Badass Mecha of the Week # 5: Guren Mk-II

I love the first season of Code Geass. Aside from the annoying imbalance Suzaku's Lancelot is causing, the whole show is really awesome for me. It's got more tactics and strategy than standard mech-vs-mech battles, and well, it seems I and many others can relate to the main character Lelouche. This week's BMoW is a knightmare frame hailing from that show, and it is no other than the uber-knightmare Lancelot's bane: Type-02 Guren Mk-II.

Before proceeding, let me give a quick rundown of Code Geass for those unfamiliar with it. I know it's a little too popular that people may have not missed it but there's still the chosen few who haven't been able to watch the show, so let's give 'em some consideration. Okay, here I go: in Code Geass, Japan is conquered by the imperialistic Britannians and is renamed Area-11, whose citizens are now called Elevens, some sort of racial slur at the time. Fast-forward a decade. An anti-Brit high school student named Lelouche Lamperouge received the mysterious Geass, which he use to make people obey unconditionally. So under the guise of the masked terrorist Zero, he organized the Black Knights, a mostly Japanese rebel organization, attempting to topple Brit power with his natural ingenuity and the Geass.


*deep breaaaaaaaaaaaath*

Back to the topic. Guren Mk-II is a prototype Knightmare frame developed for the Kyoto House by the engineer Rakshata Chawla. It is handed over to the Black Knights and is piloted by this hot chick Kallen Kozuki, a half-Britannian half-Japanese ace pilot whose daily life involves school and seditious activities.

The Mk-II has a build typical of agile mechs: wide shoulders, slim torso, narrow waist and slim legs. It is all red, which means it's probably three times faster than the usual knightmare. Its most prominent feature is a shiny silver arm with large claws armed with a powerful microwave radiation emitter at its palm. That palm's the last thing the Guren's thrashed enemies ever see, should they be able to see it coming.

The Guren Mk-II is considered at par with Britannia's seventh generation knightmare frames in development. The Lancelot, Brit's sole 7th-gen knightmare in active duty have so many times fought to a draw with the Mk-II, which I really am happy about since that mech keeps on ruining Lelouche's plans with god-like efficiency until Episode 10. That bastard only managed to defeat Kallen's knightmare in the Battle of Tokyo, having been upgraded with a float system, a flight pack, which makes it superior against ground targets.

So that's it. Guren Mk-II lost its awesome arm in the battle and is replaced by a less-efficient and less aesthetically appealing version, as shown in the first episode of Season 2. It received a flight upgrade and remained in operation until it got thrashed in the battle against the Chinese. The Mk-II was replaced later by the far superior Guren SEITEN.



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