had already established himself as a total idiot, so it is fine that he didn't see anything wrong with it. I assume it is too much thinking for his sole grey cell. All of us agree that Lulu's last plan is simplistic and we wrote our opinion about CG and Lulu, so I think there is no point to drag this discussion any longer. Last edited by Aylinn on Thu Aug 05, 2010 4:40 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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nightjuan
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I believe, just for the record, that I've recommended this show here before to those who might well be looking for something more realistic, plausible and mature in terms of its treatment of politics and warfare. Which automatically makes it better than not just Code Geass but a large number of anime series in existence, at least in my opinion, so I would second your words in that respect. Still, Legend of the Galactic Heroes is trying to address a significantly different set of issues and relies on another kind of underlying conflict in order to do so. There are certain superficial similarities with respect to Reinhard's and Lelouch's character backgrounds as well as the positions they both eventually achieve, but I'd say they are limited and not central to the core of either plot unless you remove almost all context from the equation. |
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