Guilty Crown

     When Guilty Crown first aired in 2011, I dropped it after the first few episodes. If it wasn't for the fact that Supercell and EGOIST weren't so heavily featured in the soundtrack, I would never have picked it back up and wouldn't be writing this blog on it. A year after it finished I took another shot at it, but got bored again around episode 6. Eventually though, I felt wrong calling My Dearest one of my favourite songs in the world whilst being so quick to ignore Guilty Crown that I decided I had to sit down and watch it all. Having done so I am filled with many mixed feelings.

There are a lot of spoilers below and this entire blog post will only make sense for those who have finished Guilty Crown.

     Somewhere along episode 8 or 9, I realised how much I was missing out having dismissed the show for years. In fact, it's so similar in feel to Code Geass and Gundam 00, which I adored. Up until the final episode, I was ready to eat the biggest serving of humble pie I could, and then something very wrong happened. Episode 22, the finale, felt very out of place. Though it was a sad ending, that wasn't what didn't sit right with me. I had already welled up in tears at the death of Hare and felt a lump in my throat when Shu sealed his fate by taking the void genome the second time. What bugged me was a mixture of two things.

     First issue, was with the shows antagonists. Mana, who was a great character, was painfully underdeveloped. I want to say there are plot holes concerning her, but being truthful I don't think there are, but I straight up don't understand some things about her. When she touched the meteor as a child and absorbed the apocalypse virus, was the Mana prior to that incident completely dead as of the modern day? The show never clarifies that the human Mana is anything more than a carrier concerned only with starting the 4th apocalypse as of her resurrection, whilst her last pleas for help before causing Lost Christmas were the most heart tugging moment relating to her. Also, after the Lost Christmas incident, why does Shu never feel sorrow for the tragic loss of his sister? Convenient amnesia can't explain the fact he's neither sad about his sister's death or shocked at her resurrection. Mana would have been an incredibly interesting character had we seen more of her herself, but as a husk only trying to spread the virus, she's wasted.

     As for Gai, he was originally one of the reasons I had dropped the show in the first place. I found him bland and unlikeable. Had I known that was to set up his death and later revival and reveal as an antagonist, and to showcase Shu's evolution and difference in leadership, I would have completely forgiven his unlikeability in the early episodes. However, he too has some outright confusing plot points. Throughout the latter half Gai constantly states his aim the entire time was to resurrect Mana through Inori and become her mate from the very beginning of Funeral Parlour, however as he lays dying he comments that he knew he had to resurrect Mana and be defeated by Shu when he himself was revived by GHQ. Only one of these can be true. Is Gai a bad guy or what? I have absolutely no closure.

     The second issue is the resolution and epilogue of the final battle. As Mana is resurrected inside Inori's body and then defeated along with Gai, Inori is restored but blind. Why she is blind I have little idea (apart from what I'll theorise below), nothing about the last fight could have possibly blinded her and at no point is blindness shown to be a symptom of the apocalypse virus. In actuality, I can think of a decent reason and symbolism for it, but I struggle to believe this is the case. When a person undergoes psychological trauma, they can develop what is called psychosomatic blindness. This is a form of blindness where the eyes work perfectly well but the brain no longer accepts the sensory signals from them. On top of that, it can be caused through intense feelings of guilt. Thus the passing of the cats cradle from Inori to Shu is her placing a guilty crown (if you will let me be so symbolic) upon him, giving her life for his. It is absolutely the only sense I can put to the ending, and it's a damn big stretch at that.

     It's such a shame I felt the need to rant 3 paragraphs about my confusion over the ending to an otherwise fantastic show. One undoubtedly stellar aspect of the show however, is the soundtrack. Consisting of the best work of EGOIST and Supercell, the music alone evoked strong emotions from me even before I put a storyline to the lyrics. It's the kind of soundtrack I can and have listened to on repeat.

     Guilty Crown also deserves praise for having it's main character go through the most character development I've seen. In a lot of shows like this, again think Code Geass, the main character is often a tactical genius at the beginning of the show, very little changes in their competence within their positions. However, here Shu develops along a path of wanting to be like Gai, to finding his own strengths, to finding a different form of leadership and later becoming a better person through his endeavours.

     Looking back on the show at this point, I feel that the first 21 episodes make a fantastic sci-fi seinen anime, spoiled only slightly by the finale. Given the chance to fix the final episode, I wouldn't wish the plot to be changed, but to be fleshed out more and not be left abrupt in order to be hard hitting. Even with it's shortcomings, at least now I can say I saw Guilty Crown the whole way through.