Comments on: Code Geass broke my feeble little brain http://behind-the.nihonreview.com/20080910/code-geass-broke-my-feeble-little-brain/ An insight into the minds of the staff of The Nihon Review Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:24:11 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Bamkuro http://behind-the.nihonreview.com/20080910/code-geass-broke-my-feeble-little-brain/#comment-21321 Bamkuro Fri, 23 Sep 2011 21:21:35 +0000 http://behind-the.nihonreview.com/20080910/code-geass-broke-my-feeble-little-brain/#comment-21321 -Continuation- So now we have Schneizel, a man belonging to the holy motherland of Britannia and, as Prince, he appears in part of the first and the second season just as another aristocratic governor obeying his father for domination of the world. But there is a difference, he is not satisfied with the whole situation, during the black rebelion we hear him saying: ¨Isn't it sad... people killing each other again¨, just before assigning the charge of going to interveine. He also tells Nina during the conquest of Europe what people really desire is an end to war and violence, just after having written a peace treatment with ¿France?. So how is it possible that a guy like him would end up trying to control the world bombing all important cities of the world with the damocles? Actually, wait, this reminds me to another story. I dunno if you ever heard of Watchmen, watched the movie or maybe even read the comic (one of the best ever written), but I do find incredible resemblances between the characters of Schneizel and Adrian Veidt (alias Ozymandias), I even think Adrian was the Inspiration of the Character of Schneizel but anyways. In the story of Watchmen, Veidt saves the world of a nuclear third world war between the USA and the USSR. How? Well, he uses the special overnatural forces of another character (Mr. Manhattan)making it look like Dr. Manhattan actually declares war to humanity (which, at first, Dr. Manhattan didn't want to) and so the world decides to unite forces and stop doing war between each others. At the end, Dr. Manhattan decides to agree with Veidt and decides to dissappear forever. If the world knew that Veidt had been the one behind all the attacks, the world would have splitted again , since Veidt is American. ¨I killed millions... to save billions; I feel ashamed of what I've done, but I could not let the world destroy itself.¨ Something like this was the idea of Veidt, he made it look like Mr. Manhattan had punished the world making it feel scared but at the same time conscious of who they (the people) are and who is the enemy. You could say Veidts procedure was a mixture between Schneizel's and Lelouch's. Schneizel understood the whole world, the people, as a system, which could be dominated and forced to live in peace by opression, by the Damocles. He saw himself as God or as a dictator who would know better how the world works than the world itself. ¨World peace in change of a single live... there is no point of comparison; in order to make real the ilusion of peace, punishment is necessary¨. His only problem was that people would not agree with his concept of world peace, since the world is not just a system which, with some punishment or obligation, would just obey (as it would have been in the past centuries and as it is even today, but I'll talk later about that point). Schneizels idea was to be the point of accumulation of all the hatred himself, with the difference that he really would be bad, representing the wall in front of the desires of the people of liberty, peace and true happiness and, more importantly, not dissappearing as lelouch does. It would be as another Britannia-domination, with the difference that Schneizel would have been almost invincible (thanks to Damocles). Even with this scenario, the truth is that Schneizel actually wanted the best for the people. ¨The idea of happiness leads to avarice¨ and avarice can be both good and bad, that's why he doesn't even give it a chance. ¨A life that doesn't change can't be called a life, it'd be just an experience¨ says Lelouch in episode 24, while Schneizel answers ¨I would call that knowledge¨. He ignores the fact that during his term of world domination, millions of people would not be able to live their lifes as they really would like, again, as they were just a system, as the french people were before the revolution of 1789, we've learned diferent and important things from that revolution (like f. eg. how bad the living conditions were or how strong a united society can be...), but no more, its value is only historical, no matter how much they would have suffered, it just happened and that's it, and in Schneizel's world it would happen again, it would be just a new story to study and learn from. But emotions or will of the people is of non importance for him. And there is the difference between him and Lelouch. Lelouch won't do for the world what he consideres the best, he will do what the world is asking for, which is peace through end of war, liberty of every state and people etc., an ending to all the hatred (he diecides to sacrifice himself while lying to the world, but eventhough, he gives them what they want). Lelouch thinks that, as long as the people continue looking for happiness, the future can get better, whereas, by ignoring that happiness and just doing whatever one or two people want to do, the whole situation wont get better, at least not quickly. Again, revolutions as the english, american, french and many more prove this. As long as the common will of the people is ignored by the major powers, it will end up getting worse and worse. It happens the same way today, with the difference that the major powers are more interested in money than really in a way to world peace. But this is the most important lection we can find in CG, Lelouch, being at the top of power, having achieved his goals of vengeance, is able not to corrupt and to give up everything including his own life in order to carry out the desires of the world (and most probably also his own). But I'll talk about that in my third and, hopefully, last comment. -Continuation- So now we have Schneizel, a man belonging to the holy motherland of Britannia and, as Prince, he appears in part of the first and the second season just as another aristocratic governor obeying his father for domination of the world. But there is a difference, he is not satisfied with the whole situation, during the black rebelion we hear him saying: ¨Isn’t it sad… people killing each other again¨, just before assigning the charge of going to interveine. He also tells Nina during the conquest of Europe what people really desire is an end to war and violence, just after having written a peace treatment with ¿France?. So how is it possible that a guy like him would end up trying to control the world bombing all important cities of the world with the damocles? Actually, wait, this reminds me to another story. I dunno if you ever heard of Watchmen, watched the movie or maybe even read the comic (one of the best ever written), but I do find incredible resemblances between the characters of Schneizel and Adrian Veidt (alias Ozymandias), I even think Adrian was the Inspiration of the Character of Schneizel but anyways. In the story of Watchmen, Veidt saves the world of a nuclear third world war between the USA and the USSR. How? Well, he uses the special overnatural forces of another character (Mr. Manhattan)making it look like Dr. Manhattan actually declares war to humanity (which, at first, Dr. Manhattan didn’t want to) and so the world decides to unite forces and stop doing war between each others. At the end, Dr. Manhattan decides to agree with Veidt and decides to dissappear forever. If the world knew that Veidt had been the one behind all the attacks, the world would have splitted again , since Veidt is American. ¨I killed millions… to save billions; I feel ashamed of what I’ve done, but I could not let the world destroy itself.¨ Something like this was the idea of Veidt, he made it look like Mr. Manhattan had punished the world making it feel scared but at the same time conscious of who they (the people) are and who is the enemy. You could say Veidts procedure was a mixture between Schneizel’s and Lelouch’s. Schneizel understood the whole world, the people, as a system, which could be dominated and forced to live in peace by opression, by the Damocles. He saw himself as God or as a dictator who would know better how the world works than the world itself. ¨World peace in change of a single live… there is no point of comparison; in order to make real the ilusion of peace, punishment is necessary¨. His only problem was that people would not agree with his concept of world peace, since the world is not just a system which, with some punishment or obligation, would just obey (as it would have been in the past centuries and as it is even today, but I’ll talk later about that point). Schneizels idea was to be the point of accumulation of all the hatred himself, with the difference that he really would be bad, representing the wall in front of the desires of the people of liberty, peace and true happiness and, more importantly, not dissappearing as lelouch does. It would be as another Britannia-domination, with the difference that Schneizel would have been almost invincible (thanks to Damocles). Even with this scenario, the truth is that Schneizel actually wanted the best for the people. ¨The idea of happiness leads to avarice¨ and avarice can be both good and bad, that’s why he doesn’t even give it a chance. ¨A life that doesn’t change can’t be called a life, it’d be just an experience¨ says Lelouch in episode 24, while Schneizel answers ¨I would call that knowledge¨. He ignores the fact that during his term of world domination, millions of people would not be able to live their lifes as they really would like, again, as they were just a system, as the french people were before the revolution of 1789, we’ve learned diferent and important things from that revolution (like f. eg. how bad the living conditions were or how strong a united society can be…), but no more, its value is only historical, no matter how much they would have suffered, it just happened and that’s it, and in Schneizel’s world it would happen again, it would be just a new story to study and learn from. But emotions or will of the people is of non importance for him. And there is the difference between him and Lelouch. Lelouch won’t do for the world what he consideres the best, he will do what the world is asking for, which is peace through end of war, liberty of every state and people etc., an ending to all the hatred (he diecides to sacrifice himself while lying to the world, but eventhough, he gives them what they want). Lelouch thinks that, as long as the people continue looking for happiness, the future can get better, whereas, by ignoring that happiness and just doing whatever one or two people want to do, the whole situation wont get better, at least not quickly. Again, revolutions as the english, american, french and many more prove this. As long as the common will of the people is ignored by the major powers, it will end up getting worse and worse. It happens the same way today, with the difference that the major powers are more interested in money than really in a way to world peace. But this is the most important lection we can find in CG, Lelouch, being at the top of power, having achieved his goals of vengeance, is able not to corrupt and to give up everything including his own life in order to carry out the desires of the world (and most probably also his own). But I’ll talk about that in my third and, hopefully, last comment.

]]> By: Bamkuro http://behind-the.nihonreview.com/20080910/code-geass-broke-my-feeble-little-brain/#comment-19686 Bamkuro Thu, 16 Jun 2011 17:59:03 +0000 http://behind-the.nihonreview.com/20080910/code-geass-broke-my-feeble-little-brain/#comment-19686 Although I would like to know your opinion about the rest of the anime, I will focus now on ¨the last episodes¨, which I suppose are ment to be episodes 19 to 25 of R2. I will start with the following question: Have you even understood the meaning or ¨philosophy¨ of these episodes (especially the diferent conception of the world Charles, Schneizel and Lelouch have)? Although you started saying things like:¨difficult to write anything meaningful or intelligent about Code Geass¨ or ¨Code Geass is little more than a rollercoaster ride¨, which made me quite sad realising you haven't understood much of the real meaning; you specified in the following paragraphs what really disappointed you in Code Geass: that is the too quick and difficult to understand change of the plot or at least of some parts of it. And I honestly can understand that, it was kind of akward to me too (when I knew Marianne was actually alive...). But it was defenetily not ¨nonsencial¨. Maybe it was at the first time watching it and so for peaple who just watched Code Geass once as ¨a rollercoaster ride¨. I still admit that things like: the sudden acceptance of the black knights order of Schneizel and his story about the Geass or, like I said before, Marianne being inside the body of Anya..., are quite unrealistic and sudden. And looking at this kind of factors I can still get your point of criticism. But again, it's very ingenuous of you to say it makes no sense or, even worse, when saying real nonsense (excuse me) like: ¨You don’t learn anything from it, be exposed to a new take on a social phenomenon, or come to appreciate the moral complexities of something you previously thought of as black-and-white¨. In fact, I will use this last quote to show you how mistaken you were in trying to get to understand the philosophy of the plot. Firstly, I did learn a lot of aspects, points of view..., within circles of politics, philosophy or even just social live watching CG. We have for example Nicolas Maquiavelli in the dispute between Lelouch and Suzaku about the result justifying the means or not with Suzaku changing his mind after firing Freya (which was no surprise for me when he suddenly started laughing) and Lelouch loosing everything he once had and maybe regreting his way of life, comming to the conclusion that he had to give up his last mean (his life) in order to achieve the result he wanted. Especially: ¨the moral complexities of something you previously thought of as black-and-white¨ really surprised me of hearing that. I had several discussions with people who have watched CG but we all agreed in one thing: there is no conception of good or bad considering the ways of solving the problem each figure has. So ¨black-and-white¨ doesn't even exist in CG. It's true that Charles at first looks like another Hitler and ends up being someone like God, but even in that case you can argue wether it was or not ¨good¨ (end justifies the means?). But having now arrived to the point of Charles and Mariannes decision, their real plan, I am highly doubting that more than 30% of the viewers have actually understood what ¨killing the gods¨ really means. And I will tell you it is one of the best and most well hidden critics to religions (specially to the cristian, muslim,jewish and orthodox). It is important that we first see the meaning of ¨killing the gods¨. Charles tells Lelouch people won't need lies anymore, people will just have one real personality, so what should we understand from that? Lying is bad? Well that should remind you to the 10 commandments of the Bible. And which is the ¨world¨ Charles wants to arrive at? Yes, it's exactly the same world which cristians or believers in God await after death and for which they prepare themselves doing what ¨God¨ says to be good or bad. If you actually think good or bad really exists (appart from the law), than such a world would not be that bad (although you are rejecting all bad people(what supposidly will happen in the final judgement of God)). But the reason why Lelouch rejects this kind of world is because he doesn't think good or bad really exist. And there comes his real apreciation for Nunnally, a person that may have no reason to smile still does so, because of the simple fact that she had a reason. She found good what others may find bad, she had a free will to decide how to feel. But also Lelouch, lying in order to free the world from Britannia, sees the ¨world of perfection¨ as a dictatorship since it is Charles who decides what is correct and what not. And now let's just think what the promised land of the Bible is about. At least I do find several similarities. Nunnally desired a world in which people could smile by their own will, not because someone decides if they do or not. So Lelouch doesn't want to stop time and set an end to all. ---I will continue this critic/explanation in the next message--- Although I would like to know your opinion about the rest of the anime, I will focus now on ¨the last episodes¨, which I suppose are ment to be episodes 19 to 25 of R2. I will start with the following question: Have you even understood the meaning or ¨philosophy¨ of these episodes (especially the diferent conception of the world Charles, Schneizel and Lelouch have)? Although you started saying things like:¨difficult to write anything meaningful or intelligent about Code Geass¨ or ¨Code Geass is little more than a rollercoaster ride¨, which made me quite sad realising you haven’t understood much of the real meaning; you specified in the following paragraphs what really disappointed you in Code Geass: that is the too quick and difficult to understand change of the plot or at least of some parts of it. And I honestly can understand that, it was kind of akward to me too (when I knew Marianne was actually alive…). But it was defenetily not ¨nonsencial¨. Maybe it was at the first time watching it and so for peaple who just watched Code Geass once as ¨a rollercoaster ride¨. I still admit that things like: the sudden acceptance of the black knights order of Schneizel and his story about the Geass or, like I said before, Marianne being inside the body of Anya…, are quite unrealistic and sudden. And looking at this kind of factors I can still get your point of criticism. But again, it’s very ingenuous of you to say it makes no sense or, even worse, when saying real nonsense (excuse me) like: ¨You don’t learn anything from it, be exposed to a new take on a social phenomenon, or come to appreciate the moral complexities of something you previously thought of as black-and-white¨. In fact, I will use this last quote to show you how mistaken you were in trying to get to understand the philosophy of the plot. Firstly, I did learn a lot of aspects, points of view…, within circles of politics, philosophy or even just social live watching CG. We have for example Nicolas Maquiavelli in the dispute between Lelouch and Suzaku about the result justifying the means or not with Suzaku changing his mind after firing Freya (which was no surprise for me when he suddenly started laughing) and Lelouch loosing everything he once had and maybe regreting his way of life, comming to the conclusion that he had to give up his last mean (his life) in order to achieve the result he wanted. Especially: ¨the moral complexities of something you previously thought of as black-and-white¨ really surprised me of hearing that. I had several discussions with people who have watched CG but we all agreed in one thing: there is no conception of good or bad considering the ways of solving the problem each figure has. So ¨black-and-white¨ doesn’t even exist in CG. It’s true that Charles at first looks like another Hitler and ends up being someone like God, but even in that case you can argue wether it was or not ¨good¨ (end justifies the means?). But having now arrived to the point of Charles and Mariannes decision, their real plan, I am highly doubting that more than 30% of the viewers have actually understood what ¨killing the gods¨ really means. And I will tell you it is one of the best and most well hidden critics to religions (specially to the cristian, muslim,jewish and orthodox). It is important that we first see the meaning of ¨killing the gods¨. Charles tells Lelouch people won’t need lies anymore, people will just have one real personality, so what should we understand from that? Lying is bad? Well that should remind you to the 10 commandments of the Bible. And which is the ¨world¨ Charles wants to arrive at? Yes, it’s exactly the same world which cristians or believers in God await after death and for which they prepare themselves doing what ¨God¨ says to be good or bad. If you actually think good or bad really exists (appart from the law), than such a world would not be that bad (although you are rejecting all bad people(what supposidly will happen in the final judgement of God)). But the reason why Lelouch rejects this kind of world is because he doesn’t think good or bad really exist. And there comes his real apreciation for Nunnally, a person that may have no reason to smile still does so, because of the simple fact that she had a reason. She found good what others may find bad, she had a free will to decide how to feel. But also Lelouch, lying in order to free the world from Britannia, sees the ¨world of perfection¨ as a dictatorship since it is Charles who decides what is correct and what not. And now let’s just think what the promised land of the Bible is about. At least I do find several similarities. Nunnally desired a world in which people could smile by their own will, not because someone decides if they do or not. So Lelouch doesn’t want to stop time and set an end to all.
—I will continue this critic/explanation in the next message—

]]> By: gaguri http://behind-the.nihonreview.com/20080910/code-geass-broke-my-feeble-little-brain/#comment-312 gaguri Thu, 11 Sep 2008 10:14:13 +0000 http://behind-the.nihonreview.com/20080910/code-geass-broke-my-feeble-little-brain/#comment-312 "The ability of H&C to subtilize and evoke emotions truthfully and UNAFFECTEDLY..." - Michael Evoke emotions unaffectedly? Didn't think it was possible. O well. I absolutely agree about the need for moderation. Fortissimo feels powerful only because there exists gentle and soft voice of pianissimo and vice versa. Not so sure about this notion of tipping point. I think R2 still has the opportunity to exercise moderation, bring down its tone to more acceptable level for next few episodes, where they can then release an epic climax ala season one. Calmness is an essential ingredient to any epic climax imo. I also agree on this point: a good plot twist "have to go through logical scrutiny, they have to survive at least a reasonable amount of suspension of disbelief to be credible and they have to add something to the plot that lingers longer than a momentary shock". Another aspect I observed from excellent plot twists (for example, from Monster and Kaiba) is that they are meticulously planned from the beginning and how all the puzzle pieces from previous episodes fit together to produce an amazing image, far more profound than one puzzle piece twists that are dumped out of nowhere (most twists from Geass). “The ability of H&C to subtilize and evoke emotions truthfully and UNAFFECTEDLY…” – Michael

Evoke emotions unaffectedly? Didn’t think it was possible. O well.

I absolutely agree about the need for moderation. Fortissimo feels powerful only because there exists gentle and soft voice of pianissimo and vice versa. Not so sure about this notion of tipping point. I think R2 still has the opportunity to exercise moderation, bring down its tone to more acceptable level for next few episodes, where they can then release an epic climax ala season one. Calmness is an essential ingredient to any epic climax imo.

I also agree on this point: a good plot twist “have to go through logical scrutiny, they have to survive at least a reasonable amount of suspension of disbelief to be credible and they have to add something to the plot that lingers longer than a momentary shock”. Another aspect I observed from excellent plot twists (for example, from Monster and Kaiba) is that they are meticulously planned from the beginning and how all the puzzle pieces from previous episodes fit together to produce an amazing image, far more profound than one puzzle piece twists that are dumped out of nowhere (most twists from Geass).

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