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「紫瀾 -Purple Surf-」 (Shiran: Purple Surf)
“Purple Surf
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「褐襲 -Devastating Force-」 (Katsushuu: Devastating Force)
“Devastating Force”
EMPEROCKET TO FLIGHT
As it turns out, instead of the final battle being focused on dismantling Neo Britannia, it’ll be a great unifying moment the world has against the second coming of Charles zi Britannia. Yes, Charles really screwed up by not keeping Norland close by while he was doing his Emperocket shenanigans. Like how M. Bison made all those clones only to constantly make them too early and never get to use any.
I did find it funny how Sakuya kept going through a Rolodex of tropes to try to explain why Norland wants to kill all of humanity and he’s like “No. No. No. Nope. Not that. Still not that. Not even close.” It made it all the more transparent that the reason why Norland was a Charles clone is so that Dakkan no Rozé can have a truly spicy cameo that calls back to the old series that fans love so well.
It doesn’t matter if Norland being a Char(les) cheapens the central plot of this season by acting as if Neo Britannia wouldn’t have gotten as far as it did without him. Not when you could just make Charles the final boss once again to feed into your nostalgia of seeing all your old friends and foes again.
I will say though that I don’t appreciate the idea that the only feasible way that Norland could be defeated and Neo Britannia could be dismantled entirely as an institution was to make him an uncontrollable Charles clone. Having him immediately go all in on humanity’s destruction feels like they couldn’t write a way to effectively nerf Norland or remove Neo Britannia from power without making him completely abandon Neo Britannia in favor of killing humanity with Murder Roombas.
Neo Britannia only got this far because people around him agreed with his turbo-fascist takeover of Hokkaido. Now that all the gleefully complacent lackeys suddenly have a reason not to like what they’ve been doing, their heroic turn is chalked up to them realizing that Norland didn’t actually want to be a tyrant and just wanted to kill humanity because he felt like it. Systematically killing civilians or bombing neighborhoods was perfectly fine with Neo Britannia up until it meant Norland would go nuts and put the higher-ups on the chopping block too.
ATTACK OF THE CLONE
Norland’s senseless hatred for humans also makes it even funnier when Norland’s method of getting rid of people is tossing their Knightmares off a platform. Norland going from outright taking delight in murdering swathes of people to merely throwing Catherine and Ash off of a big platform is rich.
Like this dude has no love for humanity and feels no remorse at their deaths, but he’s like “These are important characters. I need to give them a shot at being saved”. It’s absolute clown behavior that can only be justified as a way to keep the body count low on the hero’s side (unless you’re one of the unlucky sacrifices from the Seven Shining Stars).
To end on a lighter note, I was happy to see Arnold become resurrected as a Jeremiah-like cybernut dedicated to enacting vengeance on Ash. Arnold’s big fight in the last episode was a fun one because the way he said, “Let’s use these swords you have such a strong reaction to,” makes it seem like he didn’t understand the significance of the swords.
It comes off like he doesn’t know why Ash is freaked out by them, but anything that keeps him in a bad headspace works for him. It’s such a fun level of hater energy where he’s ignorant to what hurts Ash the most, but will grasp for anything he can to get even the slightest advantage.
I also want to give major kudos to Soma Saito because he went all-out on his character’s madness. When Arnold’s screaming out to Ash after falling on a Mortal Kombat stage fatality, I was so caught off-guard at how high his voice got by stretching out the A in Ash. I don’t think he was killed off here because until you see as body, there’s always a chance in Code Geass for him to magically be put back together once again. But for the time being, I’ll miss seeing this dude flip out every time he’s reminded that Ash is close by.