Recap: The C's World

So, my final presentation went well; and I officially am on break for summer. I have also enjoyed E3 this year, and I will address why at the end of this post. In the meantime,  I might as well keep going with my 15th recap of Code Geass R2, so let’s open up “The C’s World” and get to it.

I still don’t like the intro, and the introdump is so sloppy that I still can’t justify resurrecting my “previously on Code Geass R2” joke.

Picking up where we left off, Lelouch confronts the Emperor in the Sword of Akasha. After 7 minutes of faux dramatic rambling hinting at a better story than this slog; it turns out that the much-lauded “gefjun disturber” doesn’t work on him; and neither does shooting him. Christ on a bike: can this anime make any logical decision at all? They’ve taken what was more than enough for a compelling villain and made him more OP than Thanos, minus anything that made his character interesting!

Furthermore, Suzaku backs out of using the Refrain to interrogate Kallen. Kind of a cocktease, but I’m glad he stopped short of trying to Cosby her. Topical humor, ha!

Charles has also taken VV's Code, effectively leaving him to die; and add that to another plot thread that could have been handled better. Maybe the remaster can fix it, but I'll see.

Seriously, they just gloss over the fact VV is CC's older brother while they cut between not only Lelouch and Charles, but Villetta and Ougi as well. Seriously, the latter's betrayal is trivial to me compared to this mess of a story.

Likewise, when Lelouch asks his father "what is Geass," the emperor refuses to tell him outright! That's not just a dodge, it's straight up bad writing! To think people gave Rian Johnson so much heat. Seriously, what the fuck, Taniguchi?

Moreover, the whole thing devolves into a bad trip at 10 minutes in. (Sighs) Okay, if I'm going to be mindfucked for the 15th time, might as well enjoy myself doing it.

Suffice to say, the episode presents material that could have made for an engaging story; but it just devolves further into nonsense in the second half.

CC apparently wants to die, and again, I would have liked if the concept of mortality was explored more instead of just treated like a plot device on its own. Also, no comment on Lohmeyer's bit with Nunnally. If I don't give people in her position the time of day in real life, I won't do it here either.

The denouement of this episode is giving us CC's backstory. If this was the main focus of the episode; maybe that would have been more engaging, as would her world, but instead it's just flung at you two-thirds into this episode and three-fifths this series.

So, we close on a sort of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Code" as Lelouch and CC are able to escape from the Sword of Akasha safe for now, but CC has lost her memories as a result. Great, now we can add the "amnesiac savant" cliche into this. (sighs) Fifteen episodes down, ten more to go.


While "The C's World" may not be the worst episode I've covered of Code Geass R2 so far, it is astonishing to remark how much potential was wasted in this anime. Even if the animation and editing aren't as messy this time around, the script felt like it tried to cram elements from an entire different season into this one episode; and the amount of problems with the characters just keeps growing. Having just come off my screenwriting class, I know full well that sometimes you have to take ideas as they come, but sweet baby; this teleplay needed a lot more rewrites.

On that note, I have enjoyed this year's E3. Though the conferences for Square Enix and Ubisoft left me underwhelmed overall; I am pleased to hear more about Beyond Good and Evil 2, and get an official release date for Kingdom Hearts III next year. Bethesda and EA did well, since they're really pushing the whole "no loot boxes, no season pass" platform after last year. Sony definitely had a big edge in 1st-party content with Death Stranding, Days Gone and The Last of Us Part II, to name a few. Microsoft is also making more of an argument for 4K with more content, and even as someone who's not the biggest Halo fan, Infinite might be cool; and I really hope they fix the issues with Master Chief Collection. Nintendo has lots of great content, since I'm officially sold on the Switch with Pokémon Let's Go and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Mum is still the word on any more Yo-Kai Watch content, short of a few cryptic tweets from their official account. I will say that the anime is ostensibly starting the third season of the English dub on July 2, and my plan is to finally start tapping my backlog of subbed and dubbed episodes. My plan is still the same on the third and fourth movies: no word of the third game being localized; neither one will get a recap. That's all for now. Bang.