Common Sense and R2 13
When we were watching R2 13 on the live stream, I garbled out this:
[BRERA_GOTTWALD] …why are they jus
[BRERA_GOTTWALD] t
[BRERA_GOTTWALD] moving onto the next topic
I’ve been wondering this in regard to the scene after Shirley steps backwards off of the building. Lelouch and Suzaku just sit there acting so normally… I still haven’t fucking figured the mystery out yet.
Okay. So lets pretend for a minute that we’re Suzaku (yeah okay this sucks but keep reading anyway). This girl from school who you’ve known has asked you to come meet with her about something. Even though she went through some crap last year (father dies, hostage at a hotel, held up at school by the Black Knights), she has been in high spirits lately and even got paired up as a “couple” with her crush during a school event. Then for no apparent reason, she starts screaming at both you and Lelouch for pretending and acting. Then she lets herself fall backwards off of a building. After pulling her up with your manly Knight of 7-11 strength, she fucking derails the topic and you and Lelouch go along with her talking as if she didn’t just try to fucking kill herself. And to top this confusing and unpleasant chain of events, you leave her by herself during a terrorist situation.
From a viewers PoV (and based on the content of the conversation - Lelouch and Suzaku working together to get Arthur from the clocktower), the point of this scene was to remind the viewers that Lelouch and Suzaku work well together. Okay. Great. I think we know that after the Mao thing from S1. But what about Shirley’s random suicide attempt? I mean, she just yelled at Lelouch and Suzaku for ACTING and PRETENDING, so you respond to her attempted suicide by ACTING AND PRETENDING LIKE NOTHING JUST HAPPENED? sdf;lk24isdl;fk23l Wow good fucking job. And as Petah at ADTRW points out, why the fuck didn’t the people standing around come and see what was going on? Season 1 presents Britannians as preferring to be bystanders, but the times when they play uninvolved bystander always involves some 11’s. Shirley isn’t an 11. Come the fuck on.
Lelouch ditching her after this was okay. It’s, from the viewers PoV, understandable, and Shirley seemed to come to an unspoken understanding that Zero-related business came up and she even helped get Suzaku off of his case. He was trying to separate himself from her to protect her, and I understand what he was thinking when he felt that he could leave her safely with Suzaku.
Suzaku leaving her by herself at the mall is understandable. He had heroic official business to attend to and she’s a civilian. Obviously he can’t afford to get her involved in a possible terrorist situation. However, was not keeping watch on her (or at least keeping her at arms length) until an escort came for her the best idea? He seemed to disappear and left her standing among the police vehicles.
Honestly, I think it would have been better if he had called Rivalz to come pick her up (hi she just tried to kill herself, maybe you should try getting a friend to cheer her up). His bike has a sidecar after all! But this isn’t really something I can find myself to criticize Suzaku over. Requesting the local authorities to drive her home is perfectly reasonable, but calling Rivalz to come pick her up instead might have been more appropriate considering what just happened up top the ghetto boundary area. (Although, Rivalz does has a job. B-b-b-b-but still.)
Shirley herself is… really… Yeah okay, you kinda get what you deserve for running into a fucking building that’s possibly a danger zone. You want to help Lelouch? Great. Maybe you could wait until later and go talk to him when you’re back at school. Seriously. What the fuck. You have like, no experience in using a gun except for shooting Villetta while she was at point blank range. Okay. Awesome.
Also, uh, those Britannian security guards seriously can’t catch a 17 year old girl? I can understand getting your ass beaten by Orange, but they can’t catch Shirley? What the fuck?
Basically, the intelligence and skill of EVERY CHARACTER, even the nameless Britannian grunts, seemed to be reduced to next to nothing in order to make the events of this episode flow. If only there was an intelligence levels chart for these characters like the one we saw for the Black Knights…
Orite, Orange was in this episode. He was 100% Orange and thus awesome. I’m sure a bunch of people were confused as fuck ’cause they never watched the Picture Dramas. In Picture Drama 4.33, Orange explains to Villetta about his past as a guard at Aries Palace (this also has the first mention of the Knights of Rounds).
Based on spoilers and whatnot, his loyalty to Lelouch is real! Yet, it’s quite understandable why someone would doubt it. He was quite SRSBSNS about beating people up to get to Lelouch to the point where your common sense has to kick in and ask if he’s really joining up with Lelouch or not.
July 9, 2008 8:53 am 10 Comments
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cowboy (July 9, 2008 @ 10:01 am)
I just hate the fact that after ep 12’s obvious shirley death flag, for all of ep 13 they string you along like she’s gonna be fine, everything is coming up daisies, and then some homo shoots her in the gut for no reason in the last possible moment :(
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acro (July 9, 2008 @ 11:14 am)
well, it an interesting point. Indeed all the characters intelagnce was reduced to zero, Lelouch and Suzaku are idiots, Rolo is a fucking gay. it seems that the script writers couldn’t come up with something better. great episode on the one hand, and fucking stupid on the other. This is Geass and sunrise.
Shirely is idiot as well, but i can understand her, after all, Lelouch did say he loves her. She must have thought that he needs her or something… Damn you Geass! Damn you sunrise!!!
oh, and let’s not forget, FUCK YOU ROLO.
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風の谷の名無しさん (July 9, 2008 @ 12:51 pm)
It’s not like this problem is limited to this episode. Pretty much all of season 2 (and perhaps even the ep 24-25 clusterfuck) has been driven by a storytelling method whereby things happen like fucking bullet points on some producer’s powerpoint presentation. There has been a serious lack of natural flow of events, and characters regularly act in ways that make no sense whatsoever.
It’s all just the writers declaring, “let it happen!”, with a serious lack of lead-in or lead-out to build up any kind of story structure.
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cowboy (July 9, 2008 @ 1:07 pm)
yet somehow it remains FABULOUS
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miasmacloud (July 9, 2008 @ 1:28 pm)
Not really fabulous, more like RIDICULOUS. :v
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tengou (July 9, 2008 @ 4:45 pm)
Skipping most of the wall of text…
“I mean, she just yelled at Lelouch and Suzaku for ACTING and PRETENDING, so you respond to her attempted suicide by ACTING AND PRETENDING LIKE NOTHING JUST HAPPENED”
I would have liked to see more of a reaction too, but THIS SHIT ISN’T AS UNREALISTIC AS YOU’RE PAINTING IT AS.
Sometimes people in real life do overlook instances of obvious mental instability (including attempted suicide or harm to others) in order to get the person to calm down, instead of making a scene out of it or risking a relapse. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but it doesn’t look quite that stupid when you think about that for a second.
Hell, I didn’t actually care while watching, so at least it did flow fairly naturally for me, until this was pointed out…here.
Suzaku’s always been a “duty first” kind of guy and this was just another case of it.
As for Britannian bystanders, I didn’t notice any of them being nearby.
The police not managing to catch Shirley’s probably a fair point though.
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miasmacloud (July 9, 2008 @ 5:28 pm)
Acting like nothing happened is normal, yes, but its not really something I agree with. But whether you agree with me or not on psychological stuff is irrelevant. The intent of that statement was to the point out how painfully ironic it is from the viewer PoV that they go back to doing exactly the thing that was apparently a big enough influence on her to make her consider suicide.
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cowboy (July 9, 2008 @ 5:14 pm)
Shirley wriggled her way in between two closely parked vehicles, with her narrow, non-child-bearing hips. Clearly impossible for donut-eating cops (britanians are actually americans remember lolol). The person who’s really responsible for Shirley’s death is the guy who parked like a jackass. Whoever wrote this into the episode clearly had a bad commute that day, thus Shirley is a victim of the passive-aggressive nerd version of roadrage.
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miasmacloud (July 9, 2008 @ 5:30 pm)
…lol
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theflow (July 9, 2008 @ 7:13 pm)
Trust me, you weren’t the only one. Season 2 has me doing the whole suspension of disbelief thing a lot more than Season 1, but Season 1 didn’t really start doing it til after ep 12 or so. The suspension has been on full blast from the get go. Best thing to do in these cases is simply disregard it.
Acting like nothing had happened is normal, but definitely not after a near-death experience, which within minutes after becomes I don’t need mama or papa, all i need is Lulu. (b-_-)
@Miasma Geass LJ has cleaned up ED screens posted, including the Schneizel pic.
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