Guilty Crown Review
“Why do people fight, hurting one another?”
As of recent years, among all the overrated anime, Guilty Crown may perhaps be one of the most over-hyped series yet.
After the “Lost Christmas” virus outbreak, Japan had been under control of GHQ, a military force backed by the United Nations which helped Japan in maintaining the virus outbreak. The main story focuses on Ouma Shu, a high-school student who got dragged into a war between the “Undertakers”, a group of terrorists, who are fighting against the government. Shu has a strange ability called the “Powers of Kings”, where he can extract tools or weapons from the hearts of other people, which are more commonly known as “voids”.
Guilty Crown may sounds interesting at first, but their storytelling dampens on the overall potential of the show. The anime’s main problem story-wise can be easily summed as unoriginal and unorganized. The anime is filled with numerous cliches and the plot is one big jumbling mess. The writing is really bad, as if the creators are just doing whatever they want with the plot as the show went on. This problem is present until to the very end, resulting in awkward and unnatural plot twists, due to silly reasons or logic behind some character’s actions.
Because of bad writing, I had been watching the whole show at face value, even when there were drama, tears and even death, I watch all of them with a poker face. I can’t feel anything, due to aforementioned issues. Of cause, this is still somewhat okay, but even the characters are horrible.
The whole shows focuses on Ouma Shu, a seemingly bland male lead at first who only desires an ordinary life. While his character development to a more matured and decisive lead would had been better with a more flowed pacing, the creators messed it up. Latter part of the series, he looks like a complete imitation of Lelouch from Code Geass, a very bad imitation at that. I would had pitied and sympathize his role, but again, with the unstable pacing, I just watch him running about with a poker face once more.
The other characters are no better, Inori, for one, is incredibly dull and serves nothing more but just a plot device. Arugo at one point mentioned that Inori had been reduced to nothing more but Shu’s servant, or something along those lines, and he’s completely right. Gai, on the other hand, “plays” leader at one point, and “plays” the bad guys in the latter part of the show, again, with a pretty illogical and dumb reason which the creators probably just came up with as soon as they arrive at that particular scene. The rest of the supporting cast doesn’t even look that appealing too, or perhaps Tsugumi’s waving her ass around while hacking may be the saving grace as characters go by.. wait, whut? I almost got blinded and was about to judge Guilty Crown in a biased manner, whew.
The true saving grace for Guilty Crown, may be the sights and sounds. The visuals are nothing of cause, compared to the likes of Nisemonogatari or Black Rock Shooter, but on it’s own, it is already a sight to see, literally. The backgrounds are astonishingly detailed, and gives a post-apocalypse atmosphere, which the show is obviously going for. Animations are damn smooth too, which results in great action sequences.
The music is nice, though some English tracks can be heard from time to time, not to say they are bad, but they doesn’t quite match with Guilty Crown. The openings and ending tracks are amazing though, and both Koede and Chelly, who sang most of the opening/ending tracks, are awesome singers. Of cause, any songs which are involved by supercell one way or the other will never disappoint for sure.
Guilty Crown had a huge marketing budget, and was given a 22-episodes timeslot. They had more then enough episodes to create a more organized storyline. As of now though, Guilty Crown’s plot and characters are just a huge blatant rip-off from other popular titles, creating an anime far more cliche one had never thought of. That is actually okay, if Guilty Crown had a decent execution, even a typical plot element can be great, but Guilty Crown falls short at it’s way of presenting it’s storylines.
Overall, Guilty Crown is disappointing, and it’s best not to expect too much from this show, despite the hype over it. I heard Nitroplus is going to adapt a Guilty Crown spin-off visual novel, well, here’s hoping Nitroplus will do the anime some good, some way or the other…
Rating
Story: D
Character: D-
Art: A
Animation: B+
Sound: B-
Final Score
4.5/10
deluscar 
I had huge expectation for this series mainly because of the first episode. It was a really good episode in my opinion. It’s a shame that the rest of the episodes failed to even show slightest epicness of that first episode.
Lol, I may be the first one who doesn’t even like the basic concept of the anime. I mean, I know it’s supposed to be sci-fi and stuffs, but pulling weapons out of people’s hearts sounds so silly. I’m surprised I finished all 22 episodes..
I was really looking forward to this from the beginning, but even during the first episode, a little red flag was going off in my head that said this was gonna be a little derivative. Turned out it would be a LOT derivative.
Sometimes, you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, and that fact works the opposite way too, lol.
I wouldn’t call Guilty Crown BAD, but yeah it tried for too much and failed. Also, lack of likable characters makes me a little sad.
It’s horrid for me, though it still barely have some positive points
B- to the music? That’s preposterous, it’s one of the few things I liked from it…:P
Hey I’m strict D:
I don’t know what are you talking about, Guilty Crown was as Anime, perfection. The plot, the whole story was just as it suposed to be, nothing more and nothing else. It had sci-fi, it had a awsome fights, it had romance that was truly amazing, although im not a Love believer. The begining got me in that world, the romance and the awsome power of his kept me even more, and then the end…it was epic,, because i ove it more when the main character loses his loved ones, or he dies tragicly, it’s more realistic this way. Im a big fan of Guilty Crown, of Shu and Inori, and as much i would like that it has more episodes, it would only ruin it ! So m glad i found out about it, and watched it, best wishes to the creators of that Epic Anime!
You sir, are an idiot.
and you can’t appreciate other’s opinions. I liked this too. It’s one of my most favorite Anime today. It’s even more believable than People liking Bleach and Naruto alot
Truly this show sucked, rip off of code geass, basically no plot and what there was was shitty. I couldn’t sympathize with shu at all he’s so unlikable it’s unbelievable. If you have ever watched any good anime you would know the differnce between quality and shit
guilty crown wasn’t actually that bad, although there are many things left unexplained in the end and many to me unclear events…. it’s still good
or maybe I’m just impressed by the awesome graphic
The main problem with both the storyline and the characters are inconsistency, and Guilty Crown is especially extra bad in that regard.
The graphic is certainly good though I agree.
I find it funny, not only that it is indeed guilty of weak story telling, unstable plot, numerous cliches or even forced fanservice. What’s more funnier is that he(main character) is a rip off from a character who’s also a rip-off. Yes, I’m pointing out Lelouch’s character.
Nevertheless, I still didn’t find something impressive nor original with this show. Same goes for Code Geass. Heh. Its really hard to find something memorable this days. Want to lend me a hand on finding?
And I find that you’re very skilled with puns, not sure if it’s intentionally or unintentionally.
Shu is certainly a rip-off, but I never thought of Lelouch as a rip-off. I went googling around and find that he’s a rip-off of Reinhard from Legend of the Galatic Heroes, well not sure about that in the end since I didn’t watch the latter.
I think Code Geass is actually awesome, perhaps it’s because I watched it when I didn’t know much about anime still, that’s probably why I was so immersed with Code Geass. Well…. K-ON, lol.
I’m only on episode 9, but so far I’m actually enjoying the anime. I wasn’t around for all the hype, was unaware there even WAS hype until I started browsing around for reviews. Every review I found for GC so far was universally awful. I’m wondering if it’s just because of hype backlash or if the show really does become truly heinous after a certain point. There are thousands of worse series out there (Umineko, Bleach, any harem series ever except for maybe Tenchi Muyo), yet this one has so much railing on it. So far the only things that have been a disappointment were that literally every time he needed some ultra specific ability for the episode he could just yank it out of thin air, that cat-eared chick seems to serve no other purpose aside from operating some dumb computer with her butt, and Inori is boring as hell. I don’t see why there’s so much hate for this series. The music and animation quality are astounding, and what I’ve seen of the story so far is passable. Sure, there are a lot of derivitives (Code Geass, Evangelion, Eureka Seven, there are probably hundreds more) but it isn’t really a huge deal for me. Then again, I haven’t finished it yet. There’s still time for me to jump onto that bandwagon.
As mentioned before, the biggest problem with Guilty Crown is inconsistency, both in it’s plot and characters. There are some good points about Guilty Crown, art and music, but as I said, the biggest problem is it’s inconsistencies with their plots and characters. Umineko is worse? I watched Higurashi and is in love with it (love them gore), I had been thinking of watching Umineko soon but I hadn’t been hearing the most positive of reception.
And that’s what I said, bad characterization. I can’t feel much for the characters even till the end, and this is saying a lot coming from a series with 20+ episodes. Everything that happened with the characters feel like convenient plot devices. I certainly agree that music and animation are top quality, though they are better, but Guilty Crown’s technicality in that regard is certainly satisfactory.
Higurashi is by far one of my favorite anime series of all times. It’s one of the few I’ve legitimately purchased (first season, anyway, since Kai was never liscensed in the US) and watched over and over with my friends. Umineko is on the exact opposite end of the spectrum. The Visual Novel it was based on is fantastic for the most part (though the pacing is dreadfully slow), but the anime falls short in all the worst possible places. If you don’t like the characters in GC, you’re going to like them even less in Umineko, except for Beatrice who is universally awesome. And this is coming from someone who watched the anime first, so I’m not one of those crazy VN purists.
Regarding GC, your review certainly is fair. It’s not railing on it horribly nor is it praising it beyond what should be praised. Still haven’t had a chance to get passed episode 9, but I have a feeling that once the Student Council thing kicks in I’ll be kicking myself. Shouldn’t have spoilered myself on that, but just reading about the concept made me groan. Needless to say, not looking forward to the potentially down-hill ride from here on out, but I don’t often drop series unless they’re outrageously long and I haven’t taken interest by a certain point.
Higurashi was too, and is the first anime to get me interested in the When They Cry series, that said I haven’t watch Umineko as I had said, and now I might me reconsidering watching it. The VN is definitely superior for the most part, only thing with 07th Expansion is their horrid visuals. The pacing for Higurashi’s VN is dreadfully slow too, I guess build-up is important, though in this case, there might be TOO much build-up.
Indeed, even with GC, I can certainly see some pros, but nevertheless, there are still a lot of cons. It’s where Shu’s contradictive indecisiveness kicks in once again but I’ll let you have a look at it instead of me spoilering you more (and honestly, I don’t remember much myself either).
There must be a reason for the jumbled up crap, ain’t there? I hear rumors of a season 2. Maybe all the plotholes and useless crap would straighten out and would become a good anime in the end But I find Guilty Crown amusing tho. But I do agree with a lot of people that it needs some improvement :/
There’s actually season 2? But oh well, it’s just rumors, can’t take them for granted :\
My opinon on this anime was good if not okay from the episode 1-21. Then epsiode 22 happened. I have one thing to say: RRRRRRRRAAAAAAGGGGGGEEEEEE God FU**ing WHY?!?! REALLY? WHY?!?! WTF SHU WHY U BLIND??? NO SESNSE AT ALLz!!!