Anime Review: Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2 8

"One Million Miracles"

Review
After spending most of last weeks episode in a state depression this episode was Lelouch at his best leading the Black Knights and convincing everyone his plan would work. Even though Lelouch was able to get everyone to go along with his plan there is already dissension in the ranks of the Black Knights. It seems that the writers are setting things up for Todoh and some of the other Black Knights who have not gotten over being abandoned by Lelouch during the Black Rebellion in the second half of R2.

Throughout the episode we see Lelouch the three different sides Lelouch plays: Lelouch Lamperouge the student; Zero the leader of the Black Knights; and Lelouch vi Britannia his true personality that he shows to only the people he trust. It is interesting how seamless he is able to go from one persona to the other without having others realize when the change occurs.

It is interesting to see how Lelouch is also able to manipulate Rolo and Villetta in order to keep his cover. But now with Lelouch being in exile I wonder what plan he has set in place for people not to question Rolo and Villetta were he is since he is constantly being watched by the Britannian army.

I continue to enjoy seeing how Lelouch is able to manipulate everyone from Suzaku to the Britannian army to even the Black Knights into thinking they are making their own choices but really they are all following his plan. Lelouch was smart to use the massacre Euphy committed back in R1 and make the million Black Knights and Japanese that participated in the neutral zone as Zeros since he knew Suzaku would not allow another massacre to happen since he doesn't want Nunally to also be known as a person who commits massacres. It will be interesting to see were Lelouch plans for everyone to go and if his relationship with the Chinese will continue or that the relationship ends now.

Speaking of Suzaku I found it interesting that his "live on" geass command that Lelouch placed on him in R1 to still be active. It makes things interesting since it looks like Suzaku is a bit suicidal. I get the feeling that by the end of the series Suzaku will actually die because of this geass command would torment his head to much were he will make a mistake in battle against Kallen or Todoh or another major character and will get himself killed.

One thing that I noticed about this episode is that this series has a huge cast with more people added to the cast. There is the ever growing members of the Black Knights, everyone at Ashford Academy, the Chinese Federation,The Knights of the Round (of which we have only seen 3 of the 12 members with speaking roles), VV, and the Britannian Royal Family. Almost everyone in the cast, so far, is either seen or mentioned in the episode. It makes me think that unless the writers actually start killing off some of the supporting cast that there will be to many plotlines in the end to resolve. And I kind of wonder were the hell is VV, who we haven't seen since the end of R1, and his relationship with the Emperor. I hope that we get to see more of the Royal Family especially the Emperor in future episodes since they are the only ones that we haven't seen much in terms of screen time or character development.

Overall this was another great episode of R2. I continue to be impressed who the writers of this series are able to deal with series topics like war, racism, nationalism, ideals and corruption without making this series be preachy. And now that Lelouch has taken the Black Knights out of Japan it will be interesting to see the wat between the Black Knights and Britannia into a global conflict and how the other countries will become involved.

Episode Rating - 8.7/10