Monday, January 24, 2011

Characters: Code Geass part 4

Characters: Code Geass Ashford Academy

The character sheet of the Ashford Academy students and staff in Code Geass.

Shirley Fenette
Voiced by: Fumiko Orikasa (JP), Amy Kincaid (EN)

"Love is power!"
Shirley Fenette is one of Lelouch's classmates at Ashford Academy.
Beautiful, exceptionally kind, and utterly devoted to her friends — even those (* cough* * Milly* * cough* ) who repeatedly humiliate her — Shirley is named for Anne Shirley from Anne Of Green Gables, and her character design is based on the anime version◊.
Shirley gets top grades in school and participates both on the swim team and on the Absurdly Powerful Student Council, but she still finds plenty of time to pine and fret over her "Lulu" and his antics, real and imagined. She has been in love with Lelouch since their first arrival at Ashford Academy, but even after so many years she still finds it difficult to get (much less keep) his attention. She has a hilarious habit of jumping to conclusions before people can explain things to her, particularly where Lelouch is concerned.
Defying the widespread prejudice against people of Japanese descent, Shirley is the first student at Ashford to try to befriend Suzaku. (Leaving aside Lelouch and Nunnally, who, secretly, already knew him from years before.) As the series begins, despite all the anxiety her crush on Lelouch causes her — and the daily humiliations her friend MillyAshford heaps on her — she still manages to be remarkably chipper most of the time.
Some day, of course, she'll win Lelouch's heart, and then his hand in marriage — but in the meantime, fate, luck, and Lelouch himself have a few surprises in store for her.

Shirley embodies these tropes:



Milly Ashford
Voiced by: Sayaka Ohara (JP), Julie Ann Taylor (EN)

"We need festivals now and again, no matter what situation we're in."
The student council president at Ashford Academy, Milly is a cheerful and strong-willed young woman as well as the granddaughter of the owner of the school. (Hence Ashford Academy.) She loves playfully tormenting her friends, supporting them when they need it, ferreting out their secrets, keeping those secrets safe, and looking sexy and self-assured all around.

Milly Ashford embodies these tropes:


Nina Einstein
Voiced by: Saeko Chiba (JP), Kim Mai Guest (EN)

"Ooh! A table!!"
While not an especially important character early in the series, Nina does garner certain amount of attention from Code Geasswatchers. Mostly hatred. A pathologically shy student at the Ashford Academy whose family is involved in the war industry, Nina is one of the more openly racist Britannians on the show (which apparently comes from being left behind in a Japanese ghetto all alone as a kid and ending up traumatised by what she witnessed there), and is willing to throw out racial insults to men with guns. She is obsessed with Princess Euphemia li Britannia, to the point of masturbating using a table to pictures of her. Poor Table-kun.On the bright side, her scientific and engineering skills are almost a match for Lelouch's planning.
Whilst Nina never was emotionally stable at the best of times, she really snaps after the Euphinator incident, blaming the entire thing, and Euphemia's death, on Zero, and goes on to build a Sakuradite- laced nuclear weapon to kill Zero, herself, and everyone else in the Tokyo settlement. After the Time Skip she is shown to be working on replicating her nuclear bomb for Prince Schneizel.
Eventually Nina does have a change of heart — as a result of seeing exactly what her brand new weapon is capable of — and sets aside her grudge to aid the very person she aimed to destroy]. While she retains much of her hatred and fear of Asians, if theGrand Finale is to be believed, she's taking the first steps toward overcoming it. (Not that her rabid Fan Dumb cares.)

Nina embodies these tropes:
  • Ambiguously Jewish: Her curly hair, her nerdy personality, and most of all her famous last name.
  • Attempted Rape: Invoked in the Hotel episode. The student council (sans Lelouch and Kallen) gets captured by Japanese terrorists intending to use the Sakuradite conference being held there as a stage to declare their continued existence. Nina, already terrified of Japanese people due to her backstory, goes and accidentally blurts out the (very insulting) term for them: Eleven. The terrorist who hears her grabs her, and tells her that "he'll teach her a lesson", with her friends trying to defuse the situation, strongly implying that they plan to rape and kill her. She's only saved by the timely intervention of Princess Euphemia, who uses the revelation of her identity to save Nina.
  • The Atoner
  • Bait And Switch Lesbians: You can make her fall for the male protagonist in the Playstation 2 Lost Colors game. Though it's important to remember that Lost Colors is not part of the established canon, so...
  • The Beard: To Prince Schniezel.
  • Beautiful All Along: She looked much less dorky when R2 rolled in, pulling her hair up in a ponytail instead of braiding it and using a sexy uniform with heeled boots and areally short Magic Skirt. Her personality, however, doesn't change. If anything, she got even worse.
  • Brainy Brunette
  • Cargo Ship: The 'Table-kun' incident, via Memetic Mutation.
  • Caught With Your Pants Down: Or in her case, with her miniskirt up. Fortunately, the one who walked in was blind and too naive to notice.
  • Character Development: Let's just say that the Jumping Off The Slippery Slope and Heel Face Turn entries sum it up.
  • A Date With Rosie Palms: Matsurbates to pictures of Euphemia. Later goes insane, but after a while, she gets better and is implied to have worked out her issues.
  • Expository Hairstyle Change: In R2. See also Beautiful All Along.
  • Fan Disservice: How many felt about the Cargo Ship-wreck.
  • Fan Nickname: 'Racist-tan', 'Table humper', etc.
  • Fetish Fuel: Some found her fapping scene hilarious, many were disturbed, but a small part of the fandom found it genuinely sexy. Some say it's more because of howrefreshing it is to have a female character who is not a Ms Fanservice or a Femme Fatale still have a libido. YMMV, of course.
  • Freak Out: Nina did not take Euphemia's death well. How bad was it? Compare her picture here with the Freak Out image.
  • Gadgeteer Genius: Using just the contents of a school science lab, she managed to build the world's first nuclear weapon. At least in theory. She wasn't sure if it would work, though. And it didn't the first time round, though all too horrifyingly well the third time..
  • Generic Cuteness: Not really ugly, but not beautiful either.
  • The Glasses Gotta Go: Subverted. Milly says in the Picture Dramas that she's often tried to talk Nina into ditching her glasses, but she keeps refusing.
  • Go Mad From The Revelation: After Euphie's death. Almost happens again when she sees FLEIJA's effects... but ironically, that is what brings her back to sanity. Sort of.
  • Heel Face Turn: After her second and absolutely epic Freak Out.
  • Heterosexual Life Partners: With Milly Ashford. Then again, Milly likes groping Shirley, and as for Nina ... . Maybe not so heterosexual.
  • Hot Scientist: In R2, with some of the outfits and hairstyles she wears, she looks * really, really* good! See Beautiful All Along, above.
  • Joshikousei
  • Jumping Off The Slippery Slope: She took a huge leap from the end of season one to episode 18 of R2.
  • Karma Houdini: Sort of; She suffers no real consequences for her role in the creation of the F.L.E.I.J.A., though this is a result of Lelouch taking the fall for everything in his Xanatos Gambit. The guilt and attempts at atonement was there however.
  • Lawful Evil
  • Mad Scientist: Well, she managed to freak out Lloyd. Fortunately, it was temporary.
  • Manipulative Bitch: Not constantly, but she has a moment with Suzaku, pretty much forcing him to carry the F.L.E.I.J.A. warhead by guilt-tripping him with Euphemia's name. Considering how freaking psycho she is about Euphemia, it's actually pretty impressive that she could so calmly do such a thing.
  • Meaningful Name: Einstein. She invents the F.L.E.I.J.A. warhead, which is basically a nuke.
    • Depending on how you look at it, could be a case of Did Not Do The Research. Albert Einstein was a pacifist who was never directly involved in the creation of nuclear weapons (and actively campaigned against them once they had been made). His only contributions to the atomic bomb were his theories and a letter about the project to Roosevelt.
    • Einstein is also a generic name for a scientific genius.
      • That and it could be meant to be an ironic name.
  • Meganekko: Typical smart girl with Generic Cuteness and glasses.
  • My God What Have I Done: After seeing the results of F.L.E.I.J.A. in Turn 19 of R2.
    • Wall Banger: For some fans, who find it hard to believe that Nina really didn't know how destructive her creation was (and F.L.E.I.J.A. was pretty much a nuke in its own right). To be fair, however, this is Truth In Television, as many of those responsible for the creation of the atomic bomb (including Oppenheimer somewhat) had this reaction. It's easy to make a weapon, not so easy to kill.
      • She was driven by revenge and didn't care about for the repercussions until it was too late.
    • Let's not forget that hers was the first nuke 'ever in that particular world.
  • Never Live It Down: Table-kun, of course.
  • Pettanko: The Picture Dramas show that she's got a rather small bust, compared to the other Ashford girls. She is also number sixteen on the list.
  • Psycho Lesbian: Her feelings for Euphie, with a large helping of social awkwardness, make her look like a Stalker With A Crush at times.
  • Purple Eyes
  • The Quisling: Nina, Sayoko, Lloyd, and Cécile pretend to be this under Lelouch's direction; they assisted Lelouch's Zero Requiem to achieve world piece. Since Lelouch's plans depend on being hated as the most tyrannical ruler in history, Lelouch has them defect to the Black Knights after they've accomplished their tasks — the only way to preserve their names after the war.
  • Rescued From The Scrappy Heap: She tried very hard to pull this off after episode 19 of R2 by realizing how crazy she had been acting, trying to protect Rivalz, losing her obsession with killing Zero, showing genuine remorse for her actions, developing a countermeasure to her own WMD, and being kind of pitiful as multiple nations in the show joined the fandom in being out for her brain. A portion of fans did forgive her, others chose to stop hating her but still not liking her. Better than nothing, considering the circumstances.
    • Also, her manga counterpart has her rabid lust for Euphemia and subsequent attempts at revenge and role in the F.L.E.I.J.A bomb completely removed, making her more likeable as a result.
  • Roaring Rampage Of Revenge: "Vengeance for Euphemia-sama!"
  • Saeko Chiba: Her seiyuu.
  • The Scrappy: Queen of Geass Scrappies, with either Suzaku or Rolo as its King — until all of them got more or less Rescued From The Scrappy Heap, leaving Ohgi as the last scrappy standing.
  • She Cleans Up Nicely: Subverted. Fancy dresses and balls only make her even more diffident.
  • Shrinking Violet: Very shy and withdrawn — except during her bout of insanity.
  • Stalker With A Crush
  • Teen Genius
  • There Are No Therapists: Grievance counseling? In my Britannia?
  • Tomboy And Girly Girl: Nina is not all that tomboyish — not compared with, say, Kallen (when the later is not playing at the Ill Girl) — nevertheless: Nina (tomboy) and Euphemia (girly girl); Nina (tomboy) and Nunnally (girly girl); Nina (tomboy) and Shirley (girly girl).
  • Too Dumb To Live : With the distinction of being a teen genius who's too dumb to live.
  • TV Genius: Persons with uncommonly high IQs are often depicted in media as being extremely Not Good With People, if not downright out of reality. That explains why Nina is so dissociated of the real world that she's unable to really measure the effects of FLEIJA.
  • Yandere: Why nuclear weapons and Emotional High School Girls should not mix. Though she never turns her violent side on the object of her affection or rivals. Only the man who killed her love. Even then, she's able to collaborate with him in the end. Lelouch is so impressed that he even tells her "you're a good person".


Sayoko Shinozaki
Voiced by: Satomi Arai (JP), Kim Mai Guest (EN)

"I serve both Zero and master Lelouch."
A Japanese maid — twenty-four years old in season one and twenty-five in season two — Sayoko is employed by the Ashford family, assigned as the caretaker for Lelouch and Nunnally when they get into Ashford Academy. Quirky, devoted, sweet and highly protective of the Lamperouge siblings, she's the closest to a mother figure that they have after Marianne's horrible death.
Sayoko is also a highly skilled Action Girl Ninja Maid and the heiress to a famous dojo.

Sayoko embodies these tropes:


Rivalz Cardemonde
Voiced by: Noriaki Sugiyama (JP), Brian Beacock (EN)

A member of the Student Council, and pretty much the only Ordinary High School Student there.


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