Despite so many people hating this anime, after watching the whole thing, I came to my own opinion about it being one of the best anime I've seen until now. I had many ups and downs while watching it. Sometimes I was hating it, sometimes I was loving or rather liking it. I'm sure many others had the same experience.
This anime is about many natural and important parts of a human's life. It's about humans choosing their paths, wanting to reach their goals, mistakes and second chances and overall just being human in a super natural setting with fantasy and sci-fi elements.
To shorten up everything, I gave all things a 9. I would have given a 10, but "outstanding" just doesn't fit it. The story is great on it's own level. It might be something other people have seen many times before, but that isn't the important thing. You know why stories resemble other stories so much? Right. Because they're made by humans and humans resemble each other in the way of thinking and acting.
There's no point in comparing anime with a similar story, because like humans who're alike in certain parts, but differ in other parts, stories as well have their differences despite being alike. I think of this story as a great one, because it kept me watch and in the end it satisfied me. Also I liked it's ups and downs. So I gave it a 9. As for the art, I think I don't have to say that it is beautiful and without flaws. The sound as well is a masterpiece and made me one eargasm after another. The characters are like the whole theme of the anime. They're humans and develope as humans or they don't. In this case they developed a lot. They do things a human does. They make mistakes and make their choices. One gets a second chance, the other gets none. And despite so many people not getting it, it was perfectly shown how humans are. And I liked that. So it gets also a 9.
I enjoyed this show a lot. Probably because of it's ups and downs and my own ups and downs. It's boring if a show is all bad or all good. It has to have ups and downs to keep especially me watching. That means also a 9 for this. And overall of course a 9 too. Since everything was to my liking it couldn't possibly be something less.
Guilty Crown was a very enjoyable anime for me. There were times when I thought about dropping it, but I'm glad that I didn't. I think that the title "Guilty Crown" was very fitting. And again it's just like humans are. If you take the human view of guilt, all humans are guilty of the one thing or the other, but guilt isn't always a bad thing or something that needs to be punished. Sometimes life punishes you and sometimes you punish yourself. Sometimes you just learn from your mistakes and without mistakes you cannot live. Mistakes make you learn about life and I think the protagonist Shuu is the best example here.
I also want point out that all that I wrote here is my personal impression and my personal opinion. It's how I understood Guilty Crown.
