I guess you wrote this a while ago, but he uses less and less Geass as the series progresses. Due to it not working TWICE on people. He also doesn’t abuse this Geass and ask Cornelia to strip in public or suicide. I’d say he’s pretty fair with it. Unlike Rolo who just straight up abuses the hell out of his Geass…bastard.

Throughout the series battlefield tactics is compared to “CHESS”.
In Chess, you can see the entire board. Lulu must use his Geass to level the playing field in the first place. He starts out on foot in the battles which you claim he has “Maphack”. Footsoldiers vs. Knightmares….yeah I figure its only fair he captures a Geass. The rest is all tactics, he finds armaments in trains/warehouses and uses them to his advantage while remaining under the guise of a friendly Knightmare.

He is the best at chess in the entire series, save for Schneizel, who is supposedly the only person he has never beaten. I’d say he is a good strategist. You just hate him because he’s a ruthless twat, and because he doesn’t bang all the hotties next to him. Well…thats why I hate him. I mean cmon, he has like some hot Immortal bitch next to him, seriously now. She’s all over it too, like chicken on rice. He never really “betrays” his troops either, he always fools the enemy into thinking he will, and in the process makes his own troops think so. However, each time, he comes back for his troops. He manages to fool all of you who hate him too…so…I guess Goro is a great director =]

Rhys, chill out, its a cartoon. I bet you get mad at politically incorrect jokes too.

The other thing that rubs me up about this show is that the Britannia Empire is stereotypically ‘BWAHA! KILL THE JAPS! REJOICE IN MURDER! HAIL LORD-BARON-VON EVIL-SATAN!!’ - I’m a Brit and while I accept it’s just a show, I’d honestly like to see some ‘normal’ Britannians rather than just the ruling elite/snobs. It smacks of the xenophobia which occasionally spoils my favourite anime for me.

Speaking of xenophobia, that line about how being Japanese is ‘to have a shared heart’ just pisses me off as patriotic bull-crap. That’s a trait of the finer members of humanity, not just ones born to a specific country. Being born Japanese/America/British/Country-of-Choice does not give you the right to start whaling on other nationalities, which is a route I can see both Lulu and the Britannians going down…

End rant XD

Yes, his superiority comes from a certain amount of talent (or, as one might argue- posing- that gives an advantage through irritation), but mostly from said cheating, and I’d rely on Cornelia anytime as opposed to that brat.

Also, I’ve heard so many people defend him leaving for Nunally. Yes, she is his reason to fight. But if he wants to act out of emotion, then he can bloody well go, be a civilian and act on his personal decisions all he likes, or if need be be some irrelevant underling whom no one will miss. But if you’re a bloody commander then you have a responsibility, and a duty to stick with your people that is not canceled out just because you would rather go save your sister.
Ugh, behavior of that sort is most despicable in my book. And it was what ultimately made me lose all the tiny, scattered bits of sympathy I had left for Lulu the bastard.

@Crusader: Funny post, with a new perspective of a pro-Britanian…

@Eirias and BrianAndrew:
I agree with you guyz. Even though Lelouch is not the best guy ever with killing people and the evil laugh (lol) and stuff… but you can’t disagree with the fact that he is smart… really smart… even when you have geass, you need the tactics to know what and how to do things, it is not so easy and simple having a power. As for Cornelia, I wasn’t watching her plans and personality depths so closely, so yeah… no comment on that comparison.

The posts remind me of Light with this intellegent and smart character… moving on…

As for Suzaku…he is.. traitor? idealistic? i don’t know what, but I don’t like him.

@wongtcsg: Supporting justice is good… on that I agree with you. But in Lelouch’s case it is to get revenge in a sense; he doesn’t seem too much concerned with elevens, or was he? (I don’t remember). I hope he wins though. Let’s see what happens…

I post again.

The one who leads the people out of misery will be the one who have justice, support and luck on his side. No matter whether he is a britannian or japs.
And pretend evil? What, when he does that?
Let’s see who will win in this R2 season.

@Eirias and BrianAndrew

In any case the armed with Geass power Lulu has been unable to fully capitalize on his strength. He has the power but I doubt he has the sense to use it. He has all a huge advantage but Cornelia was able to make it out relatively well and with enough combat strength to remain a threat on every occasion. Armed with Geass Lulu was never able to deal a truly crippling blow to the Britannian war machine. He was wise for using the Japanese Liberation Front as decoys and expendable cannon fodder, but creating a mudslide out of nothing (note that to create that much boiling water in the space of a few scant seconds is not physically possible unless the power source exceeds that of any possible energy source we can build, unless they have perfected fusion, which I doubt is the case.)

In light of this Cornelia has no perfect information and is subject to sleeper agents coming out of seemingly no where. A lesser commander would have already been overwhelmed by this point But Cornelia still endures. She could not have imagined that Dalton would betray her, and neither did Dalton. If Reconnaissance is all that is needed to win war then why has he not already won? He has the power to force anyone to bow before him yet there he is fighting a battle of attrition. Perfect information means nothing unless you have the means to exploit it. There is no one thing that wins battles, but the way I see it Cornelia has built up a better force in terms of overall quality and doctrine that Lulu. Even Napoleon needed his Marshalls of France to build his empire. Yet who is his Davout? Toudo failed to hold things together when Lulu left and the battle was lost soon after.

Lulu has magic, and in a world where there is no other magic Lulu has the luxury of being assured a victory no matter what, but they are never decisive in the overall strategic picture. He offed Euphie yes, but did that result in a strategic coup that cam to a good end? I think not. He has tactical abilities to be sure, but he has failed to build the war machine that is capable of realizing his ambitions. His doctrines boils down to absolute and almost unthinking obedience to him. This is a huge strategic and tactical liability that he has yet to overcome.

Cornelia and her men are fighting against circumstance largely out of their control, there is no way they can reasonably achieve victory over Lulu’s perfect information or his ability to turn any one of them into a sleeper agent at will. I give more credit to her as a commander because while she more advantages on paper she is fighting under a huge tactical liability that I doubt any one without “magic” can completely overcome. Cornelia is fated to lose no matter what, but she has survived this long because her army and men are far better trained and more able to adapt to a situation than the average Lulu grunt. She has not overwhelming advantage of her own sans manpower, but what is that compared to summoning sleepers and having an orb of all seeing? A Lulu grunt without Lulu cannot win. A Blighty grunt without Cornelia can fight on credibly without constant orders from above.

Take away Geass and we shall see who is indeed the better overall commander. Doctrine win wars, not recon alone. Cornelia is better because her talents are all her own not some gift from some unkillable wench. I am not saying he is a tactical imbecile, just hat as commanders go he is much more narrow minded and armed with his Geass how can he lose?

A commander’s duty is to the men under his/her command Lulu left for Nunnally while the reason was justifiable it resulted in a complete betrayal to those under him. Cornelia is a victim of Lulu’s Geass powers, but Lulu has made far more fatal mistakes that would have cost him much more had he lost his Geass. Let us not forget that he kept Tamaki around who nearly killed his friends. He also left a propaganda minister and a underage kid in charge of troops. He failed to train his underlings enough to operate largely on their own. Lulu’s doctrine is essentially the same one the French used circa 1940, he pulls all the strings and all every one under him has to do is obey. Lulu without Geass is essentially nothing. He needs it as a miracle maker to get him out of tight spots, it is something that cannot be anticipated, but for all his vaunted talents he has yet to crush Cornelia completely.

It’s like the Italian campaign, sure Cornelia is destined to lose, but she still has tied down Lulu and essentially prevented him from achieving his overall strategic goals despite his tactical victories. That is why I think she is better, for all his supposed talent she is still there to frustrate him while operating at a distinct disadvantage. Lulu is competent yes, but he still has much to learn. Besides warfare in Code Geass relies on prediction, not on overcoming fog and friction. Cornelia has to deal with the fog and friction of war while Lulu gets to operate without it. Cornelia has more problems, but she still makes it out, without miracles.

Sun-tzu advocated a quick campaign that avoided long drawn out battles, and Lulu is pretty much stuck in a long battle. Sun-tzu advocated the using the quickest methods to secure limited goals not wanton destruction. Lulu is no Sun-tzu, he has the decpetion part down, but his plans still remain a to do list that relies on the enemy behaving exactly as he wants. Moltke the Elder had to go to battle as the situation dictated, he never relied on having perfect information to simply carry the day for him he relied on his army to be able to more fluidly adapt to the situation as he is quoted as saying, “No plan survives contact with the enemy. War is a matter of expedients.” Moltke did not micromanage his men. Lulu’s plans largely survive and it is never a matter of expedients for him. Lulu has no historical parallel for no commander in history ever had the holy grail of perfect information. Thus claims of his genius have to rely upon the idea that if “magic” were real then he is great. As it stands Cornelia remains the superior conventional commander, whose losses are not due to ineptitude, but rather the circumstances that are way beyond her control. In this regard she is very much in the situation of the Germans, her defeat is inevitable, but she remains a formidable foe. We do not doubt the genius of Manstein, Kesselring, Guderian, and Rommel even if these men lost. Just because Cornelia loses to Lulu in every scrap she never losses on a scale that would grant Lulu a decisive victory, that is a greater feat considering that for Lulu to lose he has to screw up big time.

We shall see if Lulu has learned anything since his last debacle since Suzaku may have picked up some magic, perhaps enough to level the playing field again.

@wongtcsg
Yet you yourself support a Britannian bastard child… oh the irony. I’d rather support real evil than pretend eveil any day.

@Crusader: Lelouch may use “sorcery” rather than skills in arms but the reason why he is better than Cornelia because he use his Geass at his advantage. If he has such a power, why he just he use it? If he just keep it, then the Geass is just a waste and obviously that is not advantageous in terms of tactics. In fact, with his Geass, he was able to pull off cunning plans to belittle the Britannia empire under Cornelia’s leadership. He is so good of a leader that the Japanese are willing to give blind obedience to him although he is just a man behind the mask. If there is any reason why Cornelia was/is any better is because she had more experience in the battlefield than Lelouch do. Come on, he’s only a high schooler. Imagine a high schooler defeating a master battle commander. Don’t you think it’s already an amazing feat?

Oh yeah, if you think he left his men in battle (if you are referring to the final battle), he did it for a good reason. Nunnally. She is the reason why Lelouch was waging the war in the first place. Should he lost her, then the battle is all for naught. Maybe you can blame him for not giving proper training to his men in cases of his absence but then again, it was an emergency. You may hate Lelouch all you like but you have to admit the facts of how good he is in battle. Sure enough he’s a dim-wit. He could barely catches his breath after sprinting for like 100m? But his brain power is the reason why he’s better. And that’s why he never lost any chess games - except against Mao, of course.

@Eirias: Lelouch is may be an ass but he’s a smart ass XD. And I do agree that Lelouch is a master tactician. And part of being a good tactician is effective information gathering. Just look at Miss Sumeragi from Gundam 00. Even without Veda, she managed to keep Celestial Being alive despite having the Gundams obliterated in the end. And it’s all because she is able to anticipate anything based on the information at hand. Lelouch is that kind of a person. He likes to over-analyze matters. Which is why he was able to defeat the mighty Britannia with a relatively small group of rebels.

Here is where I stand against you militarily: Reconnaissance (and therefore optimal knowledge of the battlefield) wins battles, not artillery, or manpower or any other BS. Without optimal knowledge of the battlefield, the only thing artillery can do is (A) the good’ole Creeping Barrage or (B) adjusting aim by missing your target. Both great ideas against an asymmetric force in strategically important locations.

Lelouch was an idiot in the whole driving into the enemy stronghold nonsense. Outside of that, he is basically Sun Tzu wrapped in a “Blighty” empire costume.

Hell, he even threw in the old Mongol feinted retreat. Lulu = win.

You obviously have a hard-on for strong, female commanders (i.e. Cornelia, Katie, etc.) That is fine, but from a strategic point of view, what kind of tactician allows themselves to be almost obliterated, by inferior mechanized infantry, in the middle of a battlefield? Would your much espoused hero, Moltke the Elder, go into combat under such circumstances? Tacticians who enter battle themselves in any circumstance, save only the imminent approach of the enemy to the planning area, are complete fools. Cornelia was saved solely by the deus ex machina of Suzaku (the tool)’s arrival.

Perfect information? The entire point of tactical planning is the acquisition of (as complete as possible) battlefield information such that an operation can be carried out in an efficient manner with, what is the term? Oh yes, economy of force. Reconnaissance is the key to all warfare: “A mistake in initial dispositions can seldom be put right.” I’ll agree that no battle plan survives first contact, yet another Moltke quote, but Lelouch actually manages to adapt.

It is not as if Lelouch had artillery, or air support, or non-mechanized infantry (i.e. more that a few Knightmare Frames) on his side. In the first set of battles, Lelouch had exactly one thing on his side: perfidious communications. I’m fairly certain that Sun Tzu would probably think that a good idea. Time and time again Lelouch was faced with overwhelming odds, yet he managed to overcome them. That is the kind of thing that turns Publius Cornelius Scipio into Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Major.

While Lelouch may not have avoided radio communications, at least he gave monikers that meant nothing to the enemy, while receiving boatloads of information himself, before his enemies eventually caught on.

Flanking? Check. Indirect Approach? Check. Attack from defensive position? Check. These sound like fairly adept tactical decisions.

I mean, outside of the pithy comparison of the “Blighty” Empire to Prussian, what can you say that Lelouch cannot do? His job is a tactician, not a pilot manning a God-Mode Frame.

Yes, Lelouch may be an ass, but he is an intelligent, strategic ass. He doesn’t just take a Superframe and fire off beams of win. He gets a superframe specifically designed as a command unit, and well, commands.

Here is where I stand against you: Reconnaissance wins battles, not artillery.