guilty corwn, very integral

Posted: October 17, 2011 | Author: flomu | Filed under: Uncategorized |15 Comments »

this stands for Guyscoal

8/10.

That’s my score for the first episode of Guilty Crown.  In English, this means “Very good, probably because I haven’t seen a half-decent show ever since Nichijou ended.”

6/10.

That’s my score for the entire series.  In English, this means “Predictable story is predictable, still has hope that main character will become Renton Thurston #2.”

On whiny MC

Scamp:

I’d take a wimpy lead over Yuji Everylead the Bland any­time. I’m the kind of crazy per­son who loves char­ac­ters like [bad examples]. How­ever there’s a key dif­fer­ence between the approach Future Diary took with its main char­ac­ter and what Guilty Crown did. Both series have wimpy male lead hav­ing a girl fall into his meta­phor­ical lap while being given a magical power. But, while Guilty Crown plays with wish ful­fill­ment totally straight, Future Diary pulls the ‘be care­ful what you wish for’ card and makes both the new girl­friend and the magical power just make his life infin­itely worse.

Scamp makes a great point here (much better than trzr23, at least).  However, I have yet to see Mirai Nikki (or “Future Diary” for you elitists) so I’m going to bring it to something I do know: Eureka Seven.

In Eureka Seven, main character Renton Thurston is a whiny little bitch for half the series.  But what makes his growth as a character so fascinating is his utter disillusionment early on in the show – Gekkostate is nothing like the perfect world he imagined.  In contrast, Guilty Crown’s MC (who will henceforth be referred to as “GCMC”) has neither goals nor dreams, and his aimless thoughts are painful to put up with.  He activates godmode by the end of the first episode, whereas Renton had to struggle the entire way.

But the flashbacks!  Oh, the flashbacks!

They are our last sliver of hope in a sea of mediocrity!

Oh, so his name is Shu.

On Anemone

I signed up for the Guilty Crown hype bandwagon because Scamp said it was good.  I am staying because I think the series will turn into an alternate-reality Eureka Seven where Renton and Anemone get hitched.

It’s always a little puzzling to me why people are so fixated on the male leads in anime.  It’s not like female characters have much more variation.  We’ve seen plenty of stereotypical female characters in anime this season (Chihayafuru and any other shoujo, all the friends in Boku no Harem, 4-girl 4-koma, etc.).  So why are you people whining about the whiny male lead?  We haven’t had one of those since forever!

But wait – Anemone is both a childhood friend and a strange power-granting girl!  That’s like a C.allen!

This could be the start of something beautiful.

Like Kannagi.

But really, when’s the last time we’ve seen a childhood friend turn out to be some crazy crime-fighting hero of justice and/or singer rebel girl who holds a sword in her boobs?  Never!  You always have the contrast between the “ordinary” childhood friend path and the more crazy paths.  A big anime taboo is combining the childhood friend with another archetype.  They’re supposed to come in only two flavors: the big sister type and the outgoing sports type.

But now the childhood friend has the power!  She has the strangeness to compete with Kirino, with pink hair and skimpy clothes to boot!

On the other hand, I could be completely wrong and Anemone turns out to be just another strange girl.

On Transformation Sequences

I’d rather not see this.  Why can’t we have our main character jump into a robot and beat the crap out of other robots?  We all know that that’s what we really want to see.

Some people were arguing about the disadvantages of having remote-controlled robots.  There’s not much to argue.  Hero”one-button”man definitively proved that remote controlled robots are a terrible idea.  Maybe GCMC will hop into a robot and revolutionize the battlefield.

But with the huge sword, I don’t think that’s likely.  In the worst-case scenario, GCMC will never get into a robot and beat the crap out of other robots.  Neither will Anemone.  That’s a pretty depressing idea.

5/10

That’s my updated score.  In English, that means “Probably going to go even lower once this girl gets more screentime”

Further reading:

• Secret Z post: “Stop talking about Code Geass!” 
• There is nothing else to read.  Unless you want to read “Why Guilty Crown is Code Geass,” by Anime Blogger #431.

P.S.: Title comes from corwn and derivative.  Interestingly, the corwn post comes up on the first page of google search results for “corwn.”  Must be some popular blog I’ve never heard about.

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