Code Geass/Headscratchers/Miscellaneous One

• In the first episode terrorist attack and steel biological weapons (which turned out to be CC) and then go into a heavily populated area to use civilians as human shields from the pursuing military. At the time the Britannians had 2 choices either allow the terrorist to escape with WMD that would cause the death of thousands or attack the people they were using as shields killing them to get to the bad guys. It was pretty much a catch 22 for Clovis at that point and obviously thought that attacking the people the terrorist were trying to hide behind was the lesser of 2 evils. Yet people act like the empire goes around committing slaughter on a whim and for fun. At the same time they tend to give a free pass to the terrorist that stole the weapons and drew the army there, and act like an attack that they provoked was justification for their actions later in the series
  • The so called biological gas canister belonged to Britannia. The resistance cell was getting them out of their hands, so they couldn't have it used it against them. Clovis ordered the purge because he feared that he would be disowned if he were to get caught, nothing more.
    • There actually is a bit more to that, Clovis was afraid that they would be able to hones the witch’s powers and use it against them, there was also the fact that losing here would hurt his plan to find out what happened to this Dead Little Sister and Brother that were killed by the Japanese setting of the war in the first place. Also keeping something that powerful from the government might be considered treason which is punishable by death. Plus he did care about the people living in area eleven even having a public memorial for solders in that episode; yes he was at a party but the fact he took the time to honor them shows he views them as more then cannon fodder like some of his siblings, Clovis is a lot more complicated then you give him credit for.
    • He wanted to honor Lelouch and Nunnally's memory. He had no idea they were still alive. While I do recognize how caring Clovis was towards his siblings, the moment at the party he was at clearly demonstrates he hardly cares a whit for the Elevens there.
  • Wiping out the entire ghetto was still disproportionate. I actually feel that, post-mortem, Clovis is given Hidden Depths to become actually a fairly sympathetic character, but whatever his reasons, whiping out all of Shinjuku is still a Moral Event Horizon. He could have simply sent his forces in to recover the 'biological weapon' no matter what, but because he was panicking and saw a chance of that not working (in reality, it was a slight chance, particularly seeing as the soldiers were hardly like to be kind with the populace), he went for the simple option and just ordered the entire ghetto to be wiped out.
• Kallen is a Jerk Sue Karma Houdini with a humongous dose of Moral Dissonance. She has a hand in all the major disaster and deaths in the series, in the first episode she lead the Britannian military into a crowded area to use the people as human shields after stealing chemical weapons yet nobody blames her for the inevitable conclusion. Later she sets off a device causing massive landslides and the biggest casualty count at that time including the father of one of her best friends and barley shows any emotion over it. Later she tries to kill a man she knows she can not be killed and he releases a nuclear bomb because of it (granted she did not know about it before attacking him), yet she seems only concerned about Lelouch after it happened. She also showed no qualms about murdering her friends in cold blood if they might have made her as a terrorist. She tries to stab both Lelouch and Shirley in the back and they were only saved by lucky interruptions (in one of the cases it was planed). She is also a Blood Knight that seems to only be in it for the killing sure, she gave Japanese independence as her reason to fight but it was established during her Day in The Limelight episode that she really does not like them either because they are weak especially her mother(even though she does gain some sympathy for her). The worst thing to happen to her in the series was being captured and her friend considered using Enhanced Interrogation Techniques on her but decided against it because it was to much like something her side would do, yet she still viciously beats him for even considering it after he lets her out. She was also taunted by a Jerkass which people act like is the worst thing to happen to somebody. She never gets punished and she gets a happy ending. Amazing what you notice re-watching the series
  • Kallen had no intention of using the civilians for human shields. Heck, she had no intention of getting caught in the first place, which was all Tamaki's fault for screwing up the plan. When Nagata, who was driving the truck, suggested using the canister, she forbade it. It was because Suzaku put a spanner in their resistance by undoing the progress they had made after Lelouch had helped them out in secret that the Britannian soldiers were able to corner them. She thinks of killing Lelouch and Shirley only with the intention of protecting her identity as a freedom fighter against Britannian tyranny, not because she's a Blood Knight. When she learns about the Narita landslide killing Shirley's father, she is absolutely devastated. In the Day in The Limelight episode, she doesn't view the Japanese as weak, as you put it. She only sees her mother that way for willing to become a maid in the household, and for taking Refrain (of course, before learning her reasons). She gives Suzaku a smackdown because of the implications of threatening her with the drug that addicted her mother, and that it was only because he "didn't want to stoop down to Zero's level", not because he really cared about her. And she had no idea about Suzaku having the geass command; it was more a case of Suzaku being too reckless and suicidal to retreat when he was losing. (We don't really see anything else from her the following episode aside from her retrieving Lelouch.) And Kallen has nothing bad happen to her aside from being held captive by Suzaku? What about getting used by Ohgi to lure out Zero in order to betray him without a word in the matter, and as a result ultimately loses Lelouch, the man behind the mask, and responsible for a large part of the victories and resulting peace? Ohgi and the Black Knights themselves, who complicate things because of the betrayal, get off scot free. And don't get me started on some of the enemy Britannians who live on.
    • No terrorist ever has the intention of being caught however the police were already in pursuit by the time we see her there were plenty of chances for them to either ditch the cargo or get to a less populated area before they turned into the ghetto tunnels where Britannia trapped them. Also she did not want to use the gas because it would kill the two of them not because of the safety of the people around them. She was also willing to kill her friends because she thought they might have identified her as a terrorist (I know the saying "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter"). She only seemed a little disturbed after the land slide contrast that with Lelouch who was actually devastated. Her view on most of the japans was that they were weak subservient to the Britannians, maybe not as literal as her biological mother but it was the same principle. She thought this because they weren’t fighting like she was and the empire actually had a higher approval rating then the terrorist until the tower. Suzaku did not drug her because it would damage her, what zero douse damages people. They did not trick her into betraying him. They simply asked him to bring him there so they could confront him about the pile of evidence, plus they assumed that she had been keeping information from them which she was. Ohgi seemed to have better morals then her and even though he was used by a pair of evil princes in their insane revenge schemes like she was, he was always much more cautious and did not have a hand in any mass murder.
    • The danger of letting what was purported to be a Britannian made and owned payload of toxic gas was far too great to risk at that point. Kallen was against the use of gas against civilians, specifically saying it would be a bloodbath. Again, she only saw killing anyone who found out her identity as a resistance fighter necessary to keep it a secret. And she only saw Honorary Britannians as weak and subservient, but that doesn't mean she didn't pity them. And Suzaku only didn't drug Kallen because he didn't want to "be like Zero". And while Lelouch as Zero may have done some objectionable things, he was also getting results towards getting people their freedom, contrary to Suzaku who at the time was aiding the Britannian status quo. Ohgi and the rest of the Black Knights were ready to shoot to kill Lelouch, to which effect they yelled at her to get out of the way or else she would be shot, as they suspected her of being under Lelouch's geass as well. Ohgi may have not had a hand in mass murder per se, but he was willing to follow all of Lelouch's plans, which makes him just as responsible. Beyond that as well, his plan to trade Lelouch for Japan would have left the rest of the UFN out to dry, which would have made him an even bigger traitor. On top of that, he seems to be mostly concerned with Villetta, up until that point a Britannian spy who he's been keeping secret, and still offers inaccurate testimony against Lelouch, which is followed to predictably disastrous results. And beyond that, Lelouch does not deserve to be lumped in with Schneizel like that. Lelouch uses extreme methods because he has little alternative; Schneizel does so because he can, hence his self proclamation to playing God near the end of the series with Damocles.
    • What inaccurate testimony did Ohgi give against Lelouch? Anyway, people like Xing-Ke could have led the fight against Britannia, and Ohgi didn't say that he was going to leave the Black Knights (which worked for the UFN at that point) if Japan was freed, so there isn't really much evidence that they were leaving the rest of the UFN out to dry - other than the dangerous move of privately killing the best strategist and rallying figure on the UFN side.
      • Ohgi didn't offer inaccurate testimony intentionally, rather he supported without concern for its validity the inaccurate testimony of others, both Viletta and Schneizel. Their facts weren't entirely accurate and were mostly circumstantial. Hell, they couldn't even prove Geass was real, and bought it without question. As for leaving the UFN out to dry, watch the buildup to the battle. The entire war was based on successfully liberating Japan. Not only does selling out Zero and faking his death undermine their war effort in itself, an under the table deal for Japan effectively destroys it. The primary objective is failed on the spot, and only makes the UFN look weaker because Brittiania already ruined the country. It's throwing them a bone, nothing more, and the UFN would suffer for it. It was a selfish move, without question.
• The Black Knights after chapter 19 of R2 Hey, let's totally dismiss the guy who has helped us to become a real threat for the britannian empire, who has given us hope. Oh, and let's join the Britannian prince, our major enemy in the past, for no reason. To summarize:

1. 1. Kallen: Lelouch, I don't like this, but I'll have to kill you because... I dunno, guess I prefer blondes (Gino, Schneizel...) nevermind that I was your most loyal soldier and we had lots and lots of Unresolved Sexual Tension.
   2. Ohgi: zOMG TITS!!1one Oh, yeah, I'll join you, Viletta.
   3. Diethard: Everything is more interesting with the rebels. Therefore I'll join with Schneizel.
   4. Rakshata: Meh, I'm happy making mecha.
   5. Tamaki: WOAH WTF IS THIS GUY GOOD OR BAD?! I JUST WANNA FIGHT DAMMIT!
   6. XingKe: If I joined Lelouch, the Tian Zi could be safer. But I'm gonna be the hero and rescue her!

• • This kinda fails on several levels. To start, the initial betrayal did not even include Rakshata or Xingke. Rakshata only found out later. And really, what's she gonna do about it? She's in no position to change their minds. Xingke looked pissed when he finally found out, and by then it was far too late to change the game. Tamaki is Tamaki, but even he was the voice of reason (shocking, I know) almost the entire time. Furthermore, Diethard was against it the entire time, but realized that he couldn't talk them down. Kallen also refused to betray Lelouch, up until he broke her heart, and even then he negated it at the last second. She doesn't actually start fighting against him until he becomes Emperor and really starts being evil. Until that point, she tried to get the Black Knights to see reason. When that obviously wouldn't work, she tried to hunt him down to ask him the question she asked in 22, not to kill him. It's not as black and white as you're making it out to be.
    • Actually, the second "evil thing" Lelouch did after becoming Emperor was capture the UFN representatives. The first being dismantling the nobility and Numbers systems, which resulted in civil uprisings that were put down. Once he did that and rejected her, Kallen fully tried to kill him with her own hands to make up for her apparently horrifically misplaced trust. Like Shirley before her, it may have been an attempt at a murder-suicide, but that's just speculation.
  • Let's review why the Black Knights turned on Zero. They had just found out that (in approximately increasing order of severity):

1. 1. 1. Their leader is a Britannian (they knew he wasn't Japanese, but they didn't know that.)
      2. Their leader is a teenager.
      3. Their leader is a PRINCE of Britannia.
      4. Their leader was achieving the "results" he always bragged about with a supernatural power.
      5. Their leader was using them as pawns for goals he didn't tell them about.
      6. Their leader committed a massacre at the Geass Directorate.
      7. He used this supernatural power on allies.
      8. He used that power on people Tohdoh used to work with/for... In order to kill them.
      9. He ordered Euphemia's massacre! (They didn't know that it was an accident, they just knew that he truthfully admitted that his hubris and desire to get people to be on his side and against the Empire caused it.)

• • • They already had Britannians working for them so 1 isn't a problem. 2 isn't, either; their best pilot is even younger. Schneizel never mentions that Lelouch was a disgraced prince, so 3 fits. As Diethard points out, 4 is not only helpful but an advantage against their enemies. 5 is bad, but that never comes up. As far as they knew, he was helping them win the war. 6 never comes up in conversation. 7 and 8 are true, but they could not prove that conclusively. They just bought it because Ohgi did was Villetta told him. 9 is the only choke point.
    • Even if 6 never came up in the conversation, some Black Knights leaders involved in turning on Zero had recently found out about it. Asahina and Chiba definitely knew and were not happy about it.
    • It's beside the point. Even if he knew about it, he chose not to act on it. Frankly, I think that makes Tohdoh one of the more reasonable ones. I can only assume he either intended to question Zero directly or planned to bring it up in a meeting with the entire staff. Also, Chiba, as I have stated elsewhere, did not know. She is never told. The dead dude only told Asahina, who in turn only told Tohdoh. Chiba would have thrown a freaking fit if she knew.
• Why do people constantly try and apply Black and White morality to this show when it is supposed to be Grey and Gray Morality. Lelouch was not a great hero but a terrorist that killed dozens if not hundreds of innocent people for what he thought would help him get revenge on his father for not protecting his mother. The Britannia Empire was not completely bad or oppressive, while the military did seem pretty bad they never attacked first and only responded to terrorist attacks, and the rest of the government took strides not to hurt the Japanese people even if it would help fight the terrorist. This can best be seen when Viceroy Cornelia tried to convince local legislatures to destroy the tunnels and they refused because it would hurt the Japanese economy. While both sides had their share of Kick the Dog and Pet the Dog moments neither was completely good or bad.
  • While I agree about the morality not being stark, the Britannian Empire had a habit of taking over nations through military actions and striping them of every drop of individuality, demoting its citizens to second class (or worse), cheerfully followed a guy who claimed that all morals were mere attempts by the weak to trick the strong into playing by their rules and thus could be completely ignored, ordered pogroms of entire districts to keep their dirty laundry from being aired, and nonchalantly followed said orders when given to them. Even Cornelia, who seemed more interested in protecting/avenging her family and finding a good fight than in any real political goals, was casually racist (classist?) against anyone that wasn't Britannian, at least up until she found out about Geass. While some of them weren't quite that bad, and several of the other factions were quite nasty as well, Britannia as a whole was a cancerous blight upon their world.
    • I do not understand where the stripping cultures of their individuality argument came from, it was only said by Zero in a speech to terrorists. The Britannian settlement culture seems much closer to Japanese then Western culture like they were trying to adapt to the local setting. Also if everyone born a Number was discriminated against how come an Eleven was a high ranking knight of honor and later became viceroy of the area despite Japan only joining 7 years earlier. It seems much closer to the Japan's system where being born in a place does not make you a citizen but you can become one with full rights. The destruction of the ghetto was from the terrorists using human shields against a pursuing military; it was a dammed if you do dammed if you don’t for the military. Also Cornelia was by far the most brutal member of the family since she was the only one who went on offence. Still I do not think she was racist considering the fact she had an Eleven as her personal knight, she did not like the terrorists. Calling the empire a cancerous blight is a bit harsh
    • There's no cultural adaptation. The natives lose their former cultural identities and freedoms and become second-class citizens. And Suzaku became a Knight of the Round for the following reasons: 1) he caught Zero, 2) the Emperor liked his reasoning for turning over Lelouch, and 3) the Emperor knew he could use Suzaku. Suzaku never became viceroy btw. The ghetto never used civilians as human shields. Plus, Euphemia was the one with an Eleven knight, Suzaku; Cornelia had Guilford. Cornelia was incredibly racist towards Numbers to the point where she saw nothing of razing a Japanese civilian ghetto.
    • What evidence do you have that their culture was suppressed besides the black knight saying so. People where seen dressing in traditional japans clothing practicing customs and even apparently adapting there social ideas (have you ever seen a 17 year old western girl reacting to having to kiss somebody like they were being forced to lose their virginity). Also the knight I was referring to was not Suzaku are you forgetting that Gilford was also Japanese a knight and became viceroy, yet nobody bated an eye. I think Britannia apprehension around Suzaku was more because he was the son of a former enemy then that he was a former number. And even though Cornelia was the most brutal viceroy and like her brother considered dead civilians collateral damage, she did attempt to evacuate areas they were planning on attacking.
    • --> Guilford was Japanese? You must have been watching a different show. And the Japanese were essentially treated like second-class citizens, even Honorary Britannians. And that Cornelia did try to evacuate areas they were planning on attacking was no excuse for the atrocities she made.
    • --> Evidence that culture was not respected: 1. Euphemia was told that she couldn't pick a painting to win the contest because the artist was "one quarter Eleven." 2. Cornelia called Japanese rebels "worthless relics of a bygone age" or something along those lines. 3. The existence of the honorary Britannian system allowed colonized people advancement, but why would they have to apply for second-class citizen status just to get out of their default third-class citizen status? 4. The actions of individual Britannians, such as a. the teenagers who were mean to Suzaku because he broke their phone while saving him, b. the teenagers who beat up a Japanese vendor, c. the guy that Lelouch almost killed with Geass after he beat up a Japanese man for daring to think that Euphemia's claim that he could have equality was real, d. the obnoxious (non-caucasian) Britannian guy at the casino from the first episode of R2. 5. The emperor disrespects other cultures when he calls the Chinese Federation "a nation of lazy dullards" in the middle of a social Darwinist speech. To be fair, the Britannians did allow those outside the settlement to do what they wanted most of the time. They also did appear to try to give a Japanese group dominated by the Seven Houses of Tokyo some autonomy over the Japanese economy and politics, but that was a business deal that just further established the degree to which people without connections were excluded from running the economy and is vaguely implied to have been due to bribes that the Kyoto Group gave to Clovis' ministers.
  • To add to that, the reason for Clovis not destroying or sealing the tunnels was not because it would threaten the Japanese economy, it was because it was too expensive. Clovis wasn't willing to spend that much money to stop the terrorists, because any casualties they caused were simply not important to him. Cornelia did destroy an entire ghetto - even if there was enough time for people to get out - just to lure out Zero. And most of those people would not have anywhere else to live. And the whole execution, not only of the Shinjiku Ghetto's population, but of fellow Britannians in the Babel Tower at the start of R2.
    • Clovis did care about the casualties but it was not his choice to fill in the tunnels it was the legislators, the viceroy only appeared to be in charge of the military. Also of the incidents you mentioned one was done by pursuing terrorist that were attempting to use the people as human shields and the other was done by VV and the Geass cult not the Britannia military.
    • Nothing could be further from the truth. Clovis only cared about covering his reputation. The resistance cell was only trying to get away through the tunnels. They were not attempting to use humans as shields.
    • Clovis cared a lot of thing then his reputation, and considering what it was he did not care about it at all. Also you do not escape into or under a highly populated area if you are not planning on using the people there as shelter.
    • What it was was that he didn't want the project, Code C, getting leaked out or lost. Heck, he cared little about the Elevens to begin with. His speech was just for show, and he admitted as much in private. And the resistance fighters had no other escape path.
  • It's more Black and Grey Morality. Britannia is quite obviously really, really bad, with the Numbers getting most of the suffering. Lelouch himself tried for the perfect "no ally or civilian casualties" solutions, though with a tendency towards flash and explosions, and those people who die as a result are because of things outside his control - like Diethard having Kallen kill Suzaku, Tamaki being far too trigger happy for his own good, C.C.'s brute force insertion of Babel Tower, Schneizel authorising an anti-city weapon in his own city, or simply not expecting people to be there. Though the novelisations' take on that is that Shirley's father was one of the scientists working on C.C., which is a logical interpretation of the events of the series, so the only major incident of civilians dying as a result of Lelouch is where Euphemia is driven insane and Lelouch and Suzaku follow behind her. Which was unexpected, but a likely outcome of his intended action. Of course, many could argue that makes Lelouch "White", but he does murder several JLF officers because he thinks they're completely useless. Which they do seem to be, but that's not the point.
    • What show were you watching, it was the Britannians who tried to minimalis casualties by evacuating people from areas where they thought battles were going to take place. Lelouch did not really care who died as long as it furthered his goal. This is best illustrated at the battle of mount Narita but he had Kallen detonate the VARIS which caused a giant landslide that killed not only enemy soldiers but also his JLF allies and countless Innocent Bystanders who were in nearby towns one of which was Shirley father (who was a geologist working for a mining company). He wagged several other battles in heavily populated areas.
    • Incorrect. Britannia is no more concerned about getting civilians out of areas likely to be affected. In the case of Narita, Lelouch underestimated the landslide's effect. He had no intention of causing that much damage.
    • Thank you, above poster. I just watched the part where Lulu is conflicted about causing Shirley's father's death, and it irked me that he was conflicted at all. Even though Shirley's father never hit her, he joined the Britannian military, which has been proven evil, so that makes him an accomplice to the evil Lelouch is fighting.
    • He wasn't in the army in the anime as I recall. He was a geographer or some such; at the very least, it was a civilian job.
    • Regardless of whether he was a civilian or not, there is a difference between collateral damage and purposefully killing someone. The whole Shirley's dad situation forces Lelouch to face (and come to terms with) the fact that he will occasionally have to kill people that didn't completely deserve it or where completely innocent if he wants to engage in an all out war.
• Was anyone else disappointed by the Knightmare Frame designs as the series went on? Something that always bothers me about mecha anime is that these incredibly advanced, nigh-unbeatable machines are always over designed, with unnecessary fins and frill (not to mention bizarre color schemes). Which is why I was delighted when I started watching Code Geass and saw the likes of the Glasgow and the Sutherland, which were distinctly utilitarian and militaristic. But then starting with the Lancelot, and particularly during R2, the designers just threw all sense out the window.
• Why do people keep saying that Shirley was Mind Raped by Mao? When he met her she was already mentally broken having found out that the terrorist who had killed her father was the boy she had a crush on and then panicking and shooting a knight of honor. From there dialog it was pretty clear that she had already decided to kill Lelouch and then herself. While Mao certainly did not help her and gave her a push to go through with her plan, he certainly did not Mind Rape her. I am not saying that he is not capable of mind raping people as he was shown doing it to Suzaku a few episodes later, he just did not have to do it to Shirley. This is especially ironic considering the fact Lelouch did use his geass to mind rape Shirley later that episode.
  • Because Mao did mind rape her. She wasn't dead set on killing him. She arguably wouldn't even have done it, considering she still hadn't accepted shooting Villetta. What he did is classic mind rape, dragging all the skeletons out her closet to haunt her with. There's no other way to describe it.
  • Also, Lelouch Mind Rapes Shirley?! What gave anyone that idea? All he did to her was apply Laser-Guided Amnesia and there's no evidence that her mind was any more broken for it....
  • He did mind rape her and for the rest of the season she was seen struggling with her memory loss and trying to find out what caused it. When Zero and the black knights appeared in the season final she attempted to attack him and wanted to know what he did to her mind. Sounds like Mind Rape to me.
    • Come to think of it... this may be a minor detail but when Shirley is first being threatened by Mao why does she just let him Mind Rape her? Yes, she was going through a hard time, and yes, it's implied she's not too bright; but if a scary-looking punk kid who's at least your age and clearly bigger than you (and possibly stronger) comes up and tries to have a conversation with you your first impulse should be to do anything you can to get away. You don't listen to them, you don't take anything from them.... That's just basic self-defense skills that are even taught to children. Shirley wasn't backed up against a wall, or trapped in a dark alleyway; she was in a wide courtyard, in a presumably more-or-less public place, in broad daylight. So why didn't she do anything to try to get away from Mao or alert someone else? Regardless of whether he was actually determined enough to chase after her she would still stand a chance of getting away. Anyone have any ideas?
    • She did not run and listened to him because she was that mentally defeated after what had happened and she was glad that some one offered her understanding and agreed with what she was thinking, while Mao did give her a push she was already defeated and wanted to avenge her father, Mao offered to help her achieve her goals and she took him up on it.
    • Shirley was too much of a pacifist to actually kill Lelouch, and was quite confused during her time at Narita. While your point that Mao only pushed her still stands, it has to be kept in mind that taking advantage of her broken mind to goad her into killing someone she cares about while calling her evil for what basically amounts to shooting one person and a bit of thoughtcrime regarding Lelouch pretty much fits the definition of Mind Rape. Lelouch, meanwhile, is a better candidate for Shoot the Dog in this case, since it helped her calm down and live normally for a while. At least, until people pointing out her "fight" with Lulu (which didn't fit into her memories), combined with her finding that diary page, caused her to want to ask questions near the end of the series. Also note that she doesn't do anything like turn Lelouch in, and actually figured she was safe and that Lelouch wouldn't hurt the Student Council if they all stayed calm and obeyed the Black Knights during the takeover of Ashford during the Black Rebellion.
• In episode 4 of season 1, during Suzaku's rescue, we get a view of Diethard's van, which has about ten cameras trained on Zero including close-ups. Despite this, Zero is able to open the slot in his mask and Geass Jeremiah, and nobody notices this piece of evidence later, not even Jeremiah himself when he is investigating the cause of his betrayal and memory loss.
• Anyone else gets the creeps by Lelouch's "trade" with Genbu is sound episode .533?
  • I doubt he was trading his body. All Genbu wanted from Nunnally was some solid shield to stop Britannia invading. We never find out exactly what Lelouch offers. If anything, I find attempting to marry Nunnnally morally repugnant, and should have blown his chances for re-election completely.
    • According to side-information, what he traded was information on the Glasgow.
• Lelouch has 10 older brothers (as 11th prince) and 2 older sisters, yet he is 17th in line for the throne. Who else aside from his siblings would be in line before him?
  • Younger sisters, for starters (Carine, fifth princess, was only Nunnally's age). There's probably other family members we don't hear about.
    • But why would younger siblings be AHEAD of Lelouch in line for the throne? Sholdn't Nunally and Corrine be considered, like, 18th and 19th in line?
    • Actually Nunnally is 87th in line for the throne, it was stated in R2 episode 7.
    • The wives are also ranked (Marianne was fifth), so even younger heirs from higher-placed wives would have a higher spot.
  • There's really no real-world system that fits, no. The best idea is that wives themselves count as possible heirs. Which is absurd, and no monarchy would agree to it, unless the eldest prince is too young to ascend, and only until the prince is old enough.
    • Supposedly, the Britannian system is based upon the Japanese imperial system from a few centuries ago, when the Emperor would take several wives and concubines, have children by them, and have the children ordered according to age and preference. The heirs were known to marry each other as a way to strengthen inter-clan alliances. The Turkish Ottoman system was likely another influence of the Code Geass one, where the Sultan would have numerous children by wives and concubines, have them take over provinces as governors/viceroys, and then let them duke it out for the throne once the old king is dead^[1] (or before then). Likely, it's a mix of both systems with a bit of the British system thrown in. Taking all this into account, it's likely that Lelouch is 11th Prince (and Nunnally 11th Princess) due to the warring factors of his and his mother's brilliance and favour with The Emperor, at odds with his mother's commoner heritage. Also keep in mind that Lelouch is 11th Prince, but it's likely that Cornelia, Guinevere, Euphie, and other Princesses are included in the order after each prince (Odysseus, followed by Guinevere, then Scheizel, then Cornelia, then Clovis, then Euphie, then Carine, etc... then Lelouch somewhere down the line). At one point in a sound episode, a brother by the name of Oscar is mentioned offhand by Schneizel as a possible viceroy for Area 11 before Clovis volunteers. Nunnally could be 87th in line for the throne due to the fact that she is considered useless due to her blindness and paralysis, having been bumped down the list after being reinstated (or being there all along, since she was seven when she was cast out and not particularly useful to Chuck). Lelouch, likewise, would be higher than some of his older siblings due to his genius, but lower than others, hence 17th in line whilst there were 21 princes and princesses ahead of him. Carine likely got so high due to her sheer bloodlust - a valued trait in a racist militaristic empire. Euphie probably got by based on being Cornelia's sister, which is probably why Nunnally was 11th princess to Lulu's prince. The number a royal heir is attached to doesn't always match up with their designated place in the line of succession, it would seem.
    • The one problem there is that "their number" is supposed to be their birth order, like it is in Britain. For example, Schneizel is the second prince because he is the second born son. Odysseus is First, because he is eldest. He might be much lower in succession, but he is still "First Prince". Euphemia is Third Princess. Nunnally is only a year younger, so she must be fourth - possibly sixth, after Carine, but that's pushing it. Being Eleventh would require some odd mass impregnation. Not that the gap between Clovis and Lelouch isn't odd, but it's still only one son per year. None of the first, second or third prince/princess sets share mothers, either.
    • There's nothing odd about it at all. Emperor Charles has one hundred and eight wives. It's easily possible that seven more girls would be born in between Euphemia and Nunnally.
  • With regards to Carine being 'ahead of Lelouch' despite being younger: do we actually know she was fifth prince at the time of Marianne's assassination? Because if not, it's entirely plausible that she WAS behind Lelouch (and Nunnally if she's slightly younger), but that Marianne is far from the most recent member of the Britannian royal family to have left the stage in a rather bloody manner (or perhaps, if you want to be kinder, those others were just disinherited). And Nunnally's low ranking when she returns to become viceroy may be because she was formally disinherited along with her brother before, knocking her right down to the bottom of the pack upon her reinstatement. That's assuming the numbering system is strictly by birth, and doesn't have other elements mixed in, as was suggested above.
• Does it bother anyone else that all the conflicts and problems dealt with on the show (except for the Ragnarok Connection) are either the direct or indirect results of actions taken by two young boys who meet up together 7 years later and cause more problems.
  • God yes. I tried to watch this show, having been told to expect Death Note with Gundams. What I got was two brats taking out their Wangst on each other and everything/everyone around them. Get a therapist, you two.
  • Except for the part where everything that happens is because of the Ragnarok Connection, making the events of the series the direct or indirect results of actions taken by two fraternal twins (one of which takes an immortality Code) in an effort to kill God over the death of their mother. Really, give some credit where it's due.
• When Lelouch faced down Mao with his first videotape ploy, something hit me in hindsight. No disrespect, the plan was awfully nice and everything, you know, besides Mao surviving. Why on earth couldn't he just have employed the services of a sniper? 500 metres is by no means an impossible shot, and it's not beyond Lelouch's means to requisition a character with the skills for the job. To be fair, finding a professional sniper may be difficult, but it is no less unwieldy to Geass a platoon's worth of regular police officers to shoot him up close either, not to mention the whole videotape thing.
  • Because that wouldn't be nearly as extravagant. It doesn't fit Lelouch's M.O. Also, from the out-of-universe end, it's not nearly as cool.
    • Yes, the sniper would be very anti-climactic. Then again, if you take a look at Cornelia's gun, they may not actually have sniper rifles with that kind of range, or there wasn't any tall enough buildings that weren't public access, etc.
    • Also, now that I think of it, it's a lot harder to get a trained military/SWAT sharpshooter than a couple dozen average cops from a few precincts in the city. Those guys have much better security, after all.
• Why does everybody blame Ohgi and Schneizel for the Black Knight's defection? While it is true learning about Lelouch's past and Geass ability was the straw that broke the camel's back, the coup had been being planed by the Four Holy Swords, specifically Asahina and Chiba, since the massacre of the Geass order and he replaced the previous high command with the Pureblood commander and an unknown Britanian. While the reveal of his identity and powers did probably help with some like Diethard and Tohdoh all the stuff he did leading up to it had probably already sealed his fate.
  • There are a number of reasons. First and foremost, Schneizel's claims have virtually zero real evidence behind them. He couldn't prove half of his claims, even if on a base level they were true. The thing is, Ohgi came in, having bought Villetta's story on no evidence at all, and started verifying everything like a damn moron. He's in even less of a position to know for sure, and he's playing Schneizel's game like he has half an idea what he's talking about. Villetta said jump and he did, it's that simple. As for your claim of a coup in progress, that's just nonsense. They may not have trusted him, and Asahina outright betrayed him (and got nuked for it, not that he would have survived against Rolo anyway), but they weren't planning any coup. Chiba especially, who heard nothing about the massacre. Jeremiah and the others were also in no position of power, just trust, which as Rolo notes is the more important thing to Zero. Finally, Diethard was never won over. He was forced into playing along because he couldn't salvage the situation in the face of their irrational behavior. Tohdoh didn't even bring up the cult massacre.
    • Schneizel actually did have proof, he had a recording of Lelouch talking about his powers and admitting what he did to Euphey. Also we don't know exactly Villetta told and showed Ohgi, however she did have recordings of him using his power and talking about it from when she was working with him in the Britannia secret base at school. It also filled in holes about strange behavior people seemed to have around him like why the spearhead of the empire Viceroy Gilford suddenly turned on them, and why the senior commanders of the JLF suddenly decided to commit suicide before they joined Lelouch. Also Rolo and Orange did apparently outrank the swords in the black knights as Rolo overrode an order of theirs to a soldier after the massacre. Also it was pretty clear that the pilot who transmitted the information to Asahina was also broadcasting to her. Tohdoh was seen think about it and what Assahina had said before the meeting but the killing of his top soldiers probably did factor more into it. Finally Diethard did stay loyal because he had suspect that Zero was lying and being underhanded since he blew up General Katase but for some reason he was the one they put all the blame for the coup on.
    • Schneizel didn't have proof Geass existed aside from that recording, and the recording did not go into detail about it. Lelouch being a prince is entirely word of mouth. Villetta didn't have a shred of proof, unless she had a file cabinet in those fishnet stockings of hers. Ohgi believed her on her word alone, which makes him an idiot. The other files were nothing but sensible guesswork (inaccurate sensible guesswork I might add, as they didn't know the truth behind the JLF deaths for starters). The pilot who gave Asahina that data gave it to Asahina alone. Chiba was completely uninvolved. It's a complete fabrication to claim otherwise. Finally, no one pinned the blame on Diethard. Ohgi got the blame because he led the charge. You asked why people blame Ohgi? It's because without him Schneizel's bogus claims would not have moved the Black Knights an inch. Ohgi came in, whipped from the moment he laid eyes on Villetta, and single-handedly made everyone believe Schneizel's unreasonable claims. Without him, it would have never happened.
    • Not to mention that Villetta watching over Lelouch should cast an unfavorable light over her, since she held him back from helping the Black Knights until he blackmailed her. On top of that, she might have known about Lelouch's once per person limitation on his Geass. Which makes her incredibly untrustworthy.
    • I should point out that Asahina sent the data to Tohdoh and Chiba's Knightmares, and after Zero vanishing during both battles for Tokyo, though in the second case it was because he was being tag teamed by two Knights of Round and four elite pilots until Kallen saved him. Schneizel also said that there was a recording of Zero knowing about the FLEIJA, which while true, was an absurd claim as no weapon of that power had ever been used before, and the idea that it would authorised to be used in an ally city was a level of heartlessness that exceeds anything done in the series before that. Oh, and he didn't have the latter recording, nor did he have Suzaku verify, as that would result in Suzaku admitting that the next part of the former recording was realising that Lelouch DIDN'T do it. And Lelouch's voice is different to Zero's, so they shouldn't have been able to know whether or not it was a fake. And the recording that Schneizel gave said nothing about what Lelouch's powers did, only that he used them. And Schneizel's dossiers of people Lelouch used Geass on was surprisingly accurate, but either stolen from the Emperor, or magically summoned. Either way, the information bared research to validate it, but they certainly shouldn't have tried to execute him so quickly - especially not without input from their other two bosses, Kaguya and Xingke.
    • Lelouch didn't even believe Suzaku at that moment, though, because of the perceived betrayal.
    • There's nothing showing that Chiba got the data, just Tohdoh, and he never brings it up. Zero doesn't vanish, either. The whole time he's calling for help because people keep pinning him down and backup never comes (or Tamaki comes, which is just as useless).
• For R2 Episode 21, just how did Nunnally's being blind and cripple happen, exactly? Marianne was shot during the night, and V.V. calls his buddies to set it up so that Nunnally's the 'witness' to the 'terrorist attack', but it's not like they can reanimate Marianne's dead corpse so that this happens somewhat genuinely (what with Marianne on top of Nunnally as if shielding her and all), and if they drag Nunnally to the scene to play the 'witness' she's obviously gonna know something's up. Charles isn't aware at that point that his wife got attacked by V.V. so he wouldn't use the mindwipe on Nunnally to make everything fit. With all that in mind, here's what I think might have gone down: after V.V. shoots Marianne, to set Nunnally up as a witness, they just let her stumble on the scene of her mom on the stairs during the morning. I'm guessing Nunnally tries to pick Marianne up as best as she can at this point, when the windows get shot through (conveniently moving in a straight path across the steps rather than up and down, since the guards are already dead), leaving her cripple with Marianne lying on top of her. Then Lelouch runs in a second too late, sees the aftermath, and doesn't know what the hell. Fast forward to the hospital. Charles comes to visit Nunnally, and she tells him that she found Marianne dead already before anything. Charles figures V.V. had a hand in it, then he rewrites Nunna's memory to make her think she was with her mother during the 'terrorist attack', ensuring that V.V. doesn't know that Charles knows that V.V. killed Marianne. and oh yeah, Lelouch comes to visit Nunnally later.
  • This troper always figured that it never happened during the day. When V.V. told him that Marianne was dead (you can't hide that for long), Charles went in and edited a bunch of memories to make up the daytime scene out of scratch. Later on (or earlier), Marianne contacted him and told him what was up.
  • Actually, V.V. acted like he'd just "heard" about it later, so he couldn't have told Charles in the first place. This troper figured someone else (the guards, perhaps) heard the commotion, went inside, and went for the Emperor. Charles then took Nunnally and Lelouch and rewrote their memories so that they believed they'd watched their mother die. He also rewrote the guards' memories, and possibly Cornelia's.
  • It went down like so. First, V.V. arranges the meeting with Marianne. Only two guards show up because Marianne sent the rest away and these stragglers didn't pay attention. V.V.'s very existence is a secret, after all. It's the middle of the night, so no one was around to hear him gun them down, except Anya. V.V. then arranged for Nunnally to be brought in, stuffed under her mother's dying body, then woken up rather violently by having her legs shot to hell in the crossfire. This was what he meant by "have Nunnally be the witness." As far as she knows, she was asleep in her mother's arms when everything went crazy. The fuckload of bullets used were also loud enough to start attracting attention. Lelouch and everyone else shows up, sees the faked scene, and V.V.'s complicity in the act is supposedly erased. But it's not, because Marianne took Anya as a Soul Jar and told Charles. Now recognizing V.V.'s obsession, Charles rewrites Nunnally's memories to make her blind and probably remove any inconsistencies in the murder setup (or just any memories of the murder scene, other than the knowledge of it happening). No need with Lelouch, he saw what he was supposed to. Same with the guards. Then they're sent off to Japan just so V.V. won't get any bright ideas.
    • Actually, Charles also erases their memories of Anya, and Anya's memories of them, since Marianne doesn't seem able to take permanent control. Of course, that results in large parts of Anya's memories vanishing as an unintended side-effect. Hence why Lelouch has no idea of how or why Anya has a photo of him.
• Why did Marianne and Charles blind and cripple Nunnally in the first place? Why didn't they just change their memory?
  • They blinded her as a believable way to deflect suspicion from V.V. that she might have seen through the act. A blind girl isn't going to be deciphering weird details from the murder.
    • One of the novels apparently suggests that it was to make her Living Lie Detector abilities more effective by forcing her to rely on and strengthen her other senses.
    • On the other hand, it may not have been expected. Anya's memory loss seems a lot worse than they may have intended, as well.
  • Also, they probably counted on Lelouch's over-protective nature towards her, which for all we know is likely to have been there from the start, making him keep close to Nunnally instead of wandering off to the momeland to figure out what's up.
• For the Nunnally Hostage episode, why the heck did Lelouch not just use C.C. in the first place? Why go through all the mind wiping stuff? Also, why didn't Suzaku think it slightly odd that Lelouch's sister was taken hostage by an insane, mind-reading man?
  • Because then the entire episode would be spent with Lelouch explaining to Suzaku just WHY he sent a green-haired chick (who has just as little a connection to them as Mao) off to fight what is essentially his battle. As strange as it would be for Nunnally to be taken hostage by an insane mind-reading man, it's not as if Suzaku is actually informed of it. All he knows is that Mao's a psychopath (and it's not like C.C. knows how to play chess...).
    • You are both forgetting that C.C. was in China at the time. She came back by the end of the episode. But Lelouch didn't know that.
    • Actually, C.C. didn't go to China. She apparently realised that Mao was around and made her way back to confront him, and since Lelouch didn't know, Mao couldn't stop her. I don't think she expected Lelouch to beat Mao, and it was pure luck that he did - and either way, Mao nearly escaped.
• How come nobody realized that Lelouch and Nunnally Lamperouge looked exactly like and were the same age as a prince and princess who had disappeared during the war. They did not even change their first names yet nobody put the pieces together.
  • Lelouch mentions the Ashfords "sheltering" them. Presumably, they were kept away from other people for a few years. (That would be a really lonely few years, to just have each other and Milly for company.) Probably until they started high school.
    • Actually, according to the Sound Dramas, Lelouch and Nunnally don't go to Ashford for several years after the invasion - Lelouch is said to be in mid-puberty, and Japan is conquered when Lelouch is 10.
  • Euphemia does recognize Lelouch and Nunally as soon as she lays eyes on them. As for why nobody else does, Lelouch seems to have been a minor prince, and considering how many kids Charles would be able to have with 108 concubines, it's doubtful anybody knows them all by sight. It's worth noting that early in the series, Euphie is able to travel incognito without too much trouble despite being a far more important person than Lelouch; given that, it's reasonable to assume most people simply don't know what those dead kids looked like.
    • Actually, Euphemia doesn't recognise Lelouch when she lays her eyes on him, she's long suspected his identity, and his hair and eye colour only confirm it. Lelouch!Alive + Brown haired blind girl in wheelchair = high chances of Nunnally. Euphemia did have to ask before she was sure in the latter case.
  • In the dub version Nunnally says that she is 87th in line to the throne. No one's going to remember 87th anything, trust me.
    • True. The only characters who get recognized are Clovis (3rd prince and Viceroy of Area 11), Schneizel (Prime Minister, genius strategist, and 2nd Prince), Odysseus (1st Prince so Heir Apparent), Cornelia (2nd Princess, practically general of the army, and new Viceroy of Area 11), and when Euphemia gets recognized before becoming Sub Viceroy she is only recognized by Lloyd (a nobleman) and the Pureblood Faction (all made up of extreme purists, knights, and nobility).
    • It seems that Lelouch and Nunnally were major enough to warrant their rather high status (out of 108 consorts and their children, 11th Prince and Princess is still pretty damn high, even if they're only 17th and 87th in the actual succession. Keep in mind that this is what Nunnally says after she's reinstated, no word on her position before she was exiled). That being said, 11th Prince is still pretty low when compared to Schneizel or Cornelia. Odds are, they were at the mid-level of importance: They won't be recognized on sight after seven years, but Lelouch's name and status is enough to get him recognized when he seizes the throne, and informs Jeremiah of who he is in R2. Also keep in mind that not too many people have actually seen what Lulu and Nunna looked like as kids. The student council would have no pictures to compare with, and the only painting of the two and Marianne that was shown was part of Clovis' private collection, rather than at his memorial museum. It wasn't until Anya showed up with her picture in R2 that there was any photographic evidence in front of Lelouch that showed his resemblance to the dead Prince. Besides, while the anime showed Lelouch as changing little, in reality his appearance probably matured more than we realize: the anime simply can't show it. The same reasoning explains why Mao and Nina both seem to look strange compared to the other characters, and why Kallen could pass for two nationalities: the anime's visual constraints don't do the characters' appearances justice.
• How does everyone know how to pilot Humongous Mecha? It's shown to all be hand controls, and the level of movement they're getting out of those things is pretty astounding. Shouldn't they be pretty much just falling over the first time they get in?
  • This is a genre quirk. Everybody knows that the control systems for Humongous Mecha are ridiculous. The closest you can get to plausibility is Macross Frontier's slave system, and even that is kind of a wash. As Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann points out, mecha work by "moving these handles - and it goes!". As to your other question, Lelouch is a trained pilot. He learned by using his mom's old mecha to make pizzas at school festivals.
  • I don't know if video games/computer games exist in-universe, but if they did, it wouldn't be surprising if they centered around Humongous Mecha (and pizza-making).
  • It's mentioned that Suzaku, at least, had done practice runs on Knightmare simulators before being put in the Lancelot.
    • That wouldn't work, for the same reason that playing a Flight Sim very well doesn't make you able to fly a plane.
    • Um... is someone gonna tell this guy about modern flight schools? 'cause...
    • Flight schools don't train people using commercial video games.
    • And OBVIOUSLY, Suzaku would have been trained using a military simulator, since he IS a soldier, and it's not completely impossible for it to be part of basic training.
  • Also, I just assumed that most of the Britannian Royalty are trained to pilot Humongous Mecha (though not necessarily fight) as sort of training and to look good in Chuck's eyes. Even Euphie knew how to pilot one of those things.
  • Lloyd actually tossed a manual to Suzaku...who read the 1000 page beast in a couple of hours and comprehended it all. Super technology: Inputting knowledge straight into your brain!
    • That's somewhat odd considering how Book Dumb he is. Then again, in one of the audio dramas, he's able to drive a car just by playing video games.
    • It might be just barely plausible that Suzaku could know how to pilot one but it beggars belief to claim that a school girl turned terrorist would have the slightest idea how to use them. Equally puzzling is how the heck Ohgi's group managed to actually get a Knightmare in the first place, according to one of the members they could barely get a bike before Lelouch took over.
    • Ohgi's cell was supplied by Kyoto, same as most terrorist groups. The guy was generalizing. It's far more plausible for Kallen, who's cell is being supplied with weapons, to be taught to pilot a Knightmare than Suzaku, who outright cannot do so, to be given the same training.
    • The majority of their weapons are ineffectual rocket launchers. This opens up the even bigger question of why Kallen was still with Ohgi's group if Kirihara's organization had given her any training.
    • Kirihara's organization supplied terrorist groups. It was not a terrorist group itself. There's no reason for her to join them when they aren't actually doing any fighting. Her group got the short end of the stick as far as supplies went, but it's still something.
    • Plus they apparently had the Glasgow for a while. She could have just learnt via trial and error.
• The Opening Monologue makes a big deal about how the Britannian Empire has suppressed all Japanese culture. Why, then, is the school system so very like the Japanese school system and not at all like the British system?
  • This is fairly common, since the Writer and director don't know American or British culture than they just use Japanese culture and combine it with the British culture of the 1800's. Outlaw Star and Gundam Wing did this as well
  • For the same reason everyone speaks in Japanese instead of English.
    • But they don't speak Japanese. They speak English which is presented as Japanese.
    • That doesn't explain the accents.
  • It was mentioned at one point that the Ashford Academy is a liberal school, implying that it is not like a typical Britannian school. Considering that Grandpa Ashford is a dissident who has fallen from grace in Britannian society, it does not seem unlikely that he would experiment with a different educational system, even with that of a recently subjugated colony. What bugged this troper more is the fact that an elitist dictatorship even allows a political outcast to run an elite educational institution.
    • Capitalism. Plus, they don't expect Barons or Dukes to run schools - they only expect to send their children to schools where said nobles send their children. Plus, many of the students weren't nobles themselves - Nina and Shirley clearly aren't, and Rivalz is on the outs with his noble parents.
• Can anyone explain Suzaku's thought process? Even when he's explicitly ordered to kill unresisting people, and he's well aware the military he's in has killed thousands of civilians, he maintains an "it will all be fine as long as I remain a spineless wimp" attitude. However, he gets furious at Zero for killing soldiers, and it mostly seems like he's objecting to Zero's panache and showmanship. Is a blase attitude towards genocide simply a part of the Japanese mindset, so much so that no one would even think about it?
  • He seems to believe that his intent to change the system from within justifies any actions he takes as part of that system.
  • Three words: Chronic Backstabbing Disorder. Both Bismarck and Kanon commented that he is someone who constantly betray to go up in ranks.
    • Which isn't true, but it does seem that way. Suzaku was more loyal to Lelouch from the start, and he becomes a Round, not out of treachery, but out of revenge for Euphemia's murder, and his apparent betrayal of the Japanese is an unfortunate misunderstanding that Lelouch accidentally sets in motion.
  • It could be a simple case of cognitive dissonance. Mao pointed out that most of Suzaku's ideals are the cause of him trying to retroactively justify murdering his father to save Japan from total annihilation. Though it's true that the subsequent surrender saved Japan's infrastructure and possibly hundreds of lives from being nuked by Britannia, the means he used to were so abhorrent to him that he tries to absolve himself of the guilt by claiming that the means are as important as the end result. Unfortunately, Mao also pointed out that he has an unconscious desire to be punished for the murder which manifests itself as a death wish. Piloting the Lancelot as he does (charging straight into battle and willing to die to take Zero with him) is possibly the most dangerous thing he could do short of running around with knives. Let alone change the system, Suzaku has enough problems living with himself, which is why he's a very tragic character to this Troper...at least until R2 came around.
  • Well, Suzaku seems to take the stance that rebelling against the government is just plain wrong. With that stance, the only real way to enact change is to change the government from within by joining it and getting high enough in it to make those changes. Of course, given that in the case of Britannia that pretty much means becoming emperor, that's more or less impossible, but Suzaku seems to believe that he can enact positive changes by working from within. He certainly manages to move up to a fairly high place in the government, so he's able to do something at least. In any case, because he takes the stance that rebelling against the government is wrong, that basically means that everything Lelouch does against the government is wrong pretty much regardless. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that everything that the government does is right (after all, he is looking to change it) and he definitely isn't happy about it at times (like when he's ordered to kill the JLF soldiers unconditionally in episode 13 of R1), but for the most part, he does what he's told - probably because that's the only way to get high enough up to enact real changes. However, the farther along we get into Code Geass and the more angry he gets about what Lelouch/Zero is up to, the less rational he seems to become. And of course, the less rational he is, the more likely it is for his reasons for doing what he's doing to conflict with what he's actually doing. His anger at Lelouch for Euphemia's death in particular seems to make him act irrationally - and thus less likely to follow any sane train of thought. Really, Suzaku's basic premise seems to be that it's wrong to rebel against the government, so you have to work within the government and do what you can to change it (even if that means some dirty work - though at times he seems to think that dirty work is at least somewhat justified by the fact that it's the government doing it). However, as the series moves along, his thought process seems to become less rational due to his anger. In the end, I think that the basic idea of what he's up to is at least fairly clear but that his anger leads him to act less rationally and thus follow his basic principles less well as the series progresses.
  • Also, from the standpoint of deaths, most deaths which occur in Code Geass occur because the rebels, well, rebel, and the Britannians stop them. If the rebels weren't rebelling, then the Britannians wouldn't have to fight them and you wouldn't have so many people dying. As such, Suzaku could work within the government to enact change without having to kill people. The fact that Lelouch and his compatriots are fighting the Britannians is what is resulting in so many deaths. So, from Suzaku's point of view, the rebels are just making things worse and they need to be stopped. If they didn't fight, he wouldn't have to either. So, you could argue that Suzaku thinks that everything is the rebels' fault and that he has to do whatever he can to stop them. And since they're rebelling - and thus breaking the law - he feels totally justified in fighting them. Of course, the more powerful and extreme Zero and the Black Knights become, the more powerful and extreme he has to be to stop them, so it just gets worse, but there's nothing that he can really do about that except either give up and join them (which is sort of what he did by joining up with Lelouch in the end, though since Lelouch became emperor and no longer a rebel, it's not quite the same...) or defeat them (which is what he's pretty much always trying to do).
    • The funny thing about that is that it's because of the rebellion that Suzaku is able to rise in the ranks. An "Eleven" could never get as high as he did if he wasn't so valuable fighting against a threat to the Empire as great as Zero and his Black Knights.
    • On top of that, when left to their own devices, the Britannians would unconditionally turn a blind eye to injustices committed against Numbers, no matter how heinous. The Social Darwinistic nature of the empire actually made any abuse towards them legal.
  • Simple. Suzaku is mostly a fairly ordinary Knight Templar. He believes that the law is absolute and the established order is paramount. But he's somewhat more sympathetic and less unfeeling and cold than the average crusader type.
  • At least in the conclusion of the first season, and through the whole of R2, Suzaku opposes Lelouch/Zero because he is of the rather unorthodox opinion that using psychic powers to violate the wills and minds of other human beings is a bad thing. Some people just don't have the stomach for human slavery, I guess.
    • Don't be sarcastic. At first, Lelouch is unwilling to go so far as human slavery - at least without mercy-killing them when he's done. It takes a lot of people he cares for dying before he loses enough morals to do that.
    • Or rather, him being so far gone after the betrayal that he's looking to end his life that it no longer makes any real difference.
• During Lelouch's second chess match with Mao, Mao has it set up so that if the scale tips fully to Lelouch's side (because of the chess pieces he captures), the bomb over Nunnally will be disarmed. Why the heck doesn't Lelouch just physically push down his side of the scale to disarm the bomb, then punch Mao in the face? For someone who's killed countless people, cheating at a chess game would be something he'd do. Even if he doesn't start off with that, why wouldn't he do it at the end of the game when Mao wins and throws the last chess piece on his own side (to set off the bomb)?
  • Who's to say that Mao didn't have the scales rigged to explode even if Lelouch won anyway?
  • Come to think of it, how on earth did Mao set that bomb up on his own? It's ridiculously heavy and extremely unstable. I mean, it explodes if you mess up it's swinging. How could he possibly have gotten it up there?
    • He probably used his telepathy to learn it from a demolitions expert.
    • It's not so much how he learned, as how he managed to actually set it up. Unless he has a crane hidden away someplace, he couldn't hoist a 1000 pound bomb (let alone a super-unstable one) up to where he did.
    • This is the same guy who has a chainsaw and (if you wanna believe he knows what he's talking about) a house in Australia and so he's demonstrated a remarkable ability to pull things out of his ass for the sake of teh dramaz.
    • Also, punch Mao? This is Lelouch we're talking about here. He can't even land a punch on Mao after the latter is weakened and disoriented not five minutes later.
    • Still, it's not as if it's physically impossible or something.
  • Mao would simply see that Lelouch was planning on messing with the scale and beat him to the punch...and if you think Lelouch would cheat like that, then you really misunderstand his character.
  • Let's not forget that Mao had a gun, and Lelouch didn't.
• Where did we get the spelling "C.C."? I ask merely for curiosity.
  • It is from an arcane source known only as "the credits".
  • Even without going to the credits, I think in episode two or three (whichever C.C started living with Lelouch) Nunnaly says something like "What a strange, C.C. only going by her initals," even though she says C2 (C^2 ?), too...
• Here's a question that anyone who wears contact lenses will be able to answer: how long did it take you to learn how to put in and take out a contact lens in as much time as it takes Lelouch in R2?
  • It's Awesomeness By Analysis. Don't ask.
  • While us normal folk have to take time to hold our eyelids open and try to grab at our lenses, Lelouch has the luxury of having GIANT ANIME EYES, so he doesn't have these problems.
  • Another thing that bugged me was where does his lens go when he removes it (in a truly dramatic fashion)? Come think of it, I've never seen it after CC initially gave it to him...
    • Doesn't he just balance them on his finger while going about his order?
  • Here's an idea: we've seen him Geass Shirley twice, the second time after the initial Geass was neutralized (you can see the rim around her irises; it took effect, she just couldn't act on it), he could've had Jeremiah un-Geass him then Geassed himself to "be overly dramatic with everything you do regarding your contact lenses".
    • Hey. Lelouch prefers to use skill more than Geass whenever possible. He'd prefer to train for hours to perfect it, rather than rely on Geass.
• Where exactly did Lelouch get the Zero costume? It has an ornate helmet with an automatic mechanism which opens up for the left eye, meaning it's not exactly something he bought from a shop. He procured it less than a week after he got the Geass. How exactly is he keeping it clean, since his maid has never seen it?
  • It's shown explicitly that he Geassed someone to custom-make it for him, and then forget about making it/destroy all evidence it was made. Presumably he cleans it himself or CC does it. Episode 4: His Name is Zero. It was right before he made his debut as Zero.
    • OHHH, so that's what that man was designing...I thought Lelouch acquired the Guren from that guy
    • Actually, I do completely get the point, but I thought that's the guy he got the big mobile base from.
• If Britannia is the unholy union between U.K and America why is there nobody wearing a cowboy hat and a monocle, we occasionally see someone bust out the monocle but never with a cowboy hat.
  • If this troper remembers correctly, Britannia settled the U.S, but there was no revolution, meaning that it essentially got annexed into the Britannian Empire when Britannia decided to try to take over the world!
    • According to the official backstory, American Revolution never got off the ground because the British monarchy bribed Benjamen Franklin. When, later, Britannia got into a war with Europe and lost, the government fled to America and conquered it.
    • Bribed Benjamen Franklin? I think you mean: Geassed Benjamin Franklin.
    • No, he means bribed. There's no indication they had Geass way back then.
    • acctualy geass did exist back then, how old is c.c.? what about the immortal nun (who lived long nuf to go batshit insane)? geass may not have been controlled by britannia, but it existed.
    • The real Benjamin Franklin was an uber-patriot. Unless his Geass-Verse personality was completely different it makes much more sense to assume that the bribe was a lie to hide the existance of Geass. As the discusison on the Napoleonic Wars on this page mentions the implication in Geass being 'The power of the king' is that many important people have had it and that most of the divergences from the real world were caused by it.
    • Always possible, I'll admit, but it's a common saying that every man has his price. Maybe Britannia just isn't as cheap.
    • Money isn't the only way to bribe people! Just look at how they got Suzaku to join and you might figure out how Franklin may have turned in this universe.
    • The history segments in the Code Geass DVDs (Japanese?) claim that C.C. was around then and knew Benjamin personally. "After all, Ben was a kind man who loved research more than battles... much too kind, really."
• I don't understand exactly the idea with the Britannian Empire being the initial developers of the mecha used in the series. Apart from the likes of Transformers and possibly BattleTech, the British and the Americans have never been particularly enchanted towards the idea of the gigantic humanoid-shaped robotic war machine. The closest that science fiction in America gets towards the mecha is usually the likes of the "Starship Troopers" style battlesuit rather than the full-sized mecha.
  • It's been well established that the Code Geass world is vastly different from our own based on a number of seemingly small historical differences, so it wouldn't be hard to imagine people getting crazy ideas about giant mecha. Plus, with the discovery of Sakuradite and its massive energy output, it gave scientists the resources to just totally let go.
  • From what I've read, The idea started from when an ejection seat on more traditional vehicles was created, that was eventually fitted with robotic legs to help in escaping. Scientists eventually just took that idea to its logical conclusion.
  • This is a world in which Japan is part of the British Empire, the EU was founded in the 19th century, and immortals can give people magic eye powers. It's entirely possible someone outside Japan got the idea. Come to think of it, Star Wars had mecha in it in the real world and that's 100% American.
    • Try and tell me that again after you look at the lightsaber fights. Lucas is 100% weeaboo.
  • Actually, some guy made a real life Humongous Mecha, and so far the only use he can think of for it is to fight other such mechs for entertainment. Oh, yeah, back to the point, the guy's American, so it's more likely than you think.
• Why did Zero have to kidnap the Empress? Couldn't he have just worked with Xingke from the start rather than piss off all three (Britannia, Eunuch's faction, and Xingke's faction) warring factions at once? If he had worked together with Xingke, he could have easily overcome the Eunuchs, rather than that whole drawn out fight, and Britannia would have no excuse to interfere in a civil war (they only interfered because the Black Knights were considered terrorists, they Britannians withdrew the second it became a civil war.)
  • There were fundamental differences between their causes. Xingke was wholly concerned with the Empress and that was it. There were two logical outcomes without Lelouch's interference: A) Xingke would have failed, resulting in the Eunuchs selling out to the Britannians; or B) Xingke would have succeeded, and China would immediately become isolationist. Xingke was far too proud to deal with the Black Knights, and any new government established under him would not have dealt with them. What Lelouch accomplished by striking first was getting Xingke to prove he was incapable of standing by himself. Lelouch had to save him, which proved that they had to work together.
    • But after the first Knightmare fight between China and the Black Knights (the one where Kallen gets captured) Lelouch thinks to himself that he should've killed Xingke when he had the chance. That kind of undermines the working together idea.
    • Well, of course. Kallen is far more important to Lelouch than Xingke was, no matter who skilled and useful he was.
    • Lelouch's original intention was to use the Empress to gain the people's support. He does try to convince Xingke that he couldn't do so himself (Lelouch makes the reference to while kidnapping her). As is common for this show, it's only when Xingke pulls some Super Prototype out of nowhere does Lelouch regret not having done a better job of dealing with him. Still, getting Xingke as an ally worked as a backup plan. The main point is that Xingke would not have cooperated before being shown his own weakness, and in a scenario where he successfully kidnapped the Empress instead of Lelouch, Britannia would have laid waste to China.
• Why is the heavily atheist empire on the show called the Holy Empire of Britannia?
  • Left-over title maybe? Countries generally don't change their name over something so trivial.
  • "Shinsei Britannia Teikoku" certainly seems to resemble the description used for the Holy Roman Empire (Shinsei Roma Teikoku). However, shinsei, in and of itself, can mean holiness, sacredness, or "dignity". Most likely, the description is just meant to imply that Britannia is more civilized than the other major powers.
  • Where do people keep getting the atheism from? From where, besides the Emperor's constant speeches about equality being a sin and the world being full of lies, do you get that atheism is an institutional policy for said Holy Empire? If you can provide me the quotes, it's probably just an institutional relic of a name.
    • The Emperor's attitude towards equality and the world have nothing to do with religion, or the lack thereof.
    • Sure it does. If you say something (in this case, equality) is a sin, that implies a religious basis of judgment, does it not?
    • Not necessarily; the term sin can be and is used secularly to refer to any perceived evil, and this seems to be especially prevalent in Japan. It implies a value judgement, but not necessarily a religious one. As for the religious leanings of the Brittanian empire, it's safe to say that it does not prohibit religion (you'll notice that Ashford academy has a chapel, which is where Mao has his game of chess with Lelouch), but Emperor Charles himself, at least, is anti-theistic. His master plan absolutely reeks of Rage Against the Heavens, and if IIRC he at one point declares the Ten Commandments to be among the lies that fill the world (so at the very least he personally is anti-Christian).
  • For some reason, this troper seems to remember reading either the word "atheism" or "atheist" at least once in a subbed version of the show. The word was a reference to Britannia but as said troper has no idea just which episode it came from, she is now considering the possibility that she imagined it...Still, surely it's a little odd that they are the "Holy" Empire - they're not Christians (as one might expect from the descendants of parallel-world Britons) and they don't seem to follow any other religion as a nation. Why is this?
  • The historical Holy Roman Empire warred and clashed often with the Roman church I recall.
    • That's not quite the same - they actually had a religion (which was in most parts considered Roman Catholic anyways but that's neither here nor there) and one gets the impression they called themselves the Holy Roman Empire partially because they believed theirs was right. What religion is there in Britannia?
    • You have to remember that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire.
    • The show is set in 2012. Just because it was initially a heavily religious empire does not mean that it is one currently. Probably there are a few Christian relics like the very name of the empire or the coronation ceremonies of the emperor.
    • Note that Britannia was formed when Julius Caesar's armies were repelled by a Celtic super king, around 50 BC. It wouldn't really make sense for Britannia to adopt a "foreign religion", as Christianity would have been seen, over three hundred years later. Also, the series is technically set in 1967, which is 2017 years after the Britannian empire was formed (A.T.B. 2017).
    • Actually, while they say that is so, the Britannian Empire was founded some three or four hundred years prior, and the Celtic super king, who may or may not have existed, was declared to exist in order to validate the Britannian Royal Family's claim to the throne. It's propaganda.
  • Cornelia pretty much stated this out loud when she met VV.
    • Cornelia herself was a self-proclaimed atheist. However, that may have just been personal preference on her part and has no bearing on the rest of the Empire.
  • Most of the people seem to be Catholic (see Mr Fennette's funeral). It's probably just a facade on the part of the rulers.
  • It's probably more along the lines of "Rule of Cool".
  • Wouldn't the fact that Emperor Charles is trying to kill God imply he believes one exists?
    • Yes. Atheism is nothing more than the complete and utter lack of belief in any higher power or afterlife. No theistic leanings whatsoever. Since he wants to kill a God, he believes in it. Ta-da, he ain't an atheist.
    • True, but that doesn't make much of a difference. There are real atheists today who don't merely reject faith, but consider the portrayals of God/gods in various religions (particularly Christianity) to be evil and unfit for worship anyway. Even if you could prove the existence of a deity to these people, they may acknowledge its existence but still wouldn't worship it, and it wouldn't be much of a stretch for them to try a deicide plot like Emperor Charles's. These people don't so much think that belief in and worship of gods is logically untenable so much as morally repugnant. It's likely that Charles, if he hadn't found proof of the existence of "gods" through his research of Geass, would be just such an atheist. And even if he does personally acknowledge the existence of a deity, his hatred of it would be all the more motivation to create legal injunctions against worship.
    • Wow, way to misappropriate words. That's a PERFECT definition of misotheism, but a terrible one for atheism.
  • Holy Empire of Britannia is a reference to the Holy Roman Empire, and is used to denote that Britain rebuilt on the other side of the Atlantic, but isn't really very British anymore, as far as the islands themselves are concerned. It does contain much alternate-history british culture, though. As for religion, you can't just go by several characters to determine the religion of the people. Christianity still took root in Scandinavia, Germany, and many parts of Eastern Europe that weren't part of the Roman Empire, so it's not much of a stretch to assume that it took root in Britannia. However, it could have several religions: I'd guess Christianity, Judaism, and Celtic Polytheism. Christianity is probably based on Anglicanism and the Celtic Catholic Church (see Shirley's and her dad's funerals). The polytheism is likely where the references to the "gods" comes in (even though it refers to the collective unconsciousness of mankind). Charles was being metaphorical. In the end, he probably didn't care: Chuck believes in Chuck, Cornelia believes in her own strength, etc.
  • In the Nightmare of Nunnally manga, the Emperor is Pope of the Geass Order, and stages a coup to install the cardinals as area governors, which might explain the religious aspect of it. Then again, the name changes from the "Holy Britannian Empire" to the "Holy Faith Nation of Eden Vital"
    • In Charles' speech after Garma Zabi's, oops, I mean Prince Clovis' death he specifically quotes some of The Ten Commandments exactly and says they are lies.
  • I'm wondering why no one stated that in episode 10, before the battle of Narita, there is a dialogue between Lelouch and C.C. and in the subbed version C.C. asks why Lelouch changed his family surname, but not his christian name Lelouch. This implies he / his family and therefore the royal britannian family is christian.
    • Not really. Though a very odd choice of words, a christian name, by definition (one of them anyway), refers to a person's first name. It doesn't imply and religious affiliation.
    • That must be a sub or a fansub, since my recollection of the dub doesn't use the term "Christian name", going for the more common, blander designations of "first" and "surname".
  • In one episode, This Troper recalls V.V. - when asked about his and Charles's plan to kill god - specifically explaining that god is not a winged angel or an old man with a long white beard.
• In episode 15 of R2, Why in the world did Lelouch not just get his mech and beam spam his dad? I don't care if Charles is immortal, a beam spam is going to slow down anyone. From a more practical standpoint, being in the mech would have protected him from Charles' Geass, sinse there's no direct eye contact. And while he did eventually get back in it, there's still no reason why he couldn't have done it then, or at least used a simple punch or kick to incapacitate him temporarily.
  • Besides the fact that Lelouch was seriously freaking out when Charles stood back up? You seriously think that he has the physical ability to incapacitate that massive ape with a punch or kick?
    • He meant kick him using Shinkirou.
    • Presumably because broadcast regulations wouldn't allow them to show Charlie being stomped into a fine paste (which would really test the limits of Code regeneration)
  • Do you think you would be able to climb into the cockpit of your mecha before Emperor Charles pulled out that gun he had in his coat and shot you in the chest?
• Episode 18 of R2. 'Nuff said.
  • That episode was great. It wasn't even the Diabolus Ex Machina from the end of the last season. Everything that happened in it was foreshadowed adequately. Though, Suzaku has really bad aim.
    • You know, if his aim was good and it hit Kallen, I'm pretty sure he'd be caught in Freya's blast radius and become very dead, so I'm a bit hesitant to attribute that whole thing on his "Live" Geass, unless he meant for Kallen to dodge it in the first place.
    • So you're saying Suzaku didn't miss?
    • I'm not sure, because not missing Kallen would've meant mean death.
    • I don't think Suzaku missed either. Geass in general and "live on" in particular are able to use a person's knowledge and skills. Under-Geass Suzaku didn't shoot the nuke at Kallen because he knows that hitting a tactical target (one EXTREMELY close range Knightmare) with a strategic weapon won't let him live. However, demonstrating the monstrous power of this as-yet-unused weapon and taking out some other Black Knights would.
• Why do people hate Suzaku so frigging much? The person he is being a dick to killed his girlfriend after turning her into a monster. Why should he treat Lelouch with anything approaching respect and affection after the mind rape and execution? Gee, I guess he's a terrible person for turning in his so-called "best friend", the guy who he thinks orders genocide for his own gains, to get a promotion so he can help people. He could have killed Lelouch and he would have been perfectly justified in his actions! It's not like Lelouch ever tried to explain that the whole Euphinator thing was an accident, either, so to Suzaku he's a self-admitted mind-raping bastard.
  • One, Geassing her was an accident. Two, killing her was the solution. Three, the reason why Lelouch didn't bother explaining himself for the whole Euphie thing is quite simply common sense. 'I forgot my Geass was on' is never a good excuse for ANYTHING.
    • That, and he turned over Lelouch over to the man who turned on Lelouch himself and made him into what he was, Charles, who then proceeded to screw Lelouch even worse not only by separating Nunnally from him and planning to use her as a hostage against him, but also rewriting the memories of Nunnally, Marianne, the Zero persona being his own, and that he was ever part of the Britannian family to begin with, all of which were defining traits behind his own existence, into obscurity. Suzaku had reason to be angry with Lelouch, but trusting the person responsible for not only much of Lelouch's and Nunnally's own strife throughout his lifetime, but also the corruption Lelouch, and in his own roundabout way, Suzaku, were trying to fight? Talk about misaimed blame.
  • Because essentially Suzaku is willing to work within a hopelessly corrupt and evil system, and is only doing so for the benefit of a small number of people within that system, and that largely only to ease his own conscience. Lelouch admits that he is evil, Suzaku still thinks he is somehow noble.
  • I agree with the above opinion and I also want to add that Suzaku also has some selfish, hypocritical thinking going on, yearning for death as some sort of redemption for killing his father and essentially letting the Japanese get screwed over, and then joining those same conquerors who treat his people like crap, all the while saying he'll "change it from within" (I look and look again and see no attempt at the changing, and hell, he now seems to be Japanese only in blood and name).
    • He sees the Knight of One title as his opportunity in R2 to rule over Japan. Not that it excuses the work he does for Britannia as a Knight of the Round in destroying enemies of Britannia.
  • Suzaku killed his own father and then helped everyone around him cover it up when he realised things had gotten out of hand when he was ten. And he did this rather than tell the truth and at least try to finish the work his father had started (which most would think of as being the noble thing to do as he got older). Also, ever since Euphemia died, he seems to have gotten increasingly hypocritical and hard to like...
    • Oddly enough, the positions are reversed in the Suzaku of the Counterattack Manga; Suzaku kills Genbu after telling the Emperor the location of the members of the Japanese government who want to continue the war. In Nightmare of Nunnally, Suzaku doesn't kill Genbu; C.C. does, in order to protect Lelouch and Nunnally. In both versions, Suzaku tends to be more focused on his morals, and is not party to atrocities.
  • Not to mention, it's because of Suzaku that Japan ended up as Area 11. You know, back then Premier Kururugi the ONLY one who posed a serious threat to Britannia and he was ready to kill himself and LOTS of people to take the Empire down. That's quite the hard weight on * anyone's * shoulders. Still, people love to forget it because, unlike Lelouch, Suzaku is "not cool enough".
  • The way Suzaku is, it's as though he's forgotten his goal, forgotten the views he "so valiantly" holds up and just went off the deep end.
  • Three words: Chronic Backstabbing Disorder.
  • Then four more words: Draco in Leather Pants. Seems some people can't figure out that Suzaku is the antagonist, so if you want to lionize him you're the one that's leather pantsing.
  • And how it's Lelouch NOT a Draco in Leather Pants? Your fixation on Suzaku bering the * ONLY* DILP is insane.
    • Lelouch accomplished world peace. He may have taken monstrous means to achieve it, but he actually created a unified world and accepted punishment by being a permanently despised despot and being killed by his best friend. Suzaku's punishment is to live as the (supposed) hero and savior of the world. Gee, Lelouch really is just as bad as Suzaku.
    • Which doesn't change the fact that he's a DILP as well as Suzaku. They're BOTH DIL Ps; you just seem to think that the one that's worse than the other having fans makes him the ONLY DILP in the series.
    • In other words, Lelouch succeeded where Suzaku failed. Lelouch and Suzaku are both Type IV antiheroes at absolute best, with each spending at least some time at Type V and even outright villainy. They're both Necessarily Evil Well Intentioned Extremists, but where Lelouch tends toward the chaotic end of the scale, Suzaku favors the lawful. Why do more people seem to favor Lelouch? Maybe it's because he actually gets results in the end, where Suzaku just seems to end up doing little more than help the evil empire. Maybe it's because people see Lelouch as more sympathetic due to the story being told predominantly from his side of things. Maybe it's because people just tend to resent authority, and so are more likely to favor the rebel trying to tear it down from the outside over the participant trying to change it from within.
  • Also, it doesn't help that Suzaku is so self-righteous, thinking that whatever side HE'S on is the only side that's right. He only sees things in black and white, and the worst part is that the series actually depicts him as being the one that's RIGHT. Another thing that is incredibly annoying about him: He constantly owns Lelouch at everything. His mecha is an extreme example of a Deus Ex Machina, where, no matter how much Lelouch plots and plans strategies, all it has to do is go out and it will be an instant win. It's also incredibly frustrating that the storyline works its way around him illogically just so he can stick around and conquer Lelouch. Example: Lelouch turns into a moron when he's around Suzaku, not using his geass on Suzaku to order him to leave Britannia and live an ordinary life. It doesn't make sense, because, looking at Lelouch's personality normally, that would definitely be in character for him to do.
    • If you'll notice, Lelouch specifically avoids Geassing his friends and was quite unhappy to end up having to Geass Suzaku. On top of that, he didn't even know that Suzaku was the pilot of the Lancelot until episode 17 of R1 - the episode before he Geasses him. And at that point, he was trying to convince Suzaku to join him. So, he never really had the opportunity to Geass Suzaku to get rid of him before he actually knew that Suzaku was a problem.
  • Well, first off, Suzaku is the antagonist. That automatically is going to make him at least somewhat disliked. Pretty much regardless of what the protagonist is like or what the antagonist is like, because we expect the protagonist to be the good guy that we support and the antagonist to be the bad guy that we want to fail, we automatically start out willing to give the protagonist the benefit of the doubt while we're hard on the antagonist. So, simply because of their places in the story, we're far more willing to forgive Lelouch and say that what he's doing is necessary while Suzaku is an idiot. So, they're not on a level playing field to begin with. Now, add to that the fact that Suzaku is willingly working for the bad guys who discriminate against everyone who isn't them and are trying to take over the world. That makes Suzaku even less popular. Now add the fact that he keeps getting in Lelouch's way when he's doing cool stuff and we get that much more annoyed with him. Depending on the viewer, these facts alone may be enough to really dislike him, but the real killer is his attitude. He comes across as rather self-righteous in his denunciations of Zero and Zero's methods - in particular the fact that what Zero's up to costs lives - and on top of that, he's killing plenty of people himself. So, it becomes quite easy to view Suzaku as a self-righteous hypocrite. And since Suzaku generally becomes more unreasonable as the show goes on (primarily due to his anger over Lelouch's actions - particularly the death of Euphemia), it becomes that much easier to dislike him. He probably gets more of a bad rap than he deserves, but while he says that he's doing what he's doing for the greater good, he's constantly blocking Lelouch from actually achieving that greater good, and while he's at it, he has an attitude that really rubs people the wrong way. So, it's no wonder that so many people dislike him.
    • There's also how the characters are portrayed in the side materials. A lot of people pay attention to those, and they tend to change many viewers' perceptions of the characters. For example, Clovis was portrayed as a genuinely loving older brother who cared about his siblings and thought that he was doing Lelouch and Nunnally justice with his actions in Japan (state-policy racism + vengeance for dead family will do that to your morals), and also as a Chivalrous Pervert, making him much more sympathetic in the eyes of the fans. The side materials are also credited on this site as one of the main reasons why Clovis won the North American popularity poll (which, as you'll notice, Suzaku didn't even place on). A similar situation happened with Jeremiah Gottwald, who was given a sympathetic treatment in one sound episode where he explained his motivations vis-a-vis Marianne and her children. This, combined with his humiliation and increasingly over-the-top appearances, made him the most loved character in the show. This despite massacring a ghetto in the first episode. However, getting to the point, Suzaku actually experienced the opposite treatment by the show. On top of the dickish moves made on-screen in the series proper, side materials actually get into his actions in between R1 and R2: in one picture drama/sound episode Suzaku helps conquer a new area and then finds a little girl in the rubble, after treating her, she finds out that they're Britannian and starts screaming and crying at them about how her father and brother were good people and that the knights murdered them. Maybe it was just me, but it became harder to sympathize with Suzaku after that. Later picture dramas would give us another gem: Suzaku, Scheizel, Kanon, and the Rounds all enjoying a day out at a casino (whilst the Black Knights are, ostensibly at the point in the series, fighting for their lives and exiled en-masse). This, combined with what we know about Lelouch's crappy childhood and the suffering of the other Japanese characters, makes the Black Knights in general and Lelouch in particular look like Woobies compared to the evil decadent Britannians, despite what the entry below would have you believe. From a PR point of view, it's just hard to see Suzaku as the good guy. Not that I think Suzaku is really evil, just doing what he does best: acting on his emotions, in the case of his feelings about Lelouch, anger.
    • Somehow I think the results of that popularity poll have a lot more to do with certain meme producing Image Boards than side materials. (As for the picture dramas: Interpretations vary. There's at least one person on this wiki who has used that very one as argument for why Gino is a bad person compared to Suzaku - contrasting Gino's "the strong live and the weak die" to Suzaku's "the strong should protect the weak". And different forums seem to see Suzaku's actions in it differently.) To sum up my point properly: I don't think anyone has really had their opinion changed by the spinoff material. People just use it to reinforce what they already believe. If you are inclined to dislike Suzaku, you see it as "Oh look, Suzaku is doing something bad again." If you are inclined to find him sympathetic, you see it as "Oh look, another example of how it really sucks to be Suzaku." Good ol' confirmation bias.
    • I'd call the Picture Dramas supplementary and fill in the blanks, rather than spinoff material. (The manga and novels are spinoff material.) And I'd say it cuts both ways for Suzaku. What that picture drama did was highlight the early part of his Motive Decay. And owing much to happening earlier, it was admittedly light compared to the in-series material, especially Turn 14, when Suzaku requests to Nunnally that he be able to interrogate then prisoner Kallen, who she was having a conversation with. He refers to Kallen by her prisoner number, which visibly disturbs Nunnally. Also note the irony in that the people of his and Kallen's home country, Japan, are called by Numbers. It only gets worse from there before Suzaku bottoms out.
  • I've always wondered about Suzaku's hatedom, I guess it comes down to interpretation right? I see where people are coming from, but i've always seen Lelouch as the bigger asshole, and the main reason people side with him is because he won, if Suzaku and Britannia had achieved peace through their means we might've been cheering for them instead. To me, Suzaku is a well meaning, kind hearted young man who's tainted past won't leave him alone, some would be able to cope had they been in the same position, Suzaku could not, and it's only natrual, after all, Killing your father at age 10 is not something you get over quickly. Suzaku wanted to die so bad, as a form of redemption, not only that but he wanted die doing something as heroic as possible. What's wrong with that? Lelouch feels the need to litter his plans with pointless theatrics just for the hell of it, why not let Suzaku die in a blaze of glory doing what he believes is right? I always though he joined Britannia because he's overcompensating for what happened with his father, that happened because he disobeyed the governments rules, and he never wants to let that happen again, but he also wants to free Japan from the slavery HE caused, so he devised a plan, wherby if his suicide attempts failed, he'd try rising through the system, and helping them out that way, to be honest, if it weren't for Zero, that plan might've worked. As evidenced by the falling women in episode 2, Suzaku truly does care about others, and wants to protect his people, he's just got his morals, self imposed or trauma-imposed getting in the way. I found Suzaku to be likeable, as a person, he treats his friends with respect and admiration With the exception of Lelouch later on but he has a very good reason and their one of the only things that can help stabilise his mind. The destroyed visage of Suzaku that we see in R2 is, in my opinion, a complete creation of Zero, yet no one blames him in the fandom. First off, the "Live" Geass that was gifted to him, magically blew the foot off his plans to kill himself, in his mind, Redemption has become completely unobtainable, which means that the spectre of his tragic mistake burned into him from childhood will be there FOREVER, this alone would make one lash out widly at the soul who caused it, in this case, Zero. What's worse, love had finally entered his life, someone who could both accomplish his goal of freeing Japan, and maybe help him let go of his guilt at the same time, maybe then he wouldn't need to kill himself. Lo and behold, who gets in the way? Zero, he kills Euphie, and not only that, he makes her slaughter the very people Suzaku strove to protect first, then used that massacre as a means of furthering his plans, true it was an accident but he's never told that. I don't care who you are, you're gonna be vengeful after something like that. Vengeance was half of Lelouch's overriding motivation after all, and people like him. From that point, Suzaku was all but insane, and I can't defend all he did while like this, he tried to uphold his beliefs, what was left of them, but everything around him got too complicated, too fast, and he was too broken to do anything about it. Suicide was out, so all he had left was his plan of rise through the ranks. He still couldn't bring himself to strip Kallen of her free will however, showing that he is still good deep down. If people can look past Lelouch murdering hundreds, if not thousands of unarmed civillians just because Shirley died then I don't see why Suzaku isn't covered aswell. The guy did horrible things, they both did, but they also wanted peace, both for personal AND ethical reasons.
    • I can clarify those concerns. And to clarify, it was also because of serendipity, not to mention his role in opposing the rebellion Lelouch started as Zero, that Suzaku was able to get so much leeway. Without the rebellion, Suzaku would have stayed put, more likely than not. More to the point, in light of both of their faults and aside from the typical reasons, Lelouch seems to score more points with the fandom because he actually has a plan, not to mention more overall vision, in that he plans on fixing the world, whereas Suzaku at best cares only about Japan, and usually has no idea of what he's doing. Worse, Suzaku himself is one of the biggest spanners for Lelouch, ruining the latter's plans when they would otherwise bear fruit, and thus prolonging the conflict. It's not hard to be annoyed on Lelouch's behalf a little more often, in that his plans tend to falter through Diabolus Ex Machina so often. While it was unfortunate what happened to Euphie, not to mention understandable how it would affect Suzaku, R2 still highlights how far he has jumped off, in that he is helping with Schneizel's EU campaign in hopes of currying favor up at the top. While the goal of getting Japan as a protectorate is a noble one, the means, which come at the expense of other countries, more than negate it. It is true that he didn't drug Kallen, but he only stopped himself because he in his own mind didn't want to be compared to Zero, not because he cared about Kallen. In addition, throughout the season, he let Nunnally be used as a pawn, and once did so himself, much to her displeasure. Don't get me wrong; in the end, I felt more pity in the end for Suzaku, as he learned his lesson in the end. And speaking of broken people, Lelouch was there in the end as well, to the point where his final solution was in of itself a thinly veiled excuse for suicide. In the end, the Scrappy Ball had been passed over to Oghi for very good reason.
    • Yeah, Suzaku was broken long before Lelouch, and I did like him a lot less in R2, up until his Heel Face Turn, or was it Face Heel Turn...... hmmm. It seems a major reason people hate Suzaku is because he lobs spanners into Lelouch's plans. That's a real YMMV for me, cuz I loved all those moments. I guess I just hate Lelouch that much, but thank you for explaining that too me from the point of view of someone who doesn't hate Suzaku.
    • For the record, they weren't quite unarmed civilians, at least not most of them - they were unarmed scientists working for an order Lelouch believed supremely evil. Don't get me wrong, I still consider the event a major Moral Event Horizon for Lelouch, but it's not quite as bad as you say. Also, "thousands" seems going a bit far. "Hundreds" maybe, but it may even be as few as 'scores', to be honest.
  • I also don't really get the hate towards him. Suzaku is just a tragic example of how the classical gooder than good hero archetype cannot survive in a world that has realistic shades-of-grey morality. Pretty much everything he does wrong is caused by him trying not to compromise his beliefs. Lelouch doesn't have that problem, his willingness to commit minor evils allows him to avoid most conflicts of interest.
• For that matter, why do people like Lelouch so much? The series basically rewards him and treats him heroically for being the world's biggest dick and infecting others with his dick-ish attitude.
  • Lelouch did not get a reward. Ohgi and Viletta got a reward. Lelouch did not. He ended up Dead and hated by pretty much everyone by the end of the series.
  • The series REWARDS him!? Lelouch probably has the worst luck in the entire universe, and karma is the only explanation that doesn't break willing suspension of disbelief. What's fun about Lelouch is that even with the entire universe seemingly existing to fuck him over, he stays determined with his outrageous plans managing to continue to come out on top.
    • This troper think that the troper who asked this question is on crack. Since when does having your girlfriend killed by your fake brother, having your mother killed off by your uncle, having to fight against your best friend, having to fight against your sisters (and accidentally forcing one to go homicidal and then be forced to kill her), having to fight against your parents because they were willing to sacrifice you, becoming a symbol of everything that mankind despises and being assassinated by your best friend constitute a reward? Lelouch's only reward is that his sister is safe and that's not really a reward so much as what Nunnally deserved.
  • It's because he's a badarse rebel with disturbingly good planning skills. That and because he's at least honest about his morals (or his lack of them).
  • A dick though he may be, he's honest to himself and those chosen few he trusts. And while his methods of getting what he wants are underhanded and sneaky, his goals are far better than the guys on the other side of the war.
    • I couldn't have said it better.
  • It's purely a plot to make Suzaku fans whine. Yes, you caught us.
  • First off, he's the protagonist, so we're automatically going to want to like him and give him the benefit of the doubt. So, we're far more willing to forgive him for doing nasty things than if the story were told from a different point of view. Next off, he's fighting against the evil empire that's busy discriminating against everyone else and trying to take over the world. And probably most of all, he's just plain cool. I mean, sure he does things that he really shouldn't. He's not necessarily the nicest guy. But he's a genius and is constantly pulling crowning moments of awesome. So much of what he does is just plain cool. So, while you may not always agree with his methods, he's so cool that much of the time it just plain doesn't matter - or at least you let it slide. He also has a much better attitude about things than Suzaku does. He's a bit narcissistic, but he fully acknowledges that what he's doing isn't necessarily nice. And, as Diethard pointed, he gets results. Lelouch may be too willing to be nasty at times, but he's definitely cool.
    • The Designated Hero protagonist argument only goes so far though. Plenty of straight antagonist Anti-Hero characters have been favored over the protagonist, often attributed to Designated Protagonist Syndrome, regardless of whether or not the protagonist is boring. Some of the more notable examples have included Sesshomaru, Seto Kaiba, and of course, Char Aznable. Code Geass simply flipped the script by having the protagonist be the Byronic Hero, while at the same time serving as a deconstruction by him having heroic motives and a more sympathetic characterization. And the other aforementioned characters received more than enough screentime to be portrayed and/or act more sympathetically, but just didn't. It certainly doesn't help things that the universe often has it in for Lelouch when he's trying to do the right thing, or that the only other characters with any true vision and competence, namely Xing-ke and Kaguya, can be counted with one hand, with the rest impeding any hopes for world peace in one way or another. To put it another way, if not for Suzaku's troublesome interference or Ohgi convincing the Black Knights to betray Lelouch based on suspicious evidence, Lelouch would have never flown off the deep end and resorted to a self-sacrificial gambit for world peace that hinged on him creating even more destruction, and leaving the world without his talents in case of another conflict, which is too likely, since it is impossible for humans to cease hating on the currently existing, and to focus all the hate on one person is questionable at best. Add to that that many of the undeserving people, including Ohgi, Villetta, and Cornelia, got happy endings, and it's pretty clear why Lelouch gets a lot of enduring sympathy.
    • Infact, Lelouch may suffer from Designated Protagonist Syndrome himself, which is too likely due to the show's Broken Base, and his status as a Base Breaker. There are a lot of people who have sided with Britannia, and even view Gino as an okay guy, mistaking his cluelessness for harmless idiocy, ignoring some of his declarations (he often believed that mass violation of Britannian law was a pretext to a purge) and his questionable and dangerous battle tactics. Not as egregrious, though still suspicious, is the praise Guilford himself gets. While he is honorable and sympathetic, many of his fans mistake his valor for heroism. While he doesn't kick any dogs, he certainly doesn't go out of his way to help improve things, from being the knight of the brutal Cornelia, and eventually being a more benign case of Obstructive Bureaucrat in R2. Evidently, he scored sympathy points after getting geassed by Lelouch (which ended up being out of necessity), almost getting caught in the F.L.E.I.J.A., losing his sight, and finally making it back to Cornelia. That he stands in the way of most efforts towards peace, whether or not by his own design, are overlooked.
  • That, and contrary to Suzaku, he never once forgets the cause of his, as well as the rest of the world's problems: Britannia.
    • So Lelouch is flawed and does several villanous things but we don't care and forgive him because he's cool? Congragulations, you just described Draco in Leather Pants perfectly!
    • Something tells me that this issue, as well as the issue previous, is one of the greatest themes of the series. Both Suzaku and Lelouch desire something good, but pursue evil and increasingly hypocritical means. It's also kind of a Not So Different idea, with the both of them.
    • And yet so much Fan Dumb on this very wiki keep on claiming that Lelouch is a pure heroic savior whose evil extremist actions were all perfectly justifiable because they were against Brittania. And yet Suzaku is a Complete Monster whose evil extremist actions against the guy who killed his girlfriend are unforgivable. And they say Suzaku sees things in black and white?
    • Nobody claims that Lelouch is a pure heroic savior here, or at the least, if they do, they're exagerating, they simply say he's generally more correct than Suzaku is. Britannia is a truly corrupted and f'ed up system, and Suzaku is perfectly willing to follow their orders in the hopes of changing the system from within, even though that goal is obviously a hopeless one right from the start. When Britannia starts doing horrible things in the name of victory, Suzaku just ignores that and continues his self-righteous nonsense, whereas Lelouch actually acknowledges the immorality of his actions.
    • There's probably an interesting debate - though this isn't really the place for it - about the respective morality of doing horrible things out of ignorance versus knowing the immorality of your actions and still going ahead with them.
      • Said hypothetical debate would probably focus on whether or not doing horrible things out of ignorance was because those people were genuinely ignorant of the consequences,or if they were wilfully ignorant (ie. hypocritically self-righteous; which is basically what Suzaku's detractors accuse him of being). Not that knowingly doing immoral things is much better, unless you have damn good justification.
• Why is it imperative to pick one or the other? This troper thinks they're both completely nuts.
• Did anyone else notice that just about everyone in the whole series (save for the cops Lelouch sicced on Mao) has the exact same pistol? Lelouch, Suzaku, C.C., Mao... they all have the same gray and black Heckler and Koch USP/SOCOM pistol (keep in mind, I only use that name because said gun happens to resemble the one from the series) with the glowy laser sight. Granted, it's a cool gun, but a little variety wouldn't hurt.
  • Probably standard military issue. Or military surplus. And it's the coolest gun ever.
    • No... the JLF had Nambu-like pistols...
    • Oh... well, thank you, then. It was hard to notice, seeing as just about every JLF member whose name was not Tohdoh was barely onscreen for more than a second or two.
• How the hell did Rollo survive the FREIA explosion? If he was "covering Nunnaly's shuttle" like That Other Wiki says or planned to kill her like my intuition says, either way he would have been well within the blast radius. Even Zero barely managed to Outrun the Fireball in his prototype mech, so how did Rolo do that in his lousy stolen Glasgow?
  • Rolo actually got warned about FREIA, remember? Also, Lelouch wasn't running. He had to be pushed out of the way by Guilford, and that was only after the explosion had nearly caught up.
    • How did Guilford survive? And why were his eyes the only things that were injured?
    • When Guilford pushed Lelouch out of the way of the blast, he himself was just at the edge of FLEIJA's range. Since the bomb acts as a black hole, all he had to do was eject before it contracted and destroyed everything engulfed in its light. There are three possible reasons he wears the glasses. 1 -- the FLEIJA blinded him, 2 -- By that point he knows Geass works through sight and wears the glasses to prevent being Geassed by Lelouch again (assuming he's not aware it works once per person), or 3 -- He realizes that he had been mistaking Lelouch for Cornelia on sight, so by wearing the glasses he avoids that entirely, allowing him to find the real princess by voice.
      • Note that he may have had other injuries that healed up by the time he show back up in Turn 24.
• Rolo should have just killed Schneizel when he arrived in Turn 19. He had a paralyzing Geass, after all.
  • His priority was getting Lelouch out. It's not clear if he even noticed Schneizel was there.
    • He didn't have to have noticed Schniezel was there. He should have noticed the BKs, and that should have been enough for him to Geass everybody in the area, including Schniezel and Kanon. After all, the BKs only fired the bullets he kept from hitting Lelouch. And killing Schniezel while he had his senses stopped by the Geass so that he couldn't speak or anything would have shut down the ability of the mutiny to threaten either him or Lelouch, since he'd have a far easier time sneaking Lelouch out if needed. Really, the scene made the Plot Armor of both Schniezel and the BKs crystal clear at that point, because Rolo killed random soldiers during the escape so that he could evacuate Lelouch. The B Ks would have been random soldiers to him, since it's Lelouch he's attached to, not them.
• FREIA wasn't a nuclear bomb, right? I've never seen a nuclear blast cut the surroundings so neatly apart. It looks almost like the matter (even the air) within the blast radius were gone. If it was converted to pure energy, I wonder how Earth lithosphere survived it (E = m* c* c)? If it is just "gone" to some other place, where to? And did Nunnaly survive that, after all?
  • It has "space transfer" in its description. Might be it obliterates everything within a set radius, then teleports them elsewhere.
  • It's described to be with fission and Sakuradite (which has also been shown to be a very volatile explosive). Perhaps the compound effect of the two caused something similar to antimatter annihilation?
    • Annihilation is not the same thing as explosion, fission, or implosion. The closest analogy to annihilation is "cancels out"
  • Antimatter matter reactions, theoretically, produce massive amounts of energy, producing a violent explosion, producing the typical blast radius you get from a big ol' explosion not a cleanly carved Sphere of Destruction.
  • This troper believes that "Space Transfer" only means that, after the Sessrumnir Sphere had subsided, there is vacuum, and space transfer is simply air's inrush to fill the vacuum.
  • How the hell did it cause 20+ million secondary deaths, anyhow? By all appearances, everything in the blast radius is vaporized; everything outside is basically fine (the knightmare frames hovering just a few meters outside the blast get hit with some turbulence, but are otherwise fine along with their pilots).
    • There was a sort of "reverse shockwave", at least during the first test, when air was rushing back into the vacuum left by the bomb. That's pretty much the only explanation, since no one seems particularly concerned with radiation after the explosion.
  • Yeah, the whole "20+ million" casualties thing kinda confused me, too. It might make sense, though, considering the fact that Tokyo, circa 2018, should be much more densely populated than either Nagasaki or Hiroshima (the only cities that have ever been nuked in real life) in 1945, not to mention the fact that it was probably packed with thousands of soldiers at the time. As for the Knightmares right outside the Sessrumnir Sphere that were completely untouched... uh, beats me.
    • The "primary casualties" and "secondary casualties" refer specifically to the number of Britannians and the number of Elevens that died in the blast. There were obviously no wounded and no effects outside the sphere. Remember that, while the settlement is a place for Britannians to live, many Elevens work there under slave-like conditions. The population density of the Tokyo settlement is likely as high as it is because Elevens have been forcefully relocated there to serve as laborers for the Britannians. Also, do remember that 2018 ATB is roughly equivalent to 1968 CE. The Britannian calendar starts when the Romans were cast out of Britain, not when Jesus was supposedly born.
    • It would also interrupt electricity(so anybody on oxygen is screwed, anyone on dialyses is soon to be screwed), transportation(including such important things as food, so mass starvation), government hierarchies(meaning that controlling the emergency would be extremely difficult), work distribution(it could take out a bunch of normal workers, collapsing business causing starvation, destroy particular industries, which could be lethal if it were the right ones), etc.
    • There's also the point that all Sakuradite based electronics were shut down - meaning that anyone caught inside the war zone had to get out on foot. And though the calendar is fifty years earlier, technology and population is around modern levels, and modern Tokyo is one of the most populated cities in the world. If they used the numbers for that, then 20 million deaths is high... but not outrageous.
• Why hasn't Lelouch simply told Jeremiah to cancel the "live" geass on Suzaku, or for that matter, why hasn't Suzaku asked him to do it?
  • For Lelouch that would be pointless, since for all he knows Suzaku doesn't want to die anymore anyway, a misconception supported by what Lelouch thought was a second betrayal in 17. Suzaku on the other hand doesn't know about Jeremiah's geass canceller, and it's not like anyone would have any reason to tell him about it.
    • On top of that wouldn't the 'live' geass activate and prevent Suzaku from asking for it to be removed?
    • Not unless he intended to knife himself then and there. It only activates in response to immediate danger which Suzaku actively wants to kill him.
• What is wrong with the main characters of the show following the FLEIJA incident? Let's see, tens of millions of people have been killed and none of the Black Knights seem to be very affected, Schneizel certainly has no change in demeanor, and while both Lelouch and Suzaku have crazy moments, they quickly return to sanity. More importantly, wouldn't you expect massive public reaction calling for the head of whoever deployed and/or built such a weapon?
  • Lelouch tried to seal himself for eternity with his father, Suzaku tried to kill the Emperor and become the most powerful Knight in Britannia, Nina stood around ground Zero for at least an entire day, The Order decided to enter negotiations with the people who had oppressed and killed them,and everyone else was just trying to bury what remained of the dead. I'd hardly call any of the principle characters reactions normal, and in fact the general public reaction was quite a bit like episode 12 of the first season. As for Schniezel, he was counting on FLEIJA being used from the start, no surprise he wasn't affected by it.
  • I have to echo the last line. The near lack of any attention to such a flagrant screw up on the part of the military is just annoying. Suzaku nukes Tokyo, killing tens of millions of Britannians and the head of government in the area, and there is not a single drop of public outcry for even the smallest bit of justice. It'd be like a bomber in the real world accidentally hitting the wrong city in the middle of a war and not being punished because the enemy gave up. At least there'd be an investigation of some sort to see how responsible he was. My head went through the wall once Schneizel blamed Guilford and said he was a hero, followed by Suzaku acting like he should be rewarded for it. Even Gino, who was at least appaled by the devastation, acts like Suzaku is not the least bit responsible for what happened. What is wrong with these people?
    • Do remember that Nina was in hiding, fearing such a thing to happen. But how bad was the reaction when the original atomic bomb was used? Did Japan demand the death of those involved? Was there massive public outcry banning it? The reason we don't use nuclear bombs like that today is because we know that everyone has the technology, and will retaliate by nature, and we could very well wipe out humanity if we don't hold back. It's not considered "evil" by most, just incredibly dangerous and a really bad idea.
    • The real-world parallel doesn't work. Even if they didn't know the full extent of the devastation being brought upon them, Japan was warned (a warning unlikely to be taken seriously, but still) and more importantly was the right target. Suzaku's example is more akin to the Enola Gay overshooting their target and accidentally blowing up Russia. Suzaku didn't just miss, he turned a weapon of mass destruction on a populated city and fired it away from the enemy. That isn't just a mistake, it's criminal misconduct that should have had him tried and convicted for mass murder.
  • Lelouch was never again fully sane following the betrayal, having jumped the Despair Event Horizon.
  • As far as public outcry goes, the Brittanian government had just demonstrated that it was able and willing to destroy one of its own cities rather than lose control of it. Lots of people probably wanted to protest against that, but who would have the courage to do so?
    • Their homeland surely would not be attacked in the same way, and people would be outraged at the loss of family members which surely got caught in the blast. Someone should have paid for that foul-up.
• Sort of a related question, how is it that in episode 20, Lelouch is able to go so quickly from a near catatonic state to his usual scheming self. To some extent, I understand that his behavior in front of the Black Knights was done to keep any of them (especially Kallen) from supporting him and then being killed by the others, but still, what a rapid change in mood, and this isn't the first time he has acted this way.
  • He pulled it together to do what he had to, it's not like it's the first time he's done that.
    • Not really, he simply was too shocked to and was actually saying his Facing the Bullets One-Liner. He intended to die now that the jig is up, and since Nunnally (apparently) died, he had nothing else left to live for. Rolo coming in was unpredictable, and that's why he was so touched by his sacrifice considering his treatment of Rolo as a Replacement Scrappy.
• Lelouch apparently runs REALLY damn slow. The Euphinator beats him with time to spare to the stage in a gown. Also, why didn't Lelouch try any sort of trickery to convince Euphie not to kill all the Japanese, like: "you haven't officially commemorated the SAR, so everyone out there's an Eleven. How silly of me to give you a useless task."
  • Did you watch the episode? He was restrained by her bodyguards before he could do anything. Anyway, that wouldn't have worked, because Euphy still thought they were all Japanese. It's her thing.
    • He was stopped after she had got onto the stage and tried for 30 or so seconds to non-violently get the Japanese to kill themselves, only then did Lelouch get stopped by guards. Even accounting for the need for him to put the mask back on, there's no way he could be beaten by someone 'in a gown by that large a margin. And while I doubt anything could've stopped Euphie, I was sorely disappointed that Lelouch's best effort was "Wait, Euphie!" after it was clear he couldn't issue any more geass binding orders.
    • R2 episode 5. Lelouch gets outrun by Suzaku, Shirley, Kallen in a giant mascot costume and Milly. When it comes to physical endurance, Lelouch is pathetically weak.
    • To be perfectly honest, this troper thought that joke was tossed in as an attempt at justification for how friggin' slow he was in the Massacre Princess scene when the episode first aired. Still hilarious, but in a rather sad way.
    • No, in the episode where Lelouch and Suzaku are chasing after Arthur, the cat which had accidentally slipped on Zero's mask and run away, it's well established that Lelouch has very crappy stamina in that he is quickly winded while running up a flight of stairs while Suzaku passes him up. This was way before the Massacre Princess incident.
• Why do people think it was so horrible and bitchy for Kallen to go and kiss Lelouch in R2 episode 22? Come ON, an Action Girl has right to have a more sensitive side, so smooching him does NOT make her automatically less Badass.
  • They want C.C. x Lelouch.
    • Not the ones I saw; they just seemed to be bitter for the sake of being bitter.
    • Seems a mixture of both. Apparently, a badass action girl must reject the "useless" girly feelings and is morally obligated to just leave her love interest into a "more deserving girl"'s care. LOL, NO.
  • Perhaps it's because Kallen ended up turning into a total moron after Lelouch rejected her. Really, she briefly fights C.C. (who's been helping Lelouch since the beginning) and her only question to C.C. is "So, do you love Lelouch?" What did love have to do with anything, and why couldn't she figure out what Lelouch was up to? It'd be more believable if she was honestly torn between 'being loyal to her country' and 'being loyal to Lelouch', but somehow unrequited feelings overshadowed the part where he saved her from getting gunned down by her colleagues. Real smart, Kallen.
  • Huh? Kallen was the person with the clearest morals from beginning to end. She opposed Britannia, whatever that entailed, for the entirety of the show. She was opposed to Lelouch because he had apparently decided to rule Britannia and continue its evil (with her not knowing about the whole "Zero Requiem" thingamajig), which was a problem for her because she was honestly in love with the guy. And she was fairly close with C.C. during that year between seasons 1 and 2, so she probably wanted to know why exactly C.C. was siding with him. But I'm honestly confused by what you're asking here. The middle of combat, especially when Lelouch was getting away, was not a good time for a heart-to-heart discussion.
    • Blame the bad writing level of the last arc for failing to bring across Kallen's conflict properly. and the fact that she opposes him right after he seemingly rejects her, without stressing her reasons properly, give some people the (clearly wrong) impression that she is trying to kill him BECAUSE he rejected her, instead of making it properly clear that she is opposing him becouse he started acting (from her, un-informed, point of view) like a Complete Monster, and has effectively betrayed everything they ever fought for, and became everything she ever fought against (he takes over Brittania, joins Suzaku, conquers Japan, etc).
    • And her inability to figure out what lelouch is up to stems from the fact that 1)no one would ever believe that Lelouch would try to take over the ENTIRE WORLD as step one of a plan. 2)Lelouch had given her absolutly no reason to believe in him at that point, and she gave him a chance to explain himself before the mess started, and 3)in order to understand lelouch's actions kallen would also have had to make the rather arrogant (albit, completely accurate, as it turns out) assumption that while lelouch is facing the greatest challenge of his life and having to take on the entire world in battle, he nevertheless pushed her (his LONG TIME BODY GUARD) away, rather then let her help becouse he wants to protect her. so kallen sitting on the sidelines and simply watching an evil tyrent conquer the entire world, clinging to the faint hope that he MIGHT mean well, just becouse she has feelings for the guy, was hardly an option.
  • This troper was personally irritated by that scene for second reasons: number one, it felt like Kallen's feelings for Lelouch weren't thoroughly thought it; sort of tacked on as an afterthought. Her feelings toward Lelouch up to that point had always seemed to me to look more like hero worship than an out-and-out Bodyguard Crush, and the ramp up to full-on romantic attraction seemed like too sudden a change in character. Second, Kallen is pretty much the only person in the show who was wholly and consistently good from start to finish, and seeing her get all sappy over someone like Lelouch (who, truthfully, noble motivation aside, struck me as a real monster, especially in R2) was just heartbreaking. I didn't want to see Kallen get corrupted, and that seemed like a real possibility there. My own more personal feelings for Kallen certainly had nothing to do with it, I assure you...
    • The scene in China where they fall on each other in a very romantic moment (until C.C. reminded them that she was still in the room), says otherwise. The deredere of her hero worship towards Zero + the tsuntsun of her frustration with Lelouche seemed to meet in the middle and became romantic love.
  • It just bugs this troper that Kallen is considered completely good. Yes, Britannia is the Evil Empire and has alot of douchebags in it, but her whole Japanese pride and "this is why I hate Brittanians!" shtick made her seem no better than Nina in terms of prejudice at times, particularly in episode 19 of the first season, where she was bitchy toward Suzaku while he was being perfectly civil toward her, and insulted Euphemia, who committed no crime other than being a Brittanian princess and thus, to Kallen, was evil by default.
    • She was bitchy toward Suzaku because of the "betraying his country" thing. Civil or no, she was his prisoner and that makes her entitled to being uncooperative, especially with him. Her whole "this is why I hate Britannians" shtick was not as bad as Nina because she kept it in check. She wasn't killing civilians for the hell of it, not did she consider them all irredeemably evil like Nina did. Finally, for the Euphemia example, she called her a doll princess. She didn't consider her evil, just a useless figurehead who really had no place trying to dictate any terms given the situation.
      Kallen is considered completely good, or at the very least nowhere near as bad as half of the people in this show, because she dedicates herself to a just cause and sticks to it. Even when Lelouch went bad she stuck to it. Really, name one time in this show where Kallen, intentionally, has done something that can unequivocabally be considered evil, and you'll see why she's considered good.
  • I don't think Kallen should really be considered "good", but she certainly isn't evil either. She basically has the mentality of a soldier, she will kill and die for her cause (free Japan) as required and from the very start of the series this is shown. She does show a little regret for causing Shirley's Father's death but nowhere near enough to actually make her think twice about doing the same thing again. She has her limits though, she would likely have had serious issues with the Geass order massacre and is appalled when it is revealed Zero is behind the Euphie massacre.
    • They never show Kallen being appalled by what Lelouch did to Euphie. In fact, she knew about it before the rest of them did, which is why it doesn't affect her opinion of him.
  • Well, for one thing, she was a terrorist in a cell that had no particular talent or skills. IIRC, she even admitted that before Zero came along, they were just lashing out at as many Britannians as they could, without an over-arching plan and one of the facets of Kallen's worship of Zero was that he made her something other than a murderer.
    • True, but comapre this to Suzaku, who's doing pretty much the same thing as a death wish only to his own people. Kallen at least has the good sense to pick the right enemy.
  • Kallen is a Jerk Sue Blood Knight that only liked fighting and shows no remorse about killing, she gave Japanese independence as her reason to fight but it was established during her Day in The Limelight episode that she really douse not like them either because they are week especially her mother(even though she douse gain some sympathy for her). She would literally stab her friends in the back without a second thought if they try and stop her.
    • Didn't you already say that?
    • The only people she shows no remorse for killing are the vicious rank and file Britannian soldiers. And again, she does not see the Japanese as weak or try to kill her friends.
• ... How exactly does nuking every capital city off the face of the Earth make one God?
  • Well, if you're floating around in a giant sky fortress that can nuke any single spot on the planet, and what few people remain are starving in huts, I guess that makes you kind of a god. It looks like Schneizel's going for the "Well, he'll rule all the ground at least" method of world domination.
  • It's quite simple really: what is a god? It's one who decides who lives and who dies. In Schneizel's mind, the only way to create peace is to take away the choice to kill from everyone else. By creating a monopoly on violence with Freya and thus becoming a god, he'll be able to give people the peace they desire. Of course he's completely bonkers, since he more or less sees humans and everything else for that matter as mere chess pieces, so he's literally unable to take into account that human emotion and thought might be a kink in his so-called perfect plan.
    • Hmm... so, as far as he's concerned, the Utopia Justifies the Means, correct? Not that that ever goes too well, of course...
    • Seemed to work for Lelouch, didn't it? His plan definitely had a lot of Utopia Justifies the Means in it, though not exactly in the more commonly recognized totalitarian form.
  • It's pretty much based off of the dialog; Cornelia says that Schneizel's plan to punish all of humanity into acting properly is something only God should be able to do, and Schneizel, it his usual ambitionless fashion, decides to take that idea and run it to the endzone for a touchdown.
  • I think that it stems from the fact that asian cultures don't necessarily view gods in quite the same way as western cultures do and the show was made by those from an asian culture. In the West, where religions like Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are big, we tend to view God as an all-powerful being who created the world. We also tend to think of God in the singular. In eastern culture, you have people talking about ancestors being gods, the emperors of some countries have been considered gods, and - as Lloyd points out in episode 2 of R1 - asian cultures sometimes believe that gods live in objects (such as trees). I get the impression that the term god when used by asian cultures has a tendency to mean something more along the lines of a being superior to humans than an all-powerful being like those in the West think of. That being the case, Schneizel would be claiming to be a more powerful being than humans as opposed to all-powerful - and with the ability to basically wipe most of them out, that's arguably true.
  • Schneizel was speaking metaphorically; he would have become God in the same sense that Light Yagami would 'become the God of the new world!'
• How in the hell is Guilford still alive? That is all.
  • Unexplained Recovery. On the other hand, The moments before the conversation with Rolo at the end of turn 18 established that Lelouch's Knightmare lost communication with all other units during the Freya explosion; Having Guilford's transmission suddenly cut was not him dying, but in truth nothing more than a sleight of hand to distract us from the fact that we never actually saw his Vincent's cockpit consumed by the blast. Freya simply disrupted communications at that very moment, and Guilford simply lost the legs of his Vincent and presumably was blinded by an explosion in his cockpit as well, at which point he fell to the ground, proceeded to get medical attention, and finally made his way to Cornelia a month later.
    • Actually, I think that Guliford blinded himself so that the geass Lelouch put on him wouldn't pose a threat anymore.
    • I like that explanation. Though it doesn't explain how he would've found out about being Geassed.
  • Just make it clear, he isn't blind, he just traded his Stoic Spectacles for stoic Cool Shades (probably, to protect himself from Geass): in the last episode, he looks darn well sighted, running around with an assault rifle like no man who's only been blind for three months ever could.
    • If he isn't blind, why does he have the cane? It looks exactly like a standard "I'm blind and so I swing this around to help me find my way" cane.
    • Possibly he was just near-blind at the time. Two months pass between the battle of Damocles and the culmination of the Zero Requiem. Maybe his vision is restored during that time.
    • More likely, he was highly light-sensitive. If he was outright blind then he wouldn't have a gun.
• Why the hell did Lelouch go through that much of a lopsided way to Geass Schneizel? He went to the hangar, Geassed the guards, went to the control room, pre-recorded himself, then went back to the hangar to Geass Schneizel. Why couldn't Lelouch just bloody wait INSIDE the plane and Geass Schneizel as he came in? And, for that matter, how did he run all that much when he couldn't even catch up to Milly Ashford in ep5 of season two?
  • The same reason he Geassed soldiers to hold other soldiers to be Geassed when he was going into the World of C to meet Charles. Style points.
  • See, I always took him Geassing soldiers to hold other people's eyes open not as style points, but because maybe it would have taken him more than one room to get to the important soldiers he would have to Geass, and he could only get to a few at a time anyway. Say, Room A and Room B. Room A has two soldiers that don't do anything important, but have clearance to Room B which probably won't let just anyone in (plus possible surveillance). Lelouch Geasses the first two guys with a command like "open the door to Room B and when you get in, hold your colleagues' eyes open".
    • No, the command was just "Serve Me". THEN he commanded them to gather and restrain their comrades so he could control everyone.
• Alright, so what the fuck is the state of the world now that the series is over? I can't see Suzaku or Nunnaly taking over the government of Britannia, which means that it mostly broke down (If this isn't the case, I have another problem with it). And then they expect us to believe that everything's hunky-dory? Nuh-uh. I don't think so. You don't just dissolve the autocratic dictatorship of the entire fucking world and expect that things are going to go smoothly. The war and chaos that would erupt as groups grapple for power would boggle the mind. We're just lucky that all the FREY As were destroyed and no one built nukes, or else my money would be on the world being destroyed. You create a vacuum of power lie Lulu did, and people are going to try to fill it. Unfortunately, a lot of different people who don't like each other will try, and that leads to an awful lot of violence, to put it lightly. If someone does take over the reins of Britannia...well, you've still got a global dictatorship, which means that all Lulu did was to advance Britannia's cause. If they're going to try and move it towards a democracy, then one generally doesn't need global war to be able to accomplish such a feat, and...argh, watching this show as an International Relations major is hard.
  • Bellisario's Maxim all the way.
    • That might work if politics wasn't so damn integral to the show. Lord knows the giant robot fighting got the back burner as the show went on. But getting that major of an aspect wrong is something I can't just ignore.
  • Lelouch spent much of the first half of season 2 setting up an alternative power structure, the United Federation of Nations, which he left in place after the final battle, and probably strengthened during the two months between it and his assassination. I think the problem is that the last five or so episodes are all very rushed, with a couple of month or two long timeskips that could do with being expanded on.
  • This. With heavy emphasis. I figured that Lelouch sarcastically acquiesced to Kaguya's demand that he split Brittania up into individual voting "states" once he has control of the Damocles. This was the only barrier that the UFN put up before Brittania could be allowed to join, and once he has the FLEIJ As, it's not like he's going to have any trouble getting the votes he needs anyway, not when anyone who would try to vote against him would be running the risk of getting nuked off the face of the planet. At the end of the series he is declared, as I recall, to be President of the UFN and CEO of the Black Knights. If he sucked most of Britannia's power into the UFN, then that means that the Brittanian military and the Black Knights are more or less the same thing, and are controlled by whoever has the most votes in the UFN- and whoever has the most votes in the UN will require the support of a great many different ethnic groups, since presumably every country in the world is now a member. And nobody's in the mood for more oppressive asshattery after what Emperor Lelouch did. If he ordered all his soldiers to be members of the Black Knights, well, they're geassed, so that's what they'll do even if the CEO isn't the Emperor of Brittania. Even if that fails the only heirs apparent to the Brittanian throne would be Nunnally, Schneizel, and Cornelia, since they made the heroic Last Stand against Lelouch and at least two out of the three of them are going to try and preserve peace at all cost. This is the whole reason why Lelouch made such a big deal about taking over the UFN instead of destroying it. The UFN's charter is presumably designed in such a way that there's no way to mobilize a military force against anyone except an extremely evil common enemy. The only reason it was bad under Emperor Lelouch is because he was blackmailing everyone into voting to do whatever he wanted. By giving the individual countries free will, his death created an insurmountable bureaucratic deadlock.
  • Plus, Lelouch is only playing the role of an autocratic dictator, so conditions after his death could be rather different than the conditions that that follow the death of a real-world dictator. In particular, since he only intends to stay in power for a few months, he can pick and choose who he goes after. For example, he could give his successors a leg up by ruthlessly crushing powerhungry and extreamist groups while alowing moderate and pro-democracy groups to slip under the radar. Also, if he fosters many small pro-democracy revolutionary groups in every contry he might be able to stop any one person from gaining too much power. Additionally, he has the power to force potential revolutionaries to support his Zero plan, via geass.
  • By comparison, in Nightmare of Nunnally, Euphemia takes the throne and gives the numbered areas their freedom. There is a considerable amount of transition, and Britannia has to deal with being the object of the world's hatred, but it's a more sensible alternative to this.
• In episode 13 of R1, how exactly did Lelouch manage to mount a remotely controlled explosive to the JLF's tankard? Maybe I missed something, but it seemed a smidge too convenient that he was able to just flip a switch and blow the whole thing skyhigh like that.
  • Because he didn't. What he did, as shown earlier in the episode, was place a mine under the water tethered to the seafloor. Then he pressed a button to release it when the tanker passed over.
• In R2, how is it that nobody found Cornelia for the first 1/2 of the season? Surely someone would reconize a princess of the largest empire in the world.
  • She changed her haircut, clothes, and apparently spent that time trekking through wastelands in the Chinese Federation, where there aren't many people in the first place, they are Chinese, and they most probably wouldn't care even if they did recognize her. A better question would be what took her so long. How long was she absent by the time R2 begins?
• Just one question: Did Lelouch die? In the Japanese version of the show, we were able to see lelouch himself riding the horse carriage C.C. was on, while the american version hid his face.
  • That scene was fake. Both versions are the same. He is dead.
  • The whole 'lelouch is alive' theory comes from two facts: we never see the face of the man who drives the carriage and the music has a dramatic pause when CC reveals she's talking to Lelouch. It heavily suggested that the man driving the carriage was actually Lelouch, but apparently it was just some sloppy editing.
• Why doesn't Lelouch just order people to listen to his orders? It's never been specifically stated that he can't do that... and obviously, these Geass orders last a while. (as seen with Suzaku) It would save him a lot of pain if he just ordered everyone he met to listen to his orders.
  • He did do that... after he decided that he was tired of playing nice and just wanted to get things done. See the last 7 episodes of the series. He doesn't do it before that because he cares about free will and only uses people to the extent it's necessary.
  • Where did it say that these characters:
    "Aside from Lelouch, Suzaku and C.C., several other key characters knew about Zero Requiem, including Jeremiah Gottwald, Lloyd Asplund, Cécile Croomy, Sayoko Shinozaki and Nina Einstein, while others such as Nunnally, Kallen, the core Black Knights members and Cornelia only realized it during and after his execution. Lelouch was forgiven by Nunnally, Kallen, the core Black Knights, Cornelia and others who realized that Lelouch's true intentions were noble, after the death of Lelouch."
    Figured out his plan later on?
  • Assuming you grabbed that from the wiki, either they are just guessing or aren't citing sources. Either way, I don't know of any confirmation of all that. Kallen and Nunnally surely did know, though, and the first four were clearly in on it from the start.

1. ↑ Long live the king!