Forum - View topicREVIEW: Guilty Gear Strive: Dual Rulers Anime Series Review
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LinkTSwordmaster
 Posts: 814 Location: PA / USA |
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It's interesting, some of the most memorable stories I've experienced are the ones that are the most bannapants-confusing ones that leave you without context afterwards, and now it's on the viewer to be left to ponder what it was they just saw. From Drakengard/Nier to stuff like Killer7, I think if you tell the story you want to, even if it's a weird middle-fragment of a "rise of a hero" story like A New Hope (WTF are Jedi yo?) or something obtuse and dense like Xenogears, you should trust that your audience has enough investment to do the legwork afterwards and dive into what is otherwise an investment of emotion & time into their favorite series.
I've had a mix of responses to my saying it over the years, but I think the greatest adaptation of Street Fighter, or just generally any fighting game we've probably had thus far has been the Street Fighter II: V anime. It's not that it's some perfect example of an adaptation of the source material or some example of godlike storytelling - it's that adapting a series with such a huge roster, the structuring and pacing it over the course of a whole season of TV allows the "world-traveling warrior" element of the game to shine. In the age of streaming and binging shows, that pacing may not be as clean as it was week-to-week originally, but it was a fun ride back in the day & something to look forward to, where the various Street Fighter movie adaptations need some disclaimers added to them before you sit & watch them with new viewers. TLDR: If I wanna watch Street Fighter II: V with someone that has never known anything about Street Fighter before, they can watch the show, and now they have a great basis for following the game, coming from nothing. So taking those two points into consideration, it's interesting to hear a review say the new Strive anime does neither things well. GG2 Overture is one of those games with a bannapants-confusing story if you aren't deep into the GGX2 lore. Who is Sin? What is this Maiden of the Grove? The effing Backyard!?!?? But, as time has passed, it's become one of my favorite Guilty Gear experiences because it doesn't really slow itself down and tells a full Guilty Gear story within the framework of a 3D action.... game.... MOBA.... thing. I wonder if whoever the Strive team was working with to get Dual Rulers show to air, complained that the narration would be needed for contextual purposes. Guilty Gear has never needed that in the past - "That Man!!" (TM) just shows up with no context and you "know" he's bad just-because his intentions and literally everything about him is obfuscated. I can imagine if Overture were to outright tell you at the start of the game, rather than letting you figure out for yourself, Valentine and Sin's purposes, it would instantly feel like a back-of-the-box advertisement than a narrative mystery to enjoy solving. I've not seen Dual Rulers yet. I'm a bit behind on Strive at the moment myself, but I still would not mind checking this out for myself at some point. It is unfortunate however, to hear implied that the Guilty Gear team may not have stuck to their guns and that chasing a broader appeal, may have face-planted the storytelling. It's been fighting game-levels of obtuse in the past and has never been as intro-friendly as Street Fighter II: V, but solving it and discovering the context naturally, here and there, was what always made it fun. |
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EmeraldSaucer
 Posts: 919 |
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It continues to boggle my mind that they bothered to include Baiken, a character who was all about wanting revenge against gears for the destruction of her village and the death of her family and who had to learn to let go of her hated, in this show alongside Unika, who is defined by her desire to eliminate all gears out of misplaced vengeance. And the show doesn't even allude to this commonality once much less do anything with it, Baiken is just here because people broadly know who she is so she gets to swing her weapon around (unlike poor Testament, Dizzy's guardian who doesn't get to show up in the anime featuring Dizzy's wedding beyond a couple unvoiced cameos where they are by themselves)
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Silver Kirin
Posts: 1744 |
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I admit that I'm not ver familiar with the Guilty Gear series compared to other fighting games like Street Fighter or KOF, I've only played Xrd at a friend's house once, but I imagined that this series would serve as an introduction for those who had never played any of the games, but I was wrong, I honestly thought Dual Rulers could have been like Cyberpunk Edgerunners or even the NieR Automata adaptation, but it seems nobody cared about Guilty Gear's adaptation
I know it's difficult to adapt a game into an anime, particularly fighting games, but I always loved the Street Fighter II anime movie, which managed to adapt a game with very little in terms of plot to something pretty epic, which even managed to impress the game's developers.
That reminds me that a month before Dual Strikers premiered the Switch 1 port of Strive was released. Some people thought both the port and the anime were released near each other in order to promote both. |
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Minos_Kurumada
Posts: 1441 |
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The series it's definitely no bueno specially the final battle and you absolutely need to know the GG lore, watching this blind it's like watching season 7 of an Anime without watching the other 6.
BUT, its attention to the detail and stickiness to the lore it's quite remarkable, if you know the lore everything makes sense and you can pinpoint the timeline for every flashback for which clothes a character is using. The flashback where Ky asks Sol to take Sin it's quite telling, Sol and Ky are using clothes according to the games at the time and both Ky and Sin got eye patches, Sol is also more rough and Ky is more passive as it should be. This is essentially a 3/10 anime that becomes in a 5/10 if you know the lore. |
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mdo7
 Posts: 8211 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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I'm not a fan nor have enough knowledge of Guilty Gear franchise, but from this review, it looks like the anime is medicore and on par with the Art of Fighting anime (does anybody remember that anime, and know how bad that was?), am I reading that right?
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Cheap Trick
Posts: 58 |
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I didn't watch it because it was based on Strive and I did not like Strive. I feel like this would have done better if they did it back in the 2000s when Guilty Gear was in it's prime.
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Hatless
Posts: 34 |
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Nobody goes to Guilty Gear, it's too crowded. |
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Vent
 Posts: 343 |
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I get that you said you don't like Strive but the fact is this is the time to do a Guilty Gear adaptation. Strive has sold better than all the other games in the franchise combined. The anime is just a total botch job. |
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EmeraldSaucer
Posts: 919 |
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Forgot about this point, but would be remiss not to mention it because it's just so absurd. So Bridget is pretty transparently only in this as a marketing vehicle to sell more of her figures, because she might as well not exist for anybody in the anime except Unika. But there's a point where Bridget gets gravely injured and the last scene we see of her in-person is her getting carted away into intensive care while Unika looks pensive. The only other time she shows up afterwards is in the finale as a flashback a wistful Unika thinks of
So just going off of what the anime provides for the audience, someone could reasonably assume that ASW's big money maker Bridget just died off-screen from her injuries |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 7155 |
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I’d hesitate to call it epic. At most it’s okay. Sure as hell better than either of the Alpha movies and the V anime. |
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BlueAlf
 Posts: 1767 |
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Honestly, I had forgotten how bonkers Guilty Gear's storyline is until I read this review.
(I remember that Art of Fighting anime btw just for having Ayumi Hamasaki in it.) |
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Pokenatic
 Posts: 637 Location: Neo Venezia |
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Funny enough, I am pretty much a newbie to Guilty Gear lore and I managed to sit through the whole series. Didn't think it was that impenetrable for someone who's unfamiliar with the series lore beforehand. Understood enough to get the plot, even if I didn't fully understand all of the character relations.
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Silver Kirin
Posts: 1744 |
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Maybe it's just the nostalgia talking, but the Street Fighter II MOVIE did an incredible job at taking adapting the game, which didn't have that much of a coherent story since the ending varies depending on the character, by more or less giving M. Bison a reason for being interested in finding Ryu, not to mention that there's some incredible fighting scenes with incredible animation, like Ryu vs. Fei Long, Chun-li vs. Vega, and the amazing final fight, or should I say Dramatic Battle, with Ryu and Ken fighting Bison while Itoshisa to Setsunasa to Kokoro Tsuyosa to plays in the background. You know you made an excellent job when the developers incorporate the movie's concepts into the game. but I think the greatest adaptation of Street Fighter, or just generally any fighting game we've probably had thus far has been the Street Fighter II: V anime What about the Virtua Fighter anime adaptation from the '90s? I actually haven't watched it, but VF is one of the few fighting games that managed to get an anime TV series. |
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Philmister978
Posts: 530 |
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It's an absolute wonder they did this adaptation the way they did. Like they do realize not everyone has played the game (or even watched a playthrough), right? Because I'm convinced that they were fully convinced everyone watching knows who everyone is and what's actually going on.
Hell, I've watched playthroughs and I'm still baffled by what the hell was going on. Characters just come and go with no impact to the plot -- even leaving aside Bridget, half the game's characters just up and appear solely because they were in the game, say a few lines, then vanish. And that's before them completely ignoring Nagoriyuki and Giovanna, or the DLC characters for that matter. The animation clearly doesn't help matter either. It's clear Sanzigen only cares about their work if it's an OG project or a BanG Dream title (and even then, I thought Ave Mujica's animation was weaker than previous seasons), because this and the Sakara Wars adaption from back in 2020 are perhaps some of the worst CGI I've seen from the studio. |
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Ggultra2764
 Posts: 4051 Location: New York state. |
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Suppose for anyone who's seen both anime adaptations of the games from Arc System Works, what would you say is worst, this or Blazblue: Alter Memory?
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