I have to disagree.In france communist and “nationalist” resistance groups didn’t hesitate to to denounce their rivals to the Gestapo.

Same thing in Algeria,the FLN wasn’t the only group at the beginning.They were at the end of the war….and it wasn’t luck.
Same thing today in Iraq,where you have at least three different groups with different agenda who kill US soldiers and kill each other at the same time.

A war of liberation is a struggle for power.You take power from the colonizer but also from your local rivals.
The first rule is to kill the moderates quickly.Lelouch did a wonderful job.The JLA wich was rather moderate(they only wanted the liberation of japan not the destruction of Britannia)is dead,same thing for Euphemia.

I fully understand what Lulu is going in order to kill his family minus his imouto. After all his harem requires two the imouto member too because Lulu is a bona fide sis-con.

Lulu is not Gandhi the primary purpose of the comparison was to see the best way to achieve independence. Lulu cannot be compared to Gandhi, Lulu is decidedly inferior in every respect. While Lulu started out trying just to kill his half siblings eventually the liberate Japan part became just as important. When the Japanese Liberation Front was destroyed those on board all perished its not like only the leaders manned the ship. (I know what it takes to run a ship and your grease monkey is usually not a leader) I have no doubt in my mind that a good number of grunts were also sent to a watery grave.

Yes, Lulu has forced every one to join his little group. However it is by no means a brilliant way to do things. I understand what his goals are and how he has ostensibly achieved them, but after one removes the Sunrise contrivances he is essentially useless. My second post will deal with his methods of war. Secondarily I wanted to highlight how contrary to the conceptions of Japanese pacifism Code Geass and the war genre as a whole was. Infighting amongst resistance groups essentially makes them inconsequential. If you look at the Chinese situation prior to the Sino-Japanese war in fighting can prove deadly if not fatal. Hoarding munitions and letting his friends go grafting was good for Chiang Kai Shek, but it was not good for the national revolutionary army. Again I was looking at the bigger picture.

I guess I have to make my writing a bit more clear. However I do hope that you did find it funny in a mildly macabre way.

[quote]After all Lulu has thus far conducted operations to capture/assassinate people. While failing to crush Britannia, he certainly has crushed the local opposition groups like the Japanese Liberation Front and the peaceniks. [/quote]

A statement like this shows that the author has little understanding of Lelouch’s intentions. He crushed the leaders of the Japanese Liberation Front. Keyword: LEADERS. The result is extremely beneficial to his own resistence group. The Black Knights is basically the last remaining major resistance group in Japan. Do you see where this is going? Every single opposition group in Japan will now rally under his banner. They do not have any reamining alternative. It’s basically ’support Black Knights’ or ‘cease to exist’. It’s a brilliant tactic to focus all the support under him. The author does not seem to understand the significance of such a move.

And comparing Lelouch with Gandhi is laughable at best. Gandhi’s intentions are liberating India and freeing the Indians from violence. However, since when are Lelouch’s intentions ‘liberating Japan and freeing the Japanese from violence’?

The Britannians are incompetent not him.

Glad you liked the post.

In regards to the other thing I am well versed with Japan’s dealing with her shameful past. There are many aspects of it that have yet to be resolved and could provide kindling for a greater East Asian Conflict. Suffice to say some Japanese have apologised and sincerely, the problem is that actions are louder than words and visiting a place that honors 14 class A war criminals hardly helps matters. Since this issue affects me at a slightly personal level I would like for the survivors to have some sense of closure. In all honesty it seems that in Japan the crazies have more clout than they should. After all Japan has the second largest economy in the world and now where near the investment in a military, are a lasting apology and reperations that amount to more than pennies per victim that hard?

It’s been over sixty years since it should have ended. The victims deserve closure. In regards to the textbooks I don’t think many people would approve of reducing the Holocaust into a footnote or the description of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as an “incident.” The suffering that they endured should not be forgotten since it lays bare what is wrong with humanity and how we need to advance.

@Impz

Whew…

If you have an opinion I encourage you to present it, since I don’t think that two people can think exactly alike. Even communism split into many schools so I am sure whatever it is you had to say would have been distinctively you. After all we don’t all have green hair. In all my years I have found that controversy has to be discussed in a sane manner. We may not agree, but that is far better than tabling it to explode in flames later. Service men tend to talk about all sorts of stuff when bored, military policy included. What I have found is that there is rarely a consensus on everything, but it makes for great food for thought and reflection and you don’t get a hangover.

I am glad that thus far the ground rules have still held. Every one has a right to give their two cents, besides I don’t think that you would have used web speak and poor grammar to make a thorough criticism. I know that I am not right all of the time, its more like 40%.

@Falen
I know that Lulu is not a good guy, but my main gripe with him is how incompetent he actually is. It is but a Sunrise writer that allowed him to get as far as he did. As I said before not including the proletariat in his schemes is rather daft IMHO. Glad you stuck around.

@na2niet
I agree death to Lulu. Death to Ougi. Rip them up their guts and use their innards to grease the gears of our knightmares!

Also, you already have supporters. Gosh, scary

On your article, I must say that most of what I wanted to say has been mostly summarized by others and my other comments are slightly a tad controversial to be on the discourse of my own blog. I do not want to offend people unnecessarily with my personal view on the issue.

But about something else…Japan actually has apologized for multiple aspects of its warmongering numerous times. It has even paid reparations to several countries. Google it up. That’s “not enough”, but it’s still far more than the people who claim they never have.

Some Japanese conservative sectors are idiots, yes, but that doesn’t erase the apologies made by others. Even the textbook issue has been blown out of proportion.

@ TokiDoki, chenga, Bata-kun, Ronin, ZeusIrae, D.J
Thanks for your support though in all honesty blogging on my own simply would be too taxing since I just got corralled into some active duty time. Still I am glad you all found this post to be mildly entertaining. As cheesey as it sounds Impz’s contest was a way to write something rewarding and something that kept me out of trouble. Impz willing I can post up the other parts since I have time to write but not enough time, currently, to start a site from scratch since I want to make E-5 by the end of the year.
Again I must thank YTMND’s DZK for the NARVish initial joke. I am glad you all found military style humor to be funny.

@ Falen, Chris, ryuuu
Hopefully my post did not grate you guys the wrong way too badly. There is nothing wrong with how you watch anime, in fact there is no one way to watch it either. After all there are those of us who enjoy the genre more enthusiastically than others.

Nevertheless if any of you plan on going to college or are currently attending then I submit to you that in many humanities papers you can twist the subject into including anime. Heck even my Contemporary Japanese Society professor uses trashy Japanese romance novels in her research. Yes, you can sit back and enjoy the ride, but Code Geass is still a product of its culture. The not so recent discussions on Clannad and KeyAni highlighted how some of us want a more serious treatment of the media. I myself want a more serious consideration of anime and to further that it does bear some merit in analyzing episodes as they do reflect some aspects of the originating culture.

If anime were to be akin to literature then it will be affected by social movements and tragedies. World War I left a mark on many noted authors as did the Bolshevik Revolution and the Greap Leap Forward. To say that popular culture is insulated from the troubles of an unhappy world is not true in my opinion.

@kuromitsu
While Code Geass has certainly degenerated to such a state, I think that to use the names of actual nations instead of some fictitious factions is worth looking into even if the Sunrise writing team was doped up.
I am a fan of LOGH it’s just a shame that not many people have seen it and that it is being subbed ever so slowly. I just wish that there would be a successor somewhere down the line.

As for Gundam 0080 I thought that it was good but I saw the dubbed version first leaving a bad aftertaste. It was one of the better Gundam series though I liked 8th MS more.

@Mirrinus
Ah, a humanities student. Glad you found it interesting from an academic perspective, hopefully, unlike me, you will graduate on time. Best of luck with your studies!

@ Karry
>>Thank God the higher-ups all over the world are not in agreement with you.
A Communist died and since he was an honest man albeit atheist, he was sentenced to rotate spending one year in Hell and one year in Heaven. One year passed and Satan said to God : “Take this man as fast as possible, because he turned all imps into Young Pioneers, I have to restore the order.” Another year passed, Satan meets God again and tells him : “Lord God, it’s my turn now.” Then God replied : “First of all, don’t call me Lord God, but instead Comrade God; second, there is no God; and the last thing - don’t distract me or I’ll be late to the Party meeting.”

>>Bad, and ultimately useless example. Its one thing to be a MEDIC in AFRICA, even if you are in the occupant’s army, and another thing entirely to be a GRUNT killing YOUR OWN NEIGHBOURS whenever you are ordered to do so.
Besides, Ghandi would be of little importance, if British Empire would be unchangeable. Its not that they were actually driven off from India, they simply didnt have power to spare anymore. So there - Suzaku is a dolt. I imagine if you lived in WW2 you would tell Jews to enter German army and to change it from within ? Too bad, it wouldnt work.

Despite the fact that I am among many servicemen who are not on the frontlines we all contribute to efforts on the front. After all without the logistical train every front line grunt would be nakkid on a beach some where without pay. One does not have to actually be the one to pull the trigger to be a part of the war effort. I am most certain that the guys Gandhi and his crew saved went right back into the fight eventually. So in way Gandhi did help the British subjugate the natives. France did not have the military power to spare in holding its territories but that did not stop them from trying. British sympathizers also helped India achieve independence since there was no political will to stay or did Lord Louis Mountbatten call for a do or die stance in keeping the Raj?

I have studied the actions of the German Heer prior to WWII, and it is known that the Jews were expelled from the military and despite the misgivings of a few top brass. After the Munich Agreement few had any inclination to resist Hitler. Had the Jews made up a significant portion of the armed forces they might have had some clout as a mostly Jewish Lehr or GrossDeutchland could not simply be ignored. After all it was the army that ended the Beer Hall Putsch. Militaries are made up of people if mostly thugs join then the military will be thuggish, if level headed people joined then it would be a level headed military… 50% of the time. In short if the Jews had a choice to join the Wehrmacht then I would have encouraged them to do so since the SS would not become mechanized until 1943 in any great capacity. Einsatzgruppen don’t seem so intimidating if you had a couple panzers on hand.

But I did think the blog entry was extremely well written.