Guilty Crown Review – 62,5/100

I have been following the Noitamina timeslot ever since 2005. At this point, I’ve watched and completed every single anime to appear in the timeslot, save for one, so yes: I do not say this easily: Guilty Crown has been the worst Noitanima series I have ever seen.

This is a combination of a hype that it miserably failed to live up to, plain bad storytelling and a ton of wasted potential. Here we finally had another Noitamina series that was allowed to go on for two cours with 22 episodes. In a timeslot where the biggest problem is being too short this really is an amazing chance, and even more of a bummer to see it trashed like this. This show is stupid, badly told, boring, inconsequential, and most important of all: it’s empty.

Seriously, this series does not know how to tell a story. This show has the idea that as long as it pulls enough plot twists, it’ll automatically get good. It wants this so badly, that it starts pulling these twists right out of its ass. Especially the second half of the series just keeps pulling the most convenient deus ex machina right from out of bloody nowhere. “Oh, we need this power to keep going, oh wait, that character conveniently had that power, even though it was never mentioned or hinted at before!” – and that’s just one of the least insulting ones.

Okay, so the plot is bad. On its own that’s not automatically a failure if the show has enough to make up for it. The thing is however: this show doesn’t. It looks pretty and all, but I can’t really recommend it for anything. In fact, the plot isn’t even the worst part of this show. No, that honour belongs to the cast of characters.

Shu has got to be the worst main character that I’ve seen in a long while. I mean, you really have to try to be as bad as him. This is the kind of guy of which the creators never really decided what personality they should get him. The result is that he completely changes character with every passing episode with no explanation behind it whatsoever. Whatever is the most convenient for the plot, he acts like that. The result is an incredibly annoying, inconsistent and bafflingly stupid character.

And the thing is: the entire show revolves around this loser. Every character is tailor-made to revolve around him, even though we’re never given a reason to actually like him. Everyone is forced into this role to help him tell his story… whatever the hell that may be. The lead female… is completely useless for the entire length of the show. I know that we often joke with romantic interests being pointless, but this girl is even worse. She literally does nothing other than talk here and there and go emo once in a while. The rest of the side-cast also isn’t better of, as they fit in with whatever role the male lead seems to want to play at the moment, acting as cannon fodder for him. The antagonists are just a bunch of screaming stereotypical evil guys who like to kill people because… well… because.

It’s very likely that this show had the biggest budget of the past half year. And yet, I wouldn’t rank the animation as the best or most interesting here. The show has great inbetween animation, but it hardly ever does anything interesting with its eye candy or direction. I found myself enjoying the visuals of Nisemonogatari, Black Rock Shooter, Milky Holmes, Last Exile and Chihayafuru much more, because they actually tried to bring their characters to life. Guilty Crown doesn’t even attempt to do that.

Overall, the first half of Guilty Crown is mind-numbingly boring. Hardly anything really seems to happen in it at all. This completely changes in the second half when it pulls the most bafflingly convenient plot twists that would make Code Geass cringe. And you know what? It’s still boring. It’s been a while since a show that was this hyped, that was this ambitious, fell so flat on its face as here. I read in an interview once that the creators want to make the male lead into the new Shinji Ikari of Evangelion. And indeed, parts of this show scream “Evangelion wannabe”. These guys however had no bloody clue what made that show good.

Storytelling: 6/10 – Mind-numbingly stupid, boring and empty. Has no idea how to tell a good story and just pulls random twists whatever is the most convenient.
Characters: 5/10 – I really have nothing positive to say about these guys whatsoever. There was no character whatsoever who I liked. Everyone revolves way too much around the male lead. Everyone here is exceptionally bad.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Okay, the series does have pretty graphics, but with the budget it has it could have done so much more.
Setting: 6/10 – Who on earth green-lighted this? The setting behind this feels like no thought was put into making it actually work. Again, it centers way too much to the male lead, instead of the other way around.

Suggestions:
Toward the Terra
– Neon Genesis Evangelion
Eden of the East

85 thoughts on “Guilty Crown Review – 62,5/100

  1. I love you reviews psgels, pretty accurate.

    I never see a review of Neon Genesis Evangelion (original series) of you.

    Is that polemic? too review eva?. what is your score to evangelion XD

    1. I think he seldom reviews anime that is too old and, well, everybody already know (Everybody knows Evangelion). But based on his review of the movie, i think he enjoyed the original series a lot.

  2. I’d give it a 72/100 , but i agree with almost everything you said in the review.

    Shu is certainly a bad main character, but he is nowhere near as bad as your typical harem lead , although i have a feeling you don’t watch many harems. If you don’t watch harems then yea he is one of the worst main characters. I think what makes it worse is that most of the time terrible main characters tend to come from 12-13 episode generic series. In a 20+ episode production ig/noitamina series there really isn’t an excuse for how bad Shu is.

  3. You are being way too lenient scoring this anime. Especially after that ending and the excruciating voyage to get there.

  4. Too lenient eh? I’d say that applies more to his Fractale review than this one. I know a bunch of people , myself included , who think Fractale is the worst Noitamina series ever.

    1. I’d like to pretend that Fractale never happened. So much wasted potential.

      Both of these shows were pretty though, especially Guilty Crown. But high production values can’t make up the problems with the script.

        1. Fractale looked nice. I think it had a better world setting than GC, but it didn’t have anywhere near the same budget per episode.

          Plus Fractale had 1 extremely good episode that came early on , and a bunch of mediocre to bad episodes.H3ll Fractale even had filler. Filler in a series that couldn’t even produce a coherent well executed story. Makes a lot of sense.

  5. I give Guilty Crown, 75/100

    It was generic, and pull twists like Code Geass R2.

    A casual anime viewer will like this.

    It was better that those low budget shonen.

    Still mediocre

    1. Bingo

      Although i see similarities with Code Geass , i still liked Code Geass a lot more. Maybe because it was actually coherent up until ep 5 or so of R2 , and because Lelouch >>>>>>>> Shu.

    2. I think many generic shonen are actually better-executed than this show. Mostly because they build characters you want to root for.

      I care far more about the characters in the new version of Hunter X Hunter than I ever did about Shu or anyone else from Guilty Crown.

  6. I agree on Fractale, largely based on what a waste of potential that whole show was and that I really didn’t like the male lead and that info dump of a (near) ending.
    I gave Guilty crown 14 episodes and then tapped out feeling that it was going nowhere, was wholly unoriginal ,made little sense, was contrived and boring in its plot and main character.
    Visually however it was great and I enjoyed the action scenes but it was all style and no substance.

    1. I agree with this as well. The only reason i am even debating on this subject is because it irritates me how people are biased , or allow other things to cause the super negative opinions.

      In the case of GC people are going way overboard with the negative stuff simply because of how over-hyped it was , and because it got a massive budget.

      Anyone who watches at least half the animes per season, and can use logic, will see that GC is plain mediocre.

      1. Well, speak for yourself. I had no preconceptions whatsoever going into either Fractale of GC – haven’t even heard of them until watching the first episode. Just because someone despised an anime, it doesn’t follow that she was biased against it from the start.

  7. If the characters are bad and you didn’t like anybody (especially the lead) why is it a 5? A 5 is plain average/mediocre, a 1-3 is terrible. Same could be said for the other scores too…

    1. I’d give a 9.5 on visuals 9.0 on music a 5 on characters because other than Shu i found most tolerable and a 4.0-5.0 on story simply because it wasn’t that bad other than the numerous parts that didn’t make sense , or weren’t explained. Still most anime nowadays have deus exes all over the place and unexplained plot holes. Most animes however don’t have the visuals or music this has.

    2. psgels has a custom rating system that doesn’t work exactly like the usual scales, so it’s meaningless to argue about this any further.

  8. I actually usually agree with psgels rating system , but every now and then i see a head scratcher like GC. I feel like he got sucked in to the pre release hype , and the hype because it had Production IG and noitamina behind it.

  9. Without going into too much detail, Guilty Crown definitely suffered because of Shu’s general weakness and Inori’s almost complete passivity. This could have been adequately compensated if they changed over time or if Gai and the other characters were significantly better, but they didn’t really have the opportunity to fully develop either. It’s disappointing and perhaps 22 episodes just wasn’t enough, but we’ll never know if there was any other alternative.

    Admittedly, Shu eventually became more of a man, in a certain sense, but not in a particularly exciting nor interesting way. It was all rather typical and predictable. I didn’t care for the incest subtext found throughout the plot either, which was taken to the extreme with the whole Mana/Inori debacle.

    In the ending, Guilty Crown was simply too boring and a real slog to sit through. Even if I don’t really agree with psgels on Code Geass, the fact is that other show also had some writing and characterization issues but it still benefited from being a longer series and thus having more of a preexisting base before the twists came in. Guilty Crown feels like an incomplete and inconsistent attempt to do something similar, but with even worse results.

  10. Wow Souther very eloquent , and also a very accurate post.

    On the Shu topic, i don’t know if it was just me, but i disliked him a lot because of a single event. When the girl who liked him died and he actually became badass for a short while. It gave me hope that i never should of had. If i didn’t have that hope, i would of just chalked Shu up as a normal male generic lead that we see so much these days, and wouldn’t of been so mad.

    Also strongly agree on the unneeded incest subtext. I also strongly agree that this series would of highly likely been more passable if it got the episodes that Code Geass did. I really have no clue what they were thinking. Maybe it would of also been better off if they didn’t air this until the spring season. About 30% of the way in i felt like they were making stuff up on the spot and that is inexcusable to me when a budget like this is involved.

    1. Armpit, to me Shu(Or the more suitable name “Shoe”) was the downfall of guilty crown. The biggest flaw. Psgels said before that one episode of guilty crown was decent because Shu didn’t make an appearance. And when you think about it the most annoying moments of this show was when that idiot was on screen. You said harem leads are worst but I disagree with that. Harem leads are pretty much plot devices. Their only job is to stand there and be loved by girls for no reason. They don’t really inspire hatred because they are pretty much a blank stale for poor bastards to paste their personality on.
      Shu on the other hand is a character that pretends to have character. He’s like a very poor actor. He joins the undertakers despite having no real reason for doing so. Doesn’t really care about Japan. Has no real goal. But despite the fact that the only thing that defines him is a power that isn’t even his everyone loves him for some reason or thinks he’s special. Even if he commits terrible mistakes he is absolved of all blame and even someone who was almost killed just because Shu didn’t want to waste air in the end has to forgive Shu because he was clearly in the wrong…. apparently. Shu can even cheat on a test and is forgiven because he was just using something that made him special. So basically everyone sees him as a Mary sue but we know better. Thus making him one of the most annoying characters I have ever seen.

      If you remove him from the show guilty crown actual becomes fairly watch-able. Still stupid but not quite as bad as before.

  11. I’m possibly alone in this but I would see Shu as being just as bad as harem lead. At least in Code Geass Lelouch had charisma and was at least we were told was clever, Shu is such an everyman that he feels like a self insert character, just as harem leads are and I think this is further supported by the moe aspects of the show. Still despite saying all that I somewhat agree with you Aidan by saying he’s like a bad actor.

  12. And incest, for lords sake they even threw that fetish in. I’m really glad I didn’t finish this show.
    Whats awful though is that I can watch bad anime and get a laugh out of it as a guilty pleasure or make fun of it/laugh at it but here I couldn’t even do that.
    With Code Geass that wasn’t the case for me, I deem that every bit as ridiculous but in its case Geass became unintentionally fun because of it.

  13. Lelouch wasn’t a bad character no matter how you slice it anyway. Sure Code Geass had problems , especially in R2, but that wasn’t because it had a bad lead.

    And actually Aidan you have swayed me quite a bit with your post. It is completely true that harem leads are almost always just plot devices. And even if i do find the typical harem lead , not all of them because there are exceptions like Akuto from Ishiban Daimao, to be a tad worse than Shu , i have to factor in what you mentioned. So yes i now agree with you and have changed my opinion ! Shu is worse because he is in an anime that was supposed to be good and original , and not mindless fun like harems are supposed to be.

    Like i said before though i really hate Shu.So i don’t know if i’m letting bias cloud my judgement. Those 3 episodes out of 22 that i like Shu made everything worse in the end.

  14. Code Geass is similar to GC in how it generates hate, albeit for slightly different reasons. In regards to Code Geass it’s because it has a lot of fanboy/girls that claim its the best anime ever , or one of the best.

    If i were using psgels rating system id probably give Code Geass like a 82/100.

  15. Whats worse though is why there had to be a moe element here at all. Especially Inori. Look, yes she was attractive I’m not going to lie about that, I like moe I admit that but I’m so sick of it showing up where I feel it shouldn’t/doesn’t belong and its all the worse because Shu feels to me like a self insert character.

  16. Its easy to get caught up in the hype of Geass and Guilty crown if followed when their airing but any thought given to either could at least in my case realize how trite both are.

  17. Honestly Inori had one good part for me in the entire anime, and that’s not good for someone who took up the 2nd most screen time. The only time i enjoyed her was the measly 3 mins when she transformed into that beastly form. Too bad her deus ex morphing like that negated the coolness of it.

  18. Also does anyone agree with what people say about this show being misogynistic?
    I apologize if anything I’m saying here comes off as too rantish but I feel should defend what I said regarding the moe elements of GC, I said that they shouldn’t belong there in a mech show, to me its the same and equally annoying as watching a moe harem comedy show that shoehorns in fake drama and angst near the end without indicating or touching on drama from the start.

  19. At the end of the day, there’s nothing we could say that matter. Shoe and that emotionless Rei-wannabe chalked up the popularity poll I think. The DVD and Blu-ray sells like hot cakes. An anime only need smooth animation, nice art, nice music, hot babe and pretentious plot to sell those days, maybe.

    Dear god don’t make it the new standard for anime from now on.

  20. I don’t know about misogynistic , but i know that as every minute passes with me thinking about GC i like it less and less. And i started out thinking it was mediocre.

    I think about Code Geass which i found extremely entertaining with a bunch of flaws. It makes me think if GC at least made the characters somewhat likeable then it would of been way more entertaining. I mean Code Geass with all it flaws, still had interesting characters , and quite a few of them. Shu can’t hold a candle to Lelouch. Inori can’t compare to CC.

    I really think GC should of been held back til spring so they could of went over the script again. There were some good and interesting ideas in GC, but they all fault like they were just thrown together, and made up on the fly in some instances.

  21. The differences between Inori and CC are most apparent in the fact CC was an actual character (as was Lelouch far from what Shu was)and not and maybe I’m being too harsh here, a little sex doll more than anything else.

  22. I think the guy who called her a rei wannabe had it right.

    I think i’m going to marathon the series again in like 6 months and see what i think before i assign a rating to it. The more i think the more Aidans point sets in for me. I think about Shu and then i think about the typical male harem lead. They have almost all the same qualities with 1 big difference. Shu is a whiney b^tch who was emo for literally 75% of the series. The typical harem lead never goes emo , and if he does its for a few mins in an episode or 2.

  23. Given what you said about re-watching it armpit, I may do just that. I try to to where possible watch something at least twice, just in case or if I find my interests change.
    It may be entirely possible that in whatever time I choose to re-watch it I will have a different view on it.

  24. While the premise is similar to Code Geass, and is as much of a train wreck as R2. The biggest difference why people like Code Geass more (still had a lot of hate too) was that the protagonist was interesting. The biggest problem with Shu in guilty crown, was he is a stereotypically weak protagonist (like a lot of harem shows), and he doesn’t try to engage in conflict or solve problems. Rather the main character is a wuss for majority of the show and tries to just run away and doesn’t seem to do much (so the writers essentially had to make the situation occur by coincidence near the protagonist to get him to react at all). Also, the idea with Guilty Crown I felt was they wanted to gradually bring Shu from a weak person to a strong leaderlike role. But this occurred way too late and had a lot of consistency problems to do so. Meanwhile Code Geass, despite its flaws, the protagonist Lelouch was interesting. Unlike other heroes, he was ambitious and wanted to actually do things in the story and cause trouble. Plus, having the protagonist willing to kick puppies to reach his goal is always refreshing to the stereotypical hero crap we see all the time (not to say that plot didn’t have any flaws, it jumped around a lot too in R2).

  25. Yep. This or Jyu-Oh-Sei for worst anime to air on the Noitamina block. Pick your poison. Plain and simple, they both sufferered from atrocious writing.

  26. Personally I liked some parts of this show, and I didn’t think that Shu was a bad character. For one he seemed to react in a believable way in many situations. He doesn’t have the moments of predicting the most outlandish things and seeing the future like others in this genre(looking at you, Lelouch).

    This show definitely wasn’t without flaws though, like how there were simply a couple of characters that were just there but never used by the plot in a meaningful way. Or the technobabble that is the mark of poor writing. Though the final cardinal sin this show did was bringing back Gai. I personally was glad to see that annoyance die halfway through the show. He was just not very interesting and bringing him back to life after he was killed not only cheapened earlier episodes, it also made clear how little he had to do with the plot of the latter part. His goals were achieved at the halfway point. They brought him back together with his part of the plot. And this was weird. It was as if the writers decided to make this a two-parter though copying the first part but changing the details here and there.

    TL;DR: So here we are now. Why did you, who loathe the show, watch it to the very end?

  27. GC’s pacing, story and character are indeed atrocity, I admit. No need for further discussion with those issues.

    But, Crap, After I saw your score with the production, you review is full of bias, 8/10?? are you kidding me?
    GC’s production is fantastic. Both animation 2D/CG and music are really superb. Far better than Lase Exile Fam or the most of serie that you give 9/10 or 10/10.

    As you mention about the budget, did you see its actual pay sheet or it is just your clueless guess??
    If it is the latter, I’m disappointed.

    Please, I know you hate this serie, but please , give it some deserved justice.

    1. The animation is good, but it’s often focused on the most useless places. The display of emotions was just slight widening or narrowing of eyes, while more interesting movements were going on with the hair and boobs.

      Another thing: maybe it’s just me, but the shots, composition and camera angle seem quite general for such a hyped up production.

  28. I almost completely agree with your review, though the score I’d give it is much lower.

    I didn’t even think it was possible for me to hate a cast of characters as much as School Days’ cast but this series almost got there. So many inconsistencies, stupid and mindbogglingly choices. They seemed to be only there to serve the plot, which wasn’t good either.

  29. I didn’t realize School Days was hated that much on this site. It’s a show people usually love or hate , but seems almost everyone here hates it.

    I can’t hate it. The main character was a huge douche , but was nothing like the typical harem lead so i can’t hate on him. Almost all the girls were tramps, but again that is so different from your typical harem where the girls are usually just d%ck teases so i can’t hate on that either. And the ending was absolutely hilarious for me even though that wasn’t what they intended i’m sure.

    1. I like school days. The shock factor was excellent and it does make you feel for the characters even if it’s done cheap and manipulative. It’s not the best anime but you got to admit that it had balls. Plus, it’s an excellent anime to traumatise the hell out of newbies…

      1. Absolutely agree. Now for someone who doesn’t watch many harems i can understand them giving it a horrible rating. For anyone who watches a lot of harems like i do though there is no way to hate on School Days.

        On a Harem Scale i’d give School Days a 95/100 because it is so unique in comparison to other harems. In overall terms id give it probably a 75/100

        1. Then White Album should be rated as 100/100, considering how much it broke the convention of your usual harem…

          1. Yea i will be checking it out soon because of recommendations from the community here. I look forward to it.

          2. Not at all. White album is a harem that tried to apply soap opera drama to it. In the end many the aspects of a harem were presented unaltered. But even then I find it hard to call that show a harem despite the fact it has the qualifications. Wasn’t it more a drama?

            But to me that show was a complete bore. 26 episodes and I didn’t even get a conclusion to the romance. Normally I wouldn’t hope but this was a VN adaptation so I thought they would pick at least one of the girls endings.

          3. Woah he doesn’t get any girl in the end? I know he has sexual relations with at least one girl in the series, and has a bunch more after him and he ends up alone?

            I don’t want to sit through 26 ep’s of drama for that. It’s annoying enough when the guys in normal harems don’t choose anyone , but at least you usually get some laughs out of it, and occasionally some awesome action scenes.

            With School Days it was only 12 episodes and it didn’t just rely on soap operaish drama

  30. Based on your thoughts on school days and my comments on it in the shoutbox I reckon you’d like white album armpit.
    And I agree with you armpit, even though I’m happy to accept a generic harem as enjoyable to me, school days still went that extra mile and offered something different.
    Didn’t feel as if it was playing it as safe or as self conscious as most post 80s/90s harems.

  31. Aidan, I don’t think the guy in white album really deserved a girlfriend to be perfectly honest with you.
    Also I’m sorry if this sounds rude but can we move this over to the chat box instead, this is a review about guilty crown not the harem genre and school days.

    1. I think its probably better here than to spam up the chat box. Not to mention spoilers aren’t allowed there. With all the hate GC has got we may as well use it to our advantage.

    2. I agree but seeing as we were not going to get a “Nice boat” end I think it would have been more satisfactory to see him learn the error of his ways and actually clean up his act. Seeing him break up with the girls he didn’t want and apologise truthfully would have been a far more suitable end. But what happens in the in end? He’s screws a bunch of girls, causes them great misery and gets away with Scott free. Not to mention he learns absolutely nothing from it and the girls don’t even hate him. At least school days got the moral right. You screw around, it will come back and kill you.

      1. I guess that the nice boat stuff and the moral of the story isn’t really required when you watching an anime (or,at least for me), I enjoyed White Album for its unexpected twists, the characters emotions (I’d applause the VAs for doing a really good job at it,i.e. Nana Mizuki),and its character development.

        The dramas in WA is at much higher complexity,and therefore quality than in SD.Really, when watching SD, you can just watch the 1st episode and skip to 12th without miss anything. In WA,however, if you do that.. you’ll scratching your head.

        1. I haven’t seen WA so i can’t be sure, but still i don’t think you can even compare the drama between 2 shows.. From the comments i’ve seen it seems like WA would be considered drama/harem. I would classify SD as psychological/harem.

        2. Magi, in the end White album amounted to nothing. Nice boat or a moral isn’t exactly necessary…but all stories need a point. So why care about the drama or twists of white album when it doesn’t even result in anything?

  32. Yea Makoto got what he deserved.He knew that he was actually ruining peoples lives and didn’t care. So many of the people i’ve talked to that hate School Days almost always have 1 thing in common. The mention how much they hate the main lead. And i have seen some people going deep into it explaining how mad they got.I’ve seen this in forums and in comments on streaming vids.

    I always want to ask these people a couple things, but never do because i know it will just start a fight that isn’t rational. If you hate the guy that much then didn’t they do a good job? How can you say you hate the series because of a bad character , yet not acknowledge that you are supposed to not like him?

    And to top it all off he got what he had coming in the end. It isn’t like he got away with it.

    1. As I said I think Touya from white album didn’t deserve to be with anyone. However he did acknowledge he was replacing his girlfriend in the end. I also think white album played it more realistically than school days even in its ending.
      And while I can curse Touya for sleeping around and kissing other girls, having more time for other women I can still turn it around and see it another way that his relationship with Yuki was not a healthy/feasable one.

    2. Well, a lot of people hated the characters of school days because it was badly done. His changes in personality makes no sense at all, the girls are reduced to sex object or outright obsessed with that guy for no reason viewer could understand. I appreciated it effort to make its story apart from other harem, but still, in order to do that, characters have to be real character, not walking caricature.

      1. His change in personality made no sense? He was basically a sociopath which means he was born that way. And to be honest i witnessed many of girls like that during my school days. Young girls are not smart when it comes to relationships (in general there are always exceptions though). Girls are more mature and smarter on average than boys of the same age , but when it comes to love/dating/romance thats a different story.

        I will fully admit though about halfway in stuff started unrealistic everywhere. I doubt what he did would of drove 1 girl insane, much less two. There is no way that ending made sense. I just don’t nitpick at that stuff , especially when i know i’m watching a harem. I was entertained greatly, therefore i enjoyed it.

        And for the record, i can easily see how many people would hate SD ,and i wouldn’t try to say they were wrong. I am only against the people who solely hate it because of the main character.

        1. Have a read of my most recent comment if you can regarding Makotos personality change, I do believe he was a sociopath yes but I have to wonder if that was a result of his upbringing rather than being born that way. And then theres the influence of that bastard he was hanging out with who in a sense raped Kotonoha, who knows what kind of effect that guy had on Makoto’s mind.
          Am I just over-analyzing this?

          1. You aren’t over analyzing it.If you ever play the game you learn a lot more. Still even if he wasn’t a sociopath , that’s not out of character for a male his age. A bunch of males at that age think with their lower head and don’t care about the consequences.

            But yea he was a sociopath for sure. He knew all the trauma he was causing and kept going. That is where he differs from a normal guy that age.

          2. I would have been the opposite of Makoto in that sense of sociopathy but I agree with that alot of men that age think the way you mentioned. In a way and this is in a lesser extent to why I can say something bad about Makoto but moreso the guy from white album, is that both of them and what they did with women made me regret when I myself was unfaithful when I was a teenager.

          3. And Makoto as far as I recall was damn worse in the game…holy hell if I remembered right didn’t he bang Kotonoha’s sister too in the VN?

  33. And I agree that the fact we hate Makoto because we’re meant to and he’s not a bad character. Yeah I hate the guy as a person but as a character he’s original/innovative for the genre.

  34. I was getting that vibe from all the comments.Meaning that i had a feeling WA would be more realistic than SD. In SD the characters acted realistic for close to the first half of the series,then it quickly turned into ridiculousness. Although it was still entertaining. Think ill also start WA sometime during this week.

    1. I don’t know Armpit. White album is downright boring. Even Psgels admits in his review that the first season is pretty bad. But I found the second season to be not great either.
      Let me just say that you shouldn’t go into it expecting anything great. Actually, now that I think about it I can barely remember any of the story. That’s usually a bad sign.

  35. Actually you could say that Makoto had depth as a character and even explain his behaviour, theorize at least that its partly due to his family background, I recall his parents were seperate and divorced and then look at his relationship with Kotnoha, she let him do nothing. Okay maybe I’ll get alot of hate for this but…a relationship that does not provide sex for one or either party in it is a poorly functioning one.

  36. To be honest, I’m surprised psgels didn’t give this a 4/10; and those four points are for the animation and music, if anything. Everything else was the biggest high budget trainwreck I’ve seen yet. At least it was mildly entertaining though.

  37. Super flop series..WHY people are bringing CG in here i don’t know..its one of the best despite the twists..i personally prefer happy endings..i would have loved the ending if inori(deserved) and shu(slightly arguable) both were alive..if i rank this anime it will get 30/100..[plot-02,charecters-03,music-10,animation-8,enjoyment-03,ending-00,production-02,script-02 ]..i have never given an anime sucg low marks..(my top rated animes* FMAB:99/100,CG AND CG2:97.5/100,D GRAY MAN:98/100)

  38. Code gess was a great show..its one of the most highly rated shows of all time because of lelouch of course…I DON’T LIKE HAREM SHOWS TAHT MUCH..I LIKE ACTION(SHOUNEN) ANIMES..GUILTY CROWN SHOULD HAVE HAD TWO SEASONS LIKE FATE ZERO(RATED-85/100)..kick the ass of IG..how dare they make an anime go to dust..i hope some other studio like aniplex or nitroplus takes responsibility of GC,makes proper use of the story and give it a happy ending which i prefer the most.

  39. i liked every thing about GC except the telling of the story frankly i’ve seen worse but i have also seen waaay better a couple of tweeks here and there and i think GC coulda been i fairly good manga cept you could feel the story line writers desperate struggle to figure out how they wanted the series to end everything from allowing the evil and dumb people to live who should have died to just throwing weird unexplained things into the mix wtf?

  40. also i’ve seen both school days manga and anime i hate both but for 2 dif reasons in the manga the main characters not a doosh he’s just a normal guy trying to talk to the girl he likes while also protecting his childhood friend who becomes a little to attached to him. however in the anime they make him seem more like a no good player who takes advantage of people if feel kinda bad for him in contrast between the two because most people base his character off the anime only in which he is scum and im not even goiing to go into the games details…

  41. i dont know what’s wrong with me but i really love the series,

    shu is not the best protagonist, but definitely not the worst yet,
    i really like shu being so human, weak, fragile and idiot most of the times, but in the end still found himself.. but i agree, the story telling, the script, and character development were not given much thought. it really beats me to think if inori and shu’s first meeting is part of Gai’s plan or if it’s just an accident, and if shu’s involvement in all that war thing and his connection to lost Christmas were all just a coincidence..it was nvr explained(that reminds me of bleach a bit, but atleast in bleach, ichigo’s involvement and everything was explained convincingly by aizen in the end and everything made sense!)… also in the end part, i got confused why all of a sudden things were put into place sooo randomly that it doesn’t made sense..it’s so stupid,it hurts.
    the antagonists were not fully rooted also, the main reason of all their ruckus was so stupid, but if the writers did a better script on that it might become convincing..i guess? i get the feeling that the writers were trying to be obvious and abstract at the same, the only problem is that the obviousness and abstractedness they are trying to pull out in the story doesn’t match at all ( i hope you get what i’m saying)

    but still i love the anime, because in the end the title GUILTY CROWN did made sense! surprisingly! and when i ponder abut it, i forgive all the mishaps of this anime, and Shu, for me,after all those stupid plot twist,ending being crippled, alone whithout inori and pathetically listening to a song reminiscing something he’ll trade his life for to see again, did represent the guilty crown pretty good.. if that sound stupid, pardon..

    [own opinion, dont hate!]

    1. I agree with you there. GC for me is also a pretty good series. It only needed a better story and development and it might break the series entirely GC comes out as just really underdeveloped. IMO.
      I was never annoyed with Shu. I don’t know if thats bad or if I ca just tolerate him.

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