Guilty Gear Strive: Dual Rulers Episode 1 Discussion

Okay, finally it's time for me to talk about my Guilty Gear expertise.
First of all, this was entirely made for Guilty Gear fans, you SHOULD NOT WATCH THIS WITHOUT ANY GUILTY GEAR KNOWLEDGE BECAUSE IT IS UNCOMPREHENSIBLE. I'm talking about 27 years of lore since 1998 including a dozen of games, audio books, CD dramas and a fucking pachinko machine.
That said, my first complaint about this show is that it looks absolutely terrible. The directing is horrendous, 3D models look fine from close but are a mess of polygons from afar, there are speedlines everywhere, so many still frames because they have no idea what to animate, there is a total absence of scenery and it looks several time worse than Xrd story mode.
Now onto the writing, it's catastrophical, every single line feel like exposition and seem written by machines. It's even worse than I thought because they did the exact mistake they shouldn't have done, trying to explain the story to newcomers.
Now onto the lore, this takes place after Strive story mode, apparent by the fact Sol doesn't wear his signature headband after his Gear powers were removed by Asuka at the end of Strive's story. Even more obvious he lives with Jack0 in a random shed which is shown in Strive epilogue.
Let me list EVERYTHING that doesn't make sense within GG's cannon:
-Gear origin is resumed with barebones knowledge. Gears were created by That Man (Asuka) for the Gear project, they turned against humanity when Justice (1st commander class Gear) declared war on her creators right after he activation, destroyed all of Japan and mind controlled every gear on the planet to be under her command. This is also very brief summary because I'm omitting to mention the Universal will role in all of this.
The sole problem is this whole early exposition is meaningless for people already aware of GG's lore because it lacks critical informations we already know of and it is also pointless in an attempt to resume the story to newcomers because it doesn't explain who created the gears and why they attacked mankind, it's just confusing exposition.
-Once again 0 mention of Justice but also 0 mention of Kliff, the reason the Crusades ended after him, Sol and the Holy Order sealed Justice.
-Total omission of The Missing Link, summary skips it straight into GGX, the second game.
-Now that's some real heavy disparities with GG's cannon, Ky's meeting with Dizzy. I will not mention the whole story of Dizzy, because it's way longer and it includes Faust, Venom, Testament, Josephine, too many fucking characters, so let's stay basic.
The Grove doesn't look like that but it doesn't matter, what matters is that their first meeting is actually relatively similar of GGX all things considered but their second isn't at all.
What actually happens is Sol badguy, the main character btw, ravages through hell's forest in attempt to kill Dizzy because she's last remaining commander Gear. He fights her with struggle as it is revealed Dizzy is the daughter of Justice. After defeating her, he's about to slay her for good but Ky stops him from doing it and say Gears aren't inherently evil, something he realised after discussing with Justice during the first game. Sol accepts Ky's request and spares Dizzy. All of this can easily be found in this short manga which is a cannon summary of GGX events in preview of Strive's launch.
-The shit that bothers me the most is the COMPLETE ERASURE of my favorite Guilty Gear character, Testament, who plays a HUUUUUUGEEE role in Dizzy's character development. Only mentionning Testament by name at the marriage is a spit in my face and justify this entire rant and shitting on this show (also Testament lives in Ilyria castle during Strive events, making their absence incoherent).
-TOTAL OMMISSION of Dizzy's joining the jellyfish pirates after leaving the grove. Which becomes an issue later in the episode of why Johnny is present at her marriage in the first place. Sugita Tomokazu narration briefly mentions "Dizzy's former guardian" but Dizzy's former guardian is Testament, she just was in his crew alongside all the other jellyfish pirates. The reason she joined the jellyfish pirates is to wait for the PWAB to erase her bounty and the world to forget her case while she stays hidden in the sky until reuniting with Ky.
-For the short passage of Sin in the forest, well it's a big fuck you. Guilty Gear powerlevel is basically mid to late DBZ tier for a great part of the cast including Sin, he could obliterate this bear into atoms in second. During the events of GG2, a mind controlled Sin was able to fight Sol to a tie 1on1, Sol is the strongest character in the entire story apart from a couple of outliers who are near god level, being Ino, Happy Chaos and Axl. Sol is able to tank dimension imploding onto themselves, that should tell you how strong Sin actually is.
-Many character missing for Ky and Dizzy's marriage is logical for most of them but a few. As showed afterwards, both Ramlethal and Elphelt live in the castle, as well as Testament normally, them not being present when an attack occurs is ridiculous.
-Johnny isn't that powerful, Unika being as strong as him isn't shocking. However Dizzy beating Ky and Dizzy on a 1v2 is insane considering both Ky and Dizzy are in top5 strongest characters as well alongside Sol. I hope for ArcSys she isn't revealed to be trash in the game when her DLC releases lmao.
-Ky seals himself with Dizzy with the thunderseal like he did during the Baptisma 13 incident, at least that's something we already know is possible. Still it looks like ass.
-Unika motivations are meaningless. Gears have been extinct for at least 15 years now that she appeared, the only Gears left alive are Dizzy, half gear Sin, and the peaceful gears of ganymede island like Dr Paradigm. She is actively hunting a dead specie, gears aren't even an issue in the world of GG anymore and at least 99% of their corpses were absorbed by Valentine years ago.
-Most characters get a couple of lines of introduction but Ramlethal and Elphelt do not for some reason. The explanation for this is the writers realised any summary of their existence would require to refer to dozens of characters who weren't presented either, like Aria, Valentine, Ariels, Justice, Bedman and Asuka.
-Yet for the most hilarious part of the entire episode, Jack-0 Valentine is presented with a single line: "Sol's partner". Ignoring the fact Sol isn't even presented as the titular main character anyway, summarizing Jack0 as "sol's wife" is so dumb it almost feel like it's was written like a meme from a GG secondary. Jack0 isn't the 3rd clone of Valentine, reincarnation of Aria Hale who fusionned with Justice to stop the Universal will from destroying the world as well as bearing the Scale of Juno inside her, she is just Sol Badguy's wife lmao.
-Finally because I've written too much. Baiken should be with Anji taking care of Delilah and not still roam around the world for no reason but the reason of her presence I know was marketability more than proper good writing.

Anyway this show sucks complete ass and is just a shilling campaign for Unika because she will join Strive's roster in a couple of months. It looks bad, sounds bad, is incoherent with the established lore and is a waste of time. Still I will keep watching it in hope of seeing my fucking GOAT Axl Low appear for even one second even if I know it will not happen because the entire cast was already announced and is the most reddit tier cast possible.
Guilty Gear is actually cool, if you want a better show than this watch the WoolieVersus video series where he explains the entire lore of GG in 5 hours, it's way better than this garbage.

Well that was BORING, the animation was ass, the shots were too close with fast paced cuts it actually made my head hurt, story makes no sense everything is just some info dump. OP doesn't even sound like guilty gear music.

Damn u really know ur shit.
@James-LastOmnic

@PettankoLover

In the interest of accuracy...they do not, in fact, know their shit.

- "That Man" was responsible for destroying Japan, not Justice. He did this because a virus was beginning to manifest that essentially turned the Japanese populace into walking nukes; in an act of desperation, he manually controlled the [robot] that would gain sentience later (to be come Justice) and glassed the entire archipelago.

- Kliff's, Sol's, and Ky's roles in the Crusades and GGML are important in the greater context of Guilty Gear, but more or less irrelevant to the setting and themes of this story. Sol and Ky are veterans of a long and bloody war against gears that impacted their respective views. That's all that you really need to know at this juncture.

- Ky's meeting and eventual romance with Dizzy in the anime is heavily abridged, which, sure, is valid criticism I guess, but it's also not falsified. The anime doesn't convey it well, but what it describes are three separate meetings with decent chunks of time between them.

- The first power scaling comment is right. Sin shouldn't have had any trouble with the bear. He's also a softie, though, so in this scenario it's entirely plausible that he didn't have any intention to kill. Even Sol says "you roughed it up plenty; it's not going to bother anyone again." It's kind of moot, though, because GG's power scaling is nonsense anyways.

- I don't even know what to say about the "characters not being at the wedding" comment. There are any number of reasons for people to NOT be there, but just to cover the ones James mentions -- Ramtlethal, Elphelt, and Testament -- it's an extremely politicized event trying to establish a fragile peace; the three characters mentioned by name are all prior affiliates in literal world ending, genocidal plots. The optics would be terrible. That's not even considering the fact that they have other shit to do.

- Power scaling comment 2 is pretty wrong. For one, we don't have a strong grasp on how strong Unika actually is; she opened with a surprise attack, got put on the backfoot, and then retreated. Calling Johnny "not that strong" is pretty disingenuous, because he's a normal human who goes toe to toe with series powerhouses on the regular and come out fine. Again, GG's scaling is borked, so it's impossible to get an accurate picture.

- Gears are not extinct. Leaving aside the fact that Dizzy, Testament, and Sol (sort of) all are Gears, there's a whole community of Gears living peacefully on an isolated island chain in the Pacific. Unika's motivations are dumb -- because anyone can see from a mile away that she's being manipulated -- but they're not impossible.

- Ramlethal and Elphelt not getting properly introduced was a poor choice, but trying to give full context for anyone in this show would be a pacing nightmare, so I get it. The writers still could have done something better, though.

- Jack-O being "Sol's Wife" is dumb, but also in the same boat as above; total pacing nightmare to cover.

- Baiken still has to put food on the table, so she continues bounty hunting. She doesn't have to be a housewife; Anji is already filling that role brilliantly.

So anyways, there's my counter-tism write-up. Guilty Gear lore is absurd, dense, and subject to speculation. Will this show be a good introduction to the story? Most probably not. But damn if I won't try to give my spiel to prospective fans every step of the way.

@PettankoLover

In the interest of accuracy...they do not, in fact, know their shit.

- "That Man" was responsible for destroying Japan, not Justice. He did this because a virus was beginning to manifest that essentially turned the Japanese populace into walking nukes; in an act of desperation, he manually controlled the [robot] that would gain sentience later (to be come Justice) and glassed the entire archipelago.

- Kliff's, Sol's, and Ky's roles in the Crusades and GGML are important in the greater context of Guilty Gear, but more or less irrelevant to the setting and themes of this story. Sol and Ky are veterans of a long and bloody war against gears that impacted their respective views. That's all that you really need to know at this juncture.

- Ky's meeting and eventual romance with Dizzy in the anime is heavily abridged, which, sure, is valid criticism I guess, but it's also not falsified. The anime doesn't convey it well, but what it describes are three separate meetings with decent chunks of time between them.

- The first power scaling comment is right. Sin shouldn't have had any trouble with the bear. He's also a softie, though, so in this scenario it's entirely plausible that he didn't have any intention to kill. Even Sol says "you roughed it up plenty; it's not going to bother anyone again." It's kind of moot, though, because GG's power scaling is nonsense anyways.

- I don't even know what to say about the "characters not being at the wedding" comment. There are any number of reasons for people to NOT be there, but just to cover the ones James mentions -- Ramtlethal, Elphelt, and Testament -- it's an extremely politicized event trying to establish a fragile peace; the three characters mentioned by name are all prior affiliates in literal world ending, genocidal plots. The optics would be terrible. That's not even considering the fact that they have other shit to do.

- Power scaling comment 2 is pretty wrong. For one, we don't have a strong grasp on how strong Unika actually is; she opened with a surprise attack, got put on the backfoot, and then retreated. Calling Johnny "not that strong" is pretty disingenuous, because he's a normal human who goes toe to toe with series powerhouses on the regular and come out fine. Again, GG's scaling is borked, so it's impossible to get an accurate picture.

- Gears are not extinct. Leaving aside the fact that Dizzy, Testament, and Sol (sort of) all are Gears, there's a whole community of Gears living peacefully on an isolated island chain in the Pacific. Unika's motivations are dumb -- because anyone can see from a mile away that she's being manipulated -- but they're not impossible.

- Ramlethal and Elphelt not getting properly introduced was a poor choice, but trying to give full context for anyone in this show would be a pacing nightmare, so I get it. The writers still could have done something better, though.

- Jack-O being "Sol's Wife" is dumb, but also in the same boat as above; total pacing nightmare to cover.

- Baiken still has to put food on the table, so she continues bounty hunting. She doesn't have to be a housewife; Anji is already filling that role brilliantly.

So anyways, there's my counter-tism write-up. Guilty Gear lore is absurd, dense, and subject to speculation. Will this show be a good introduction to the story? Most probably not. But damn if I won't try to give my spiel to prospective fans every step of the way.