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iamvoid0 · 2 years

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How this Magical Girl JRPG Handles Trauma - Blue Reflection

I wasn’t originally going to do a piece on Blue Reflection. However, after playing the Blue Reflection: Second Light demo, I thought, “damn, this shit dread”. Upon learning that Second Light was the second game in the franchise, I got the first game for the PC. Second Light’s demo was a great introduction to the game’s real-time strategy mechanics. Second Light was clearly leading from the first game, and I wanted to also enjoy the story.

Blue Reflection is a fantastic slice of life RPG which centres itself on teenage girls and the issues they face being teenagers. Going from a mundane plot line about a girl wearing makeup because she likes the art it can produce all the way up to sexual assault and trauma. Blue Reflection takes a nuanced look at emotions and how it interacts with the characters, crafting a unique identity for itself in a sea of over-the-top RPG clones.

In this essay, I’ll look at how the game handles itself, its severe and traumatic topics, and how it uses the plot to inform game mechanics. While this will not be a review, I will call out specific issues with the game and praise what many should be taking notes of.

Chapter One — Is this Slice of Life?

Once I got into the game and played for an hour or so. Something quickly hit me. This is a magical girl, slice-of-life JRPG. At that moment, I couldn’t recall the last time I saw a game like this. It was a breath of fresh air in a genre that defines itself on over-the-top dramatics, punishing gameplay, and a complex lore system that spans genres.

I have to be fair to Blue Reflection, and it carries profound lore that expands itself much like the JRPGs and RPGs that came before it. The gameplay systems are decently complex, but with an air of accessibility to them, where I didn’t actually feel frustrated learning or playing the game.

The game can be considered a casual RPG, though I believe this classification to be a bit limiting. The game is very relaxed. It makes it easy to pick up and just play. However, a lot is going on here, from manually levelling up your characters to keeping track of the multiple NPC characters and their relationships with one another.

Overall, the game is a fun experience that shines once you don’t let the little things bother you. The game isn’t perfect, but it is worth your time.

Chapter Two — Magical Mechanics

I am writing this piece primarily to look at the game’s stories. However, I want to take a moment to talk about the game’s RPG mechanics.

The game starts you off as Hinako Shirai, a ballet dancer who injured her knee the previous year and has been unable to follow through with her dream of being a dancer. You eventually encounter another student consumed by their emotions, and they begin acting out. You then meet Yuzuki and Lime Shijou, who grants you the power to become a “Reflector” by giving you a ring. Though their decision seems simple at first, later, it is revealed that there is much more to this decision.

You jump into the Common, where everyone’s emotions are shared. In “The Common”, there are monsters who respond and feed off different kinds of emotions. The common also has these crystals, which house the deep-held emotions of the person whose emotional state you are in. Once you break enough crystals and beat the main antagonist, you leave the common and go back out in the real world, where you help the person, gain friends, and gain their fragments which help you in battle. The game incentivises you to do as many quests as possible, make new friends and earn their fragments which can help change the way you battle and power up your moves and character. It really leans into that whole, “Oh, you’re a God? I’m sorry, but you don’t have the power of friendship.” This also serves as a good allegory for friends supporting each other in emotional distress.

The game has a mostly grounded, real-life, slice-of-life aesthetic. Then the bosses show up at the school, and they are literally these massive, biblical-style angels, titan-like monsters. The designs are genuinely intriguing.

Weaknesses are displayed to the user using symbols. And it doesn’t tell you when it changes. And it only tells you after you’ve attacked. When I pick a circle attack, there is no visual indicator to determine if this is a weakness or strength. I simply must remember it. It’s all grey. This is a real-time battle, and it is hard to remember square, circle, and triangle in the heat of the fight. It’s easier to remember when games use colour to help you differentiate between weaknesses and strengths. Then sometimes, some monster just chooses other battle weaknesses in the middle of the battle.

You can take up to four friends into battle. And they offer bonus stats, such as health, attack up, healing, etc. The game wants you to complete as many side quests as possible to unlock friends to use in battle. When you invoke one of your friends during your turn, they make quite a spectacle.

Another point is that other games use emotions as a part of gameplay mechanics, such as the ill-fated Princess Peach game. (let me know if you want me to do a write-up on that)

Another thing to note is that the entire cast of this game is girls aged 15–18. And all of their stories are just normal but real stories. Their stories are also, at times, tedious and petty. In one account, we have a girl named Ako, whose subplot involves her being like, “oh my god, my father would never approve of my career choice”. And you have to then save Ako because she was too stupid/stupid to understand that journalism isn’t that bad. And her father, who is an in-universe rockstar, would be proud of her. I didn’t care for this plot point, but it shows what Blue Reflection does well.

If you’re looking for female-focused, hyper-feminist, lead games, you’re not going to find them here. The game has many fan service moments undermining what Blue Reflection wanted to stand for.

Chapter Three — There shouldn’t be any fan service

It really becomes unbecoming by the mid-game. You’d get a low-angle shot at the start of the game, looking up, and I’m there thinking,” oh, okay, fine, it’s a little weird but okay”. But then it keeps happening. Every few cutscenes would be this weird angle camera, and you’d stand there going, “What is this?”. Especially given the content of the game and who it is meant for.

I think the game needs to reduce or altogether remove the fan service especially given the target audience.

Chapter Four — A breath of fresh air

I grew up with Hamtaro, Card Capture Sakura, and Totally Spies. Cartoons and anime that are female-focused and whose storylines are tailored towards girls. I watched several popular ones, and I enjoyed them as well. There is a demand for this kind of writing style and slice-of-life. I have not seen this kind of slice of life and female-focused writing in a JRPG. Others may have been produced in Japan but haven’t seen a translated release. I’ve played many dating sims and visual novels, though I only play the critically acclaimed ones.

Some people will criticise the game for leaning so heavily on emotions. I understand the history and its implications of it. However, at the same time, I think the game did a good job showing the player just how emotions can become monstrous when left unattended. It can be violent, and it can feel like a battle for some people. There were some issues. Some emotions were represented well, and others not. The game has potential.

Every girl in the game is just their problem. Their characters are only as deep as the problems they face. Despite this, you do get to help them along with their problems. You get to see them resolve issues through direct or indirect actions. There are times when, even though you ‘solve’ the character’s issue, the character themselves need to be willing to accept the help or do the work required to move on. So every quest may end, but ultimately it isn’t up to the protagonist whether or not the characters are better in the end.

Blue Reflection is an excellent female-focused story you don’t really get to hear or see that often in games.

Chapter Five — Not All That Glitters

The characters may not be very unique visually, but the issues they face vary greatly. There are more minor issues, such as some girls being jealous of an exceptionally gifted girl because of her makeup.

One girl loves makeup and wanted to share the joy of makeup with her friends. She thinks that’s all she’s worth, and it’s the only way for her to make friends. She goes and helps them put on makeup and wants all of them to love makeup. When she goes and helps these other girls put on their makeup and puts on hers, The fellas tend to like her. For one girl, in particular, it made her angry at the makeup girl. She didn’t understand what she was doing wrong when nothing was wrong with her. And the individual was projecting their insecurity onto the makeup girl, which made the makeup girl insecure. She bonded with people over their love of makeup.

There were issues where the main protagonist is constantly battling her accident which stopped her from dancing, and her friend, who knew about it, used it against her. There were issues where the characters were intentionally lying about other characters so the others would isolate and bully them. The game’s storylines can be charming and easy-going, but when it takes a turn, it is a sharp turn.

One of the girls finds a camera in the changing room, and I was like, holy shit, that’s a real fucking plot line. I was getting ready for a teacher doing this, and we would have to do some real shit here.

A girl and her friend discovered the camera and realized someone was spying on them in the changing rooms.

One girl is furious and wants to desperately find the person, and the other is like meh, whatever, let me play on the phone. It may seem weird to some, but those are accurate responses if you’ve interacted with or seen people deal with and process trauma. Some people might fight hard to make sure this never happens again / reclaim power for either themselves or others. Some people might just recluse themselves into whatever they can to prevent from processing it. It could be tv, movies, music, books, going out, clubbing, and anything else. This was really good to see these actual responses. It was entirely out of nowhere. You get Saturday morning cartoons, then boom.

I was fully prepared for a conclusion where it was an adult, a principal, a teacher, or something along those lines. I was fully ready to see how far the story would go with these issues, maybe evening speaking on society as a whole.

And then we find out it’s a girl.

Not just any girl, it’s the Captain of the girls’ team. She placed the camera there. And I was like fuck, I genuinely didn’t expect them to say it was a girl.

But then it was never addressed.

The girl who wants to know more and bring justice gets angry, and she gets angrier when the other girl who reclused doesn’t want to address the issue. As they both get angrier, they go rampant, and you must go into the common to fix it. And you find their crystals and break them, and you feel what they feel. Then you come out in the real world, and then Lime says you can try to help someone knowing fully what they have been through, but it may not always work.

I think it was an excellent plot point to have the characters acknowledge that this is all they can do at this point.

It was good that they provided a nuanced look at something as serious as this. Certain things can mess up people in various directions that we don’t simply understand or know how to deal with.

In another game, it might have been a switch. You know you break the crystal, and everything is fixed. Especially if it was a side character, you see the quest would have been done, and you probably wouldn’t think about it again. The game deserves credit for adding the nuance when I didn’t expect it.

You focused on the people and how they were affected. We don’t know the real repercussions and what the actual punishment was. It was okay to just leave and connect the dots for some others. This quest affected the entire school.

That was the last plot point I went through, and maybe it was addressed further down the line. So ultimately, I don’t know if the character in question was punished or if the victims ever got any relief or dealt with it.

I think they addressed some of it was really good. It was a great nuanced quest and arc. The game set itself up to have an honest discussion about the issues.

Chapter Six — All together now

Blue Reflection offers a diverse set of characters, stories, and personalities for every kind of person to get attached to. Each character comes with their own problems and nuances and adds a great deal to the story. It’s a fun take on an overdone RPG style.

There are problems with the battle system, but the moves are well designed, and a lot of visual candy is associated with it. No action really feels tedious. However, coming down to the end of the game, you’ll find the moves that do the most damage and just use those to complete the game. You’ll spam AoE and knockback moves mostly. When that fails, there is Lime. Who, for some reason, is an absolute unit. She has some kind of hidden damage modifier that makes her hit enemies like a break wall. She is, without a doubt, op.

I think she was placed there to ensure casual players can power through the game. It is an excellent way to keep the player moving, especially if they might not have been competent or advanced in RPG mechanics.

Some topics here you don’t find in other games. There are many cutscenes, and hopefully, they’ll reduce it going forward. Fanservice is still a big problem that can affect playability. Don’t rush through the game; otherwise, it becomes frustrating.

Overall I’d love to see more depth and nuance in the characters. I feel like this game really has a lot to offer.

Even though it exists within its niche medium, I think the game can go beyond its niche and help craft a new RPG style that appeals to gamers who would like to see a story with a more modern touch and more profound stories.

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The Void Calls, Will You Answer?

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themagical1sa · 1 year

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/nbh

what do you mean anti looks like classmate crushie–

#[ 🗣️ | the magical girl speaks ]#ft. crushie #ft. antisa #anticrush arc real?!?!?! /j #this cannot be happening on the same day. the same day when i see the cute new student from another school who also happens to be japanese #what in the wattpad fic is going on with my life 😭🙈🫣

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bl-bracket · 1 year

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Introducing: Who is the Greenest Flag in a BL Series?

After the bl poor little meow meow competition (congrats again to Wei Wuxian), it's time for the next BL bracket: the greenest flag in the BL world.

What characters in BL series are constantly showing the greenest flags over and over again? What characters seem allergic to being toxic in anyway?

Submit them here!

Rules for entry are on the form and the pinned post on this blog!

Submissions Close: March 31st @ 10 PM UTC

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haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted · 2 years

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Snakeskin Veil (Japanese Ver) by Yuhki Takeuchi

#Magic the Gathering #MtG #Strixhaven #Strixhaven: School of Mages #Arcavios #Snakeskin Vein #Japanese Version #Japanese Mystical Archive Version #Mystical Archive #Fantasy #Art #Yuhki Takeuchi

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whalden · 2 years

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Whalden School for Magical Propriety, A Series / The Origins of Alva (Book One) / Character: Joanna Nolan

#whalden school of magical propriety #the origins of alva #character board #coming of age #character design #japanese mythology #joanna nolan

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magical-demigirl · 8 months

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your translation for your last post is a little bit off but its an understandable mistake! it looks like you have three cures and "futari" is only used when youre talking about two people (think "you and i" instead of "we"). u could use "watashitachi" instead!

Thank you! I'm still learning Japanese and my class has not gotten to that part so I thought based on futari wa many translations it could pass

#magical demigirl #asks #Learning Japanese at school right now

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luveline · 1 month

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JADEEEE i'd love to see an interaction between hotch and teacher!reader outside of school? maybe jack sees her first and step away from hotch for a moment to say hi, hotch gets scared when he realizes jack left but reader comes with him just a moment later because she's panicking too like 'why are you alone? where's your dad?' and jack takes her to him. is that ok??? i hope so! love you <3333

I love you ty for your request! —Hotch flirts with Jack’s favourite teacher, because he’s never as subtle as he should be. fem, 2k

Jack reads a couple of books a week now his dad is home more often. His mom used to read to him some because he loves them, but she preferred to tell her own on the fly. His dad isn’t as good a story teller, and when he does try the stories don’t end up very happy, so they read. Sometimes two or three books a night if they're short ones.

With Jack’s library card they can borrow ten books. With his dad’s, another ten. Twenty altogether, enough to last the month if they’re careful or if dad gets called away a lot, which he usually does.

“Can I look for Super Pup?” Jack asks his dad.

Aaron sits on a chair a little too small for him in the kids section. “What?” he asks, looking up from the back of the large picture book Jack’s just handed him.

“Super Pup?”

“I’ll help, buddy.” Hotch looks like he’s going to stand, then hesitates. “In a second. Don’t go where I can’t see you, Jackers.”

Hotch is tired. He didn’t come home until very late, but he’d woken Aunt Jess anyway and, when Jack woke, there his dad was sleeping in the beanbag by his bed. He’s sore all over now and exhausted from a restless night. Jack feels sorry, as much as he can for being six nearly seven, but he also knows that his dad doesn’t mind the hurting. It was nice to wake up together after a few days apart.

And now he’s brought him to the library, and after that they’ll go for groceries. Jack should be quick. If they get home before dinner time his dad will ask him if he wants to nap together, which is the best. They just lay there in the big bed with the fan on and snooze until it’s too late to cook, so his dad breaks out the takeout menus, and promises he won’t do it again with a quick hug from behind.

As though it makes him a terrible parent for feeding his kid. Jack can’t know how guilty it makes Hotch feel to do it, and Hotch doesn’t seem to notice how much Jack loves these days where his dad is exhausted and totally his.

Jack runs around looking for Super Pup. Hotch’s phone beeps in his pocket, and he fights to keep his eyes open.

A ways away, you browse the fiction section in a crouch, knees somehow totally under your skirt, flicking aside spines of skinny books for something you can read at lunch time. Something that doesn’t require much attention, and could be read in short intervals. You used to demand a half hour to yourself when you first started teaching, but that was before the lonely kids started cropping up. Kids with no friends, or sad smiles, who want company and quiet alike.

You reach for a pink-spined Japanese translation as a little hand pats your elbow. You’re so used to kids you say, “What’s up?” before you remember you aren’t at work.

You turn in your crouch to look behind you. “Oh, hi, Jack! What are you doing here?”

“Me and dad are looking for books.”

You smile at him genuinely, happy to see your favourite student, even if you’re terrified on the inside at the prospect of his father. He’s the most gentlemanly man you’ve ever met. He’s arduous in how respectful he is, he’s understanding, and he’s tall, dark, and handsome. It is a chilling collection of traits. You stumble whenever you have to talk to him.

But Jack is easy. You and Jack talk every day. “What sorts of books? Just for fun?”

“I want to read Super Pup.”

The kids love Super Pup and his magic bark. You stand promptly, suddenly much taller than Jack as you brush down your skirt. “Wait,” you say. Mr. Hotchner gets called away for work all the time, but he wouldn’t leave Jack alone, would he? “Where’s your dad? You’re not by yourself, are you?”

Jack laughs. “No! I’m looking for Super Pup! Dad’s tired.”

You can’t decipher exactly what those two things have to do with each other, but you can guess how panicked his dad will be to find Jack so far from the kid’s section. Fiction is the other side of the library. “How did you end up over here?” You offer your hand. “Should we go back and find your dad?”

“I saw your skirt, Miss L/N. I like the flowers.”

He takes your hand, clumsy to your gentleness. “Thanks, honey. Let’s go find dad before he calls his scary friends and has your name on the news.”

You get to the kids section slowly. Endearingly so, but nerve-wracking, too, because Mr. Hotchner can be intimidating. Jack likes holding your hand, you think, clinging to your fingers as he guides you across the library, past the staircase down to the first floor, and back to the kids section.

“Jack?” Mr. Hotchner asks loudly, turned away from you both near the graphic novel selection. “Jack.”

“Mr. Hotchner,” you say.

“Dad!”

He spins on his heel. His shoulders relax noticeably, but the stress in his gaze remains.

“Jack, I said stay where I can see you,” he says, not half as scolding as he could be as Jack lets go of your hand and runs to his legs, where he stops. “Please, buddy. You gotta listen to me.”

Jack turns between you and his dad with a smile, “But look, it’s Miss L/N.”

“I can see,” he says softly.

Mr. Hotchner leans down, taking Jack up into his arms with impressive ease, and begins the walk to you where you’ve stayed.

“I hope he didn’t interrupt you,” he says.

“Please,” you say, “he’s my favourite. Just–” You wince. “Don’t tell anybody at school I said that, Jack. Please.”

“I think we can keep this secret,” Mr. Hotchner says.

“He was just telling me that you’re looking for Super Pup. If you don’t find it, we have copies at the school library. And we can always order you one.”

Mr. Hotchner gives you a small, and what you know to be rare, smile. “I don’t think he even looked.”

“I did look!” Jack disagrees, though his disagreement barely has any attitude to it, a credit to his upbringing.

“You clearly weren’t looking in the right place.”

“I was too. How would you know, you were sleeping!”

“I wasn’t sleeping,” Mr. Hotchner says to you.

You tuck your hands behind your back. “It’s okay, Mr. Hotchner, I believe you. In my classroom we like to say we’re resting our eyes.”

“Aaron,” he says, as he says whenever you speak to each other, and as you always forget to call him. Not a demand but a suggestion you’d swear to be bordering affectionate.

You’ve been Jack’s teacher for two months this year, and almost the entire year previously. In the summer when they leave, you’ll find out if you’re moving up a grade with him, but until then, you’ve made the most of such a nice kid, and you aren’t shy to tell that to Aaron. You don’t mind that Jack spends his lunch time with you. He embodies all of the reasons that pushed you to become a teacher in the first place.

And his father is a good reason to stay. He’s one of the only nice (hot) dads.

You do worry often that he can read your expression. His lips have quirked into a bemused smile, what’s so funny? He’s terrifying.

“Aaron,” you rush to say, and fill the silence you’ve made, “It’s nice to see you.”

“It’s nice to see you, too. You’ll see me on Monday, so you’ll be sick of me by Tuesday.”

You rock ever so gently on your heels. “You aren’t working.”

“It’s Jack’s birthday.”

You nod, pleased. “I know! I know, we already talked about what cupcakes he wants, didn’t we? Everybody’s gonna have rainbow sprinkle, and for a treat we’re going to watch a movie before lunch.”

“Do you do that for every kid?”

“I do.”

“How do you afford it?” He lowers his gaze. “I just mean, it’s expensive to do that for every birthday.”

“Luckily for me and unluckily for the kids, quite a few of them have birthdays outside of term time. Thirty students is three trays of ten, and that doesn’t usually break the bank, even if things get tight. But… I don’t know, I guess I just have to make room when it does. It’s special to feel special, and,” —you smile, exuberant and a little shy at once, clutching your elbow in your hand— “Jack always makes everybody else feel special. ”

The boy in question turns into his fathers chest, pleased beyond words.

Aaron gives you a long, long look. “Thank you,” he says.

“Oh, you’re welcome.”

You say goodbye to Aaron and Jack and wish them both a good weekend, which you spend wondering what the pressure of Aaron’s hand would be like on your shoulder, and if you should be ashamed of yourself for thinking about it at all. He seems like he’d give a good hug. You catch yourself picturing him opening a door and ban yourself from thinking of him at all.

Monday morning, you stand at the door ushering your students inside, and you can’t help beaming when Jack and Aaron arrive.

“Aw, Jack, where’s your birthday badge?” you ask, fall air nipping your nose.

“He was feeling too shy,” Aaron says. He’s in casual dress again. Some men should be banned from half-zips, it’s inhumane.

“You were?” You bend just a bit, hand in your pocket. “Well, I thought you might be, so I brought my badge from home. It’s super shiny, bud. What do you think?”

You show Jack the badge, It’s My Birthday in silver against a rainbow backdrop.

Maybe it was silly to bring, but you had a feeling he wouldn’t want to wear one, and maybe he should. He deserves for all his friends to give him some attention, and to have them fight over who gets to sit with him at lunch.

“We have something for you,” Jack says.

You stand straight. “You do?”

Aaron hadn’t been expecting to be the one to give it to you, that much is obvious. He hesitates for a second before he passes you a small brown box, the top of which is made up of four leaves folded into a dome. You have an inkling of what it might me.

“Thank you… Can I open it now?” you ask.

“I think you should wait for lunch,” Aaron says.

You raise your eyebrows but abide by his suggestion, murmuring another thank you as Aaron bends to give Jack a hug. “Have a good day. I’ll be here to pick you up, I promise,” he says.

It’s a great day. The kids are excited for cupcakes and overjoyed to get them before lunch. Not a crumb goes uneaten, and as they all sing for Jack with his borrowed badge, he’s actually happy for the attention. He doesn’t eat with you at lunch, which is a great thing even if you love his company.

Alone, you fold back the leaves of your mysterious box and smile like an idiot when you confirm what’s inside. A cupcake slightly more sophisticated than rainbow sprinkle spreads icing across the brown carrier, and a business card leans against the other side.

The front of the card is as you’d expected it to be spelling out Aaron’s contact details from work, and you combust thinking he wants you to call him, but it’s the back that you’d been meant to see. You read it as you fold down the leaves of the cupcake carrier,

Thirty students, three trays of ten. What does that leave for you? —Aaron.

Flirt, you think firmly, happily. He’s such a flirt.

#aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotchner x you #aaron hotchner x y/n #aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner fic #aaron hotchner blurb #aaron hotchner drabble #aaron hotchner imagine #aaron hotchner fanfic #aaron hotchner fanfiction #hotch x reader #hotch #hotch x you #hotch blurb #hotch drabble #criminal minds

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j-psilas · 9 months

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Will we ever get anything quite like Code Geass again?

I don't think it's possible.

Code Geass is Japanese nationalist propaganda disguised as a global political drama, disguised as a military mecha show, disguised as yaoibait, disguised as a teen melodrama, disguised as a high school romcom, disguised as a Pizza Hut commercial...

...except those layers aren't layers at all, but are instead comingled in a giant snake ball of insanity.

The lead writer, Ichirō Ōkouchi, only ever worked as an episode writer for other shows prior to Code Geass, and never took the helm of an anime series ever again. And it shows. [EDIT: Several people have pointed out his other lead writing credits to me. So I misread Wikipedia—sue me. I maintain that this guy is a better episode writer than he is a lead writer.]

The minute-to-minute pacing is impeccable from a mechanical standpoint, with tension and stakes rising to ever-higher peaks, balanced out by the slow simmers of the b-plot and c-plot. It keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat at all times. Meanwhile, the large-scale plot is the most off-the-wall middle school nonsense I've ever seen, continually surprising the viewer by pulling twists too dumb to have ever have been on their radar—and therefore more effective in terms of raw shock value.

"Greenlight it!" was the mantra of this anime's production. It must have been. It has, in no particular order, all of the following:

Character designs from CLAMP, the foremost yaoi/BL group in Japan at the time—for characters who are only queer insofar as they can bait the audience, and only straight insofar as they can be more misogynist to the female cast.

Speaking of the female cast, hoo boy the fanservice. We've all seen anime girls breast boobily, with many cases more egregious than Code Geass, but there's something special about it happening immediately after—or sometimes in the middle of!—scenes of military conflict and ethnic cleansing.

Pizza Hut product placement everywhere, in every conceivable situation. High-speed chases, light slice-of-life scenes, intimate character moments, all of it. Gotta have Pizza Hut.

The anime-only Pizza Hut mascot, Cheese-kun. He wears a fedora.

The most hilarious approximations of European names—which I would love to see more often, frankly. Names like, I dunno, "Count Schnitzelgrübe zi Blanquezzio."

A depiction of China that is wholly removed from any modern reality, with red-and-gold pagodas, ornamental robes, scheming eunuchs, and a brainwashed child empress. There's a character named General Tsao, like the chicken.

Inappropriate free-form jazz in the soundtrack, intruding at the most unexpected times.

A secret cabal not unlike the Illuminati, run by an immortal shota with magic powers, holding influence all across the world, at the highest levels of government. They matter for approximately three episodes.

An unexpected insert scene of a schoolgirl using the corner of a table to masturbate. She's doing it to thoughts of her crush, the princess Euphemia—because she believes Euphemia to be as racist as she herself is, and that gets her off. This interrupts an unrelated scene of our protagonist faction planning their next move, which then resumes as if uninterrupted.

Said schoolgirl, in a fit of hysteria, threatens to detonate a worse-than-nuclear bomb in the middle of her school. She then goes on to develop an even more destructive version of that bomb, and become a war criminal, in a chain of cause-and-effect stemming from the moment she finds out that Euphemia wasn't actually that racist.

A character called "the Earl of Pudding."

A premise that asks us to believe that the name Lelouch is normal enough that he didn't need to change it when he went into hiding as an ordinary civilian. "No, that's not Prince Strimbleford von Vanquish! That's our classmate, Strimbleford Smith."

The collective unconscious, a la Carl Jung, within which the protagonist fights his villainous father for control over the fate of humankind. After this is over, the anime just keeps going for about ten more episodes.

An episode in which a mech tosses a giant pizza.

A gay yandere sleeper agent who can manipulate the perception of time.

Chess being played very badly, even to the untrained eye. Lelouch frequently checkmates his opponent by moving his king. This goes hand-in-hand with the anime's crock of bad chess symbolism.

A fictional drug that can most succinctly be described as "nostalgia heroin."

Roller-skating mecha in knightly armor, and some of the most sickass mecha fight choreography that I've seen.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture. This anime is what the average Westerner in 2006 thought anime was, and it was made in a confluence of factors that cannot be replicated. I've never had so much fun watching something that I found so... insulting. Repugnant. Ridiculous. Baffling. I love it sincerely.

Catch me cosplaying Lloyd Asplund at a con sometime, or maybe even the big gay loser himself, Lelouch vi Britannia.

#code geass #anime #lelouch vi britannia #rolo lamperouge #nina einstein #kallen kozuki #lelouch lamperouge #clamp manga #lloyd asplund

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