But, wait. Where was C.C. during the festivities? Answer: she was doing something more important (check out the 2nd picture 😉)
As most of you probably already know, beloved long-time member of this sub, basedfinger, aka High Priest of Kallen, had to recently step away from Reddit by deleting his account due to some severe doxxing, and so he appointed me to be a temporary High Priest of Kallen. I´m pleased to announce that he has now returned to us, and is once again ready to love, protect and cherish Kallen on this subreddit with all his might, as well as to guide troubled souls towards the soothing crimson light of Kallen, that is the source of all that is good, beautiful and just in this world, and in all other worlds that may come after.
Welcome back, basedfinger! We missed U!
lol, "lelouch xbox background" 😂
”lelouch x suffocation” wtf 😭
After u/rinkudamanrd (Knizer) and C.C. had rested for a couple of days following their road trip - during which they’d visited as many pizza joints as possible - Kallen and I invited them out for yet another double date. This time, we four headed to the beach to enjoy one last day of fun summer activities!
Imagine our surprise when, upon arriving at the beach, we ran into two familiar faces: Euphy and Shirley! Purely by chance, they were vacationing at the same beach hotel as us - having been invited by Milly!
For a moment, the four of us worried about what kind of beach bash the Queen of Parties might be cooking up for us. We all breathed a quiet sigh of relief when Euphy told us Milly wouldn't be joining us today; she had gone to visit a museum with Nina and u/Hefty_Local_1875.
"I wouldn't have picked Milly as the museum-going type," Kallen said, voicing what the rest of us were thinking.
"She normally isn't. But this particular museum specializes in the history of... adult entertainment."
"Ah," we all said in unison, nodding understandingly.
"And after that, the three of them are going to a place called 'Golden Bananas,' followed by an after-party at the Blue Oyster Bar. The two of us managed to slip away to the beach under a pretext. We spent all of yesterday marching to Milly's beat, and as fun as that was (in a way), we want to spend this last day of vacation having some more ordinary fun. Want to join us?”
Of course we did! First, we played three-on-three beach volleyball. We switched up the teams every now and then. It was incredibly fun, though I probably ought to start hitting the gym, seeing as the team I was on lost every single time 😭 (insert "Coincidence? I think not!" meme here).
Next, Kallen taught us all the basics of surfing - or, well, almost all of us. Shirley already had experience with it as a water sports enthusiast. C.C., on the other hand, was dead set on staying ashore, which puzzled the rest of us a bit. But C.C. was adamant in her resolve.
Only later did we find out that C.C. was extremely annoyed because Shirley had announced earlier that she would be grilling meat and vegetables for everyone, topped with her famous BBQ sauce - even though C.C. had wanted pizza. So, she had skipped the surfing to secretly order a pizza and enjoy it while the rest of us practiced riding the waves. However, a middle-aged man had ruined C.C.’s pizza experience by kicking sand onto it after she rejected his advances. C.C. got her revenge, though - with mayonnaise.
As the sun was setting, the aroma of grilling meat wafted through the air. The six of us ate our delicious beach meal with gusto – all that fun had worked an appetite to all of us. Three exotic-looking birds flew overhead. From the speakers, The Beach Boys sang: "Wouldn't it be nice to live together in the kind of world where we belong?"
What a perfect, last day of summer.
Kallen and I went on another double date with u/rinkudamanrd and his wife, C.C. This time, we went to karaoke. The girls sang like pros! (And, well, we were okay, too 😅).
Can you guess which song they are singing in this photo we took as a memento? Leave your guess in the comments before checking the answer here ➡️>! "I´m in love with a monster".!<
Some of the other songs we sang during the evening included:
"Senza Fine" (C.C. sang this to Rinku).
"Witchcraft" (Rinku sang this to C.C.).
"Brown Paper Bag" (Kallen asked me to sing this because she knows I like singing it).
"Freedom" (I asked Kallen to sing this because I knew she likes singing it).
Official art from the Code Geass mobile game Genesic Re;Code.
For me, the answer to this question highly depends on the angle from which you choose to look at it:
If I had to choose one witch whose morals appeal to me the most from the anime series I've watched thus far, I'd choose the Lady in Black from Fire Force. She knows that she alone is not powerful enough to defeat the evil that threatens the world, but she still tries to help as much as she can with the limited magical powers she possess, even creating a temporary oasis for suffering animals and helping the hero of the story as much as she can. That's a moral I can get behind: help others, even a little, with the powers you have instead of sinking into hopelessness and apathy in the face of all the evil in the world. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan: Nobody can help everybody, but everybody can help somebody.
On the other hand, if I had to choose a witch based on whos personality I find most intriguing, I would choose Echidna, the Witch of Greed, from the anime series Re:Zero. She is charming, intelligent, and extremely selfish - and she doesn't try to hide it in any way. So, if you're foolish enough to let your guard down in front of her and trust her even after she's admitted to you that she's a witch with evil schemes, I'd say you deserve your Darwin Award, as well as all the suffering she'll make you endure if you accept the terms of her contract. This will also become evident in your interactions with her. Since she's forced to answer truthfully to every question asked of her, it would also be pretty much impossible for her try to pretend to be a good witch. But, this is where her intelligence shines through: whether that limitation was forced on her or whether it´s self-imposed doesn´t really matter, because she's smart enough to figure out a way around it. Meaning, that even though she is forced to answer every question asked of her truthfully, she is not obligated to give the questioner the whole answer, which she shamelessly uses to her advantage. So, if you are not smart enough to ask the right questions and deduce her intentions from them, you deserve to suffer for trusting a literal evil witch. Now, I am not saying that I like her as a person. And it would be hard to identify with her morally, as she is manipulative, selfish, and even heartless enough to abandon her own child. But even if I don't like her as a person (or would not want to meet someone like her in real life), I can still find her twisted personality fascinating enough to analyze further.
But if I had to choose someone not based on any logical reason like their morals or personality but purely on my ”gut feeling,” I would choose the Witch of the Highlands, Azuza Aizawa, from the anime series I've Been Killing Slimes For 300 Years And Maxed Out My Level. I can totally understand the desire to laze around for a couple of centuries after literally working yourself to death!
And of course, if it were possible to choose an anime where Kallen is the witch of the story, she would be the best possible anime witch based both on her morals and personality, as well as my own feelings.
When I recently watched Code Geass for the first time in my life, I knew next to nothing about it - which was exactly the right way to watch this series, which had so many unexpected plot twists! However, there were some things I knew about Code Geass before I pressed play.
One of the few things I did knew was that Code Geass would be centered around a brother-sister relationship, and that the brother would be the more evil of the two and the sister the good one. How did I know this? I had seen a similar sibling dynamic a little earlier in another one of my favorite TV shows, Murder Drones. I had read a comment from another fan of the same series, in which he noted how the sibling dynamic between characters called N and Cyn in Murder Drones reminded him a lot of the relationship between Lelouch and Nunnally in Code Geass: In Murder Drones, Cyn, who >!gains magical powers, seeks revenge on those who mistreated her and she has an unhealthy fixation on her lovable and sweet older brother, N. !<So basically the same thing as in Code Geass, but in reverse in relation to Lelouch and Nunnally.
It's been confirmed that the creator of Murder Drones, Liam Vickers, is a big fan of anime, and it's also evident in the atmosphere of the series: so much so, that a friend of mine pointed out to me that if the Murder Drones weren't an Australian 3D animation but a Japanese hand-drawn animation, it would be an archetype anime. The series is full of anime references and tropes, the characters' facial expressions and gestures are often almost comically exaggerated, all the monsters are pure nightmare fuel, and the fight scenes become progressively more epic with each episode. I wouldn't be surprised if the Cyn and N dynamic was intentionally added to the series, as homage to Code Geass. That, and a magical symbol that appears over your eye, when you´re using your magic powers 😉
Murder Drones was a great series, but since it was so short, only 8 episodes, I didn't know what to watch next. I was tired of all the Marvel superhero stuff, as well as CSI, NCIS, and the like. I wanted to see something different. (Looking back, part of the reason why Murder Drones felt so new and exciting to me was probably because it was so anime-like: unlike in Hollywood shows that I had been watching, where the hero wins and the villain loses 99% of the time, in anime series the hero can actually die and the villain win, which made me truly worry about the survival of my favorite characters. That was true in Murder Drones, and especially in Code Geass!)
Then I remembered that one comment that had mentioned an anime series called ”Code Geass.” I was skeptical at first, because I hadn't watched much anime in my life, and when I had, they had seemed either stupid and boring or incredibly brutal and violent. I Googled the series in an image search, just to see what the animation style of the series would be like. I got a bunch of pictures of big robots shooting lasers, pictures of a guy who looked like a teenage Dracula, as well as some pictures of a beautiful redhead girl with spiky hair. And so, that was all I knew about Code Geass when I started watching it: teenage Dracula, a beautiful redhead, robots, and an evil brother with a good sister. "Ah, what the hell. If I don't like it, I can always go back and watch familiar stuff after watching it. Besides, if Murder Drones was partly inspired by it, there must be something good in it," I thought, and started watching.
That's how my anime journey began. Since Code Geass, I've watched dozens of different anime from different genres, firstly because I wanted to get to know this old thing that was new to me, which I used to think was just for nerds, but which I now realize is so diverse that it offers something for everyone. I've watched sports anime, mecha anime, girls with guns anime, slice of life anime, isekai... A lot of different things, from genres that I never even knew that existed. Secondly, I wanted to recapture (pun intended) that same magical feeling I had when I was so captivated by the story of OG Code Geass that I forgot to go to the bathroom or eat: I just had to watch the next episode to find out how Lelouch would get out of a difficult situation with his superior intelligence, and whether my beloved Kallen would survive or not! And I did managed to recapture that feeling: as I write this, I've actually seen three anime that are even better than Code Geass, albeit for different reasons... But still, Code Geass will always have a special place in my heart as the anime that started it all for me. And I wouldn´t have seen it, and later all those other anime, if I hadn´t first seen Murder Drones.
What about you guys? Did Murder Drones inspire you to watch something new? Had you seen a lot of anime before watching Murder Drones, or were you an anime noob, like I was? And what shows would you recommend someone to watch after seeing Murder Drones? (I would obviously recommend Code Geass, which by the way is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year!)
Link to the original picture is here.
Happy International Redhead Day y´all! I can think no better day to publish this!
It took me almost a year to collect all these comments praising Kallen from various social media platforms. Whether they are talking about her personality, her looks, cosplaying, fanart, fanfiction, gaming, or something else, reading them always brings me joy, knowing that there are so many Kallen fans in the world. I hope this brightens your day as well.
And if you want to make me extra happy? Leave your own positive comment about Kallen!
So, three rules before we start:
You can only choose voice actors for English dub, not for Japanese dub.
The person you choose for the reboot role cannot be the same as the original voice actor.
You must justify your choice, for example, "He sounds very similar to the original." (Your arguments can be just one word long, not lengthy like mine, the important thing is that you have some kind of argument).
In the name of fairness, I will name my own candidates first, as an example. (Ahem):
Who could possibly reach Johnny Yong Bosch's level in interpreting Lelouch? After much consideration, I ended up with Jesse McCartney (Young Justice). Interpreting the multidimensionality of Lelouch's personality, from a compassionate brother who deeply loves his sister to a malicious megalomaniac who smirks like a lunatic while mercilessly murdering his enemies, is no easy task, but I believe McCartney could pull it off. As I said, that is difficult to portray, because Lelouch is the most engaging kind of evil genius: the emphasis on the word genius, but never forgetting the evil part 😉 ”If dislike is the opposite of like, is disaster opposite of aster?”
Recasting Kallen's voice actress was the most challenging because Karen Strassman's performance was so phenomenal: you can really hear the tears in Kallen's voice when she cries, and the fierceness of a righteous, passionate warrior when she's angry... and, of course, the teenage girl's infatuation when she's alone with the dark and evil but oh so handsome prince. My final choice ended up being Tara Strong, who has experience voicing feisty redheads both as Barbara Gordon (Batgirl) in Batman TNAS and as Mary Jane Watson in Ultimate Spider-Man. My humble opinion is that she's the only one besides Karen Strassman who could not only sound like Kallen, but also properly interpret her dual role: in other words, sound both like a fragile ”invalid” student from a noble family, and also like a badass female warrior who doesn't back down from a fight, whether that fight is fought at the controls of a mecha or on the streets with knives and pistols. ”Don´t worry about it, tiger. I can handle myself.”
The choice of recasting C.C.'s voice actress was the easiest, because when I heard Michelle Ruff's voice in Sword Art Online, I knew immediately that she would be able to interpret C.C. perfectly: C.C.'s almost emotionless monotone, as interpreted by Kate Higgins in the original story, was at the same time sexy, annoying, masterful... and deeply disturbing. In fact, thanks in large part to Kate Higgins' performance, C.C. is the only character in Code Geass who truly scares me - so much so, that I've had actual nightmares about her killing me with zero (pun intended) remorse while speaking to me with that beautiful voice and looking at me with those horrible, sad, yellow eyes. And there's also no doubt in my mind that Michelle Ruff could convey with her voice both the tragic sadness that comes with C.C.'s endless loneliness... and the horrifying, unbothered lack of respect for human life that comes with C.C.'s complete and all-encompassing selfishness. For C.C.´s is the voice of someone who can dispassionately take the life of someone you love. Not because she enjoys killing, but to get what she wants most... or to eliminate anyone who happens to stand between her and that which she wants most. The purest evil in the form of an ageless, merciless, nameless witch. ”It´s the name of the one who will someday beat you.”
To keep this post from getting insanely long, I´ll cover my recasting of some of the supporting characters´ voice actors more briefly:
Suzaku = Josh Keaton (From Spectacular Spider-Man, he has the perfect voice for our least favorite heroic white knight who always follows the rules – often to a fault. ”Anybody who has the chance can be a hero. I believe that.”)
Euphy = Kristin Sutton (After hearing Sutton in I´ve been killing slimes for 300 years and maxed out my level, I knew that she would be the perfect voice for our favorite sweet princess. ”Oh, gracious me! Aren´t you cuter than the bow on a doll´s dress!”)
Nunnally = Ryan Bartley (From If it´s for my daughter, I´d even defeat a demon lord, she has the perfect sweet little anime girls voice for Nunna. ”I might be able to see things differently than other people can. I don´t try to, it´s just part of who I am.”)
Shirley = Lizzie Freeman (From The Amazing Digital Circus, I can totally picture her voice as our favorite ”girl next door.” ”I hate this stupid adventure!”)
Cornelia = Morena Baccarin (From Deadpool movies, she has the perfect voice for the princess who doesn´t take sh*t from anybody. ”Say the magic words, fat Gandalf!”)
Charles = Chris Guerrero (From Overlord, he has the perfect booming voice for a big, powerful villain. ”If this was a fairy tale, the strength of your pure heart would empower you to vanquish me and love would triumph over my perceived wickedness. But this is reality. Unfortunately no such miracle will happen!”)
V.V. = Allanah Fizgerald (From Murder Drones, she definitely has experience voicing creepy, immortal kids with magical powers. ”That´s really sweet, big brother. Too bad you´ve served your purpose.”)
Sayoko = Sally Amaki (From Overwatch, she is the perfect voice for our favorite supermaid.”I have a message for you to take back to your boss. Kanezaka is under my protection!”)
Diethard = Ian Sinclair (From Solo Leveling, he has the perfect smug voice for our least favorite tv guy. ”Perhaps I came off as arrogant.”)
Lloyd = William Fichtner (From the 2001 movie What´s the worst that could happen? he has the perfect voice for THE eccentric scientist. ”Come on boys, pull daddy like a chariot.”)
Rakshata = Ashe Wagner (From Lackadaisy, they have the perfect cat-like voice for Lloyd's rival scientist. ”Done in by a scarf. The comic end that makes the tragedy, doesn´t it?”)
Bonus pick number 1: Rai = Michael Chovack. Ok, so, this pick is heavily biased (as if the previous ones weren´t), and not just because of the obvious reasons: Michael Chovack is also one of my favorite indie voice actors. But, at the same time, if Rai (from Code Geass video game Lost Colors) ever gets his chance to finally make his anime debut, I truly think that he would be the perfect choice for the role of Rai.
Bonus pick number 2: Elzwei = Angelina Jolie. Hey, this is all just make believe, so no-one is off limits; just imagine that I actually have enough money to hire her for the role, okay?
For those of you who don't know yet, Elzwei is the official AU daughter of Lelouch and Kallen in the alternate timeline of the Code Geass video game Genesic ReCode. Ever since I heard about her, I've been curious to see what kind of stories could be told about her. She's the second Code Geass video game character, besides Rai, that I'd really like to see make her anime debut - and who better to voice the child of a badass warrior queen and a complex anti-hero than the woman who's played both Lara Croft and Maleficent?