CODE GEASS / First Impressions

Summary:
As the group of people known as the Eleven are set free, Lelouch is holding Clovis at gunpoint. Clovis tries to express his happiness that Lelouch is alive since he had heard otherwise, but Lelouch still has memories of his mother being gunned down. She had been looked down upon by the other princesses because she had been a commoner, but Lelouch is angry at how the royalty would go as far as to pretend her death was the fault of terrorists. Fearing for his life, Clovis denies that it was him, so Lelouch uses his eye to force Clovis to reveal who the culprit was. As it turns out, Clovis truly doesn’t know, but he thinks that the second prince Schneizel and second princess Cornelia would. When Lelouch releases Clovis, the ruler returns to being afraid of the gun, so Lelouch briefly lowers it. But then he points it back at Clovis again and pulls the trigger.
When Lelouch regains consciousness, he’s at school in the student council room being smacked on the head by student council president Millais Ashford. After he and his friends discuss the budget for club activities, the group returns to class where they see the news reporting about poison gas in the Shinjuku ghetto. Not hearing anything about Clovis, Lelouch wonders why that information is being hidden and recalls how he shot Clovis in the head – a memory that causes Lelouch to want to throw up. When he returns from the rest room, Lelouch overhears the familiar voice of one of the nearby girls – very similar to the female Knightmare pilot he had been helping the day before. His friend Rival catches him staring and asks if Lelouch is falling in love, but Lelouch claims that he only finds it unusual that she’s here now after not having been around since the commencement ceremony. Rival identifies the girl as Kallen Stadtfeld, someone who seems to have a weak body, gets outstanding grades, is from a rich family, and has a quiet personality.
During lunch, the girls who are eating with Kallen run away in fear of a bee that appears. Kallen follows their lead and runs to the bushes to hide, but the bee comes after her. Seemingly out of sight of everyone else, Kallen slices the bee into three with one quick motion of her hand, but she notices too late that she was seen by Lelouch. He realizes that she is indeed the girl from yesterday, so he uses his eye to interrogate her about why she was committing terrorism in the Glasgow Knightmare. Kallen claims that it’s because she’s Japanese, though she admits that she actually has half Britannia blood in her. As Lelouch’s questioning comes to an end, Shirley sees him and Kallen talking from a nearby window. After Kallen reverts back to normal, Lelouch turns to go, but then remembers one more thing. To his surprise, when he uses his eye again to instruct her not to say anything about Shinjuku, she doesn’t seem to respond and instead questions what he means about Shinjuku. Lelouch attempts to order her back to the classroom, but she continues to press for an answer. Fortunately, Lelouch is saved when Shirley calls out to him and Kallen, urging them to hurry to science class.
At home, a blind girl in a wheelchair and her maid are waiting on someone to come back. The maid makes an origami crane for the girl, named Nanaly, to feel with her hands. Lelouch – Nanaly’s brother – then comes home and apologizes for being late. Meanwhile, the general who was under Clovis is telling his scientists that their plans have failed, their lab here is to be destroyed, and everything will be moved. It seems that these experiments, like C.C., have been going on in secret, unknown to even the Britannia emperor. Back at home, Nanaly tells Lelouch over dinner about the origami she had learned earlier. She explains that when she folds 1000 cranes, a wish will be fulfilled, so she wants to know if her brother has any wishes. Lelouch doesn’t really answer and instead asks Nanaly what she wants. After a brief moment, Nanaly decides that she wishes for a gentle world. Lelouch promises that this will comes true when Nanaly is able to see again, but to himself, he thinks that the futures they can choose are limited. Though they are being sheltered here now, he wonders how long the Ashford family can support them. Lelouch feels that the future becomes the victim of the political conspiracy, and he wants to create a world where even just Nanaly can be happy. Going off the earlier promise, Nanaly takes Lelouch’s pinky and sings the yubikiri song. Lelouch tells Nanaly that he wouldn’t lie, though privately he thinks that he would not lie to only her.
The next day, Lelouch decides to test his eye ability on his teacher by asking about a test problem. The first time he asks, the eye seems to work and the teacher gives him an answer, but the second time he tries, the teacher brushes him off as if he were joking. From this, Lelouch realizes that his power only works once on any one person. Meanwhile, Kallen becomes reminded of what Lelouch had said earlier about Shinjuku and starts to suspect that Lelouch was the person behind the voice during that battle. Both of them have an interest in talking to each other, so when Lelouch asks her to go out with him because he’s got something to say to her, she agrees, much to Shirley and all the other girls’ surprise. He takes her to the student council’s club house, but their conversation gets interrupted by the arrival by the other members. Everyone is here for a party celebrating Kallen’s joining of the student council, which was a request from Millais’ grandfather, the board chairman. All the members introduce themselves, including Nanaly, who happens to be here even though she’s in the junior high section. Rival wants to uncork some champagne, but in the struggle with Shirley, he passes the bottle to Lelouch. While trying to get the bottle from Lelouch, Shirley falls on him and the cork of the bottle accidentally pops off. It flies straight for Kallen, but she easily swats it away with a quick swing of her hand. Unfortunately, she doesn’t notice until it’s too late that there’s a stream of champagne coming straight for her.
Having been soaked, Kallen goes to take a shower and Lelouch brings her a change of clothes. Through the shower screen, she asks him to hand her a small pouch from the nearby sink, so Lelouch brings it to her while looking away. Kallen grabs his wrist and starts asking him about being at Shinjuku on that day, but when he answers her question with a question, she takes out a knife from the pouch and threatens to cut his wrist. Before she can ask anything else though, the bathroom’s phone rings and Lelouch answers it. It’s apparently for her, so Lelouch hands Kallen the phone. On the other end is the familiar sinister voice, making Kallen realize that it can’t be Lelouch on the other end because he’s standing right next to her on the other side of the shower screen. She demands to know who the person is, but he hangs up on her after telling her to come alone the day after tomorrow at 16:00 to the observation room of the old Tokyo Tower. Lelouch wonders if she was talking about a game of some sort, and Kallen nervously confirms it. In any case, Lelouch points out that he can see her naked, causing Kallen to panic and try to cover herself as he leaves the room. As for the voice on the phone, it was indeed Lelouch, but it was a recording he had made earlier that he hypnotized Nanaly’s maid to play over the phone. Afterwards, Lelouch and Kallen hear about Clovis’ death from the TV news featuring a press conference by Jeremiah. In addition, a report comes in that someone has been arrested: Suzaku.

Preview:

This episode proves why I love this series. I thought that this might be a more boring episode where we get introduced to all of Lelouch’s school friends, but it was far from that. They introduce a KallenXLelouch dynamic, though it’s at current far from romantic and Lelouch has the upper hand in the relationship. The phone call feint was pretty ingenious, and it once again draws parallels in my mind between Lelouch and Light in Death Note.
Kallen is also quickly rising as one of my favorite characters of this series. The elongated shower scene doesn’t hurt, though I thought she would have become self-conscious a lot sooner about being nude with Lelouch so close by. Oh yea, I think this counts as nipple. But I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising considering that they showed some nudity in that ED screen (see episode 01 entry). I wonder how much they can push before they need an R-15 rating…
Anyway, now it looks like Lelouch is going to have to go save Suzaku. And here I thought it’d be the other way around with Suzaku saving Lelouch from himself first. In any case, the preview shows that Lelouch will be donning his cape and helmet for a public appearance in next week’s episode.

49 Comments

  1. Hey, it looks like C.C. reappeared! Though she’s in some wierd contraption..

    We get to learn a bit more about Lelouch’s past through this episode but does he actually get around to killing that prince?

    Kaito
    Reply

  7. Hrm, it seems that Lelouch’s eye is one-time use. I wonder how that will play out later in the story…
    Nice how he concealed his identity using the voice recorder and the telephone.

    Kaito
    Reply

  8. Wow, Lelouch is already on his way to crushing the empire if he killed Clovis.
    But I feel that he’ll comeback…..you know it has to happen.

    I didnt expect them to have a shower sequence so quick into the series :).

    By the way people, in the beginning of the first episode did you notice C.C. right after showing Lelouch and Suzaku (as kids) climbing up a rock?

    Avisch
    Reply

  12. th pacing for code geass is REALLY quick (which isnt bad of course…nothing is worse than draggy episodes). th karen-lelouch interaction was definitely interesting & demonstrated his quick wit yet again with th phone call (altho karen is pretty competent herself).

    C.C. has yet again failed to make another vocal appearance (altho yukana is credited as “narrator” 2 weeks running).,,and is it just me or is it possible that C.C. is th result of some freakish cloning experiment? (if you watch the ep you see several of the “capsules” that C.C. emerges from in ep 1.

    mewmew
    Reply

  19. I dont know but i like Karen better than Shirley, she is hot n all but i like Karen’s attituden besides she is really hawt 2. It looks like this series is going to get better n better, n by the way does any one know why Lelouch has white hair? cuz i just saw a pic of him with white hair just wondering. 😀

    [PRIME-LAB]
    Reply

  21. Even though Lelouch is kind of evil minded, He is still the main character, the series is named after him last time I checked.
    There is kind of the love triangle in the coming episodes Between the girl with the Green hair(C.C), the girl with the long orange hair(lelouch’s classmate) and Lelouch. We all know He will end up with the Girl with the Green Hair.

    Jd
    Reply

  27. I find it funny that Karen was holding onto Lulu’s hand throughout the time she was in the shower. She grabs his arm, has a knife in her other hand, and basically has the upperhand. She should have NOT allowed Lulu to answer the phone, but no, she had to let her guard down by putting the knife aside and answer the phone with the other hand, and STILL holding onto Lulu’s other hand. By all means, Lulu, clearly stronger than her, could have thrown her outside of the tub, acknowledging this vulnerability. I mean, wouldn’t you feel threatened to have someone grabbing your arm like that? Good to see that Lulu’s still a gentleman. All in all, I have to say that Karen’s an amateur.

    Dan
    Reply

  30. It should be noted that the screenchot in the 6th row of C.C. is rather misleading. The Britannia Empire is still looking for her, and that screenshot is actually only of a picture. It’s still very unclear where she is, what happened to her, or even if she is still alive.

    I can’t wait for the next week… The first grand public appearance of Lulu’s masked persona.

    It’s kind of interesting that if you really want to apply gundam references, the main character (rather than the main rival) is the one sporting the hidden identity and mask in this show.

    Rift
    Reply

  35. lulu is a girl’s name, his name is lelouch, it’s fine if shirley calls him that, but it’s just too girly for normal use.

    and what’s up with that picture of c.c. in like WWI or WWII or something?

    assdfhfdjg
    Reply

  36. Woah, this episode looks really good. I cant’ wait to see Millais-sama :3
    And I prefer Karen’s hair in this episode, she looks better.
    And Shirley is cool too!
    So Lelouch indeed has royal blood…..BTW, Why is Nanali blind?

    shezaei_neko
    Reply

  37. if they didn’t say in the episode, i’m guessing it might just be psychosomatic from seeing her mom shot when she was younger. but it’ll be interesting to see her blindness come into play if lelouch ever needs to use his eye on her

    asdadghjj
    Reply

  38. The scene that shows Lelouch wearing his cape and helmet for a public appearance in the next week’s preview does really remind me of the same scene in “V for Vendetta”. Now I wanna know which qualification he’ll get from which heroes in other stories (Now we have Shinn Asuka, Shirou Kamui, Yagami Light, Mido Ban, and V in his characteristics. I wonder if we’ll see more.)

    And for Suzaku, He’s really a good guy (in Episode 1), a good soldier (in episode 2) and finally a good scapegoat (in Episode 3). Congratulations on your unlucky days. -3-

    moonseeker
    Reply

  41. @Angel eyes go to fansub tv, there is a group who’s tranlating it, they’re on ep 2 tough…

    Lelouch definetelly is my fave chara he’s something like Shin (but WAY MUCH BETTER) with the air of Light (DN)and Fuuma; the magnetism of Athrun (Heck! GSD appeared to be more a MECHA HAREM SOMETIMES)and the determination oif a Heero Yui (GW)hell yeah an evil Kira+Dulindall!! Gotta love this bad guy!
    Shuzaku on the other hand, just seems like a mix between Kira( without the crying), Kamui (without the crying) and Subaru (without the yaoi thing? o.O who knows….?)!

    RickaZ
    Reply

  42. Even if this was a Gundam SEED ripoff I’m sure it will be leaps and bounds better than Gundam SEED. Of course there are so many reasons I don’t care to delve into as for why I don’t view it as one. Hopefully at the very least they won’t waste budget early and have to resample/reuse the same action animations over and over and over like SEED.

    Mareel
    Reply

  43. Well i have to say that when whats her name was squeezin herself in the shower the animation seemed to jump up a notch.

    Too bad this episode wasn’t as action packed as the first two though i suppose it cant be.

    bak3onh1gh
    Reply

  44. C’mon this is no Gundam SEed ripoff!! It may not be original BUT its INNOVATIVE! anD IT S rOCKSSS. kALLEN IS too HOOTTT!! Shirley too! LeLouch is a damn cool ANTIHERO! fEELING SOME Alucard there (hellsing)! REally a gundam SEED and DEATH NOTE COMBO AND YET IT BEATS BOTH BY A MILE!!! Wahahahaahaha!!!! (a la LELouch)

    Emperor of Britannia
    Reply

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