Lelouch : "Type IV AntiHero" or "Type V AntiHero" ?

First time he intentionally kills civilians, anyway. I also seem to recall some of the purged blocks dropping on the vehicles of people who haven't finished evacuating, but it's been a while since I watched those episodes.

The end of the first season is actually pretty interesting, morally speaking.

Isn't it still a war series, also it's technically based in an alternate reality version of our past.(ATB starts 55 years before AD.) So morally speaking it has the moral structure of 1967-68, right in the middle of the Vietnam war our time. Not saying it's justified just saying it doesn't make him a full on Villain Protagonist. That would make every military leader from the 1970's back one as well. not that some weren't.

edited 14th Dec '10 12:00:36 AM by americanbadass

The point of the end of the first season is that he was never truly in his heart interested in defeating Britannia or liberating Japan, everything he ever did was to protect Nunnally. Which is definitely a heroic trait of some sort. He just values his family over everyone else, just like most people in the world including people who've been called heroes. So I'd say that he never crosses into Type V in season one.

edited 14th Dec '10 12:28:16 AM by Clarste

Were the purge guys civilians? I mean, they did have guns (or did they bring those from home?) At any rate, they were working for the invading/occupying government and, through their deaths, a great military play against said government could be achieved. If you accept the basic premise that violent rebellion against Brittania is acceptable, I don't really see the problem there.

Lelouch could have given them the guns, and there was no evidence that they were military personnel (like wearing uniforms). And you can work for a government and still be a civilian. Not to mention that their deaths were completely unnecessary for the plan to work.

edited 14th Dec '10 10:50:57 AM by shiro_okami

The collapse of those earthquake-prevention structures was necessary for the invasion of Tokyo to work; if the people Lelouch had geassed hadn't turned violent against their co-workers, they almost certainly would have been pulled away from the controls. Really, I don't see how it's any worse than attacking a munitions factory.

Um, eartquake-prevention structures are meant to SAVE lives, not end them. ANALOGY FAIL.

Fine, then it's no different than attacking medical facilities that a military group is using.

some points that are worthy of mention are:

• 1- The staff and cast of Code Geass openly admits that Lelouch is a Villain Protagonist and Suzaku is the Hero.
• 2- Lelouch describes his battle against Britannian, as a battle between evil and evil.

That HAS to be against the Geneva Convention and would likely put anyone who did it in more trouble than accidentally killing civilians.

edited 15th Dec '10 12:02:36 PM by shiro_okami

Why? The goal isn't to kill civilians, after all; they're just killed as the result of attacking a military target.

Medical facilities are NOT military targets. And the engineers WERE specifically targeted; Lelouch would have known that those Geassed would have killed the others as part of his plan even if he did not command it directly, which he probably did. Their deaths were NOT accidental.

For the record, attacking medical facilities is against the Geneva Convention (It's actually the reason the Convention was created in the first place). It's considered a war crime to attack them.

And there's a major difference between attacking a military target and accidentally killing civilians as collateral damage, and attacking civilians because it will also cause damage to a military target. The Tokyo settlement isn't exactly a military base.

This reminds me about the argument that the rebellion was evil because of all the dead civilian contractors on the death star.

Also does anyone think the world of CG has a Geneva convention?

edited 15th Dec '10 8:32:39 PM by americanbadass

Suppose for a moment that it wasn't those mind controlled guys initiating the purge sequence, but some members of the Black Knights who had snuck into the building, and, as they're typing in the codes to start the collapse, some personnel burst in to try to stop them. Wouldn't you expect them to fight back?

If the people aren't armed, all the Black Knights need to do is wave a gun in their direction for them to back down. If they are armed and start fighting, then they are no longer civilians.

Whatever the case, I very much doubt that the workers in the supports were civilians. Britannia doesn't seem like the kind of place that would leave that up to civilians.

Even if they are not civilians, they would at least be non-combatants. And despite your doubts, there is absolutely no evidence that they were military personnel, let alone combatants.

There's no evidence that they weren't either. Given that the series makes a big deal whenever he kills civilians either intentionally or accidentally, I'm inclined to believe they aren't. I wouldn't be surprised if they were issued guns.

I'm aware of that. I'm just saying that if they were military, the series should have showed that instead of making it ambiguous and letting the viewer figure it out for themselves.

-On second thought, Lelouch really is a villain protagonist, he took advantage of the ideals of others to achieve his personal vendetta against his father.

Except there was more to what he was doing than vengeance, so no.

And the staff and cast at times spouted hyperbole. Code Geass in several ways was basically a deconstruction.

What Lelouch meant by evil vs. evil was using a necessary evil to conquer an oppressive evil.

I wouldn't use the Zero Requiem as part of the metric of his general character, except for after he cracked, and was mostly concerned with finding an excuse to die.

Look, with the purge guys, first thing we saw them do was type in the computer to make parts of the city collapse. It was only after their co-workers tried to stop them that they pulled out guns and started shooting. That makes me think Lelouch didn't specifically order them to kill the other people in the control room; he just didn't order them not to, so they fulfilled the command to the best of their abilities. Presumably, had they been able to start the collapse before anyone else could interfere, no one in the control room would have died.

I don't know whether or not the Geneva Conventions would consider it a war crime (as I understand it, a lot of the stuff in them doesn't apply that well to insurrectionist groups, and let's not even get started on how mind control powers would fit into the equation). However, morally, I don't see how it's any different than ordering an attack on a military installation when you know civilians are in the area.

EDIT: Yeah, the trouble with Zero Requiem is it has Lelouch doing some really terrible stuff, but doing so to bring about world peace. From what I've seen, how harshly people judge Lelouch for his actions then depends on how plausible they find the notion of Zero Requiem in the first place.

edited 17th Dec '10 7:25:21 AM by RavenWilder

You make a good point, but again, it would have been better if they showed Lelouch making the Geass order in flashback to make it less ambiguous so fans wouldn't have questions like this.

He had other paths to peace aside from the Zero Requiem. One wonders why, for instance, instead of waiting a month, he and Suzaku didn't go confront Schneizel right away. He might have also been able to save Nunnally from being used as a pawn against him. Had he been able to save Nunnally, he would have surely had second thoughts about the Zero Requiem, which he did largely because he felt he had no one left to turn to.

The Zero Requiem would basically mean that he would have to be worse than Charles ever was, not to mention Schneizel. We already know he brainwashed his troops and made them into Faceless Goons, and used them in We Have Reserves tactics, as well as ordering assassinations, and exploding Mt. Fuji, which depleted most of the sakuradite reserves and caused even greater destruction over Japan.

And doing this to concentrate everyone's hatred on one individual? Wouldn't work for long. Humans are too fickle. Besides, Lelouch would be more useful to the world alive than dead, in that he would lend his insight and/or leadership towards peacekeeping.

On top of that, before the betrayal took place, his endgame was to free Japan and the other areas, save Nunnally, and take down the Britannian government, and have something more just erected in its place. (He says about as much in the 4th R2 picture drama.) One would be hard pressed to believe that would be any bloodier.