Guilty Crown

Number of Episodes: 22 + OVA prequel

What Wikipedia says: "On Christmas Eve, 2029, the unidentified "Apocalypse Virus" spreads and plunges Japan into a state of emergency in a chaos known as the "Lost Christmas" incident. An international organization known as the GHQ intervenes with martial law and restores order to Japan at the cost of its independence.

Ten years later in 2039, Shu Ouma, a 17-year-old high school student who keeps to himself in school, meets Inori Yuzuriha, the lead singer of Egoist, while visiting one of his favorite places before heading home from school. Shu is a big fan of Inori, a singer who has taken the Internet world by storm. However, he also discovers another side of her: she is a member of the Undertakers, a resistance group that aims to liberate Japan from the GHQ. Shu inadvertently gets involved with the Undertaker and the King's Mark appears on his right hand after the Void Genome canister in his pocket broke. This mark bestows him the power to reach inside another person's heart to extract and materialize a weapon or item from it. The anime tells the story of Shu's reluctant involvement with the Undertakers and the hardship involving the battles they fight and the lost truth of Shu's past."

What tTPO says: If only it was that straightforward.This is a series that clearly a lot of people have put a lot of money and a lot of effort into. It certainly looks the part. But it really does just make for such a spectacular trainwreck. 

The basic mcguffin was pretty cool (extracting stuff from peoples hearts) but after that it was all downhill. Shu is generally weak and whiney (only getting a bit of spine quite late in the series), Inori is kinda cool but is a bit of a nonevent personality, our main 'other' character suffers a mid season transition from one characature to a different characature, while the rest of the side characters are actually reasonably likeable don't get enough screen time to save the series. 

Aside from character issues there are major plot and direction problems. Halfway through the series there is a MAJOR change of direction and focus, and not for the better. It really may as well just be 2 separate series. Where difficult to believe plot events and turns work so well in the enjoyment of Code Geass, they really just don't here. And when we do get some exposition about what is going on it is not always easy to understand.

It's not all bad though - there are some good moments with the side characters, when Shu gets a spine, a bit of drama when some characters die, and when there is a bit of exposition which actually improves understanding (including the OVA). But it is so not enough to save the series.

How About the Music?  There is little doubt that this aspect of the series is the best. Except for the actual animation which is also rather good. In any case the first OP ("My Dearest" by supercell) and ED ("Departures ~Anata ni Okuru Ai no Uta~" by EGOIST) are fantastic, and give the series a sense of purpose the actual series lacked. The second OP ("The Everlasting Guilty Crown" by EGOIST) and ED ("Kokuhaku" (Confession) by supercell) didn't work so well for me but the first ones more than made up for it.

So how does it end? (Spoiler Free.): The series is so frayed that no ending was ever going to able to answer everything. But it is is an ending that provides some degree of closure. Even if, much like the rest of the show, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. 

Overall Grade: Really, really, wonderfully bad. Occult Academy looks spineless in comparison with Guilty Crowns true committment to epically bad writing. Grade D. Seriously, what were they thinking?