Is it wrong that I actually want Lelouch to be dead? I agree that there’s stuff pointing to both interpretations, but that was too good of a death scene to waste on him just being alive. Lelouch’s bloody body sliding down to a chained and downright tortured looking Nunally was particularly gruesome yet beautiful in a morbid way. Lelouch allowing himself to be killed is certainly character redemption enough, and I’m not sure that after all he’s been through he would let himself live a peaceful life, but as I’ve said before I find it useless to analyze Geass too much so I’ll just say that it was a pretty good ending for the mess that preceded it. The characters all got their just desserts, and even Orange-kun came out on top. Loli-farmer-wife? Who wouldn’t want that?
All in all I can’t really say that Code Geass has been the best mecha series in a while, or even an overall good story. Too much wasted potential, terrible writing, and just general lack of direction marred the whole production. Truthfully I believe that CG was a victim of its own popularity. All the sudden this 26-episode show turned into a fifty-episode multimedia behemoth, and the writers had to come up with something to fill all that screen time. I do, however, appreciate what CG tried to do, to completely reverse and deconstruct common roles we all accept, perhaps not in a way as radical as Evangelion but in a way that demanded attention. Only in CG could the main character being killed for his crimes at the end be seen as a happy ending. A lot of good porn came out of all this too, so I can at least be happy for that.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes is everything its name claims it to be, and no legend about heroes is complete without the tragic hero. Even before Shakespeare stories about Hercules and Oedipus Rex showed the fascination people have with great men falling from great heights. It is only fitting that the final season of LOGH is about the lengths great men will fall to.
At the beginning it is hard to see where the show will go next. Yang Wen-li is dead and his republican remnants are exiled to the fringe of the galaxy. But as the old axiom goes it’s harder to maintain power than to obtain it, and Reinhard’s empire is beset by terrorists and schemers at every turn. While it is easy to portray men like Lang, Truniht, and De Villiers as villains, the greatest threat is not them but instead the most loyal of admirals, Reuental. Through an intricate series of character attacks, suspicions, and threats Reuental all the sudden finds himself pegged as a traitor aiming for Reinhard’s head.
Now, it would be easy for Reuental to reveal the truth and clear up everything, but he can’t. His pride won’t let him. In a sense his whole life has been a tragedy of identity. Hated by his mother and denied ambition by Reinhard, he is a man who in another age could of been king but has to be content with living in Reinhard’s shadow. And when the time comes for him to be a traitor he does not hesitate to embrace that role. If Reinhard, the warrior-king who wants to be more a warrior than a king, needs an enemy then Reuental will be it, even if it means fighting his best friend Mittermeyer, because it is the only role Reuental sees as having any worth in his life. If he can’t be famous than he will be infamous.
Reunetal’s rebellion is a tragedy because its conclusion was decided before it began. While Reuental has the genius he does not have the material resources, and the war is for such nebulous aims that no one knows why exactly they’re fighting. Like many characters in the show Reuental is denied his heroic death in battle, and instead must linger on for days as he bleeds out from a fatal wound. In that time friends and enemies alike come before him to settle accounts. Finally killing Truniht was probably the best thing Reuental ever did, but his quiet moments with the woman who wants to kill him and the son he never wanted have to be some of the most poignant in the show.
The other tragic hero is the man who no one would dare to call a hero, the ever manipulative Paul von Oberstein. Throughout the whole show Oberstein has always been portrayed as the wolf in Reinhard’s pack. The man that did what no one else wanted to acknowledge even needed to be done, and who no one could speak against because they knew in their minds that he was right. Thus it is only fitting that in the final episode Oberstein not only uses the dying Reinhard as bait for the rest of the terrarists, but that he himself dies in the attack. The show itself is reluctant to say what exactly Oberstein was, extreme patriot or manipulative bastard, but I take the more patriotic interpretation. He’s man who put the good of the empire ahead of everything else, even beyond the life of the Emperor himself. The needs of the many always outweighed the needs of the few and he carried out this philosophy to its most ruthless ends.
Finally there is Reinhard himself, who may not be tragic but is definitely the greatest hero of them all. The only tragic element of his death would be the fact that, like Yang Wen-li and Reuental, he is denied the death in battle he always wanted. Instead he is killed by a disease no one has ever heard of. While I thought Reinhard’s illness was a bit too melodramatic, a quick stunt to clean the room as it were, the show does handle it with class. Reinhard’s request for Reuental’s son to be friends with his son is both bitterly ironic and beautiful, reminiscent of that promise between Reinhard and Siegfried Kircheis from so long ago. Truly a part of Reinhard died with Kircheis and the rest of his conquest has merely been an attempt to fill in that hole.
The final scenes of LOGH are probably different from what many would expect from the title. Instead of an epic battle between the forces of good and evil, they instead focus on friends and foes alike coming together both to mourn a passing age and to look forward to the next. New relationships are cemented and the hope of the generation is passed onto the children. The final scene is Mittermeyer with his wife and child, the child vainly grasping for the stars, highlighting LOGH’s main theme that history will repeat itself, but that hopefully humanity will one day learn from its own follies. Julian’s final speech sums this up beautifully by stating that if people had just cared enough to change society instead of handing everything over to the Goldenbaum dynasty, then hundreds of years of war and death could of been averted. Julian says my favorite line of the show here: “Politics always takes vengeance on those that belittle it.”
And after talking about these Empire guys so much I also want to say something about the Alliance guys. Schenkopp’s death fits the nature of the show, where great men are often defeated by the insignificant, but it’s still a terrible death to be done in by an ax to the back. At least he takes out like a hundred men while bleeding to death. Schenkopp is probably one of the most manly characters in anime ever, and Dusty Attenborough’s remark after his death sums up Schenkopp perfectly: “I didn’t think the guy could actually die.” Julian also gets props for developing the most throughout the show from a literal housemaid to an incredibly competent leader. That’s character development done right. Yang Wen-li and his merry men’s slogan “FOPPERY AND WHIM!” is probably the best slogan to come out of any anime. They may not have been as interesting as the Empire all of the time, but they knew when to have fun.
There’s literally a thousand more things I could say about LOGH. No other anime I’ve seen has approached its breadth and depth. Its characters are human, its span colossal, and its themes universal. It is about history, power, and what happens when they intersect with politics. It is fitting that the shows ends with the line “Die Sage ist Voruber, Die Historie beginnt” for truly the show chronicles an age of heroes. But it also shows that heroes by their very nature only show up once in a lifetime, and history is truly made by the tasks of millions of men and women over time. Perhaps it is true that the show will reward only a certain kind of viewer, one who can watch and wait and ponder. It is not flashy, nor is it meant to be enjoyed and discarded in a second. It is truly a thinking man’s anime, and it’s a shame that there aren’t a lot more like it. (Hence why my posting this month has been terrible. Chock it up to a general disgust with anime at the moment and mountains of schoolwork.)
I’ll be starting on the Gaiden stories soon, but I wonder if their affect will be diminished since I know what happens. Though they’re probably meant to be nostalgia fuel anyway. I’ve been with these characters for too long not to want to see more.
Now Schneizel’s just a noraml megalomaniac villain who wants to nuke the whole world. Very original there. And I have to love that his big evil plan is basically an orbital nuke platform that probably took trillians of dollars to make. Apparently no one in the Geass world has invented ICBM’s either, or all of this could of been done easily a long time ago.
Bitch don’t know about my coincidentally placed machine gun. Most ignoble death for an awesome character ever?
“What is this feeling in my metal heart. Could it be…love?” Orange x Sayoko is the most unlikely and awesome pairing to come out of Code Geass yet.
Lelouch finally realizes that being evil means screwing a lot of people over for goals higher than your own petty semblance of love. And I swear C.C. is the only actual female character in the show now. All those other women are just gratuitous cameos.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes this isn’t. Even lowly Bittenfeld could run circles around these guys while waving underwear in their faces.
So the sweet little innocent girl, who we’ve been told is sweet and innocent the whole show, is now completely willing to launch a WMD at brainwashed soldiers just because her brother lied to her, and she’s doing all this for the other guy that is lying to her, even though she’s supposed to have some insane lying detector ability? Yeah, whatever, that makes sense.
Now this is the show I wish I had been watching for 22 episodes, where the the battleship of quirky badasses fended off vengeful aliens and autocratic conspiracies alike, and where the misguided romance of the newest recruit was nothing more than a comedic side-story. Instead the side-story is the actual plot and the badass crew is sadly sidelined. Frontier has been an alright show so far, but it really missed the chance to have a lot of fun with these characters.
When your main character is being told he’s still a whiny kid when there’s only three episodes left to go, then there might be a problem. Alto has to be the worst protagonist in Macross history. Even Shin, who was also a bit dense, fared much better than Alto. Alto just doesn’t have a clue at all. And now the only ones left on Frontier are him, Sheryl, and the increasingly psychotic Luca. Great. Lets just get to the apocalyptic final battle where Ozma takes on the whole NUNS fleet, if that’s what the spoilers still say, and get this over with.
And sometimes it’s just fabulously weird. Even the reason the show gives makes no sense at all. This weird Kamen Rider moment has been brought to you because commenting on Lelouch’s gay hat is only so funny after twenty times.
The bone crunching sound here is great for the kids.
TV-Nihon released the first four episodes of Kamen Rider Ryuki, and me being me I had to check them out, even if there is no guarantee this isn’t just a fluke and there are no more episodes on the way. Now, I’ve seen the first episodes for Kuuga, Agito, 555, Kabuto, Den-O, Kiva, and now Ryuki, and I have to say Ryuki has the creepiest first episode of them all. Sure, Agito has a leopard monster that kills people and then stuffs them into trees, but Ryuki is even better. In the first two minutes a woman looks at herself in the mirror and notices a stringy substance around her neck. She can see it in the mirror but not in real life. She starts frantically scratching at her neck to get rid of it but more just shows up. Suddenly, a giant spider appears in the mirror and extends two giant claws outside to kill her and drag her in. And this is a sunday morning kids show.
Yes, Knight is the goddamn Batman.
Now, Ryuki is famous for being the series where Kamen Rider basically jumped the shark. Before it all the shows were essentially the same: an evil organization is trying to take over the world and it is up to their own cyborg creation with a heart of gold to stop them. Kuuga replaced cyborgs with magic and Agito expanded the roster to include a couple more main Riders, but they’re still basically in line with the old stuff. Ryuki is completely different. There’s not just one Rider, there’s thirteen, and their job isn’t to fight an evil organization but each other. Ryuki is really the point the point where Kamen Rider became the sum of the Rider name and legacy, some influence from the Metal Heroes series of the nineties, and whatever the writers were smoking that year.
Cause every Rider needs a CG sidekick now.
Despite the radical changes Ryuki actually starts off pretty well. There’s action, intrigue, and a whole lot of CG. Ryuki is probably also the point where CG became a Rider’s greatest weapon. I really like the way these earlier Hisei series are filmed. Kabuto, Den-O, and Kiva aren’t bad but they have a much greater awareness that they’re a kid’s show, and because of that there’s a lot more cartoonish influences, especially for Den-O and Kiva. Both have a very wacky, almost insane, since of humor, which is almost completely lacking in Ryuki. There’s a couple odd balls, but the direction still feels like it’s trying to be more than a kid’s show. There’s still the merchandising out the wazoo, but that’s just a fact of life.
The suit doesn’t even fit his body!
The only thing I really hate about Ryuki right now, and the reason I was reluctant to watch it, is that the designs are absolutely terrible. Ryuki’s suit sucks so much. It’s main chest piece doesn’t even cover all of the chest, and its shoulder pads don’t even cover the shoulders! The whole thing just looks really shoddily built. Knight is a bit better, probably because it’s a darker color. The weird grated masks are also iffy, but they’re fine compared to the rest. Maybe the designs for the rest of the Riders will fare a bit better. Hopefully TV-Nihon will keep releasing episodes so I’ll be able to find that out.
