[ANIME] Code Geass R2: official statements + evaluation of fan theories (SPOILERS)

[geassedbylelouch]

i feel like they dont even know what they want for R3.
i wanted R3 but if they are going to do an AU or something to that. they shouldnt bother.

I think it's way too early to say that they don't have something envisioned. We have to wait and see the anime first before having we can conclude anything.
The reason why they made it an AU is because they felt R2 was finished and didn't want to touch it anymore. So to make a sequel,they had no choice to make it an AU. Maybe that's why they kept Shirley alive, to clearly define it as AU. Because that's all the movies changed and that's not a lot, if you're making an AU you might as well make a whole bunch of other changes, but they didn't. So it feels they deliberately changed as little as possible, just enough to be it an undeniable AU and that's it.
That way they can expand the franchise and and not change the ending which they felt was in accordance with their sense of ethics and aesthetics.
You have to keep in mind they felt very strongly that Lelouch had to die, they made that clear in interviews and tweets.
I'll dig them up.
Here they call Lelouch's final death their sense of aesthetics, (Continue vol 42, October 2008):
Continue: "Why were you so bold as to choose this ending when the viewers might see it as a Bad End?"
Okouchi: "Bold... yes, we were so bold as to chose this ending. Perhaps the show that is Code Geass ending up this way was decided the moment Director Taniguchi and I teamed up. I suppose you can call it our sense of aesthetics, or perhaps a part of our psychological makeup."
Here they call Lelouch's death a matter of ethics (tweets from May 2018):
<Geass Memories 78> So his end can't be one that forgives him his sins. At least he's aware of his sins and pays for them with his death. This is mine and Taniguchi-director's sense of ethics in our works.

So they feel very strongly about his death, and didn't want to change that in the original series, that's why they created an AU where he will be resurrected in the sequel "Lelouch of the Resurrection".

[Deleted]

The ending didn't change though. The Zero Requiem happened like in the original anime.
They said they made it an AU because they didn't want to touch R2 which they called fully finished.

I haven't found the movie subbed yet, but if they didn't change the ending, why create an alternate time line?
I've seen the interviews you linked, it's obvious he's dead. Those tweets are really hammering that in, I guess they get that question every so often. So if they're not changing the Zero Requiem and not changing his death in the movies, couldn't they have just continued R2 into R3?

[geassedbylelouch]

I haven't found the movie subbed yet, but if they didn't change the ending, why create an alternate time line?
I've seen the interviews you linked, it's obvious he's dead. Those tweets are really hammering that in, I guess they get that question every so often. So if they're not changing the Zero Requiem and not changing his death in the movies, couldn't they have just continued R2 into R3?

Yeah, the Zero requiem is unchanged, that was confirmed by people who saw the movie. So he's dead in both the movies and in R2.
The reason why they made it an AU is because the directors said they didn't want to touch the original because they were so happy with that ending.
The reason why they didn't change Lelouch being dead is because the anime didn't allow Lelouch having a code, that would violate the rules set by the anime itself. They could have changed the rules in the movies, but I guess they felt that would be changing too much and things which are too fundamental.

[Khain]

What? Code Geas R3 is a movie? disappointed...

[geassedbylelouch]

What? Code Geas R3 is a movie? disappointed...

No no, it's not known yet what format it's going to be. It COULD be a movie, it could be a regular season, it could be a series of OVAs like "Akito the Exiled".
They never confirmed what it's going to be.
What IS known is that it follow the 3 recent movies and not the original series.

[Deleted]

I've read the full text now, it was quite long but damn was it worth reading.
It's clear now that code theory just doesn't add up. At first glance it seems plausible, but the things they say just don't survive scrutiny. It's a bunch of isolated stuff which they then twist to fit their narrative, like the ending shot with C.C., they said she looked at the cart driver when she said "right Lelouch?", but as the text points out she looks AWAY from the driver because she looks up into the sky while the cart driver is sitting below and behind her.
I wish I had read this years ago.

[geassedbylelouch]

Glad to have helped.
There's so much disinformation going around when it comes to Lelouch's death.
Some people just can't seem to accept that the show staff decided to kill off Lelouch and that this decision was set in stone from the very beginning.
So they push their baseless, officially debunked theories and pretend they're fact. People then read that and propagate the disinformation.

[Demontjuh]

i feel like they dont even know what they want for R3.
i wanted R3 but if they are going to do an AU or something to that. they shouldnt bother.

i agree, screw AU, why even continue with the naming scheme of r1 r2... r3 if its not going to connect to that.
how many au movies/ova's where out? call it AUx.

this thread brought me down in terms of hype for it, i seriously hope its an actual 3rd season of the main series.
even if they do a plot where he gets revived decades later because some emperor/dictator copy-cats britania's previous emperor and LL is revived to stop it again, with totally new cast cus everyone he knew is dead, i wouldn't rly care. i just want LL antics with CC flare thrown in.
aslong as its a continuation without having to watch the AU bs.

[Traveler Voltin]

i agree, screw AU, why even continue with the naming scheme of r1 r2... r3 if its not going to connect to that.
how many au movies/ova's where out? call it AUx.

this thread brought me down in terms of hype for it, i seriously hope its an actual 3rd season of the main series.
even if they do a plot where he gets revived decades later because some emperor/dictator copy-cats britania's previous emperor and LL is revived to stop it again, with totally new cast cus everyone he knew is dead, i wouldn't rly care. i just want LL antics with CC flare thrown in.
aslong as its a continuation without having to watch the AU bs.

if Lelouch is suppose to be dead in canon, why do they need to make an AU to bring him back via resurrection?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

if Lelouch is suppose to be dead in canon, why do they need to make an AU to bring him back via resurrection?

Probably to seed a way for him to return through the films, so it doesn't seem like an asspull when he comes back in the sequel.

[geassedbylelouch]

why even continue with the naming scheme of r1 r2... r3 if its not going to connect to that.

There is no R3 in the sequel's name, that was always nothing more than just a fan made name.
The only correct title of the sequel is "Lelouch of the Resurrection"
Also, there was no naming scheme since season 1 wasn't called R1 either, that too was just a fan made name.
The only R name was season 2 which was explained by Word of God (on the audio commentary track) to mean every applicable word starting with an R: revolution, rebellion, round 2, etc

this thread brought me down in terms of hype for it, i seriously hope its an actual 3rd season of the main series.

Really sorry to have hurt your hype, but it's really not a continuation of the original series.
That has been officially confirmed, it's even on the official code geass website:http://www.geass.jp/
And it was recently confirmed again in an interview: https://old.reddit.com/r/CodeGeass/c...hanges_in_the/

LL is revived

LL?
If you mean Lelouch with the code, it's official that he doesn't have it. It's been officially confirmed that he's truly dead so many times (that what's the very first post of this thread is about)
Lelouch's death was set in stone from the very beginning, it was one of the first decisions they made about the show, this has been confirmed too.
Code theory was never more than a theory by fans who couldn't accept their favourite character had died.

aslong as its a continuation without having to watch the AU bs.[/QUOTE]

[Traveler Voltin]

calling them R1, R2, and R3 makes things easier. so i dont really care if it was fan made

[geassedbylelouch]

calling them R1, R2, and R3 makes things easier. so i dont really care if it was fan made

Well sure, but I meant that they don't have to structure their plans around our names
The name R3 doesn't make sense anymore, as you pointed out, but that is not on their heads.

[Traveler Voltin]

Well sure, but I meant that they don't have to structure their plans around our names
The name R3 doesn't make sense anymore, as you pointed out, but that is not on their heads.

i really wish they would figure it out already. this cock teasing is getting out of hand. lol

[geassedbylelouch]

I'm sure they've already made up their minds and aren't cock teasing. It's the fans who sometimes take their wishes for truth and then confuse other fans by spreading this "truth".
There was recently an article where it was yet again confirmed that the sequel will follow the movies and not the original series.
https://old.reddit.com/r/CodeGeass/c...hanges_in_the/

[Demontjuh]

LL?
If you mean Lelouch with the code, it's official that he doesn't have it. It's been officially confirmed that he's truly dead so many times (that what's the very first post of this thread is about)
Lelouch's death was set in stone from the very beginning, it was one of the first decisions they made about the show, this has been confirmed too.
Code theory was never more than a theory by fans who couldn't accept their favourite character had died.

aslong as its a continuation without having to watch the AU bs.

LL as in Lelouch Lamperouge, for one to be revived means they have to be dead first.
im pretty sure the ending was meant to be interpreted like the ending of inception. i'd say any confirmation whether he was dead or alive after the show, official channels or not, is either to end debate or someone on the productions side interpretation, i vaguely remember someone official saying it was meant to be viewer flavor long long time ago. the writer says "i think" (opinion) alot in those interviews you linked, in terms of value i'd say the production directors pushed for the vague cart scene with the guy's hat down to create myth and hype. rather then what the writer envisioned with a clear death. i'll stick with the motion pictures and what my eyes can see, not what others tell me regardless if its an story official or not.

I haven't watched anything code geass related beside S1 and S2 + sides and i am not planning on watching the milking that came after, if the new stuff truely wont have anything close to a continuation of S2 then fine, i was content with S1+S2, would i have loved more? sure, but not in the form its gunna take.

[geassedbylelouch]

im pretty sure the ending was meant to be interpreted like the ending of inception.

Not in the slightest.
In the Continue Vol42 interview they explain they'd understand that not everyone would be happy with the ending and that everyone is free to interpret Lelouch's death as a happy or a bad ending, but Lelouch's death itself is not open to interpretation.

i'd say any confirmation whether he was dead or alive after the show, official channels or not, is either to end debate or someone on the productions side interpretation,

Again not true.
It wasn't "someone" who was trying to end debate at all. The decision to kill Lelouch at the end was one of the very first decisions they made for the show an dthis decision was unanimous. They are very adamant about this, stressing that Lelouch's death was a matter of their feeling for aesthetics.
You really can't try to dismiss the mountain of official statements as "someone trying to push his agenda", the entire staff agreed on it.

i vaguely remember someone official saying it was meant to be viewer flavor long long time ago.

And yet again a lie from code theory.
This is a big misrepresentation of what said.
As I said above in the interview they said people could interpret Lelouch's death as sad or happy, Lelouch's death itself is set in stone and can't be denied just like it can't be denied he was Britannian royalty, it's part of the canon.

i'd say the production directors pushed for the vague cart scene with the guy's hat down to create myth and hype.

So the entire ending of a story higes on someone wearing a hat? A traditional race farmer's hat which is totally normal for a farmer there to wear, I might add.
The hay cart scene was even dropped later on. So it can't have any importance for the udnerstanding or they wouldn't have dropped it.
And not only was it dropped, it was replaced with a new scene where C.C. explicitly tells the audience that Lelouch is truly dead!
You can watch the new epilogue on the ZR blu-ray (or here: https://streamable.com/d8dji)

i'll stick with the motion pictures and what my eyes can see,

Well, C.C. very clearly states that Lelouch is dead in the above linked new epilogue

[Demontjuh]

So the entire ending of a story higes on someone wearing a hat? A traditional race farmer's hat which is totally normal for a farmer there to wear, I might add.
The hay cart scene was even dropped later on. So it can't have any importance for the udnerstanding or they wouldn't have dropped it.
And not only was it dropped, it was replaced with a new scene where C.C. explicitly tells the audience that Lelouch is truly dead!
You can watch the new epilogue on the ZR blu-ray (or here: https://streamable.com/d8dji)
Well, C.C. very clearly states that Lelouch is dead in the above linked new epilogue

I'd say that looks like them wanting to end debate. removing scene that was causing myths and releasing something after the fact to steer in the correct direction.
im sure during the pre-screening and private viewing there were people that asked the same question 'is LL dead?" because of that end scene.
Its fine that they want to make their vision clear, but such a scene leaves stuff up to viewer interpretation which caused these myths in the first place.

Is it so bad that people prefer their own interpretation? I like the way i interpreted the ending and i'm happy with it, no matter what an official or you say.
I'm not telling them to make it canon, CG ended with S2 but AU is milking to me, like i said before i was hoping they would make S3 unrelated to AU, whether they used my interpretation or some other way to connect to S2 and revive LL, aslong as it had the same flavor as S1andS2. (again without AU)

[geassedbylelouch]

I'd say that looks like them wanting to end debate. removing scene that was causing myths and releasing something after the fact to steer in the correct direction.

That is definitely true.
By 2009 (when the new epilogue was made) they must have started hearing some of the tinfoil theories and decided to step in.

im sure during the pre-screening and private viewing there were people that asked the same question 'is LL dead?" because of that end scene.

I wouldn't be so sure of that.
Code theory is very much an American thing. In japan there's almost nobody who believes it and there's nearly nobody who talks about it.
I know this from personal experience (I went looking for Japanese reactions, armed with google translate) and this was confirmed by the Japanese speaking person who translated a bunch of the articles for me, and provided the pictures of the magazines with the interviews.
Their test public was no doubt 100% Japanese.
The reason (I think) why code theory is so big in America is because it's de facto a conspiracy theory: rejecting experts' opinions (i.e. Word of God in this case), accusing exerts of lying, the idea of having to look for clues to find the truth, twisting facts (scenes) to make them fit the dialogue (for example the scene where Charles pretended to be geassed), and so on. it's all textbook conspiracy theory material. And that kind of thinking is very big in America and much much less so anywhere else.
The Japanese saw Lelouch die and didn't question it because to them it was obvious that seeing Lelouch die meant that Lelouch was dead and not somehow secretly alive. Their reasoning was that if they were supposed to believe that Lelouch was immortal, it would have been clearly shown to be the case.
I know that you'll say that the last scene was ambiguous, but that's only because you solely look with conspiracy theory eyes. There really wasn't anything about that scene which CLEARLY wanted you to think Lelouch was alive. Yes, there was a guy with hat, so what? The cart isn't going to ride itself after all. And the driver's clothing was normal, traditional clothing. His face wasn't hiding, his face was just not important. If they wanted us to think he was Lelouch, they would have given a clear hint for it. Only through conspiracy reasoning can you go from "total lack of information" (driver's face) to "there must be something hidden" (is Lelouch), while more logically a lack of information means there's just nothing relevant.

Its fine that they want to make their vision clear, but such a scene leaves stuff up to viewer interpretation which caused these myths in the first place.

Not everything is or has to be open ended.
The creators never wanted Code Geass to be open ended because for them it wasn't that kind of story.
They really hammered on the fact that to them Lelouch's death was inevitable because it's a matter of principle to them. It's their sense of aesthetics, they even called it their "psychological makeup". So I can understand that they want people to understand the message they wanted to convey.
If I were a painter and I made what I thought was the best banana I ever painted, and some people would go "to me it looks like an apple", I'd also reply "no no no, it's a banana" and make sure I make it look even more banana-like. If the message you're wanting to tell is "banana" and some people say "no, apple", it's just very disheartening, maybe even insulting.

Is it so bad that people prefer their own interpretation?

2 years ago I would have said that was perfectly fine, but now I must say that it COULD be a problem in some cases. And Code Geass is such a case.
Most people present code theory as a fact, and anyone who disagrees is mocked, ridiculed and spat in the face. I've personally even been threatened by a code theorist just for saying the Word of God said Lelouch was dead. Things started escalating a year ago, after the announcement of a sequel. Code theorists became 10 times more aggressive and toxic, pretending that Lelouch officially had the code (despite the obvious interpretation of resurrection being a resurrection!)
Because code theory is presented as a fact, many people believe that that is indeed the case, and then they themselves will explain it to others like that and thus the lie propagates itself.
This is dangerous, because now a very large part of the English speaking fandom is convinced that Lelouch is immortal and they will be very very confused, irritated, disappointed and even angry when the sequel shows that Lelouch is, in fact, dead. We live in an age where angry fans take out their anger on the creators, look at Star Wars, look at the death threats made to a voice actor of Darling in the FranXX, etc. I don't want that to happen to Code Geass just because some fan conspiracy theory which ignored a million of official statements got so popular that the whole of America started believing it.
The hostility and vitriol of some code theorists is getting out of hand, so in this case I have to say "yes, people ignoring the official statements and the rules of the anime and choosing to go with their own headcanons instead, IS bad here".

Now, to clarify, I don't mean you personally when I say code theorists. I mean the ones who claim code theory is fact and who refuse to see it any other way.
The people who KNOW that Lelouch is canonically dead, but CHOOSE to pretend he's alive, and thus not expect to see an immortal Lelouch at the start of the sequel, they're fine. There's nothing wrong with fan theories, as long as you know they're fan theories and not actual canon. And in this case as long as you know that Lelouch is actually dead, so there'll be no surprise and anger when we see his corpse in the sequel.

I like the way i interpreted the ending and i'm happy with it, no matter what an official or you say.
I'm not telling them to make it canon,

See, that's fine.
As long as you don't see your headcanon as true canon, there is not problem.
But there's so many people who start frothing at the mouth when you say that Lelouch is truly dead by Word of God.
And there's a lot of people who believe Lelouch to be immortal, not because of the anime, but because others told them that was fact. That's why it's important to point out that Lelouch is truly canonically dead.

As bonus I'm going to link a couple of those hostile and toxic replies. And some of the people who have been deceived.
The creators are wrong: https://imgur.com/a/oo5dPp8
Get rekt: https://imgur.com/a/Brdov5m
Immortal Lelouch is officially confirmed: https://imgur.com/a/8G4h8WU
Lelouch confirmed alive and well: https://imgur.com/a/Xznb78D
The creators don't matter: https://imgur.com/a/qtIeTIH
Lelouch publically announced immortal: https://imgur.com/a/3lFmyRS
Show writers made code theory: https://imgur.com/a/ZCCzL3p
OP is an idiot and the writers suck: https://imgur.com/a/LrLGtTv
The writers are lying!: https://imgur.com/a/AguKcLg
All your posts suck and you have shit taste: https://imgur.com/a/68T9Gbr
See? THAT is the result of a conspiracy theory which has gotten out of hand, despite the creators repeating for 10 years that he's dead.
Now imagine how these people will react when they see a dead Lelouch without a code being resurrected in "Lelouch of the Resurrection". Will they think "oh, I guess I was wrong all these years, I guess I'll update and change my opinion about code theory", or will they explode in anger and lash out at the show and the creators?

I'm not asking people to throw their headcanon out of the window.
I'm asking people to see their headcanon as a headcanon and acknowledge that the true canon is different, and know that the sequel will follow the canon, not the headcanon.
And I'm asking people to stop spreading code theory as if it was canon fact, because it's very much the opposite.

[geassedbylelouch]

News update, hot from the press!

Trailer announcement, next friday 03/08/2018, 20h, a brand new 210 second trailer will be shown!
https://twitter.com/GEASSPROJECT