Guilty Crown – 22 [END]

Who likes Guilty Crown? Tsugumi sure does!

This is it. Time to see if I’ve wasted 22 episodes worth of my life or not. …Well I can’t say that I’m particularly sad to see this show go, but I will definitely miss Truck-chan and tagging with Fosh every week (Lagrange and the fact that I haven’t been here the whole series aside). He made this show worth watching xD

Ku Ku Ku we have finally reached the end of this oddball series. Seriously what a strange twenty two episode ride it has been for everyone out there, but I really need to give a shout to all of my tag team partners that helped out with these reviews, because you are all amazing so thank you! So, what will become of this ending episode? Are they setting us up for failure or closing the door on Guilty Crown forever!? Shall we find out?Plot this week follows Gai and Shu finally having their epic showdown for the fate of the world!

Ayase versus Daryl and his evil mecha crab.

We start things off with OH MA SHOE watching in shock as OH MA MANA wakes up after she successfully took over Inori’s body, but something is strange to Shu as she rushes over to his side to give him a tight hug. However, he is not really in the mood to create some touching reunion and basically calls her a monster again because she just stole Inori’s mind and body. Mana of course gets angry and clings to Gai as he summons his sword from her chest and creates a large map of the world under his feet along with starting his final battle with Shu. Meanwhile, Mana dances on this map and wherever her foot touches she sends beams of void energy to the selected areas…yeah she turns the world map into her own personal game of blow up the world DDR.

ALL HAIL EVIL OH MA MANA!

The fate of the world played on a giant 8bit gaming machine.

Mana-“Since the world is going to end, I feel like dancing!”        Gai-“Yep, you are really something special.”

While Mana plays world destruction DDR, the Undertakers have their hands full with Daryl. Oh and the huge map that Mana is dancing on also shut down Ayase’s machines along with the other robots. On the computer side of things, Tsugumi has a hacker showdown with Kido and Ayase has to eject from Truck-Chan after she loses control over her machine forcing her to try manually control it with help from Tsugumi. We jump back to Gai and Shu for a bit as they have a void versus void fight, but it appears Gai is far too strong for him to actually fight against. That is until Shu hears a voice calling from a tiny crystal flower nearby! Just what could it be? None other than a tiny piece of “Inori’s tear” and Shu uses this flower to summon his own giant killer sword.

Daryl has a fan service battle to end all battles.

Tsugumi-“I love the new windows 3000! It is so interactive.”

Smoke all the void flowers.

Gai-“COME AT ME BRO!”                                     Shu-“NO YOU COME AT ME BRO!”

Using this new sword Shu reverses everything that Mana did to the voids and Shu suddenly starts to have visions of Inori. Thanks to OH MA SHU and his weapon, the tables finally turn in favor of the Undertakers. They start to overcome their battles and a few personal fights against the likes of Daryl, Kido, Shuuichirou and of course zombie Gai. After Shu finishes off Gai, it pretty much screws Mana up causing her to start crystalizing and Gai has a mind trip with Shu where he has a chat about voids and the utopia of Daath…basically they wanted to turn the earth into one giant crystal filled with memories? That sure sounds like a failure of an evil master plan to me.

Daryl-“Why won’t you love me?!”                          Tsugumi-“Nyaahahahah prepare to get beaten.”

BECAUSE WE FREAKING HATE YOU, KIDO!

Rest in piece again you beautiful Gai! You and your abs of steel.

Gai also believed after he died with Mana she would be free at last, but no matter how many times she dies, Daath would just reanimate her again. However, the only way she can die is to finish her “role” that she was created for; so in the end Gai had to become the devil and bring on the Apocalypse to save Mana’s life and hope that Shu would stop them. After the mind trip Shu gains his kings powers and he starts to cleanse the world of voids aka sucks them all up inside his right arm… Yes, OH MA SHOE’S arm is a now a super vacuum to suck up all the voids along with void cancer.

Shu-“I wanted to Avoid crying in the final episode.”                      Mana-“It’s cool bro…let the tears flow.”

Thanks to OH MA JESUS, the world is free of voids. Before Shu can finally bite the bullet, Inori shows up again inside his mind and takes the voids away from him saving his life. Sadly she ends up dying in the process and the GHQ tower falls apart forcing the Undertaker members to escape without knowing if Shu survived or not. Daryl also managed to survive as well! Hooray for that guy, right?

Daryl-“He is so right! I should stop being so evil…Just kidding! I can’t do that.”

So what happens next in the story? We skip ahead to a “few years later” with a gathering to celebrate Hare’s birthday with Tsugumi, Ayase, Shouta, Yahiro, Kanon and finally a blind Shu. Yeah, poor guy is now blind but he did gain a brand new mechanical arm. The final moments of the episode follows Shu sitting alone on a park bench listening to Egoist music and he is sent inside his inner world holding Inori close to him.

Tsugumi-“Ayase, we should start a family.”                 Ayase-“Ehhhhhhhh?”                 Yahiro-“Dude…that is so hot.”

Shu-“Back in my day we didn’t have credits in our anime.”

Extra guilty fun

Mana-“You have angered the moe gods, OH MA SHOE, I will kill you.”

Shu-“Hold still so I can take a picture of you, Gai.”             Gai-“Make sure you get my good side please.”

Gai-“Just don’t trip…yeah…you might instantly die.”

Ayase installed a special hidden camera in Tsugumi’s hacker room.

LOOK AT THE TINY ROBOT BABIES! Hnnngggggg.

End thoughts

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ WHERE DID DARYL GO?! Screw Shu having a million and one flashbacks of Inori. Screw his prosthetic arm. Also, screw the fact that I have absolutely NO IDEA how he survived taking on the cancer of the world. I WANNA KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO DARYL. It’s bad enough that Gai had next to no motives in the end besides “Yeah, I’m helping Mana just because”, but my shipping pair didn’t even get together. WhatisthisIdon’teven. All would have been forgiven if they had just shown him, but NOPE. Obviously flashbacks are more important. I should have seen this coming.

…Okay, okay, time for an analysis of what went wrong this episode. (My rage just can’t be contained at the moment). If you want to avoid my bitching, you should probably just skip to the next paragraph. Let the complaining begin! I think most of the loose ends were tied up really sloppily. I mean, Shuuichirou pretty much killed himself for no reason, Yu disappeared and was never seen again, Mana disappeared just because Gai did, Inori was reduced to a deus ex machina and I have absolutely no idea how Shu survived. Hell, I would have probably liked this ending better if he died (or maybe if he died a Madoka-esque death where his consciousness was still around or something) since I think that would actually mean something in terms of his character development. He developed as a character and became someone who decided to take on the weight of the world, yet assuming that Inori is the reason why he’s still alive, she’s the one who suffered the consequences. Something just doesn’t add up there. I liked the fact that the characters were celebrating Hare’s birthday and I liked the fact that they actually had a (kind of vague) explanation of Voids, but this ending just felt… off and incomplete. Even that ending card didn’t feel right. I think that one from episode 21 would have fit waaaaaay better.

Good things about this ending?  The animation was great, as was the soundtrack. Also, having the original ending (Departures ～あなたにおくるアイの歌～) play at that one point was absolutely brilliant timing-wise. Mana-Inori (…whoever that was) dancing was… kind of weird, but at least it looked pretty. Yes, if theres things that this anime had consistently right, it was the awesome character designs and that soundtrack. …The animation was on and off. …But at least this episode it was on… Yeah. I think at this point, I’m just trying to justify me watching it.

So I haven’t tested this out myself with the entire series (and I don’t really want to), but I found that this messed up confusion of a storyline was actually better when I was marathoning to catch up. I think it’s because there wasn’t a wait between things like “Oh look, a cultural festival” and “wtf why is Shu randomly king of the school now?” The story seemed to flow better the closer together I watched it. So yeah, if you can, I found that watching this all at once for a short bit helped me to follow the plot immensely.

Ahahah yeah I am with you big time on that, Kara! Just what the hell happed to Daryl afterwards? Did he become a nice guy after all? Or did he get killed off and we didn’t get to find out his fate? Just kidding everyone, but seriously how fun would it have been if Daryl was sitting at the table with Tsugumi and everyone else at the end? Ah well we can keep on dreaming for our non-canon pair of characters. Beside Daryl’s mysterious disappearance, it was nice that they did not show someone like Yuu floating outside the building grinning and making us scream YOU BASTARD, don’t make us punch you through our monitors!

Action wise this episode had plenty of moments that made my jaw drop! And yes even the right amount of fan service with Ayase running into that wall for some “plot jiggle”… that did look quite painful! Damn you Guilty Crown for hurting my waifu! Anyway, after the Funeral Parlor machines lost power I was like oh snap is Ayase going to jump inside her machine and pilot like that? Sadly that was not the case. At least she got help from Tsugumi who helped fight Daryl in the end and speaking of Tsugumi, did you see all of those tiny robots at the end? D’awwww moe robots are freaking cute! So they get a few thumbs up from me for including more moments between the pair of flight suit girls of Ayase and Tsugumi.

Now for the leading guy of Guilty Crown, Mr. OH MA SHOE aka OH MA JESUS aka OH MA HITLER and every other amazing nickname that came our way…so he saves the world from getting turned into crystal and sacrificed himself only to have Inori save him in the end?! So usually the guy gets the girl in the end right? Sadly Shu gets no girl and ends up going blind forever? I gave that character a lot of crap throughout this series because he cried and whined his way through twenty two episodes, but I feel he deserved a bit better. However even through all the crap moments, it was nice to see Shu grow into a decent character and he did get his stuff together near the end. So what about you? Do you think Shu got what he deserved in the end? Or should he have died along with Gai and Inori? Let me know!

Overall did I like Guilty Crown even after all the failed hype it got? Part of me will forever say yes because reviewing such a train wreck series was actually quite fun for me. While Guilty Crown will never go down in anime history for having anything ground breaking or brand new, it was an interesting idea at the start! Yes we all know Guilty Crown was pretty much rehashed Code Geass clone but it still managed to provide me with something entertaining to play around with. Like those meme themed screencaps…I wasn’t realy sure how they would work, but I am glad people liked them. So finally this series is over! There are characters I will miss a whole lot like Ayase and Tsugumi and maybe even quiet old Inori who started to grow on me near the end. So what did you think of Guilty Crown? Hated it? Loved it? And should they do a second season or give us a few OVA specials? Maybe some Tsugumi and Ayase love? However, I like the way things ended up.

Final stuffs

DAN EAGLEMAN FOR THE WIN! And Tsugumi x Ayase

Thanks for the fun, Guilty Crown! You shall be missed for a while until the new spring season starts up…

About Tag Team

We live, laugh, enjoy and strictly believe on "more the merrier". When together, we usually come up with very chatty, conversation-based episodics and interesting posts.