CODE GEASS – 01
OP Sequence
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OP: 「COLORS」 by FLOW
Watch the OP! Mirror 1 Mirror 2 (8.4MB, XviD)
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Summary:
Two boys had been playing together one day when they had seen something in the distance. It was on this August 10, 2010 that the Holy Britannia Empire had declared war on Japan. It was a fight between the neutral Japan and the super-power Britannia, but the latter had used their “Knightmare Frames” to overwhelm Japanese self-defense forces. Japan became a possession of the Empire, meaning that freedom, rights, and even its name was taken away. Area 11 was the new name of the defeated Japan. Back then, one of the boys had vowed that he would smash Britannia. It is now seven years after the war, in the year 2017. With news reports of terrorist bombings on the TV, a student named Lelouch faces off against a noble in a game of chess, which Lelouch is confident he can finish in 9 minutes. In fact, he pulls it off in just 8 minutes and 32 seconds. As Lelouch and his friend Rival are exiting the building, they see the third prince of Britannia, Clovis, on a nearby TV screen. Addressing the empire’s citizens and the people of Area 11, the prince makes an impassioned speech about terrorism and fighting for justice. He has the people pray for the lives sacrificed for justice, but Lelouch and Rival just ignore it.
After the speech, the prince receives word about some medical equipment and orders out a Knightmare squad in response. Around this time, Lelouch and Rival are on the road when they get almost run over by a large truck. The truck veers off the road and crashes into a building. Lelouch goes to investigate and briefly sees a figure made up of light particles floating above the truck trailer. With more and more people gathering to see what’s going on, Lelouch runs in to help the drivers, but they don’t respond to his calls. When he climbs on top of the truck, he suddenly hears a female voice say that she’s found him. Lelouch isn’t given much more time to think because the drivers of the truck put it in reverse and pull back out onto the road, causing Lelouch to fall into the trailer. As the truck speeds down the highway, it comes under attack by military helicopters, so the female driver Kallen goes to the back and boards her own Knightmare Frame. With it, she easily brings down a pair of the helicopters, but then a Britannia Knightmare gets air-dropped to challenge her. To compound their problems, another Knightmare appears and shoots at the truck, forcing it to escape down a different road. Outmatched, Kallen manages to fire her Knightmare’s arm and escapes in the smoke.
The military believes that what the terrorists stole in that truck is a chemical weapon – poisonous gas. The terrorists are of course Kallen and the other truck driver, who is bleeding as now he drives down a subway passage. Unfortunately, the truck gets stuck in a large hole in the ground. The noise alerts a nearby Britannia soldier, who spots Lelouch in the trailer and assumes he’s a terrorist after the poisonous gas. After getting attacked, Lelouch wants to know from the solider why Britannia created the gas. It’s when Lelouch says that he wants to crush Britannia that the soldier realizes Lelouch identify. The soldier is actually Suzaku, Lelouch’s friend from before the war seven years ago. As the two are trying to figure out how it ended up like this, the container that supposedly houses the poisonous gas suddenly starts to open up. Suzaku tackles Lelouch onto the floor and covers his mouth, but no gas comes out. Instead, a green-haired girl emerges. Soon after, the two of them and the girl are discovered by another Britannia force. The commanding officer wants Suzaku to shoot the terrorist Lelouch, but he refuses, so the officer shoots Suzaku in the back instead. However, before they can do anything to Lelouch or the girl, the dying truck driver activates the self destruct and blows up the truck.
Upon receiving word that the terrorists ran away, Clovis decides to order the destruction of the Shinjuku Ghetto. Various squads of the military set out and start slaughtering the population and shelling the city. Still underground, Lelouch is blaming the girl for what’s happened as he reacts to Suzaku’s apparent death. As the two emerge above ground into a warehouse, Lelouch sees several civilians, including children, getting shot by the military. Unfortunately, Lelouch’s friend Shirley calls him right then, causing his cell phone to ring and alerting the Britannia men. The officer in charge shoots Lelouch, but the girl gets in the way and takes a bullet to the head for him. After she falls and starts bleeding all over the ground, Lelouch is angsting about not being able to do anything when the girl’s hand springs up and touches him. She wonders if he doesn’t want it to end since she can see that he has a reason to live. She asks if he can live if he has power, and says that this is a contract. In exchange for giving him power, she wants her wish to be granted. If they contract, he will live in the human world but live for a different reason than everyone else – a different providence, a different time, and a different life. The power of the king will make him isolated.
Lelouch agrees to the contract and stands back up in front of the soldiers. With the new power of his left eye, Lelouch commands the soldiers to die, so they point their guns to their necks and commit suicide. By the time Lelouch realizes what’s happened, there are dead bodies lying everywhere. In retrospect, he recalls that from that day on, he had been telling lies – lies about his name, lies about his background, nothing but lies. He’s sick of this world that doesn’t change, but he can’t give up the lies because of despair. However, he obtained power.
ED Sequence
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ED: 「勇侠青春謳」 (Yuukyou Seishunka) by ALI PROJECT
Watch the ED! Mirror 1 Mirror 2 (11.9MB, XviD)
I like the OP about as much as I liked it when I heard it on the trailer and on the special, which is to say I LOVE it. FLOW music always has that catchy tune, and this is no different. I’m not a big fan of ALI PROJECT, but the ED wasn’t too bad. What really caught my eye in the ending animation was that they kept what appears to be a tiny bit of nudity.
Well, this series starts off with a fairly big action episode that throws our main character right into the middle of things. I was pretty impressed by the pacing of the episode and how two of the main characters have been shot already. Odds are that neither Suzaku nor C.C. is dead, but that doesn’t mean that Lelouch can’t angst about them anyway. He picks up a rather interesting power of king that seems to make Britannia people obey him. But if the opening animation and what C.C. said is any indicator, this power isolates him from the people around him. That’s probably where Suzaku comes in: as the friend character who has to save Lelouch from himself or his power or whatever. Anyway, I really like the anti-hero vibes I get from Lelouch, and I think Fukuyama Jun did a great job on his voice.
So I originally thought Britannia was referring to England or something, but then I saw this shot and which makes me slightly suspicious of an anti-American message. It kind of reminds me of the US government in Blood+. Come to think of it, for whatever reason, this series gives me the same overall feeling Blood+ did. That and Eureka 7. It’s somewhat hard to describe, but I have a feeling that this will be a great show. It is of course a Sunrise series and I’ve had fairly good luck with those. This story has proven itself interesting from the get-go, and the animation and music are the usual Sunrise high quality.
I’m pretty sure that I’ll be picking this up as a second Thursday show (next to Kanon). We’ll see if the second episode can cement that decision.
October 5, 2006 at 9:29 pmVillage Idiot
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Are you going to do Super Robot Wars OG: The Divine War by any chance?
October 5, 2006 at 9:30 pmLalita
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Thanks for the screencaps! I really can’t wait to see this show, it looks totally awesome.
October 5, 2006 at 9:31 pmOmni
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Not a chance. I’m catching enough flak as it is for dropping Nana so that I can fit Bleach and Negima into Wednesdays.
October 5, 2006 at 9:32 pmLuna Buzz
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Seems like Britannia is the Whole North America + Upper part of Mexico.. Now that I look more at it Code Geass just sort of falls into a general type of world is going to die (japan) and one young man must save it.
October 5, 2006 at 9:37 pmdward
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Thanks for the work Omni! Seems like I’ll be adding another mecha series to my fine collection…
October 5, 2006 at 9:42 pmdeina-kun
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I can’t wait to watch this. :]]
October 5, 2006 at 9:48 pmakurashy
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I love the OP! it reminds me of eureka seven lol, as for the ED well.. i never liked rozen maiden openings so take a guess.. (from the same group) i didn’t like it T_T!
I love the background music they used, really leaves a impression when watching it. so it was true, it looked like gundam seed with xxxholic characters mixed with tsubasa o_o (is it because CLAMP did the character designs? :O)
well absolutely loved it :D can’t wait for the next ep XD
October 5, 2006 at 9:54 pmRyan A
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Awesome! Looks like a solid first episode. Eureka7, xxxholic, and all that, yes definitely can tell its Clamp; Clamp mecha ^^ yays
October 5, 2006 at 10:05 pmtakamachi
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anyone else think lelouch looks like a combo of chairman durandall, shinn, and kamui?
October 5, 2006 at 10:13 pmcoba
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Yes, the overall face is pretty much like Shinn while the smirk is Durandall’s.
October 5, 2006 at 10:14 pmcoba
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BTW, how is the main prtoagonist ? Is it Lelouch ?
October 5, 2006 at 10:23 pmshezaei_neko
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Wonderful!! This 1st ep. looks great!! Can’t wait to watch it!
By any chance the student council president Millais Ashford appears in this episode?
CLAMP RULEZ!!
October 5, 2006 at 10:29 pmcoco-0106
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woohoo! Character designs by CLAMP!! The story looks really interesting so far, i hope you stick to blogging this!
October 5, 2006 at 10:31 pmRickaZ
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clamp rules and definetelly THIS WON’T BE GSD I’m jumping on happiness Kudos for everyone on the staff and the op RULES!!!!!!!!!!!!
October 5, 2006 at 10:32 pmOmg_Zerg_Rush
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Looking at that world map makes me think that in this timeline
a) the usa lost in its war for indepenance againts britan or they never had one to start with.
b) britan defeated the usa at some later date.
October 5, 2006 at 10:33 pmRickaZ
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and YES TAKAMACHI YOU’RE RIGHT!!!!
October 5, 2006 at 10:35 pmZzz…
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I will refrain from saying anything about former PM Koizumi or that new PM at this time.
October 5, 2006 at 10:49 pmKaito
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Wow, first episode and two are already down.
Will we ever see more C.C. and Suzaku? xD
October 5, 2006 at 10:59 pmtakamachi
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looks like in the end, lelouch makes everyone commit suicide through mind hack.
October 5, 2006 at 11:06 pmLalita
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I am curious about the fate of C.C. too!
October 5, 2006 at 11:44 pmGStrike-
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the OP reminds me of Eurka7 first OP O.o
October 5, 2006 at 11:52 pmmangaka-chan
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Both OP and ED are pretty good but I’m not so sure I can swallow the whole “Japanese-patriotism” thing and then there’s the IMO, rather over-used, antagonist-being-the-Westerners trend (be it the British Empire or America) from Blood+. o_o Still, I think I’ll stick with it for a little while to see how things go.
October 6, 2006 at 12:26 amJo
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cannot wait… i wanna see it now..
October 6, 2006 at 12:37 amGloranor
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Around 7:57 when the Mecha OS starts up, it display’s a pledge or soemthing. My raw is pretty bad, but so far I could read:
“We pledge to the spirits of founding fathers
And the ???? of the ??? our mother?
That we shall be the shields? which defend our ????
And the ????????????”
As far as I’m aware, you don’t refer to anyone as “founding fathers” in britain/UK… so, apparently, SOME revolution did happen… so maybe the British invaded after that, or maybe they merged later for some reason*, or maybe the US invaded britain and then adopted their system for whatever reason… yeah, my head hurts too ;-)
As for the “Japan-good/Westerners-evil” theme… well, I did roll my eyes as I always do when I see “patriotic” themes like that. “Japan/US is the nation/people standing between Liberty and doom!”
*Maybe they pull a complete twist, and we’ll later learn the reason why it went that way was because of Japan…
October 6, 2006 at 1:29 amTidus
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that guy with the chess looks like evil shin in GSD…
October 6, 2006 at 1:47 amg-cel
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omg! finally…ahhh i love october it so cool!!!
October 6, 2006 at 3:17 amkws
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I’m getting hooked by this series already. Wow how I like the main character’s coolness!
October 6, 2006 at 8:05 amAi-Tan
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Oh yay~~ It looks good. Especially that green haired girl. ^^;;
October 6, 2006 at 8:53 amagdafg
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i’m guessing britain somehow conquered america and most other parts of the world. if japan is number 11, that might mean 10 other countries were conquered before it. but why would britain do that, and if not britian, why would america change it’s name to britannia?
October 6, 2006 at 9:10 amRenegade334
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@Gloranor:
The beginning is like this:
“We pledge to the spirits of founding fathers
and the glory of the nation our mother
that we shall be the shields which defend our homeland”
The rest is quite hard to make out due to the emblem behind. And, anyway, there was a scene switch just before the text ended, so…
October 6, 2006 at 9:33 amr
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The anime to which producer Takeda was related is sure to become an anti-American anime
disregarding director’s intention.
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%AB%B9%E7%94%B0%E8%8F%81%E6%BB%8B
October 6, 2006 at 10:08 am*Chi*
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Blood+ and Eureke 7, ka?
Well, if they do a similar ending like in Eureka 7 I’ll like this series^^
(had enough in the last time of stupid endings, rofl..)
October 6, 2006 at 10:25 amF.A.I.T.H
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I’m getting the ‘Athrun and Nicol’ vibes from the grown-up versions of the two boys…=P
October 6, 2006 at 10:52 amGloranor
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@Renegade
Thanks.
Definitely not something that I’d expect of a “Brittanian empire” – founding fathers, but no mention of majesty, queen, king, whatever.
@F.A.I.T.H.
I was thinking “Reinhard von Lohengram and Siegfried Kircheis” when I saw them as boys *lol*
October 6, 2006 at 12:19 pmmuhi_kira
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actually at first i’m kinda interesting with this anime beacuse the creator was clamp and sunrise
and the singer of OP&ED
but the story was good
i like to see how lelouch and suzaku together again
October 6, 2006 at 2:34 pmGil
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WTH, the girl got head-shotted? Noooooooooooo
October 6, 2006 at 3:51 pmDvorak
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Does anyone else find the ed really addictive? I hope you’ll continue to blog this!
October 6, 2006 at 4:06 pmDaveJS
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hmm, seems interesting. I’ll have to check it out
October 6, 2006 at 4:07 pmtakamachi
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anyone know who’ll be subbing this? i just need a name.
October 6, 2006 at 5:00 pmBROOKLYN OTAKU
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COME ON!!!! anti american??? hmmmmmm u think??? its pointing RIGHT AT THE WEST COAST FOR CRYING OUT LOUD……….series looks promising…..but lemme ruin the ending for all yall..AMERICA WINS …THE END
October 6, 2006 at 5:02 pmBROOKLYN OTAKU
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WOAH!!!!! correction!!! AMERICA AND CANADA!!! “big exhale” man ! i hope they got a lot of mechs in japan,,,matter of fact they better call the whole gundam squad
October 6, 2006 at 5:02 pmasian182
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britannia??? isnt that england??
October 6, 2006 at 6:09 pmAmbient Escape
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OMG Im sooOo looking forward to the next episode~!!! Thanks a lot for the caps!
October 6, 2006 at 8:40 pmdward
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Ooooo…..I didn’t know anything about special powers and such. I thought this was a purely mecha anime!
October 6, 2006 at 10:08 pmemi
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It looks gorgeous. I’m actually really really excited =D
October 7, 2006 at 3:41 amzaira
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awesome! just awesome!
both op and ed are just great! well of course i’m a big fan of flow and ali project though there some ppl who dont like ali project but oh well ehhehehe
nice mucis bgs, great quality! and nice plot! though i’m not too fond of those mechas but i guess they are also great. keep this series blogged! pls! good luck!
October 7, 2006 at 1:52 pmeden
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code geass reminds me so much of s.CRY.ed. lelouch looks like ryuhou
October 7, 2006 at 10:23 pmmewmew
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I really, really liked th feel of th anime. It feel like a tezuka osamu piece (th title blocks in the OP reminded of his works so much) and I’m a big sucker of dystopian settings (I was rather…awkward with the britannia thing though D:). Hopefully you will keep blogging this ^^. Sunrise is finally making mecha-anime that is worth watching again ^^.
October 8, 2006 at 8:14 amEien
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yea the main char looks like a shinn-kira cross =.= *shudders*
October 8, 2006 at 10:16 amtse
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oh ow….we seems to have a main character that is a antagonist…
October 8, 2006 at 2:30 pmRyuma
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Nice action and a pretty good first episode to kick off a series. The mecha designs are fairly decent in that their functionality and parts seem very readily apparent; that said, I don’t like their mismatched color schemes, lol (robots never look good in purple). Colorful robots sells toys, sure, but for military vehicles, it’s a bit silly. I also had the same problem with the mecha in Eureka 7; very nice designs but the colors made my eyes bleed with some exceptions here and there (TheEND, for one).
The world that the series is set in seems interesting but I have to agree that I’m always wary when some anime beats the viewer over the head with the, “Japan is great, Westerners are the enemy!” theme (it just reminds me of the Chinpokomon episode on South Park, lol). Spouting blind patriotism through a show seems like bad media, to me.
The character designs are good overall, though I’m not big on the exaggerated youth look of the main character Lelouch and his friend Suzaku; it makes them look like they have the heads and faces of 10 year olds stacked on top of gangly adult bodies. Everyone else appears fairly normal by comparison (the enemy Nightmare Frame pilots were pretty cool). Lelouch is a bit hard to like and identify with as a hero though; he’s cocky and aloof and full of anger (justified in his view), but I suppose that’s where his anti-hero powers comes in.
The pacing of the first ep was very good, with rarely a dull moment. The mystery of the girl in the transport truck is interesting (she seems very Eureka-ish), and I look forward to seeing how Lelouch’s newfound abilities isolates him from the rest of humanity as the girl claims. The scene where he commands the soldiers to kill themselves was nicely done.
With Flow’s catchy, energetic OP song and the show’s themes about warfare and mecha, I’m definitely getting a Eureka 7 vibe, which is a good thing as I loved that series. The ED was kinda jarring and the pacing of it all sounded odd to my ears; maybe it was how it was edited, or it really was sung that way, I don’t know; not exactly my cup of tea, I guess.
Hopefully we get to see more of the background behind the Britannia Empire and its war and occupation of Japan, and the apparent resistance against Prince Clovis if Karen and her “terrorist” organization are any indication.
October 9, 2006 at 5:25 pmNinji
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Its just an anime.. there needs to be an enemy in it. Doesnt matter who it is really… its fiction ment for enjoyment. In american games and shows we are always against other countries… so why not have someone against us… its not like a real life war lol.
October 13, 2006 at 10:27 amIzaak
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Wow, Britannia managed to annex Philippines.
October 17, 2006 at 11:00 amJess
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the first episode amazes me totally.
October 24, 2006 at 9:46 pmAnne S.
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i want badly to watch this series but i cant find a way or a place to Download it! the place i found the torrent. It is in some strange format called MKV which i can make it work on media player! . so i guess i will have to with somebody upload it in youtube and pray that they( you tube) wont delete it!
November 12, 2006 at 10:53 pmcherry_nahme
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COOL!!!!!!! CLAMP’s colaboration, right?
November 27, 2006 at 7:22 amLhiZZa
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i dont know where to find it can anyone tell me??i’m actually curios about it..is it in youtube??please help..
allyevejeff@ yahoo.com
my email
March 9, 2007 at 1:34 amerika5
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COOOOOOLLLLLL I LOVE THAT
June 14, 2008 at 3:24 amdescendant
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isn’t that is C.C. who was watching small lelouch and suzaku at the beginning of the episode? could it be that C.C had already been watching over lelouch ever since he is a kid??
October 2, 2008 at 1:10 amJarmel
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Wow it’s been two years but my god it’s been two years of epicness and trainwrecks galore.