Code Geass

A recording of Lelouch, not Zero. For Lelouch's deception to have lasted this long, you have to accept that it's impossible for anyone to identify Lelouch and Zero as having the same voice - so, as far as the Black Knights know, the voice on the tape could just be an actor Schneizel hired.

…oh, damn! Never considered that! Very nice catch.

Ultimately, what makes the Black Knights look bad is the rushed pacing you sometimes saw in R2. There's not enough room in the story for the Black Knights to conduct their own investigation and verify Schneizel's claims. For everything to happen in the time allotted, the Black Knights need to meet with Schneizel and then be pointing guns at Zero that same afternoon.

I never really had an issue with their betrayal. It looked very bad for him as it was and Lelouch refused to defend himself when they confronted him and even just just outright admitted to them he was using them. Not betraying him at that point requires them to not take his admittance to manipulating and using them at face value which requires them to have deep insight to his personality, specifically his self loathing and tendency to just take the blame and be hated and push everyone else away because it was easier for him, that nobody but possibly Kallen (who's the only one to not quite believe him) would have.

As far as him having mind control powers, as absurd a claim as that was given how often people had seemingly done irrational if not suicidal things in Zero's presence such as just hand them a train full of knightmares, completely ignore their presence and even collapse the ground of the settlement him having mind control is honestly not that big a jump to make.

Ironically, even stuff with a perfectly benign explanation like Kirihara trusting Zero now looks suspect as well.

The Black Knights betraying him is simply the culmination of a lot of the stuff Lelouch did and refused to explain coming home to roost.

Has anything ever explained why we never see the Knights of Two, Five, Eight or Eleven in the show? Are they simply not in Japan (the Empire is huge, after all), or are those seats actually vacant?

They're likely just vacant since there's no indication in either the main series or any later spin-off that there are any members still unaccounted for. The light novel adaptation also has this be the case explicitly, even saying that there's more often vacancies than not.

Huh, I wonder what the qualifications for each rank are then, since it seems that, say, Three isn't immediately promoted to Two if Two is vacant.

Judging from everything shown, it seems the only particular hierarchy in the order is that the emperor's personal knight and therefore the leader is always the Knight of One. Otherwise it seems the rest of the numbers are just chosen arbitrarily. Which does kind of fit with the whole idea of the mythical Knights of the Round Table where it being a round table signified that no one was of higher status than the rest.

"Schneizel did have that recording where Lelouch confessed to controlling Euphie, though. And a whole bunch of people have mysterious gaps in their memories..."

Only the part where Lelouch said "I gave the order". It omitted the rest of the conversation where Suzaku noted he was lying.

Yeah. The Black Knights originally betrayed Lelouch because he lied to them (and Schneizel did too) but in the compilation movies they didn't turn on Lelouch; they just wanted to talk but Schneizel tried to kill him.

Rose of the Recapture info and release date.

And to be streamed on Disney+ too.

-facepalm-

Just can't ever let a story end, huh.

You are approximately five years late with that ultra-cold (and wrong) take. Japan lets series die all the time. You aren't deep enough into the medium if you don't know that. The reason they're making more Geass works is that Geass was already mega-successful and they want to use that to create an ongoing successful franchise to milk the way they milk Gundam every year or so. Revenue is unstable at the best of times in the industry, but if you have positive brand recognition, you can sell merch like they do with Geass and Gundam, as Bandai already does with the latter, which means you can make actual money instead of just raking in red ink.

Edited by darksidevoid on Mar 30th 2024 at 4:57:26 AM

I dunno. I think being upset that they're milking the story is fair. Things like Akito the Exiled which takes place during the show are one thing but an entire movie trilogy that only exists to set up a movie that retcons what was an ambiguous ending (R2's TV ending) into an unambiguous one and following up that movie with a 4 part film series and then continuing to milk things is another thing entirely.

Edited by Chariot on Mar 30th 2024 at 5:22:37 AM

They're not milking the Lelouch story anymore, though. That's over. The Roze stuff and whatever comes after is ostensibly unconnected to that.

Edited by darksidevoid on Mar 30th 2024 at 5:32:28 AM

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2024-04-05/code-geass-april-fool-orange-juice-really-goes-on-sale/.209571

An April Fool's joke on Orange Juice is being turned to reality.

The thing that's still a shocker is that Amy Kincaid was able to come back to voice Shirley from Re;Surrection, considering she didn't have a lot of VA credits.

And Shirley seems to be Kincaid's significant role. See how MyAnimeList made a page on her.

Edited by HallowHawk on Apr 24th 2024 at 7:30:27 AM