05.17
Delicious Manservice
So this episode of Code Geass was pretty by the books, with a few surprises here and there. It was out of left field how Lloyd revealed he had a Geass in front of Lelouch, and then Tamaki went crazy and cut off that dude’s arm. Kallen needs better wr—Wait, this is the Mahouka blog. I forgot. From the barrage of shows like Guilty Crown, Aquarion EVOL, and Valvrave, I should have known better. I should really distinguish this show from its ilk a bit more, and focus on its more original traits, like how a red haired girl is focused on this troubled lady named Sayaka, or the flamboyantly evil guy wearing glasses who gets butchered by the heroes.
Like, are we supposed to think the student council’s cool for needlessly attacking enemy combatants like that instead of just incapacitating them? It’s just I haven’t seen enough of Miyuki’s character for her freezing a bunch of guys without a hint of mercy to come off as something that compliments her personality. Maybe it would be interesting if the show understood how to utilize the “villains fighting even worse villains” angle, but that idea gets quickly swept away by the characters screaming about how Tatsuya’s their savior. When one of the characters’ dads appears just to tell Tatsuya how awesome he is, even Stephenie Meyer would complain about you wanking over your protagonists.
Oddly though, this has become the point where I’ve gotten used to this show’s blindness in its own storytelling. Tatsuya can run off another speech about Antinite, and Miyuki could talk about how her strong black Onii-sama don’t need no black man, but what else do I say about these issues other than they’re bad and only pad out what’s already a drawn-out arc? Besides, if these lectures on magic are supposed to be integral to knowing about magic, then why doesn’t Blanche know how to circumvent that rule? Like why don’t they use anti-mana bullets like Kiritsugu does? I know Tatsuya literally invents the rules of magic behind everybody’s back, but you could make it less obvious.
Since this is finally the end of this bitter arc, let’s run through what’s been accomplished. We had all of our characters introduced, and a motive for one of them, even if it’s too vague to really be seen as a distinctive motive. When all’s said and done, what has this arc taught us? That Tatsuya is a champion of the old guard? That terrorism is stupid? That China is evil for some reason? Frankly, I’m interested by how people can claim the author doesn’t try to reflect real life struggles. Whether or not you intend to, any fiction you’re going to write will reflect the reality you’re living in. Saying that “it’s magic, so it doesn’t have anything to do with real life” only belittles speculative fiction as a medium and dodges the issue at hand regarding the show’s reception. It’s almost as the “don’t like, don’t watch” excuse when trying to avoid criticism, because your favorite show should be able to stand when facing analysis rather than wither at the mere hint of slander.
But throughout this arc, I keep getting the hint of a world that abhors change, a world where the authority figures look like clean-cut Johnny Unitas knockoffs and the traditions are kept without any question as to if they still work. It’s a world where a young woman will fall in love with a guy who threatened to stab her a few weeks ago. It’s a world where noble blood seems to outrank skill accomplished from one’s own hands. In any other show, this world would be lambasted as a dystopia. But instead, it’s a paradise, where the beautiful people reign and their quests go without challenge. At this rate, I’m starting to miss Unbreakable Machine Doll. At least that show wasn’t so full of itself with its messages.