The story itself is pretty weak despite being relatively original. Shu, the main character, gets a power called “The Ability of King” which allows him to extract peoples “voids” and use them as tools or weapons. He then is forced to join a resistance group called “Funeral Parlour” which uses his unique power to fight against the government.
The story sounds good, right? The biggest problem with Guilty Crown is although it tries new and interesting ideas it fails miserably in execution; especially in its first arc. Whoever thought it was a good idea to sacrifice what could have been a show that focus’ on the ethical actions of BOTH the government and Funeral Parlour in favour of Shu being an all-around pussy and high school hijinks is out of their minds. The sad part was the show teases you with the much more interesting plot in the first arc again and again, but pulls it away in favour of what can only be described as pure retardation. The voids themselves are actually pretty creative. But half the time it feels like the writers use the voids as a way to write themselves out of difficult situations.
I don’t want to give spoilers in this review, but it does change pace in the second half. The story takes a much darker tone and Shu finally begins to become a character with actual depth *gasp!*. The plot itself changes almost everything about it, and the writing becomes noticeably much better. But even then it suffers from amateur writing and God awful pacing. Some episodes were almost like the show was listing events rather than showing you them. To avoid spoilers, the explanations that were given for many of the questions everyone had can only be described as “Evangelion syndrome”. What I mean by this is by the end of the show, I still don’t know a lot of the details and I’m too lazy to look on Wikipedia to find out. Maybe I’m just an idiot but half the time I simply listened to the background music instead of the dialogue as it was far more interesting.
I feel like the characters also suffered from the poor writing of this show. By the end of the show most of the characters received almost no development. I felt like other than Shu and Gai, most of the main cast was poorly written. Guilty Crown attempted to make Inori “interesting” by shrouding her in mystery and making her an emotionless blob for 90% of the show. But all this ended up doing was making her as interesting as a wall. I swear there were some episodes where her only line was “Shu”. I could go on and on about the other characters, but I only really want to talk about one… Daryl…. What was the point of his existence again? From what I can remember he shot innocent people in cold blood in the first few episodes, and the show actually attempts to make him seem like a “good guy deep down” for no particular reason? He is easily the most poorly written character in the show and the writers could have made him so much better. There were literally dozens of routes they could have taken with him, but instead of actually developing him with the use of realistic motivations and scenarios, they cram what they call character development down our throats. It makes me angry thinking about it.
Despite all of this, the show actually does an excellent job at making us feel something for the characters. What I enjoyed the most about how the show handled the characters is that when a character died, they didn’t die for the sole purpose of nothing but a manipulative emotional reaction. When a character died, they actually died for a reason. And the reasons are used as motivation and development for the other characters in the show. I can at least applaud the writers for this. And the show did turn Shu into a likeable character by the end of the show. Without spoiling anything, let’s just say, the development got much better for most of the cast.
The best and easily most enjoyable part of this show is the animation and soundtrack. I personally can’t wait to put every song from the sound track on my mp3 player. I haven’t enjoyed a soundtrack this much since Welcome to the NHK. From the “epic” songs to the catchy OP’s/ED’s… I loved everything about the soundtrack. I would say the show is worth it for the soundtrack alone. The animation is equally as gorgeous. The choreography during fight scenes are complimented well by the beautiful animation. I really can’t say more than good things about it.
This series is a perfect example of a series that put production value ahead of telling a good story. The series also has excellent seiyuu’s to compliment both the amazing soundtrack and animation. When the seiyuu’s deliver their lines, you can feel their pain, anguish, enjoyment, melancholy and excitement. I found the voice acting in this show to be good even for Japanese standards.
In conclusion, I can’t really say I hated the show. In fact, I really enjoyed it. It was a guilty pleasure of mine *bah dum tish*. The episodes themselves seemed extremely short, and it was rather easy to watch despite the plot trying to be “deep” or whatever near the end. Overall, after I finished the show, I just had an overwhelming feeling that it could have been so much more.
