k, so I finally got to watch the episode this morning (raw was taking forever last night so I just gave up and went to bed). 

 - Regene’s laugh was fabulous; misinterpreted the Ali-Regene scene in the spoiler guy stuff earlier, in retrospect it’s really obvious.
 - Ribbons was also fabulous this episode. His little interaction with Hilling this week was kinda cute even (hooray for overinterpretation!).
 - Ali vs. Lockon was pretty :|
 - The mass-prod. Innovators were pretty ridiculous, but on some level I wanna say it’s because it’s (aside from the kamikaze attack side of things) the obvious, natural progression of this sort of thing and as a general rule the villain doesn’t do things like that so it seems silly. 
 - Patrick shielding Kati was spiffy even though it was foretold in the spoilers. I wonder how long it’ll be before we find out what happened to him.
 - And it looks like we’re finally gonna get the Ribbons-Tieria catfight I’ve been whining about since the end of S1! Weee~ 
 - Also, I still don’t believe Regene’s dead permanently primarily because we still haven’t really found out his motive/goal in all this keikakuing against Ribbons (and I refuse to believe it was so stupid as simple and retarded powergrab). My theory at the moment is that Regene knew about all this and was expecting to get killed (but perhaps not so quickly) for killing Ribbons. Er, the point is all his melodramatic keikakuing which is something of a break from his usual style was all for show since he knew Ribbons could read his thoughts/etc (or was pretty sure he could and confirmed it in the confrontation). Anyway, I’m expecting Regene to show up again during the Tieria-Ribbons fight in Veda to help kick Ribbons’ ass.

Lol, shitty dialogue is shitty (and copypasta panel is copppyyypasstaaaaa), but whatever you get the idea.

Arios deserves credit for coming up with the idea for the scene. Epilogue coming later desu~

Alright, so this came up on /m/ and I just realized that the way shit went down in 21’s a lot more interesting than it seemed at first. To start, a rundown of events (of interest to this post) COLOR CODED FOR EXTRA FABULOUS

Episode 18
[18-1] 4month timeskip: Regene is meeting with Wang
[18-2] Ribbons tells off Wang {Wang is no longer useful to Ribbons}
[18-3] Ribbons tells Regene  I SEE WAT U DID THERE
[18-4] Regene hands off the Veda-coords to Wang and Hong Long

Episode 19
[19-1] Nena makes Wang and Hong Long go boom
[19-2] Ribbons pimpslaps Regene; “You were too mischievous. …don’t do it again.” {but about what exactly?}

Episode 20
[20-1] HyponoRibbons talks to Louise 

Episode 21
[21-1] Wang, not dead.
[21-2] Ptolemy receives Wang’s message. Setsuna heads out to save her.
[21-3] Bushido and Louise are dispatched to the area. 
[21-4] Nena and Bad Haro find Wang and Hong Long
[21-5] Nena kills Hong Long; Bad Haro asks her if she’s going to pursue Wang; Nena stalls,confirming her pause with Regene.
[21-6] ”He’s here?” {Regene was expecting Setsuna}
[21-7] Wang hands off the coordinates to Setsuna; she does not leave with him.
[21-8] Bushido arrives, challenges Setsuna to a duel.
[21-9] Wang tries to escape.
[21-10] Nena makes Wang go boom. “Your role is over.”
[21-11] Nena monologues her real intent to Bad Haro; Bad Haro announces YOU’RE FUCKED NOW, BITCH.
[21-12] Louise appears; kills Nena.
[21-13] Bushido and Setsuna in the fabulous sparkly world of QBW and GN Particles; “He’s finally awakening.” {Regene was anticipating this}

And now for the fun part. There are several different threads running simultaneously and there are a couple spots where it’s not clear who knows what/whose keikaku is whose. So this might get confusing.

Fucking hell, 1550 words?

I’m gonna start with Nena because her actions are pretty easy to track since she’s not keikakuing on her own. The attack in 19-1 seems to be primarily self-motivated, but I suspect Nena went out on not terribly specific orders from Ribbons (something like: here’s your Gundam and here’s where Wang is, have fun). Nena fails to kill Wang here, this is not according to keikaku but of minimal consequence as Ribbons does not appear to be too concerned about it and just has Nena go after her again. In attempt #2, in 21-4 and so on, it’s worth noting that Nena’s got two ‘people’ with her this time, Bad Haro (Ribbons) and Regene. Given Bad Haro’s presence, presumably Ribbons is aware that Regene is there–and so I think we can conclude that Regene is probably there to supervise (and perhaps a side-motive for Ribbons is making an example of Wang in front of him/making him take part in her punishment).

The next, really really interesting item is that after killing Hong Long, Bad Haro (Ribbons) prods Nena to continue BUT Nena stalls and then confirms with Regene (“There’s no need [to go after her] right now. Right?” / “Yeah.”). So basically my thinking here is that Regene, who was expecting Setsuna (21-6), has her stall (which is not at all unlike Nena) long enough for Wang to hand off the coordinates to Setsuna.

Jumping ahead to follow the Nena-thread, Nena blows up Wang saying “Your role is over.” Which more or less confirms that she’s on orders from Ribbons here to take out Wang. Then of course Ribbons turns it around on her and takes her out. I suspect Ribbons actions here had less to do with what Nena said about not being all that loyal to the Inovators just then and more to do with cleaning up loose ends (Nena’s a loose cannon, she’s not  loyal and she’s not all that reliable, so for Ribbons she’s probably more trouble than she’s worth–he didn’t even bother giving her a new MS) and rewarding Louise. 

Now jumping to the Louise-thread. 20-1, Ribbons is a creepy fuck and has taken a particular interest in Louise, more than we had initially suspected–up until now it’s just seemed like Louise was another Wang (money) and his eyes in A-LAWS. In 21-3 it’s clear that since Ribbons is dispatching Louise and Bushido to the area, he knows a couple things 1) the location Wang sent Ptolemy and 2) the following people are/will be there: Setsuna, Wang + Hong Long, and Nena. And also it’s apparent that he was anticipating the Nena-Louise confrontation (although the precise timeline is not all that clear, you can make arguments for Ribbons dispatching them later along chronologically and therefore not having as much prior knowledge of the situation too). 

So anyway, my take on the Louise thing is that Ribbons has taken an uncommon interest in Louise and knowing that the one thing she wants more than anything is to avenge her parents, he orchestrates the revenge setup for her as a “present.” (He gives her Nena, in the Gundam that killed her parents and a huge, nearly unstoppable, top-of-the-line MS to off her with.) This also neatly illustrates how much of a dumbfuck Ribbons is when it comes to human psychology. Given his interest in Louise, I don’t think he quite realized what giving her vengeance would do to her and was genuinely trying to be “nice” if you could call it that (er, it’s meant as a reward or that’s how Ribbons sees it). 

Alright, now to directly address the Ribbons and Regene threads as best as I can. There are still a lot of ambiguities here so, yeah. Okay, so first Veda’s coordinates. Let us assume for the moment that they actually are Veda’s coordinates (because, well, they might not be and it could very easily be part of an elaborate keikaku we have yet to see). So in eps 18-19 we have a sequence of I SEE WAT U DID THERE – Coord hand-off – BITCH, BEST NOT BE STEPPING OUT OF LINE AGAIN. And I’ve got to wonder what the slap was about exactly. Given the sequence of events we’re made to assume that it’s about the Veda coordinates, but there’s enough ambiguity there that it could have been about any number of things (could even be Regene bullshitting the “Oh of course you’re the only one suited to the 00~” response).

Point here^ is that we don’t know if Ribbons knows about the coordinates or not. Which is fine really since we can justify his motives for going after Wang in two ways right now: a) he knows about the coordinates (perhaps not explicitly that they’re on a piece of paper/etc, but that she has info she’s not supposed to have) or b) Wang’s no longer useful and she’s starting to get uppity :. is a threat and should be dealt with. 

Alright, so from there we have Ribbons giving Nena the task of offing Wang because Ribbons likes to make people think they’re doing what they want to do when they’re really doing what he wants them to. Okay, so next Nena’s failed to kill Wang. I will suppose (alright, there’s gonna be a lot of supposition/assumptions after here) that during the time the message was waiting for Ptolemy to reboot, Ribbons intercepted it and sent his peeps to Wang. Since Nena didn’t finish the job last time, Ribbons sent along Regene to supervise, perhaps also as a loyalty test kind of thing (prove you’re not working with her by killing her kinda thing). Anyway, I don’t think Regene told Nena anything about his keikaku (so Nena wasn’t really “working for Regene” per-say, if that makes any sense–she’s doing his bidding but she doesn’t realize it’s not the same as Ribbons).

Now another option for how they got Wang’s location is simply that Regene had a hand in it (either she gave him her location in hopes of him helping her or Regene gave her the location or something like that and then Regene turns around and gives that to Ribbons).  Alright, anyway, point is Wang and Nena here are just tools for Ribbons’ and Regene’s respective keikakus, neither Regene nor Ribbons actually give a shit about either person in question in this particular gambit beyond their usefulness. Regene is using Wang to get the paper to Setsuna and Ribbons wants Wang dead, by Nena’s hand so he can then dispose of Nena and give Louise a present all at once (’cause Ribbons likes hitting several birds with a couple other birds in succession while making each bird think it threw itself into the other of it’s own volition). 

Anyway. Bushido is clearly related to both Ribbons’ keikaku but the reason hasn’t really been made clear yet (unless it’s just to kill/stall Setsuna, which is totally reasonable if we assume that he knows that Wang has info and that Setsuna’s coming to save her and then in the contingency (which actually happened) where Nena failed to kill her again and Setsuna got a chance to talk/retrieve the info he’d have do do something about that, right?) And Regene seems to have a particular interest in Setsuna’s becoming an Innovator, as if it’s part of his brilliant keikaku. 

Oh yeah, and because it’s fitting I’m just gonna quote someone from the thread in question on /m/:

>HURRR I CAN’T KEEP UP SO THE WRITING MUST BE BAD. NOW I’LL CALL THIS GUY A BUTTHURT 00FAG CAUSE I’M COOL

inb4  Nena/BAD WRITING shitstorm

[EDIT] Thinking some more about the Pimpslap-Wang gets blown up parallel. Dunno why I didn’t make the astoundingly obvious conclusion that they’re related events earlier. Anyway,I think  the parallel between the slap and Wang getting blown up essentially tells us that Ribbons knew Regene went to Wang again (violated his warning earlier) and then gave Nena the opportunity to blow her up. However, it’s uncertain how much Ribbons knows about Regene’s keikakuing there. Regene’s reaction is kind of telling, his crushed expression makes it seem like his whole keikaku hinged on Wang getting the note to CB and Ribbons fucked him over. 

Anyway, following that, the Regene-loyalty-test thing seems to make sense (maybe Regene even volunteered to go after Wang with Nena as a show of loyalty on his own), since under those circumstances Regene needs to prove his loyalty in order to be free enough to move around. 

And @ Anon or something, just doing this here because it’s related/I’m too lazy to go respond separately in the comments right now. I disagree about Nena intentionally not killing Wang. I don’t think she was ever in on any of the plots and was just being used by Ribbons and Regene. She blew up their ship and for all intents and purposes they should have died, but they didn’t. (And just for the record, I’m not trying to start an argument here, you made some interesting points, but I just happen to see it differently–I don’t really think there’s enough information available right now that doesn’t require heavy speculation/extrapolation to debate who’s more “correct” so let’s just agree to disagree.)

I’m really not sure what this is, I skimmed the thread I thought it was referring to but couldn’t figure out what it derived from precisely (er, the post’s first line was “a summary of the previous thread” ) I believe this may be a communal theory about how things will end based on the spoiler guy stuff, summaries and general speculation. I thought it was interesting though and sheds some light on how 2ch is interpreting the spoiler guy stuff for what that’s worth. I think there are probably some typos in the post and my translation is probably a little off in places because I’m not totally awake right now LOL EXCUSES. 

AND ONCE AGAIN, THIS IS JUST A POST FROM 2CH THAT I THOUGHT WAS INTERESTING. IT IS PROBABLY NOTHING BUT SPECULATION BUT, AGAIN, I THOUGHT IT WAS INTERESTING. Please don’t start bitching at me for giving false information or whatever, because I’m not trying to do that.

The reason Regene isn’t dead yet is that when he tries to betray [Ribbons] he’ll be shot by Ali and is then taken hostage… He was acting without permission for Tieria’s sake. But it’s not like shooting them {the Innovators I guess?} with a gun would kill them. 

{something about recapturing Veda, I dunno what てごろごろしたい is supposed to be, unless that て is a typo or there’s some word play going on withごろごろしたい that I’m too dumb to be getting}

One hint about Veda’s recapture is that the 00’s particle spam has an unknown power on the gold-eye effect. And so [things like] intervention from Ribbons to completely snatch away [control] aren’t possible. Since Ribbons can’t intervene, they can capture a shard {of what? Veda?}. Thanks to 00’s mysterious power. 

The flower Feldt gives [Setsuna] is one that never dies, a mysterious flower. And then [he] gives it to Marina. [It is both] the destruction and regeneration of mankind who were chosen. 

When the godly light rains down [on the world], humanity develops quantum brainwaves. And so, during the final battle Setsuna’s will… feelings are transmitted to all of humanity. Fighting has come to an end. 

Ribbons is faithfully executing the plan. With this result, it couldn’t be helped that the Innovators were only pawns. With Tieria as the human-Veda {conduit? I dunno what 厨州 is, I’m almost inclined to say it’s a typo for what I don’t know}, without allowing anyone in, he leads humanity while blocking off Veda, as the [only] remaining Innovator.

Now go speculate!

Moon after the break

前スレの訳

リジェネはまだ死にません理由は裏切ろうとしたところひろしに撃たれて
そして人質になります・・・彼はティエリアのために無断でこうどうしたのです
ですかが彼らは銃で撃たれたぐらいで死ぬ事はことはできないからだです

ヴェーダ奪還にてごろごろしたい
ヴェーダ奪還のヒントは00粒子のさんぷあれんには金目効果の届かぬ未知の力があります
ですがあるリボンズからの介入により完全に奪うことはできません
リボンズが介入できないかけらを手に入れたのです
00の未知なる力のお陰で

フェルトから渡された花は永遠にかれることのない花、ふしぎな花です
そしてそれはマリナに渡されます
選ばれた人類の再生と滅亡

神の光が降り注ぐとき人間に脳量子波が宿る
そして最終決戦で刹那の死が・・・想いが全ての人間に伝わり
戦いは終幕を迎える

リボンズは計画を忠実に実行していた
その結果がこれであり、井野辺はただの駒でしかなかったのだ
ティエリアはずっと一人ベーダの厨州で誰も入れずヴェーダと人類を遮断したまま導くのだ
残されたイノベとして

Oh yeah, I’m pretty sure there are some typos in this, the guy posted another “corrected” version a few posts later but it looked like he copied the wrong version and just reposted it again.

Regene’s going to get fucked over in the end after trying to meddle in keikaku and whatnot. You know why? Simple:

Regene = 2ch;

Mizushima haet 2ch.

D:

More when I get back from class.

[EDIT] Back for more useless over-interpretation!

Think about it. NEET jokes aside, Regene spends the whole series not doing much of anything but questioning Ribbons keikaku even though he doesn’t really know what it is, as well as insulting/trolling Ribbons. And Mizushima’s been all “2ch is mean ;_;” lately. So yeah.

Also, this:

Regene ;_;

On a vaguely related note, I get the feeling that next week will be a make-or-break the series episode depending on how they end up handling the whole Lyle x Anew thing (at least insofar as it’s plot relevance is concerned, I still don’t care what happens to either character). I would like to say that everyone should probably just chill until we see how it plays out. I’m not so keen on the whole situation but it might work out alright in the end. Worst case scenario my plan is to just ignore the whole Lyle x Anew thing as an extraneous side plot that wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place (unless it ends up tying in to the overarching plot somehow–moreso than just fucking shit up, if that makes any sense). One subplot turning out poorly is negligible if the rest of the story’s decent (or at least that’s my thought–but then again, I’m the kind of person who will watch and thoroughly enjoy something for just one good side character/subplot even if the rest is shit).

And just remember guys, if the series turns to shit we can still have fun with it. It’s really not a total waste if we get trolled after considering it all SRSBSNS. Or maybe that’s just the part of me missing Geass Sundays right now…

I do realize that the layout of preview shot lends itself better to the reverse situation (i.e. Souma’s in the foreground in the Lelouch pose) but drawing Anew doing a Spinzaku kick while holding Desu required too much effort to imagine well enough to draw.

Only now do I realize how similar Saji’s hair is to Ribbons’.

I’m bored and have nothing better to do with the ~2 hours before class today, SO, a nice point-by-point prediction/theory rundown so there’s one nice place for me to point at and be all LOOK I TOTALLY CALLED IT or for other people to go “lol, look at how dumb GH was for thinking X would happen ECKS DEE”  

Section I: 75%+ probability rated events:

 • Anew is gonna be the one in the “new unit” in 20; she’ll leave Ptolemy sometime during 19
 • GN particle spam will affect Innovator pairs in some way
 • Wang dies or is incapacitated before getting the Veda location to Ptolemy. The message in 21 is not from Wang.
 • Tieria doesn’t attempt a proper Veda reconnect until 21. 
 • IF Ptolemy captures an Innovator, it’ll be Hilling. But I’m giving it 50% chance they won’t even get that far next week. 

Section II: ~50% probability rated events:

 • REGENE–TIERIA BODYSWAP AWWWRRRIIIGGHTTTT
—-Event is GN particle spam induced
—-Event is temporary
—-Possible implications for Anew and Revive?
 • IF Hal resurfaces again, it will be temporary and probably internal (i.e. he won’t be assuming full control of Al and raping shit, but he might wake up to have a chat with Al about Somarie)
 • No proper Bushido fight until… 22 at the earliest.  
 • Anew dies in 20. The sad part of INNOVATOR plays in the background.

Hmm… I thought I had more than that. Well, I might add to this again before Sunday.

First off, I just went through a whole bunch of S2 episodes looking to shoot some holes in the theory by finding instances of either Tieria or Regene making the expressions in question.

Well. I think the most telling one is Tieria’s expression in the preview, not so much Regene’s (although in conjunction it makes sense and does look odd, even for Regene, there are certainly circumstances that can explain that kind of face on him–but again, I still think Regene would have a more obstinate THE FUCK DID YOU JUST DO TO ME?! kinda face rather than ohshi- …..). These would be the two most compelling pieces of evidence I’ve found (you can find other similar instances elsewhere, I just picked the two that worked best because I didn’t wanna post like 50-some-odd screenshots just to illustrate my point that this-is-always-how-it-goes, so either take my word for it or take a look for yourself). Anyway, I’m really only going to address the Tieria shot in the preview because of the above. 

First up is Tieria. This is from… episode 9 I think, when he’s fighting Ali. It’s the closest expression he’s made to the one in the preview. He actually makes this expression with his eyes a lot, but never in conjunction with any sort of smile (even when he’s fighting Bring and being quite confident about fucking his shit up, he’s always very SRSBSNS in that area):

And for reference/comparison, Tieria from the ep19 preview:

Alright now this one, well, just look at it and then look back ^ and look again:

Yeah? See it now? Yeah. That mouth, totally Regene. Now Regene, he makes this sort of face quite a lot (well, a lot in terms of % of his screen time and % of (semi) close ups–can’t really compare shots with significantly different distances with this sort of thing because then you get some serious QUALITY related issues)

Anyway. I suspect if a bodyswap does happen, it will be temporary and probably GN-Particle spam induced rather than Veda-connect-attempt related since, well we know there’s gonna be particle spam next week and it doesn’t sound like the Veda plan is going to come to fruition until around 21 anyway–I’m starting to think they won’t manage to capture an Innovator after all. No Hilling hijinks on Ptolemy :( Also possibly-fake-possibly-real spoilers implied that something’s gonna happen to Revive during the particle spam too, so, I dunno. 

I openly admit that this is a pretty out there theory, and is probably reading way to much into things that may just turn out to be QUALITY or be occurring for other, totally sane and understandable reasons but… DID YOU LOOK AT THOSE LAST TWO PICTURES? Also, remember how Tieria reacted to particle spam in the shower? Yeah. Just think about it. I’m not saying it’s gonna happen for sure, I’m just asking you to consider the possibility.

SHIT DESERVES ITS OWN POST BECAUSE FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF NOW IN GLORIOUS GIF FORM

THERE ARE REASONS THIS MAKES SENSE BEYOND HOSHIT REGENE SMIRK AND TIERIA BSOD FACES ON THE WRONG BODIES BUT IM STILL TOO HYPED UP TO EXPLAIN AND OH MAN I STILL HAVENT FINISHED MY HOMEWORK FUCK

[EDIT] ALRIGHT, EXPLANATION:

1. Biggest evidence is obviously the faces here, seriously, if the screenshots aren’t convincing go back and actually watch the preview. Tieria does not look like that even when being smug/determined in battle (the really telling thing, for me at least, is how he looks when he’s talking, he’s still got that evil smirk but is pretty relaxed, if Tieria was in RAEP modo he’d be shouting and shit). And that is not Regene’s OHSHI- face. 

2. Ribbons is supposed to be kicking Regene out and punishing him :/

3. VEDA and/or TRANS-AM RAISER HIJINKS NEXT WEEK

4. Innovator body-swapping precedent set by Hanayo and Hanaya in 00F (I dunno the specifics, just that Hanaya stole Hanayo’s body and mind transfer is totally feasible because Hanayo had a body at one point but now she’s just a hologram)

5. Also note that these scenes are right after each other in the preview.

Anyway, more importantly:

 - I think we beat 2ch to this, assuming we’re right of course (just checked the obvious threads for something like this to come up in and nothing yet as far as I can tell)
 - What are they gonna do with the voices? Are we going to get a for-the-audience’s-benefit voice-swap or are they gonna have Paku Romi and Kamiya Hiroshi just “switch roles” (er… Paku doing Tieria while he’s in Regene and visa versa rather than swapping the voices with the minds for ease of understanding).