Code Geass R2 — Episode 3

It’s episode 3 and we have more plot twists! I wonder how long this can last. Surely it can’t be too long now before Sunrise runs out of surprises to throw at us and drops the ball by revealing that the ultimate villain character is actually Nunnally.
It’s quite interesting how the main characters in Code Geass R2 all lead such complicated double lives. But I sort of miss the first season back when Kallen and Lelouch were the only ones doing it.
Summary
Lelouch pulls a fast one on Rollo by calling him from school. The Zero who is speaking on air is actually C.C. in disguise. (Says a lot about CLAMP-designed guys when a girl can take their place and no one notices.)

“Oh Lelouch Zero, you are so awesome. I want to have your baby.”

“Psyche!”

“WTFBBQZOMG!”

“Heh.”

Impending cat fight
Other than unintentionally setting up this hilarious exchange between Kallen and C.C., Lelouch also manages to confuse the heck out of the special operations unit (led by Villetta Nu) that is in-charge of keeping tab on his activities. Now they are unsure as to whether he did regain his memories.

Emo…
Rollo returns to the unit’s secret underground HQ beneath the school and sulks. They can’t detect that Lelouch’s Geass (which can’t be turned off now as before) is back because C.C. passed him a special contact lens that blocks the Geass.

The Italians look too normal to be in the same universe as the rest
Meanwhile, Britannia is invading Italy. The Italian forces have the upper hand due to geographical advantage, but it’s all over once Suzaku flies in with his Lancelot.

During the time since the last season, Suzaku has apparently earn himself the nickname White Death. He asks the Italians to surrender before it’s too late, but those pizza-eaters refuse to submit themselves to the horrors of British cooking.
Personally I didn’t like Suzaku right from the start, but I still feel that he hasn’t gone over to the dark side yet. As that old saying may or may not go, “to fool your enemies you must first fool your friends,” or something like that. While I don’t care either way since I hate his face, I think he’s just being groomed by Sunrise for his new one true love to soften his heart. I just hope it’s not Kallen. (She’s mine.)

What is more surprising however, is how Rollo appears to be emotionally attached to Lelouch in a manner that is difficult to describe. He seems to cherish the heart-shaped locket which Lelouch gave him for his (Nunnally’s) birthday… Yaoi fangirl baiting? What kind of elder brother gives his younger brother a heart-shaped locket as a birthday present anyway?

Unimportant characters
In order to force Zero to show his hand, Guilford threatens to execute the members of the Black Knights who are currently in captivity. Lelouch is forced to take action, and he has to do so while under heavy surveillance by Britannia agents. (Jeez, did I mention how much this reminds me of Death Note?)

I can’t stand her
He goes on a date with Shirley and escapes the mall by faking a terrorist attack. Using his Geass, he commands a nearby Britannia agent to give a false report to Villetta, sending her on a wild goose chase with false information about C.C.’s whereabouts and leaving the special unit’s HQ vacant.

Yagami Light being tailed by an FBI agent
Lelouch then lays an ambush for Rollo…

“This is a gun in my hand.”

“And yes I am happy to see you.”

Unfortunately, Lelouch’s perfect plan is spoiled by imperfect information (as usual). Rollo can stop time! Or rather, he can make everyone around him freeze while he moves around and effectively teleports. I doubt that he actually changes the flow of time per say (i.e. bullet time), probably just the perception of it by people.

Oh noz. Looks like Lelouch is in huge trouble! Will he survive this? Spoiler: Yes.
Screencaps

I wonder how it feels to know that your PE teacher may kill you any time

Some kinky stuff going on here…

If it’s so powerful, why doesn’t Britannia build more?

The Grand Pimp

Schizophrenic or Oscar-winning actor?

Rollo Beam

C.C. has good fashion sense

Poor Kallen gets all the fanservice duty

Wine is just rotten grapes

DUN DUN DUN!
Now I have to work on some complex numbers. Sigh…



April 22nd, 2008 at 7:12 am
You forgot to mention how much better C.C. is this season with her new clothes and sarcasm. I love watching her get catty with Kallen… or for that matter, pilot a frame.
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:24 am
I sure don’t wanna be near Rolo when his Geass goes berserk like Mao’s/Leouche’s…
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:21 am
nice screen captions (as usual)…now if only you have the reactions of the Chinese ambassador’s reaction on kallen’s ‘fan service’ …(epic lolz?)
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:25 am
Yes Rollo is actually nunally that had a sex change in order to be able to see. And yeah, ZA WARUDO geass is gay. Just hope he drops a knightmare and “WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY” and “mudamudamudamudamuda”
April 22nd, 2008 at 2:25 pm
hmmm… i think Rolo’s geass is actually to stop time. Why? well, vincent is a prototype made based on lancelot (or something like that) and it’s to be mass produced, or so it says on the geass official webpage, so it’s impossible it’d be stronger than lancelot, with teleporting capabilities and all, coz if that’s true, then everybody with a lancelot can own suzaku anytime with a vincent. so it’s hard to imagine that there’s no geass in play thr. and from episode 2, vincent managed to destroy so many knightmares in such a short time (the scene whr lelouch looks at the radar from his knightmare and was like WTF! I’m definitely gonna die!) btw, it’s like 14 knightmares in 19 secs. ya i counted…
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:42 pm
There was no teleportation involved. That would at least involve faster than light movement, infinite energy, and DM going into seizures. Assuming of course, that the ‘teleportation’ occurs only within four dimensional space.
Rollo was simply suspending the thought processes of everything in the immediate vicinity. Like Professor X. Come to think of it, Professor X is likable to the ultimate Geass Meister (GM, hurhur another pun), to bastardize a few terms in an unholy fashion.
Judging from the glowing orb that seemed to track the radius of his geass at around 11.28 into ep3, I’d say the effective range of his Geass is roughly about 20 metres. This is of course unless he is able to control this distance, but somehow Occam leads me to doubt that. It also seems that like Mao, he does not have to look directly into his targets’ eyes when using his Geass.
What this means is that to people affected by Rollo’s Geass, he seems to teleport since they have no memory of the time that are brain hacked. Like Lulu’s Geass it seems. It is not time stopping (unless you wish to talk about general relativity, but I am trying to keep this simple) or teleportation.
To illustrate; if a person was about to have a pie hit his face just before he was hit by Rollo’s geass, the pie would not be affected by time freeze nor will it teleport, it would simply sail through the air until it lands on said person’s face.
The pie does not require any special Geass abilities nor exotic physics to perform this ‘teleportation’, which is why Rollo could ‘teleport’ entire Knightmare Frames.
On a separate note, I wonder if Lulu will one day gain this ability as well since his Geass seems to be in a constant state of development now that he cannot turn it off. However, that may lead us down the slippery slope of Dragonball.
If the unique abilities of the Geass (I am assuming that Geass is both singular and plural, grammatically speaking) are somehow related to the way they are applied (The Emperor’s Geass seems to require eye contact as well, despite the fact that he can already use it in both eyes), that may rule out the possibility of Lulu evolving beyond eye contact.
One way I can think of to explain this, is that both Lulu and the Emperor’s Geass require an information/command uplink that requires eye contact, while Rollo and Mao do not. Mao is simply reading people and does not command them, while Rollo is just turning them off; neither of them require complex commands to be relayed.
This is still guesswork at best, but then most of Higurashi’s plot could be inferred through guesswork as well, so who knows.
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:07 pm
I think suenns point was, that Lelouche was the one who was shocked how so many Knightmares can die so fast but he only got the messages, he wasn’ actually there.
So assuming it really only stops the brain function, the readius has to be considerable bigger than 20m, since Lelouches was definitely not so close to them. So for him time would’ve been normal, which means that for him only the messages form the other BlackKnights would’ve come in slower since those weould’ve been under Geass effect.
Though yeah i do guess it affects the brain too and i do guess it has a limited range. Snipe the guy.
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:19 pm
The Lancelot went berserk for a while after CC messed up Suzaku in the first season. As if it was somehow alive or sentient or something. Maybe Rolos knightmare can somehow amplify his geass.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:14 pm
i agree and disagree with shuenn and oblivious, rolo geass is a mystery for us now. If rolo geass can stop time then he can kill lulu right aways like he did with a agent. But if his geass only affected on human then he has died already when Karen and some guy attacked him in ep 2. I know vincent is fast but cannot fast enough to dodge the attack from them Guren MKII which as fast as the lancelot.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Andreas:
That doesn’t really mean anything. Those Knightmare Frames can already move pretty fast and the battle takes place in close quarters.
Not to mention that even if Rolo can physically pause time in a certain area (the limited range is implied by the red sphere his Geass projects), it still won’t solve the apparent paradox that Lelouch is not near enough.
The more likely explanation is that Rolo’s Geass only affects the mind and his Knightmare Frame takes advantage of this by being really fast. This explains why Lelouch hears the Black Knight being defeated so quickly over the radio even though he should be out of Rolo’s range.
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Emperor’s Geass seem invincible,he can rewrite everyones memories and make them to forget that (if) Zero won the war?Seeing how he changed the entire school’s memories, this isnt impossible.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Well, it’s not like lelouche can’t rewrite memories…
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:41 pm
But assuming that if only people are affected by the Geass, then when Rolo uses his Geass on the Knightmare pilots while they are in their Knightmares, does that not mean that their Knightmares should still be moving while the time to “teleport” passes?
Perhaps this suggests that he is able to stop “movement of objects which Geassed people are in contact with” as compared to just the halting of the thought processes of the people themselves to cause somewhat of a lack of a time-lapse of the brain, because in Episode 3, When Rolo used his Geass and the sphere of influence appeared, it affected a large part of the room and the people certainly stood frozen, but the water kept moving.
If he is really able to stop movement completely with his Geass considering the Knightmare case, then it creates a hell lot of questions.
Lol. Wonder what would happen if his Geass was kept on though, seems to me as though he uses it a lot of times. Wouldn’t be surprising, but I believe that it would have an extremely interesting effect and I can’t wait.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:59 pm
How did you know it was Italy they were invading? I didn’t catch that…
Btw, enough of the f*cking Death Note jokes !
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:43 am
The question isn’t “What kind of guy gives a heart-shaped locket to his little brother?” The question is “What kind of guy gives a heart-shaped locket to his blind sister?” It makes little sense if you think about it. I am curious of what is inside the locket.
All of the Geass so far seem to be mentally oriented, so I don’t think he can freeze movements. I think Rolo’s allows him to cause people to freeze in a certain position (it would be simpler if there was no such thing as momentum >.<). If the Knightmare already has the command program to shoot (or was rolling forward), there is nothing Rolo can do. The pilot would be a bit confused when he woke up, though.
Oh, what havoc he could wrought during rush hour ^.^
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:51 am
Andreas, has he ever had the epic skillz to rewrite the memories of a whole school. I would say thats more than 400 people, and he did it from far away. If he had not have done it from a considerable distance, then he would have had to alter the memories of tons of Japanese….
And its still not explained whether ANYBODY has memories of Nanally. Does Karen remember her… does Rollo remember her, these are questions which sunrise havnt really told us about, and it looks as if they will not tell us.
For example, when Lelouch gets his memories back and is talking to Karen after he realizes he does not have a brother, wouldnt he ask her where Nunally is… i dunno, but that would be the first thing on my mind….
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:45 am
C.C. already told him that they have no clue where Nunnaly is. And also the King seems to have to look into someones eyes just like Lelouches does. He had Suzaku raise Lelouches head while hiding his Geass-eye before he altered his memories.
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:35 am
That could just have been for show. I dont think it is, but he does seem to enjoy his Big Bad role.
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:56 am
I believe that the emperor and Lelouche have the same type of Geass. It’s just that the Emperor have a much more evolved one compared to Lelouche’s.
Lelouche can actually rewrite memory just like what he did to Shirley. He made her forget about what she knew about him being Zero, if he had ordered her to remember that she’s a personal property of Lelouche, let’s say…. a Sex slave, then she most probably will think so, while on the effect of his Geass.
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:31 am
Rollo = ZA WARUDO!!! TOKIYO TO MARE!! soshite, toki wa ugoke das…
Zero = *pwned*
mmm CC boobs!