#lloyd asplund

[j-psilas]

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.

[yu2ki]

code geass lost stories icons 🧁

[lloydasspound]

Happy birthday♡

[fvlmen]

Ok, so we all know Code Geass has its flaws, but y' know what I appreciate about it? The way scientist are depicted. They are no "Hello yeah I'm a SCIENTIST I know about rocks, biology, chemistry and hey I just accidentally broke this Uranium nucleus, now what guys?". They have specific knowledge, and there are many women between them.

When I was 16 or something, and I watched Lloyd's mechas being sabotaged by Rakshata's same damn field, I was like, "Aw, why did he go from super clever to stupid? Why doesn't he just find a way to counter that field?"

And now that I've grown up to be an (astro)physicist myself, I know I would be like, "I don't know what kind of quanto-mechanical wizardry you're doing to my robot. And please, just stop it, because I'll probably never figure it out."

[team-council]

me: life is meaningless. i am going to blink and be dead. nothing matters, i will lose everything so soon.

five seconds later: OMG LLOYD ASPLUND💞💝💖💗💓🥰🥰😁😁✨🖤🩶🤍💜

he makes the pain go away fr

[mintraspberryst]

they would like each other a lot (srs) (THEY ARE LITERALLY SOULMATES I SWEAR TO GOD) (...i will not elaborate. you just have to live with ichilloyd boyfriends casually existing in this world from now on)

[lipid]

The Britannian army and Royal Family in the upcoming Code Geass musical

[smthfunnyhappenedonthewaytor3]

Suzaku: Lloyd, check into their cameras. Lloyd: Oh sure, let me just load my "tap into every security camera in Britannia" app. Lloyd: *taps the screen* Lloyd: I’m sorry if that sounded like sarcasm. It wasn’t. I am in.

[uncanny-instinct]

To you, so beautiful and fair

[genesic-archives]

3★ Lloyd Card (illustrated by 島 [Shima])

[apollostea]

I don’t personally don’t know if any friends of mine like Code Geass so I’ll post here.

Today my mom told me while I was watching Code Geass that Lloyd Asplund looked and sounded gay.

[rolorules]

By Tsumaje.

[lloydasspound]

What are you doing here?

[roseofcards90]

Thinking of them <333

[ta6ris]

take this stuff i spent 10 mins on

[thisearthycat]

stage play redraw 🥹 i love them sm

og below the cut 👇