Feb 12, 2025
Guilty Crown. An anime that aired in 2011-2012 and was especially popular because of its catchy openings and stunning animation.
I must say ,going into Guilty Crown blind, without having seen or heard spoilers and
only knowing the MAL score of the series, I had quite a lot of expectations.
This is one of my first ,few reviews, but I felt the need to write one for this absolute circus of madness.
The first half of the story (episode 1 - 12) focuses on the cliche archetype of :"boy with hidden past and memory loss meets emotionless girl and gains power to save the girl and the world".if
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done properly , a series like this can yield great results, however this wasn't the case here. It's a mix of all the generic tropes one can imagine ,mashed into an amalgamation of "soulless". Up until episode 12 ,the story ,as generic as it may have been , atleast tried to stay on track with the mediocre plot it set the viewers up for. After episode 13, right when the second half of the story starts, the story takes a weird turn. From corrupt government that wanted to create a new race of humanity fighting opposing revolutionary army with no end goal, to students trapped in a school during a new outbreak of the virus, isolated.
I must say , the ability to manifest weapons out of the "heart" of someone is rather intriguing and slightly reminiscent of Bleach, with a much less inconsistent , illogical and annoying execution.Apparently ,some people faint by having their void manifested ,others don't, some of the abilities can somehow be combined (like when Shu stopped the Leukocyte beam), while others can evolve when used by Shu , or cant.
Let's not even start on the characters.Shu, the protagonist, is as one dimensional and childish as it gets, second ,in horrible writing, only to the piece of cardboard Heroine: inori. I can see they tried to create a flawed kid with responsibilities of an adult ,but all they managed to do ,was disgrace the interesting initial concept of Guilty Crown. On the one hand, Shu is quite literally bipolar, as his mindset fluctuates throughout every single episode between being an antisocial coward to heroic to coward again to more heroic to emotionally scared and coward AGAIN to sociable hero to psychopath. On the other hand, inoris personality is nonexistent. She first follows Gai completely ,because why not? Then she switches over to Shu , because of love I guess ,and that's that. She never takes action without being told to ,except for 1 time when she tried to save Shu. She also shows a few signs of madness ,but that's irrelevant. The supporting cast are also dreadful, so I won't go into any more detail about them.
Then there is the Right ability at the right time trope (Deus ex machina) , the protagonist making immature decisions and later regretting them etc
However ,credit must be given where credit is due. The animation of this show is phenomenal ,with no repeating frames and solid CGI, especially considering it came out in 2011. The music is good, both the OSTs and the Opening (the endings were okay) so no significant complains here. The artstyle is okay, nothing outstanding, new or unique, but gets the job done and works well with the vibe of the show.
Iam very disappointed because this show could've been so much more and yet ,fell short of every single expectation I had for it ,in story writing, world building, characters.
Better alternatives to this ,in my opinion, are "Project K" or "Kiznaiver". They obviously aren't perfect either ,but I was a lot less confused ,annoyed when watching them ,over Guilty Crown. They both have a similar "path" to follow (as in lost memory ,new power ,emotionless girl, save girl and world etc) but personally delivered a more enjoyable and interesting experience.
Thank you for reading and I apologise if the composition of this review is a bit messy, I wrote it relatively fast.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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