Summary:
Addressing C.C.’s body, Lelouch questions what she wanted him to do by giving him this power. An enemy Knightmare frame suddenly bursts into the warehouse and the female pilot sees all the dead bodies lying around. She tries to learn what happened here from Lelouch and uses gunfire in an attempt to intimidate him, but he doesn’t budge. Instead, Lelouch uses his left eye to try to get her off the Knightmare. When the effect doesn’t take hold, Lelouch realizes that it only works if he has direct sight of the person, so he uses a story about being a being the son of a duke. This causes the pilot to come out of the Knightmare to confirm his identity by checking his ID card, allowing Lelouch to make her give up her Knightmare with his eye. When the woman regains control of her mind, both Lelouch and her Knightmare are gone.
Meanwhile, Suzaku wakes up inside a Britannia medical trailer under watch of Knightmare frame developers Lloyd and Cecil. The reason that Suzaku survived the bullet from before is because his pocket watch protected him. Lloyd tells him of the official story about what’s going on, which is that the poisonous gas spread throughout Area 11 and that the culprit hasn’t been found yet. To Suzaku’s surprise, Lloyd decides to give him the keys to a special Knightmare frame. Around this time, Shirley is getting into her swimsuit at school when she gets a call from Lelouch. He asks her to check the TV news, but there’s nothing about Shinjuku except for a traffic restriction. Lelouch guesses that this will allow the military to report whatever is convenient after it’s all over.
Lelouch takes a walkie-talkie and contacts Kallen in her damaged Knightmare, directing her to the west entrance – she should trust him if she wants to live. With no other options, Kallen pilots her Knightmare onto a set of train tracks and heads for a train coming her way. Following Lelouch’s orders, she leaps over it while her pursuers stop the train with their frames. The pilot of one of the Britannia Knightmares, Jeremiah, watches as his comrade gets suddenly destroyed by a hidden Knightmare – Lelouch’s. Since he’s getting double-teamed by Lelouch and Kallen, Jeremiah decides to eject and get away. By the time Kallen turns around to talk to Lelouch, he’s already gone. But when Kallen’s comrades come running, Lelouch contacts them via walkie-talkie and informs them of the contents of the train: a whole set of Sutherland-class Knightmare frames. He also tells Kallen to get a new energy pack and to wait for his next instructions in 10 minutes.
Under Lelouch’s command, the rebels start rapidly taking out the enemy forces. The Britannia leader Clovis decides to attack what he perceives to be Lelouch’s forces’ positions from all sides, but it turns out to be a trap and Clovis loses all his units. He calls upon Lloyd to deploy his toy, which Lloyd calls Lancelot. With Suzaku piloting despite being still injured, the Lancelot easily starts taking out the rebel Knightmare frames with its amazing speed and superior array of shielding and weaponry. Lelouch realizes that something is wrong, but his Knightmare also gets found and attacked by the Lancelot. Fortunately for him, Kallen distracts and saves Lelouch, though doing so completely wastes her mecha. And the Lancelot is so fast that it can quickly catch up with Lelouch’s fleeing Knightmare. This time, however, it is Suzaku’s compassion for human life that spares Lelouch because when he sees a woman and child fall from a high-rise, Suzaku breaks off the chase and catches them instead.
Afterwards, Kallen returns to her friends and other refugees, but the warehouse they are in gets raided by the military. The soldiers raise their weapons to fire, but an order by Clovis surprises everyone with a ceasefire. Clovis appears to be doing this because Lelouch has a gun trained on him after he snuck into Clovis’ command center with the ability of his eye. Lelouch asks if Clovis remembers them playing chess together and how he always won. It’s been a long time since they’ve seen each other, and Clovis is shocked when Lelouch introduces himself as the successor of the 17th imperial throne: Lelouch V. Britannia. Clovis thinks that Lelouch should be dead, but that is clearly not the case. Lelouch declares that he has returned to change everything.

Preview:

Wow…that was a lot of mecha fighting goodness. Lelouch remains an awesome character, one of my favorites this season. That mix of craziness and calculating is very much like Light from Death Note as some have suggested, but I prefer Lelouch’s character so much more. We find out here that Lelouch is indeed Britannia royalty, perhaps killed/sealed away/something to prevent him from succeeding the throne. I imagine his true identity has something to do with the mask and the outfit he’s wearing in the OP. For now, Lelouch’s intentions appear to be fairly good, but that’s mainly because the Britannia Empire is portrayed so unfavorably, and so overthrowing them isn’t a bad thing. But I’m sure that as the story goes on, that’ll get more complicated.
The other highlight of this episode was the Lancelot frame. As expected, it’s really powerful, which made for some rather one-sided but entertaining battles. They did a great job on animating those fights, with the quality as good as last week if not better. Anyway, it doesn’t look like Lelouch is going to get his own special mecha to combat Suzaku’s Lancelot, but it’s also not certain that the two will continue fighting through the entire series. And there’s still C.C., who played virtually no part in this episode. How she lives through a headshot – and I’m sure she did, being a main character and all – is a question that will be answered in a future episode, maybe as soon as next week.

36 Comments

  1. I haven’t seen a mech series in a long time where the main character doesn’t start out in a decent mech…Does Lelouche even fight, or does he just give out commands (literally) like he’s been doing since the first episode?

    Rasmiel
  2. Just watched it raw (i understand japanese). WOW!! Great job sunrise!! That was seriously entertaining & lelouch’s family heritage becomes clear here (I dont want to spoil viewers tho >.>). I do find it odd that C.C. didnt make an appearance at all, however, seeing that she is clearly one of the main characters (th britannian army mentions her and thats it…).

    The Japanese wiki said something about Karen being half “eleven” half britannian. That makes sense, I guess, but how come her last name is Japanese in the ED song is different (its in kanji) when the official site clearly has it down as Stadfeld..(sp?). Did she change her last name for some reason?

    In any case, I really, really like this series-nice to see Lelouch more of a commander more than a fighter (although his dialogue gives strong implications that he sees the Eleven terrorists like Karen to be “pawns” and nothing more).

    mewmew
  3. Yeah….I’m kinda wondering whether C.C is alive or not. We see her in the OP and on the official website…but then again, she got shot in the head in the previous episode! Unless she’s not human (which is probably the case), I don’t see how we’re going to see her again, in material form that is. Anyway, I thought Lancelot was piloted by Lelouch but on closer inspection of the OP, it seems like I’m wrong. Now I’m kinda curious as in…who’s the bad guy here? It seems to me Lelouch seemed a little…too happy and conceited with his powers. Who knows? He may end up being Light(refer to Death Note)?

    dward
  4. To mangaka-chan: Suzaku is an Eleven, but he works for the Britannian army (if I am not mistaken with my Japanese, he is either a “naturalized” Britannian or an honorary Britannian). Lelouch is technically not on the side of the Eleven-run resistance (members being Karen etc.) although in this ep, he manages to contact them and place under his control and direction. If the OP is any indication though, Lelouch probably will continue “using” them to further his plans to destroy Britannia and direct them as the “unknown” commander. Of course, what will be interesting to watch is how long Lelouch can keep his anti-Britannia operations a “secret” to those around himself (he already revealed himself to Clovis, for one).

    mewmew
  5. After watching ep.2, Lelouch looks more like the evil genius who will do anything to obtain his goals, than a good guy.
    Lelouch plans to destroy Britannia to restore Japan, while Suzaku wants to maintain the peace by working through the Britannian military?

    Somehow, this reminds me of Gundam SEED… but what the heck, Lelouch is cooler.

    Kaito
  6. I waited a whole week for this and in change I recive an ep where my fav. character (C.C.) is supose to be DEAD (I don’t think that she is dead because she is one of the mayor charcters…I think so o.O)

    I think that I have no other choice that to wait another week…TT-TT

  7. I just watched the raw, and it seems that near the end when Clovis is announcing a ceasefire there is a shot showing the officer and soldiers ordered suicide by Lelouch – C.C. is not there… She got taken away? Or perhaps she walks away?

    kws
  8. kya!!!!! Lelouch is just soo cool!!
    very nice mecha fighting episode!
    suzaku is cool too! like his mecha lancelot! super fast and …fast!
    + both 1st and this episode are very high qualitied!
    keep it up that way!

    zaira
  9. yes plz I would LOVE if someone subed this b/c this series is HIGH Quality
    now Lelouch just reminds me of Fumma (x:1999) with the loks of Kamui (X:1999 too)and a bit of La Krueze on him hehehe thsi series wil get twisted and I’m lovin’ the idea ^^
    LELOUCH 2 ETERNITY
    problem is.. that I’m STARTING TO THINK THAT GIRL WHO LOOKS LIKE LACUS (GS-D) wil be LIKE LACUS!!! I don’t want that!

    RickaZ
  10. Wow, Lelouch really plays the role of the anti-hero well. I love shows like this where the main character has questionable moral and have sufficient power to realize his goals no matter what. You never know whether to cheer for him or to hate him. It makes for good drama and conflict. So far, it looks like this show has a lot of potential. Hope they don’t screw up with such a good premise.
    I find it really ironic that the reason Suzaku used the new frame – and fought Lelouch -is because he wants to find and help Lelouch. I find these kind of irony really appealing.

    ryuuu
  11. Hey, anyone notice the frame in the preview where it’s got a bunch of the same outfits C.C. wears?

    I wonder if C.C. isn’t the only one?

    + there’s that picture from ep1 with tons of people like her in egyptian type clothing.

    Scaevola
  12. Before I acknowledge Lelouch’s coolness, there’s just one thing I’d like to know: how come Clovis and Co. didn’t notice one Knightmare unit standing there, apparently doing nothing, and not joining any attacks against the terrorist forces?

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