Forum - View topicREVIEW: Guilty Crown BD+DVD
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Kalessin
 Posts: 931 |
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I really wanted to like this series but ultimately, I just couldn't. There are some really awesome scenes in it. A lot of what goes on in it is really cool. The concept is cool (at least the part you get up front; the concept of what the bad guys are up to is just stupid). The music is fantastic. But the main character really isn't very likable (similar to Shinji in Evangelion - only worse), and where they go with him at the halfway point in the series is truly awful, and while he changes towards the end, he just becomes a different kind of unlikable. And like Evangelion, what the bad guys are up to towards the end is completely nonsensical and stupid (spoiler[in pretty much the same way that it is in Evangelion]). And the ending is just spoiler[needlessly sad. It didn't have to end tragically. It could have been happy, but of course it wasn't].
Honestly, they had some really awesome ideas for this series, and the production value is phenominal. The music alone puts it head and shoulders above many series. But they totally squandered what they had, and in spite of the absolute gems found within it, Guilty Crown is ultimately a pile of muck. And really didn't need to be. It should have been one of the best series ever, and instead, it's a disaster. |
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Alabaster Spectrum
Posts: 528 |
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This was the show that made me lose faith in supergroup type anime (now I just expect them to be complete crap as a rule) where some producer (usually Aniplex and Tokyo MX) gather up all the most currently popular people in the industry, give the characters some ultra sexed up character designs, stick them in a sci-fi setting and then just Plfffffffffffffffffft! At the time I was naive enough to believe that if the industry was going to do this it's because those people would be putting their best foot forward and not just for marketing reasons and baiting in an install audience for originals but nope the latter is pretty much what it always is. Guilty Crown was a huge wake up call for me and a good chunk of the reason I'm as cynical as I am now and IMO why there have barely been any passable original sci-fi shows in years.
Shows like Aldnoah.Zero, Valvrave the Liberator and Kabaneri of The Iron Fortress (admittedly I didn't bother with the latter cause I learned my lesson already but apparently it went down the same path yet again) basically solidified that this is a thing now and there seems to be some rule that if you're going to do an original action show that means the above formula. Really glossy visuals with Sawano music videos played over them with absolutely terrible scripts written by washed up once popular writers that don't seem to give the slightest damn about what they're doing anymore. Anyway I'd ask why if these kinds of shows are consistently so bloody controversial why people keep spending their time watching them instead of checking out other stuff that isn't just all popular names and style over substance. Like if people stick with them through their whole run and get angry and rage out after them whose fault is that really? IMO the Guilty Crown formula as it were (A significant degradation of Code Geass' writing style from 2007) is about as close to just objectively lazy schlock writing as you can get. Nothing ever sticks and nothing ever feels like it resonates or has a sense of purpose that is noticeable over the course of the show. If I have to find one person where I feel like they always seem to do their job well in these and to the best of their ability it's always the character designer. That's it though and I can only imagine how some of these shows would fare if they didn't. Probably more like Qualidea Code which I'm sure would be the most popular show of the current season by far if it was ever on model and maybe if they swapped out the current composer for yet another Hiroyuki Sawano vocal drop soundtrack which seems to be a key part of making the formula work from a commercial standpoint. 
Last edited by Alabaster Spectrum on Thu Sep 01, 2016 3:59 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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Paul D. Atreides
 Posts: 128 |
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It's been a while since I watched this one.
From what I remember I thought it was: stupid but fun. Kind of like how I thought about Code Geass, which is fitting since this is (according to Jacob) a successor of that show. Seeing how I saw Cross Ange as it was airing that just leaves Valvrave as the only one I haven't watched. But now I think I might rewatch Guilty Crown at some point just to see how I feel about now. |
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Alabaster Spectrum
Posts: 528 |
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Who is "we"? I think he makes plenty of fair agreeable points and I can take him seriously just fine. There's nothing wrong with what he said and he's not randomly attacking other people with nothing resembling a proper counter argument which is far less easy to take seriously. 
IMO you should never have to "want to like a series" you should just be able to enjoy it or not plain and simple. If you feel like you're even remotely forcing yourself to enjoy something it probably means there's something obviously wrong with how it's appealing to you. I don't know this whole "I tried to like show x" is just bizarre to me and I see it all the time in the anime community and just wonder....why? I guess people really just are that susceptible to hype nowadays and want to feel like they belong or something and enjoy the popular shows as much as others claim to but if that were me I'd just feel like I'm lying to myself and others somehow. |
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gwdone
 Posts: 272 |
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Yeah Shu does have to decide to grow a pair and get on with it. I have no problem with that. And for me it doesn't mean that it's copying any other anime directly. Put anyone in those situations fantasy or not, child or adult, and you can expect some internal and external wigging to be going on. Many of the kids in these anime have to do the same as Shu in order to save the world etc etc. The artwork was a big plus for me and some of the bad guys were pretty cool to watch as well.
If I were to sit and get really anal about this, that, and the other on all anime and them seeming to have the same templates as other anime, then I may as well give up and go to where the templates really shine which is Hollywood movies. Guilty Crown (to me) sure beats the snot out of anime that feature Mecha on Surfboards or the MEGA yawn fest I'm watching now called Fafner. I missed out on Code Geass the first time around, but may check it out when the anniversary release comes out. On Evangelion, it has a totally different feel and look to me. I'd have to say that Shinji is more of a whiner than Shu for that matter. Thankfully I enjoy both shows in different capacities. But different strokes........etc etc. I accept that. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18194 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Here's the thing, though: I have watched other series which had similar templates to this one and found them much more enjoyable. One such series I'd point to - which I would say this one is a spiritual predecessor to - is Valvrave the Liberator. Yeah, it was cheesy and corny as hell, but it ran with it. It got away with slickly pulling plot twists out of its ass because they at least eventually made sense in terms of the series' wacky logic. And it had something else, too, whose merits may not be evident until you compare it to GC: it actually had reasonable, across-the-board character development. Some characters in it changed allegiances, but why they did at least made sense. Though it arguably focused more on its male characters, it didn't leave its female characters hanging in that regard. Basically (one objectionable scene aside), Valvrave is the realization of what GC was trying to be. |
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jojothepunisher
 Posts: 799 |
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I am guilty of this myself (no pun intended), but most people remembers Guilty Crown for its incoherent and unoriginal plot twists, and they allow those painful moments to represent their impression of the quality of the series as a whole. If you take the effort to savor each moment of the series, GC was actually overall well executed and entertaining. |
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Kalessin
Posts: 931 |
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For me at least, it has nothing to do with hype. I knew almost nothing about Guilty Crown before I watched it. It's more a case of the show having a lot of stuff that I really like, but it keeps doing stuff that I really didn't like. So, on some level, I try and put up with the bad stuff to get the good stuff, and sometimes, the end result is a fun but flawed show, and other times, the result is just horrible. In this case, it was ultimately horrible. Maybe rather than saying that I wanted to like it, it would be more accurate to say that I was hoping that it would be something that I would like and that when it had problems, they would go away. So, I kept hoping that the show would improve, and it just got worse. With all of the elements that it got right, Guilty Crown should have been a truly awesome show, but certain aspects of the show were just botched so badly that ultimately, I'm just angry about the whole thing - which I wouldn't be if the show didn't have so much going for it. There are very few shows that I'm actually angry about after watching, and this was one of them. They just totally ruined what had the makings of something truly awesome... 
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Razor/Edge
Posts: 607 |
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I thought Guilty Crown got more flack as a Code Geass rip off than an Evangelion rip off. I saw Guilty Crown before I saw either one of those(it was one of my first non-shounen jump anime). I've wanting to go back and rewatch Guilty Crown, for some reason. When I do, i'll have to look for Evangelion parallels. From what I remember of the series, I don't remember anything that was like Evangelion. But this was 5 years ago and i've seen a lot of anime since then. |
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gwdone
Posts: 272 |
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Hmmm I'd not heard of that one, however, I see that it is available. I'll be sure to get that one and check it out. I'm all about some good character progress. I appreciate the suggestion!! |
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Sloppy_Jimbo
 Posts: 98 |
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What saves this show for Sloppy is the OP sequence and song, the sometimes slick sakuga segments, the suave supervillain Segai, the sexy senoritas, and Shu's sophomoric school sovereign societal segregation and stratification strategy.
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R315r4z0r
 Posts: 717 |
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This is one of my favorite series. I just really thought it screwed up at the end. It needed one more episode because it completely rushed it's conclusion just so they could show that little epilogue.. which I didn't like very much, myself.
I find way too many anime do this. Never mind the fact that most anime don't even have conclusions... just open ended for a possible future series. But when we do get a show that has an actual plot that concludes at the end... a lot of the conclusions seem tacked on and unfitting of the build up. There are only a rare few shows that have excellent conclusions. |
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2245 |
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Kalessin pretty much summed up all my feelings on this show. It had a real barnburner of an opening episode, sort of stumbled, sort of fell across the halfway mark, and then basically decided to dig its own grave.
The songs were fantastic, and usually the visuals were pretty nice too. But the story was just a MESS. It almost felt like the whole show switched gears after the halfway mark and decided to go down a completely different road thematically and narratively. I can't remember the last time I felt so frustrated watching a show. Every week I got strung along; a few glimmers of good stuff here and there, and a quagmire of nonsense to slog through. I've never seen a show with this much wasted potential. The ending was probably the worst part for me, though (aside from the terrible, terrible treatment of a lot of characters, especially Arisa, which Theron already touched on). Not that I wanted it to be happy, but I thought spoiler[the wrong person died]. By rights, spoiler[Shu] clearly should've atoned for making a real mess out of everything in the second half spoiler[by dying], but nope, let's give it to spoiler[the girl who never got a shot at a real life]. That makes sense.
If nothing else, this was the show that broke me of feeling like I had to finish every show I started. I was never going to put myself through that kind of headache-inducing frustration again. |
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DmonHiro
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In my opinion the 1st half was fantastic. The charatcers were developing at a decent pace, the intrigue was interesting. If the story stayed on that path, it would have been great. They had so much potential. The song of apocalypse was basically a blank check to make something awesome. And then... the 2nd half. Remember when the song started in episode 11, and Inori was saying "No... that's the wrong song!". Were you wandering what the right song was and what it did? Too bad, cause that plot line is dropped. Remember when Shuu was growing, slowly, into a good man all to save Inori? You do? Too bad, cause that delelopment is sooned sweeped under the rug to make room for Emo-Shuu... then king of Angst, who pisses all over the memory of a dear friend by doing the exact opposite of what the friend wished for. Remember when the side charatcers were usefull? AHAHAHAHA!
Anyway... aliens. |
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Alabaster Spectrum
Posts: 528 |
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Honestly I just think most anime could do better with one thing and that's simply better scripts. Unfortunately it's not going to get it with the current rotation of writers so it's stuck in a rock and a hard place. {Edit: Please refrain from excessive quoting.. I edited your post for you. ~ Psycho 101} |
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