(Short, no image post. As is customary when I’m a day late.)
This was season 1 quality stuff right here. It’s still not the best thing on television, but it’s quite fun nonetheless. The episode revealed everything we needed to know about C.C.’s background (though the origin of Geass itself hasn’t been shown) and the nature of the contract, and Charles being immortal does put a bit of a damper on Lulu’s plans for revenge. And while he has the benefit of a dead V.V., Ougi is suffering multiple puncture wounds to the chest as he and Villetta plummet to quite possibly their deaths. Really, I’d be quite happy if they just never showed up again. Not that I dislike the characters, but it would be fun to let the audience speculate on whether they died or eloped.
We’ve also got the ongoing hints of dissent in the ranks as the Black Knights pile up the dead bodies of the Cult members. I guess we have to hope that C.C.’s character development doesn’t spell out her own death in the near future. The idea of her Geass making people love her, and her servile attitude after losing her memories at the end of the episode have made her into the cutest girl on the show.
I’ll agree with what some others have said in saying that memory-loss is a little overused in this series. We had Villetta and Shirley last season, and C.C. in this one. Add that to all the memory altering that Charles did with his Geass and it gets a bit tiresome. Speaking of which, I’d always thought that his Geass was just going to be a gimmick in order to allow the reset at the beginning of the season, and considering the fact that he doesn’t have it anymore and that’s the only time we ever saw him use it, I’d say I was right.
It was also nice of Suzaku to realize he was being a cunt and not harm Kallen. But now we’ve got an even bigger asshole approaching her. The Knight of Ten has the worst character design ever.
As a final note, I just got finished reading some alleged spoilers for the entire rest of the series, and they sound entirely plausible. A translation of the spoilers is here. Keep in mind that none of them are guaranteed (except the ones that have already occurred).
I like how Suzaku is going to accidentally drop a nuke on Tokyo and kill ten million people. None of those deceased are going to be Lelouch or himself, despite being in the mech that drops the bomb. Nor anyone in Ashford. :rolleyes:
Inorite? Ashford will be fine on the outskirts of town, nevermind the nuclear fallout. Lulu and Suzaku will just put on some of those cool shades and everything will be A-ok.
I agree memory loss has become horribly overused, as a concept, but can’t say I disliked this specific case, even though I’d rather see the old C.C. come back sooner rather than later. In short: it was fitting, in a way, if the overuse is overlooked.
Animation quality was pretty uneven during this episode, but I imagine some fixes may show up in the DVDs, like in the first season.
As for the alleged spoilers…I’d say that would cover until about Turn 20 or so, if true, but would still leave four or five episodes for the actual conclusion. It sounds plausible, but still leaves enough room for doubt, especially since not every single detail is going to make its way to that list.
Finally…I imagine the supposedly “nuclear” explosion will either happen as a result of dropping the device from way above the ground, or it’ll be one of those cases where a missile is thrown off-course, and nobody can stop it.
Either way, can’t say the survival of all key characters wouldn’t be a massive coincidence / plot armor, but hopefully it’s still entertaining to watch.