#i get that they’re trying to destroy the world but it’s clear that the BKs don’t want the RGs to come back

[freswoe]

i really don’t know how im feeling about the latest fhjy episode. sure, it was fun, the combat planning was great to watch and the battle map was awesome, but… story-wise? It wasn’t good. more than that, the preview for the next episode looks like it’ll mainly be just a battle episode, and that combination does Not make me feel optimistic about the ending of fhjy as a whole.

i think the thing that best sums up my confusion and disappointment with this episode is when Ally/Kristen shouts ‘For Lucy!’ and honestly… why? What about Lucy Frostblade - the kind girl whose major philosophy was that the world is cold so we have to keep each other warm, the foil to Porter’s house of conquest without mercy - suggests that she’d want the brutal murder of her friends without any attempt to talk to or redeem them? the entire season has stressed the doubt/conviction relationship - with the RGs representing wrathful conviction and the BKs representing doubt - and yet there’s zero doubt, zero room for understanding, when Fig’s first action as Wanda Chillda is to stress that she fucking hates ruben and wants to see him die. also, whatever the fuck was going on with ivy and fabian.

its just. this episode is the penultimate episode of the entire season, and if i was watching with no prior knowledge, id probably say it would be episode 13, 14 etc. a cool fight, but absolutely zero emotional resonance - just the Bad Kids going to town on yet another enemy. cool fights, cool planning, cool teamwork, but nothing really special about it.

i’ve seen some people saying not to take this so seriously, that it’s an dnd liveplay so of course the storytelling isn’t always gonna be Handcrafted To Perfection TM, but Fantasy High has a track record of some pretty amazing and thoughtful storytelling, and that’s what makes this episode kinda suck. There’s zero emotional resonance. The BKs clearly view the RGs as minibosses, annoying obstacles to defeat so they can focus on the main event, and that would be fine if that’s what the RGs were. But they’re not. We’ve learnt about them, we’ve seen how they were corrupted and groomed, we’ve seen how they really are just the Bad Kids who really went bad. They have narrative weight! They represent the mindless, wrathful conviction that the BKs are trying to stop, and for the BKs to slaughter them with that wrathful conviction (with no room for doubt or redemption at all) is… it’s not good.

don’t get me wrong, I get why (they’ve been awful to the BKs all season, cathartic last fight etc) but it still sucks narratively. like i can’t stress enough that the BKs are using the exact same tactics that they resented the RGs for to slaughter them. ruben says to fig that the BKs are killing his friends (despite their awful interparty relationships, they’re still his friends) and her response, instead of the understanding and kindness that fig (and, tbh, Emily) are known for is to cast ruben into literal fucking hell.

even oisin’s death was anticlimactic. gorgug’s kill on him was cool, but no nod to adaine? not even a mention of ‘you led my friend on and broke her heart so now i’ll break your heart?’ the broken heart thing was Right There and nothing happened. oisin died, a player was removed from the field, the battle went on. no emotional connection or resonance whatsoever.

i don’t know. from a narrative perspective, this episode was bad. all the nuance of the bad kids/rat grinders dynamic has been lost. the bad kids have become Exactly what the rat grinders said they were with apparently zero self-awareness on the matter. they shoot porter and jace and the RGs down with zingers and cool spells and don’t bother even trying to de-rage the rat grinders, and the result is an episode 19 which feels like a mid-season miniboss fight. they bring the same approach to fighting the RGs that they did to fighting the monsters in the Last Stand, which, y’know. not good.

the only way i can think that they might turn this around is if the BKs are shown to be influenced by rage/the RGs get brought back (still hating the BKs, but at least giving them the chance to try again), but I really don’t know at this point. just overall feeling very disappointed.

[codetrainwreck]

As a nonshipper, do you think Taniguchi didn't make LxCC obvious to not offend shippers? mononoke-no-ko's trans says he personally interprets this as a love story and OP/ED show CC/Lelouch feelings. He says it's not necessarily a love between a man and woman but those lyrics... the translation of them seem pretty romantic. Plus he says Lelouch staying with her is like a proposal or something like it? Not buying what he's selling. Maybe these are the delusions of a salty kalulu shipper though.

Uhhh okay so this is long and rambly and I probably barely answered 50% of your question.

First, the recap movies

Tbh I think the changes to the recap movies made it very, very clear they were going for a Lelouch x CC ending. I don’t think they were trying not to offend people. The recaps made it very obvious.

Kallen and Shirley’s roles were both reduced in the recaps. Though Taniguchi claims that Shirley and Lelouch “were dating” in the first recap movie, they barely even interact and it results in Shirley looking like a stalker or something. His comment about how Shirley and Lelouch were “dating” is part of why I don’t think he can do romance lol.

The first recap movie adds in a new scene where Lelouch plays darts while CC eats pizza and they talk about how there’ll be a day when he isn’t with Nunnally anymore. At the end of the scene, the other BKs buzz Zero on the intercom, Lelouch puts the mask back on, and the other BKs come in. Kallen tries to lecture CC to learn how to use a KMF (originally Tamaki’s line from the TV show) but CC gets catty and tells her, “I’m eating brunch tee-hee” with a smug look on her face.

The first recap also adds a few frames of CC watching over him when he’s with Suzaku and Nunnally. The second recap has a new scene where CC turns up her nose and is coy and playful w/Lelouch, saying he never asked her who gave the Emperor his Geass. The third recap has a new scene where amnesiac CC is clumsy, falls over in a position that you somehow see both her ass + her tits, and plays w/her hair. It serves no other purpose than to make her look uwu moeblob.

Next, Revive

So, the quote about Revive was something like… “the song lyrics to Revive are Lelouch’s love for the world, which includes CC”. Tbh, that… actually makes a lot of sense to me?

There is a part in the China arc where Schneizel says something about how the world belongs to the people. With his decision to withdraw because of the Eunuch’s actions and the citizen’s response, it’s thus also implied, “…and rulers belong to the world [to act on behalf of the people]”. However, as R2 progresses, it’s clear that while Schneizel feels he is owned by the world, he does not love it.

In contrast, Lelouch does love the world and he does love the people in it. And as a person with power, with the ability to do something about the state of the world, he shows his love for it by trying to remake the world anew. Though he talks about destroying the world, he also talks of a day when it’ll be more gentle, and he has strong feelings for many people in the world. And of course, that would include CC.

The songs that were specifically written for Geass were like… “I can change the world” (COLORS), “I destroyed the world” (WORLD END), “Did Lelouch leave his mark [when he destroyed the world], or did he fade to obscurity?” (NE:ONE) The progression that, now that we’ve destroyed the world (WORLD END), we bring it back to life (Revive) reallyreallyreallyreallyreally makes sense to me.

The clause about it being “love for the world” just indicates when the singer says “kimi” (you), they’re referring to the world at large instead of a single person. So, the first two lines of the song could be like, “The world spoke to me as I slept for what seemed like an eternity // I embraced the morning that came when I finally woke up“.

Lastly, can Taniguchi and Okouchi write romance?

In my opinion, Taniguchi and Okouchi have no idea how to do romance, but that was to their advantage. Their inability to do romance surfaces in the TV anime plot in the form of Lelouch never hooking up w/anyone. And it was that lack of commitment to a pairing has driven many fans to still be involved in the fandom after ~10 years. The flames of the shipping wars still burn brightly.

rainfall has a post up about the proposal. It’s a translation of the booklet where it talks about this. I would suggest reading that cause I think it paints a different picture than what’s been circulating on Tumblr. But even just reading it in Japanese, it does feel more like Taniguchi is trying to get a reaction out of CC’s voice actress. There’s also the CC story card where CC herself even considers that it’s possible she only imagined him saying her name. Even though the recaps telegraph their plan, the 2 aforementioned tidbits make their relationship seem more “subtle”, doesn’t it?

But, even though I said Taniguchi and Okouchi can’t do romance, the idea that the love between 2 people must be romantic is also admittedly very stereotypically western of me. I think there is a difference in how east vs west see love and write about it in our fiction. karice had a good tweet chain about this before, though not in the context of Geass or even anime. That Lelouch and CC walk off together, showing a bond (or ”attachment” as karice translates it in her tweets) without there being some overly romantic love confession could very well just be a cultural thing.