“A Bride in the Vermilion Forbidden City”
Review
I have to hand to the writers of this show for making the talking heads moments are just as compelling, if not more, than the action scenes. That is rare no a days especially when the anime/cartoon main mode of fighting are with huge mechas that there characters pilot (cough*Gundam*cough). But as Code Geass has shown it is one of those rare shows that we get every once in a while that we get that keeps the viewer on the edge of there seat whether it is during all the mecha fighting or if it is characters siting around a table talking and playing chess. In this this episode all the mechas basically serve as nothing more than statues that are shortly seen in the beginning part of the episode. Instead this episode was basically based on the latter with a big party and wedding that Zero and The Black Knights crash.
This episode basically had everything a person may expect from Code Geass (minus mecha battles). There was fanservice (LelouchXKallen), usual CC comedy, meeting between two leaders of the war (Lelouch and Schneizel), betrayal (Zero kidnapping the young Chinese princess), and the appearance of characters we haven’t seen in a while (VV and Jerimiah).
The best part of this episode was the chess match between Lelouch and Schneizel. It is rare to see Lelouch sweet in these types of moments since he was obviously on edge throughout the match continuously thinking of a new strategy to beat his older brother. During this match I remembered what was a throw away line in R1 that is said again in this episode before the match. That was Lelouch telling himself that Schneizel is the only person that Lelouch could never beat. It is going to be interesting to see were the writers will take Schneizel since we have seen more of him than the emperor this season and he seems to have his own endgame in mind.
This episode continues to do a great job reminding the viewer that there really is a war going on and the chess match and the political marriage that was interrupted were nice tools to reminded of this fact. It will be interesting to see what Lelouch has in mind for the young Chinese princess he kidnapped at the wedding. We will probably be seeing a lot of mecha battles next episodes since both Xingke and the Britannian army will be going after The Black Knights to get the princess back.
The one thing that I did not enjoy about this episode was that right when Zero entered the party the scene suddenly cut to Milly and Nina confrontation out in a balcony. This scene seem to come out of nowhere since I thought both these girls were suppose to be friends and the scene seemed to be just forced into the episode even though we did not need this confrontation that lasted one minute. Also with each episode she appears I am getting more and more annoyed by Nina’s character since she has basically become the b!@#$ character every show has.
Overall this was another great episode of R2. It is great to see that this series is heading into more of a global war since it helps makes the scope of R2 much bigger and epic that R1.
Episode Rating – 9.3/10