Code Geass episodes 23 & 24
After the dramatic changes in episode 22, I finally watched the next two (and having seen all of season 1 except the last episode). Now I have all the thoughts, which are major spoilers for the show, but aren't really about the show (so are hopefully ok to read if you don't think you'll watch it).
Wow, from episode 22 things just spiral further out of control, as the resistance get what they previously wanted.
The mass slaughter in episode 22 was caused entirely by accident, by Lelouch's unfortunate choice of words when his power randomly activated and caused Euphie to kill everyone. I was still happy thinking of Lelouch as a hero in over his head.
But then, he seemed to feel forced to embrace what he'd done accidentally, and fight on even when it clearly meant killing innocent people. And now the series is clearly shaping up to be a proper tragedy with initially-well-meaning people getting into worse and worse situations.
And it also caused me to re-evaluate my previous opinion. At the time I thought "bad luck", but now I think it was likely SOMETHING like that was going to happen. Leading an armed rebellion, even one with a charismatic and focussed leader, probably IS going to lead to a lot of slaughter. Lelouch was unlucky in how exactly, and how suddenly, that happened, but an armed conflict in a populated country, especially one with a lot of allies you don't have control over, is very likely going to lead to a lot of deaths, even of people you don't want to die, many of which will turn people against you.
But on the other hand, simply living under the rule of an occupying government which randomly slaughters thousands of people for no particular reason and generally bleeds the economy dry and leaves people with no rights and no food, is ALSO bad.
So, um, maybe there's no good choice :(
It also occurred to me that if Lelouch had been more insightful or less vengeful, he might have been able to bypass the military options entirely. "Hi, low level minion, can you ask important minion if I can have a quick word with the viceroy *mindcontrol*, hey viceroy, can you be a fair and just ruler naow pls? *mindcontrol*"
I'm not sure if that would have worked, but it would have been a good thing to try!
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comments so far.
Wow, from episode 22 things just spiral further out of control, as the resistance get what they previously wanted.
The mass slaughter in episode 22 was caused entirely by accident, by Lelouch's unfortunate choice of words when his power randomly activated and caused Euphie to kill everyone. I was still happy thinking of Lelouch as a hero in over his head.
But then, he seemed to feel forced to embrace what he'd done accidentally, and fight on even when it clearly meant killing innocent people. And now the series is clearly shaping up to be a proper tragedy with initially-well-meaning people getting into worse and worse situations.
And it also caused me to re-evaluate my previous opinion. At the time I thought "bad luck", but now I think it was likely SOMETHING like that was going to happen. Leading an armed rebellion, even one with a charismatic and focussed leader, probably IS going to lead to a lot of slaughter. Lelouch was unlucky in how exactly, and how suddenly, that happened, but an armed conflict in a populated country, especially one with a lot of allies you don't have control over, is very likely going to lead to a lot of deaths, even of people you don't want to die, many of which will turn people against you.
But on the other hand, simply living under the rule of an occupying government which randomly slaughters thousands of people for no particular reason and generally bleeds the economy dry and leaves people with no rights and no food, is ALSO bad.
So, um, maybe there's no good choice :(
It also occurred to me that if Lelouch had been more insightful or less vengeful, he might have been able to bypass the military options entirely. "Hi, low level minion, can you ask important minion if I can have a quick word with the viceroy *mindcontrol*, hey viceroy, can you be a fair and just ruler naow pls? *mindcontrol*"
I'm not sure if that would have worked, but it would have been a good thing to try!
You can also comment at http://jack.dreamwidth.org/956210.html using OpenID.
comments so far.