Guilty Crown - Episode 19 Discussion / Poll

[orion]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

I know where DragoZero is coming from. Most martyr-ends I've seen in anime have been good, if not excellent.

OTOH, martyr-ends have become increasingly common in anime lately, particularly for big budget productions (a couple prominent 2011 anime shows made use of the martyr end, and that's just what I myself am aware of). There's actually a chance that much of the audience might go "ho hum, where have I seen this before?" if GC goes with the martyr end so soon after two different prominent anime shows went for it. There's also the idea that Shu arguably deserves a happy end more than anybody else in this show does.


But I would encourage everybody to at least prepare themselves for a GC martyr end. GC has set Shu up almost perfectly to be a Christ-like figure if they want to go that way.

1) Shu's Void ability includes the ability to absorb the weaknesses of others unto himself, which also means he can heal people now. Very Christ-like, just replace "weaknesses" with "sins".

2) "Lost Christmas" and Gai's cross necklace - This I would typically not attach much weight to in an anime show, but given the other hints out there, these really do seem to reinforce/foreshadow the idea of Shu as a Christ-like figure.

3) The very name "Guilty Crown" may make one think of the Crown of Thorns wore by Christ. This I wouldn't typically attach much weight to, if not for the fact that the song for GC's first OP even references "crown of thorns", IIRC.

You combine all of the above together, and it does paint a pretty clear picture, imo.

But you can't milk the franchise too much with a dead MC. I'm betting that he evolves into a god.

[Kaioshin Sama]

Started watching this again to finish up this mess. Pretty bad episode again, but has some aspects that are tolerable.

I'm struck once again by how impossible it is to feel anything for any of these characters considering how inconsistent they have been. I really do think that the only even remotely decent handling of characters has been with any funeral parlor character not named Shu, Inori, Gai or Arisa, not because I find them exceptionally good characters, but just because everyone else is just whatever the plot wants them to be week in and week out while they are at least consistent in personality and motivation, something that is clearly incredibly hard for this show to do with the rest of it's cast.

I'm also struck by what a terrible villain Segai proved to be in "the end". He was probably the closest thing this show had to a consistent familiar faced antagonist and he was pretty much just a joke the whole time. Shows like this need more interesting villains so that they can provide interesting conflict with the heroes, but alas Segai just proved to be nothing more than a laughing clown man. I'm almost certain he'll be back since this is still a Yoshino show and I'm more than familiar with his revolving door policy on character death which we've already seen countless times in Guilty Crown.

Not much else to talk about, the budgets back, but the writing and characters are still as obtuse and simplistic in the extreme as ever. I just see no reason why the writing for this show couldn't have been better than this. It's just incredibly unprofessional and unbecoming of a show that billed itself as a sci-fi/war epic in it's early promotion and even in it's early episodes.