Monday, July 18, 2016

Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion Part 4 Episodes 14-17


The sins of the past come back to haunt Lelouch and C.C.  For Lelouch, he must contend with the fact that Shirley knows his secret, that he is Zero.  How far will he go to protect his power and identity?  Will he risk killing a friend?  For C.C., she must confront a man who she gave a Geass power to years before she met Lelouch.  He’s found her again and wants to make her and Lelouch suffer.  It’s a war between two Geass powers collide, everyone is caught in the crossfire.  But only one Geass user will emerge victorious.

There were a couple of places I could think of to start this review.  In truth, im still a little torn.  Do I start with the Mao arc or the Todo breakout?  Guess I’ll just go chronologically.  There’s a lot to get to with this set.

Is Mao a potential future for Lelouch?  That question was asked pretty clearly with the three part Mao story arc.  A crazed, Geass infused maniac from C.C.’s past posed a pretty interesting “What If” for Lelouch and shook up his world in more ways than one.  The biggest of these was Shirley.  I don’t know if Lelouch really was in love with her or just considered her a dear friend.  Whatever the case, whipping her memory of him entirely was a real gut punch for him.  I guess the question now is how long until Shirley regains her memories?  Call me crazy but it seems bound to happen, even if it goes against the rules of Geass. 

Mao himself started out pretty interesting.  With a different kind of Geass with it’s own drawbacks, he still managed to trip up both Lelouch and C.C. quite a bit.  Still, I feel like maybe a little too much time was focused on him.   Frankly he should have died after the second part.  The only reason to drag Mao’s time out any longer was to give us some insight into Suzaku’s past and give an excuse for a pretty cool Lelouch and Suzaku team up.  There’s a very “Sherlock” quality to this pairing isn’t there?  Lelouch being the detective and strategist.  Suzaku may not be dumb but he is the brawns of the two…and superhuman apparently as he outruns a sentry gun with Stormtrooper aim…ok.  And I gotta hand it to Lelouch.  Geass-ing himself was a clever move…but one I wish he’d saved for later on in the series.  Though necessary, just seems like a waste to use it against Mao, unless he can use it again on himself but I doubt that.  Anyway, if these two, Lelouch and Suzaku, did team up, it’s doubtful Britannia would stand a chance.

Sadly, these two are on different sides and that brings us to the Todo breakout (that either sounds really cool or really dumb the more times I write that).  Now not to knock Lelouch too much, but you figure he would have found out about Suzaku piloting the Lancelot sooner.  He’s got eyes and ears pretty much everywhere.  You think he wouldn’t have had someone look in on Suzaku’s activities with the military.  This trip up in logic cost Lelouch a key ally even though he managed to get Todo out in a pretty spectacular action sequence.  Plus Suzaku seems keen on sticking to his “change the world from within” stance…so it looks like he and Lelouch are unknowingly enemies from here on. 

Couple of side notes.  In a cast of dozens, is adding more really a smart move at this stage?  We’re almost into the final act and now we have Rakshata, a cute Indian scientist who’s essentially the Black Knights equivalent of Lloyd (Lancelot’s creator and Suzaku’s boss…more or less).  We’ve heard Lloyd mention her once or twice in passing but I never thought we’d see her in person.  Cute but necessary?  That remains to be seen.  Oh and Oghi tried to squeeze in some importance by finding an unconscious Violetta (Jeremiah’s second in command) and with amnesia following Shirley shooting her to protect Lelouch.  This…just feels down right unnecessary.  Oghi hasn’t been one of the best or most fleshed out characters, so I guess this is just giving him something to do…and to have some shameless nude shots of Violetta…cause fan service.  We did finally get some cute sister time with Cornelia and Euphie, just chilling out.  Hearing them talk about Lelouch and Nunally makes me wonder how theyre gonna react when they find out he’s Zero.  At this point, it’s only a matter of time.

One last thing: can we at least confirm Mao is actually dead this time?  I wont be fully satisfied with the outcome until we actually see C.C. double tap him with her pistol…you know incase of Zombie virus or…you know surviving a hail of police bullets…

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