Setsuled's Journal

It's weird to think there are fewer people in New Orleans now than there were at Comic-Con this year. But so it is. You have to think most of the people staying now are pretty damned hardcore. During Katrina, you could say there were people who really didn't understand the gravity of the situation. But the people there now know better than anyone just how bad it can get. My hat's off to them, truly.

To those who consider them foolhardy or suicidal, I would just like to point out that in this life of tangled illusion, facing peril with the place and people you love might be the purest distillation of human existence. Even so, I hope this thing evaporates miraculously in the next few minutes.

To-day's new Code Geass reminded me of what Hideaki Anno said when asked why he was doing Rebuild of Evangelion--because there hasn't really been anything new in anime since Evangelion. Episode 21 of Code Geass, three episodes away from the end of the season, revealed the Britannian Emperor's plot to wipe out the psychological existence of humanity, destroying every human's constructed self-identity or collection of lies, as Lelouche put it, to connect humanity in a single, non-corporeal existence.

The Emperor refers the event as Ragnarok, so maybe they'll claim Norse mythological influence before Evangelion, maybe even feigning total ignorance of Evangelion like the creator of Lain, but there are too many specific details. The conflict with parents is even introduced as the Emperor is revealed to be Lelouche's father and Marianne, Lelouche's mother, magically appears after having been dead since Lelouche was a little boy, to explain to him that the only reason she and his father abandoned Lelouche and his sister when they were children was because they loved them so much and wanted to create a big soup for them to live in forever, and ever, and ever. It's actually a lot more succinct than the final episodes of Evangelion, but not as elegant or interesting. Code Geass tries to one up the older series, though, by having Lelouche passionately defy his parents in favour of reality. It was nice, and I like that plucky Lelouche fellow, but it mainly just served to underline how Code Geass is a sort of echo of Evangelion.