we're finally notdotq anymore

1400-word post approaches. I debated whether to post it in a comment on the original post by Owen or to put it here on my site; indecisive like the little shit I am, I’ll DO BOTH. Cross-posting ftw.

Suzaku holding a sword foreshadows Lelouch’s death,

Lelouch’s death by sword penetration is foreshadowed from day one by the fact that the series is by Sunrise. Don’t kid yourself.

(re: Nunnaly by Lelouch’s side) I wonder what this means.

There’s a disconnect for me, here. Nunnally wasn’t actually by Marianne’s body when she died, she was placed there after the fact. Furthermore, Marianne didn’t CODE RESURRECT, she geassed a convenient bystander. You say that she lives on through her geass and that Lelouch lives on through his code/ideologies, and while I agree with the latter part, I don’t see Lelouch ever getting a code. Charles grabs him, but can Charles pass on the code? It seems like this part of your post relies on a wobbly understanding of wobblier yet metaphysics.

Also, Lelouch most importantly lives on in the memories of those around the scene of his death (Karen, the black knights, Suzaku, Nunnally) whereas the only people who witness Marianne’s death are Anya (memory wipe) and V2 (dead, dead, dead). (Anya regains her memories, I believe, but I’d argue that this is inconsequential because she only knew Marianne as the queen—they weren’t buddies or lovers or anything.)

It’s nice to see you bring more “original” reasons to the table as for why Lelouch is still alive (the shops of the horse cart were seriously an embarrassment) but I’m not convinced.

Curiously (to me), you didn’t address a number of problems with him being alive:

1. Suzaku cried

This might be explained by “he’s never going to be able to chill with his buddy again,” but if he’s becoming Zero he can probably do whatever he wants in secret, like going out and meeting his friend (a parallel can be drawn to Jonathan leaving Saul’s castle to meet David in secret). I guess another possible explanation is that he really wants to kill Lelouch for real, and knows Lelouch will resurrect, and is pissed about that. But then the impaling wouldn’t have been so lovey-dovey.

2. C2 cried

Presumably, because the one guy who treated her with love and care (I was about to say “loved her” but then I remembered Mao and his “BUT YOU WON’T FIT IN CARRY-ON!!”) in all her memory (I think it’s safe to phrase it like that—she may have been loved at some point, but she does not remember it) is dying. There are some other possible reasons for her tears:

1. she can’t die because Lelouch already has a code now (from Charles?) – but as you said, this is unlikely, she wants a good life before no life.
2. she’s crying for all the people whom she knows love Lelouch and are about to lose him (she respects Karen et al’s love for Lelouch). This seems -almost- plausible to me, since she’s kind of a good person, but the whole prayer thing doesn’t interface well.
3. the last—and only decently reasonable alternate reason for her tears, as I see it—is that they are tears of happiness. She’s immortal, Lelouch is immortal, they love each other. This would be a fulfillment of Lelouch’s promise in Episode 25 of season 1 (”I’ll become the warlock to your witch”). If this is the way things are, then I’m super-happy for both parties. I’m skeptical, though, because her face as she cried was not the face of someone who’s ecstatic.

I suppose that both of the above problems (Suzaku’s tears, C2’s tears) can be answered with a simple “they didn’t know about Lelouch having received Charles’ code,” but that’s baloney. They’re far more likely to know than we are, after all. C2’s in touch with these kinds of things and can sense pretty much whenever Lelouch so much as uses his geass—there’s no way, as far as I can tell, that she could not know about it. As for Suzaku… he was Lelouch’s best friend. The only one he could confide in. He knew everything about the grand plan. And Lelouch said that this was a “punishment” for Suzaku. It wouldn’t be a punishment if Suzaku weren’t bearing the weight of killing and becoming the hero (another blog made a really good note about this, I forget which, but it was something like “Lelouch became the sacrifice Suzaku always wanted to be”).

3. If Lelouch received a code from Charles, it’s just as likely that Lelouch passed that code onto Suzaku.

Another thing with Suzaku becoming Zero—Lelouch mentions “forever” in his sentence for Suzaku. This can be literal or figurative. Figurative is “you will live out your life under the curse of my geass.” Literal is “you are immortal forever.” We know that his “live” geass defies reality as we know it. Maybe it’ll make Suzaku live, literally, forever?

But it can’t be that, because Suzaku could just have Jeremiah ungeass him if he wants.

BUT there’s still the possibility that it could have been literal… because Lelouch could have passed Charles’ code onto Suzaku! It’s just as likely as Charles giving V2’s to Lelouch. One might even argue that it’s more likely, because while you’re drawing a lot of implications out of midair for that Episode 21 scene, Lelouch actually says something about Suzaku living forever.

Of course, if Lelouch is passing a code onto Suzaku, he’s not going to be reborn.

4. Is rebirth via code at-will?

We see C2 bite the bullet a few times, and she always comes back. This is the immortality granted by the code. She’s always back, fully regenerated, within minutes of dying. Consider this: Lelouch is killed by Suzaku. The crowd goes wild. The crowd rushes the hostages. The crowd surrounds Lelouch’s corpse. He’s not going to just stand up and walk away. Also, people would see to his burial. He would need Zero-esque smoke and mirrors to up and vanish (pink smoke bombs, Knightmares busting out of the pavement, etc.). I think it’s safe to assume that he’s there, dead, corpse-like.

Does he resurrect later? Can he choose when or when not to?

I personally don’t think that’s how the code immortality works. This belief of mine is based on the fact that not once in the series did someone in possession of a code time-delay their resurrection. If there’s a more reliable source that shows otherwise—like, an interview with the creators that goes along the lines of “lol we don’t define our metaphysics well for a REASON, didn’t you know? teehee~”—I will kneel before the irrefutable proof. And by irrefutable, I mean that Problems 1-3 will still be problems.

That’s it for my major qualms with him being alive, I think. One more little note, since you so thoroughly enjoyed saying “x in scene a is like y in scene b, get it? get it?” in this post: Suzaku, who stands at the top of the ramp down which Lelouch’s corpse falls, takes Lelouch’s place, “becomes” him in a sense by becoming Zero. Lelouch, who stands at the top of the stairs down which Marianne’s corpse falls, takes nothing from Marianne but her hair, eyes, and aptitude for maniacal laughter.

I’d make a witty tl;dr note, but then you’d think I was imitating you.

P.S. my question for you in IM that I didn’t get to ask was something like, “you _do_ realize that I haven’t even said anything critical about your post, right?” You kept slamming my negative reaction to your post before I even had one. And I still don’t have one… your post is well-thought out and heavy on the “going to the text” technique which is key to good discourse. I applaud it. But applause is different from agreement. I think you base too much on the idea that Charles gave a code to Lelouch… which, as I noted, is just as likely as Lelouch then passing it on to Suzaku. Or to Nunnally, even.

First of all, I don’t care that Lelouch is driving the cart. This is done very often in many anime I have watched. Kanon did it by having a fox (Makoto) walk through a forest in the ending. Sola did it by leaving cans of tomato juice on a picnic table. Higurashi Matsuri ends with a cg of Hanyuu sitting on a porch. It doesn’t mean anything.

This previous comment was to good not to quote. Amen. It’s the anime thing, you know? Tons of shows do it, and it never means anything.