My Review on Guilty Crown

Type: TV

Episodes: 22

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Oct 14, 2011 to Mar 23, 2012

Premiered: Fall 2011

Broadcast: Fridays at 01:15 (JST)

Producers: Aniplex, Dentsu, Movic, Fuji TV, Fuji Pacific Music Publishing

Licensors: Funimation

Studios: Production I.G

Source: Original

Genres: Action, Sci-Fi, Super Power, Drama, Romance

Duration: 24 min. per ep.

Rating: R - 17+ (violence & profanity)

It’s been very long time for me not writting update in my blog, but in this semester I given such a wonderful task from my lecturer to write some review of theme that I like to do and that is “Movie”.

After I searching in my list of movie that I had in my laptop, there’s interesting movie that I’ve not seen and take my interest to watch it it’s called “Guilty Crown”. After minutes of watch i amaze at world that this film displayed. Japan has been almost completely destroyed by a virus that going through Tokyo. After the incident, Japan has become of a dystopian mess under the surface of the nice public face they have. The virus, continues to destroy humanity with little hope of ending.  

The main protagonist, Shu (CV: Yuki Kaji ), is a normal teenager who falls into the conflict between the government in this dystopia world and rebel group Funeral Parlor. After sometime, he got some super power after had been injected with a viral drug that gives him the power to retrieve a physical manifestation of a person's "heart" by reaching into their chest. The world, while fantastical in nature, is carefully conceived such that the suspension of disbelief can cover most problems.

Plus:

This show starts out like pretty standard anime fanfare and by the time you reach the plot shift I've mentioned, it systematically rips you to pieces. Not just because you feel betrayed by what you're seeing on screen, but because the plot justifies the change in a way. I found myself reluctantly agreeing sometimes, thus making me feel like a horrible person. It is very difficult to induce that sort of self loathing in the viewer of all people.

As the plot continues, it explores some very enticing themes surrounding the usual coming-of-age story. I can't say I've seen a show tackle such a dark way of evolving a character in this way. There probably has been, but I've never seen it. The plot is extremely effective at showing Shu as he goes through the trials the series forces on him. He might not be the most relatable character sometimes, but you can always understand why he does what he does, even if his reasoning is flawed.

The Bad:

This series can be absolutely “depressing”. This isn't a bad thing for myself, but it might not work well with people of the more  “always get carried away” one. You should not watch this series when your mood is not in a good one, DO NOT. This depression manifests when the usually predictable plot goes full psycho on you and  you can’t  withstand  the tense that come to you.

On another note, people might be a bit displeased with the absurdity of some things in the series. The apocalypse virus is the unobtainium of this universe and it fuels every facet of the show from the protagonist's power to the strange crystals that appear. This mystical element just sort of needs to be accepted at face value for the plot to move on.

Furthermore, Mana being infected with the virus and becoming a creepy raging psycho-socio-path is compelling, but it makes little-to-no sense. This ties into the absurdity of the overarching "natural selection" plot, which in-and-of-itself is pretty bonkers.

Speaking of characters, this series is a bit short in the character department, although not for lack of trying. Most of the supporting cast gets barely any introduction and  they don't get a back story, which makes them difficult to relate with. The main cast gets enough, but even then  the protagonist, Shu, can be difficult to relate with when it is critical for the viewer to do so. As such, sometimes it feels a bit hallow when the characters do make choices.

Throughout the series there’s few times where characters do something that seems totally off-the-wall nuts (this usually ends badly for everyone). Some of the decisions that characters make in the series still hard to believe at least to me.

The Verdict:

Guilty Crown has presented so good and beautifully conceived that usually is a bad thing from a rushed and predictable plot series. The characters introduction is not to rushed on an episode and for me it’s good thing because kinda confuse too sometimes watch a series with so much character and most of them is just complementary and only use to make good scene when advancing the serial plot. The world is well conceived, but it relies on this universe's unobtainium for everything. I didn't find this a problem, but some people may get boring by the seemingly all-powerful virus that does everything.

This is a series to people that like to watch a main character's journey from zero to hero . Most of the beauty of the series lies in the evolution of the lowly protagonist Shu into a "hero", as it were. The trials he face are fantastical and unreal, but his reactions to them are very real. Sometimes he do unnecessary thing, but sometimes i think it’s really hard choice and I don’t know what to do if  i were faced with what he was. The popular colloquialism for this series would definitely be, "It isn't the destination that counted, it was the path taken to reach it". Shu's path is certainly a compelling one.