Code Geass: Rozé of the Recapture

Episode 7

Yet again, Rozé of the Recapture starts an episode taking the wind out of its own sails by immediately resolving a cliffhanger in the most awkward, anticlimactic way. If Walther wanted to express his loyalty to Princess Sherry and, by extension, Sakuya and Sakura, did he really have to do it as she gets out of the bath? “Sorry, I was just really overwhelmed by my loyalty and had to sexually menace you for a second.” It makes! No! Sense! And what's more, this is the start of a new movie, so that was a deliberate choice as opposed to a consequence of this odd hybrid approach they're taking.

I know why the creative team made that decision. Since he assaulted and approached Sakura in the bath, where the Britannians don't have any surveillance, he's going to escape Scissorman's sweep of Sumeragi loyalists and will be the key to Sakuya's escape. If Walther had said something about that in the scene, his choice of time and place would make sense, but I imagine they want to turn it into some kind of twist.

The rest of the episode was a heady mix of the same sort of irritating decisions that haunted the first half of the series and some smart writing and plotting choices. Sakuya heads Lavender House, the orphanage that Ash spent three years at along with Narah and his younger brother Nichol, seeking a flashback. I mean, seeking more information about the complicated young man she has been brainwashed into thinking is her brother. Now I'm going to take a moment to complain a bit about the decision to set Recapture just seven years after the end of R2. The time frame simply does not make sense. In that time, an empire fell, and a democracy (or constitutional monarchy?) rose in its place. Finally, a new empire came about and reconquered parts of the old empire. As a result, it feels highly compressed every time they try to fill in parts of what happened between installments, and it's hard to piece together what happened when.

Norland isn't exactly a proud papa, it turns out; rather, Ash and Nichol were sent to live with him as part of the mysterious “Vogue Scheme,” which emptied the Britannian orphanages and sent the children to live with Britannian nobility instead, presumably to be trained as child soldiers. At one point during the flashback, it cuts to Ash training Haruka, then back to Scissorman training him using almost the exact same phrasing. I thought that was clever, but it would have worked better if they'd had more time to make similar cuts. Like, say, if the show were twice as long!

Best takeaway from the big flashback: Ash is dying the white streak in his hair blue. But seriously, I enjoyed Jugo Sumeragi and his relationship with Ash. He's got such a big, warm personality, and it's plain to see how he was able to win the people's loyalty with his likability and charisma. He's like an indirect foil to Norland, who controls his followers through violence and fear. It may be an obvious choice, but his banter with Ash was fun, so I'll allow it. I didn't even get annoyed when he started doing the protective papa routine over the mere idea of Sakuya marrying, even after he introduced the idea.

It turns out, however, that Ash's belief that he killed Jugo Sumeragi is all just survivor's guilt! Wah wah wah, I convinced the man who was scheduled to be executed to try to escape so he died a few hours earlier than he originally planned. It's not even like Ash fumbled in a way that caused their escape to fail; they just got caught, plain and simple. It's just SUCH a tired narrative cliche that I'm actually a little mad at myself that I didn't see it coming. Maybe I didn't want to believe that a Code Geass production would really make the most boring choice possible, despite that repeatedly being the case. If an anime character feels guilty over “killing” someone, there's like a 90% chance that they actually bear no responsibility, but made a suggestion that someone take a risk that put them in a position where they had bad luck and died as a result.

As dull as that may be, it does put Sakuya in an interesting position: she's been posing as Rozé all this time, justifying what she's done to Ash with the idea that he killed her father. Turns out, he would have happily protected her anyway and she did something profoundly unethical to someone else's brain and sense of self for no reason at all! She's not a terrible person, so she feels a deep sense of guilt that, unlike Ash's, is fully justified. She geassed him on impulse, with the strangely oblique phrasing, “Just as you protected the person most important to you, you will protect me the same way,” presumably right after getting her power from LL.

And, it turns out, using her geass carelessly has been her undoing. She's used it too often without considering any evidence or witnesses she might leave behind. It's not like before when the Britannians didn't know anything about geass powers, so Lelouch could use his without anyone figuring out what was going on. The empire is aware of the power and what it looks like and now, thanks to Scissorman, how to break it. And now they've used it to find her.

PLEASE don't waste this plotline like you have so many others, Rozé of the Recapture! It's a rare case of a character facing real consequences for their carelessness, without it being telegraphed to the point it was blindingly obvious. I've given up on the show being anything but empty entertainment, but if they throw this out the window for narrative convenience like you have every other moment of tension, it'll be nothing but creatively bankrupt content slop in my eyes forevermore.

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Code Geass: Rozé of the Recapture is currently streaming on Hulu and Disney+, depending on your region.