I don't even recall the exact date when I began looking at the promo art advertising Guilty Crown, but by then I got to know the craze it garnered amongst the fans in these forums when I.G. announced the anime airing on October 2011.
Now, for five consecutive months of episode broadcasting I unintentionally kept myself gullible and thick-headed regarding all the criticism directed at the show's lack of cohesion.
It only hit me until the eighteenth episode to realize what were the writers doing messing up the story.
Is it Guilty Crown recommendable? Probably, but I will warn new viewers to keep their expectations low in regards if the story follows a single direction or not.
But, I do recall that the core component that sucked me right into this franchise was Yuzuriha Inori, nonetheless.
The way they designed her sporting that pink hair, those crimson-ruby eyes, and wearing that revealing Phoenix dress struck within me as a character blended with a unique sensuality but yet remaining pure and child-like innocent from the beginning to the end of the series.
Gosh, I even recalled how I played over and over the first episode before the second got released with rewatching only the parts when Inori was singing; she was an eye-candy, pleasant experience to my senses.
However, I do agree with the rest of the mainstream population that Guilty Crown tumbled and slipped throughout the way for all the factors already stated by more knowledgeable viewers than me who got critical about this animes' faults.
Seriously, for all the mess that he went through the real victim was Gai all along, and it was clear with the last episode that Gai never had a choice, and, moreso with Mana.
I feel in contempt with the writers about the way they handled Mana as a utter antagonistic force without redemption.
Spoiler:
Sure, Gai can hug her as many times as he wishes to make sure she gets saved, happy, and not alone. Nevertheless, Mana became Eve the moment she got first infected by touching the meteor fragment, and from that moment she desired nothing more for her Adam to appear next to her and to start making the new humanity together by erasing the current one with the virus.
Hence, when Shu was expected to be borned Mana had already made her choice, and what does she gets at the end?
She becomes a monster that got rejected not only once but twice by her little brother, but that's because she became an Infected.
Is it Mana's fault turning into something like that, because the Virus had already begun consuming her during her early childhood? For the way the writers executed the last arc, it looked like there was no other choice for Mana but to remain the villain and Devil to destroy the world.
At the end, what happens?
There are other things which I do not want to go into detail. I'll save those for the coming users that'll be posting in the thread.
Probably, I'm feeling the aftereffects about going a three-days consecutive streak of having finished eight shows for the previous two seasons that have already expired.
Guilty Crown is ok if you manage not to get detracted by its disjointed subplots, and their characters acting out of their character at times, but I do not recommend it to rewatch it again and again save for the shots about Inori singing, and the shots about Mana turning Apocalyptic asymptomatic in psycho mode.
Sorry, if I wasn't able to provide a more enthusiastic review for the overall anime, but I'm burnt today from fatigue.
- Second title of the past autumn 2011 anime season to conclude.
- Got lucky to be the first one who casted the first vote in this thread, BTW.