ReviewBonfire

Guilty Crown

ギ ル テ ィ ク ラ ウ ン

Saw this anime many years ago and remembered it quite positively. I started it again to get a new picture of how it actually was. Well, my assessment at the time couldn't have been worse.

The first 10 episodes of this title are actually an unspoken intense torture. The characters are terribly empty, the dialogues almost meaningless. The scenes pull past each other. The protagonist has no will and reacts to everything that has breasts. The fan service is practically pushed into the camera. As soon as someone changes clothes or you see a female character, the buttocks are pushed straight into perspective. Only the music and animations were solid to good. In the sense that it was almost a disaster and I had to pause practically every 30 seconds to talk about what we were watching.

In any case, I deliberately wrote "up to episode 10". And here you can see again why you shouldn't just drop a title like that.
The title has actually improved significantly from episode 11/12. I can hardly say that the first part and the second are actually the same anime.
From part 2 the dialogues became more profound, the characters had more depth and personality. There was indeed drama and unexpected twists and turns. The atmosphere was finally right too.
And even the protagonist has changed fundamentally. From being an adolescent follower, he has become someone who is actually something interesting.

Story:

The plot looks pretty promising at the beginning. The subject is not necessarily fresh, but it had potential.

Hardly anything was made of this potential until the end. The twists and turns in the second half were okay, but nothing that would be called impressive. The structure to these was also weak. In that sense you hardly had anything to be interested in.

Animation / Pictures:

Mostly very nice to look at, the presentation of the atmosphere is also very successful. For the most part, the anime was rather gloomy, but had its colorful moments.

Mechas are all weak CGI, as expected, but the other animations were very nice.

Characters:

Punch against my Eye-

The protagonist looked like an interesting introvert at the beginning of the first episode. But appearances were deceptive. He was just a selfish pervert who gawked at every woman with a sad look of innocence and had complexes without end.

He actually had a positive character development. Positive in the sense of having completely lost all of its negative qualities. However, there was hardly any real transition to this and it happened very quickly. It seemed very forced and badly done. But I clearly preferred to watch his personality for 12 more episodes.

The female protagonist was the definition of "blank sheet of paper" - no personality, nothing at all. All she could do was drool over the name of the protagonist. Only towards the end did you at least make something of her.

The second protagonist (school friend) was initially just a fan service object. However, later developed into a better real protagonist.

The rest was ... either for fan service or for pointless dialogues until their time ran out.

Solely the leader of the rebels, had an interesting background and a solid personality.

You could have prevented so much here, if you had made even a little more effort with the characters.

Music:

Nice osts, endings and intros. Individual and will certainly be remembered. Have really nice recognition value.

Conclusion

The title is a typical example of "potential lost".

I would give 2-3 out of 10 to the first half. This was almost a disgrace and is on par with bad American teen horror films.
The second half, however, was a subtle 6/10. And it is enormously incomprehensible why one had to pull off such a show before the anime suddenly rotates 180 degrees from one episode to the other.