Somehow I keep forgetting that this show is being produced by Production IG and not Sunrise. Though I guess even Sunrise would be unable to create a plot so thin and full of holes as this. I simply can’t believe how terribly lazy the writing in GC is, and this is not to mention the character cast completely void of any charm or depth. I really did expect more out of IG, but I guess with all the big names on the roster they’re so gung-ho about creating a franchise that they forgot about creating a story for it first.

Long story short, Guilty Crown assumes that you, the viewer, are a complete moron. Let’s start with the first episode, when Inori and Shuu meet. The bad guys bust in, and apprehend the injured Inori. They know she took the Void Genome vial, and obviously want it back. They also notice Shuu, and arrest him…no? Well, at least search him? Nope. Instead they drag Inori back to the party van before getting their dumb heads together and realizing she doesn’t have the vial anymore. It sure must be easy to become a cop in the future Japan.

Being a good wimp of a protag that he is, Shuu ends up taking the vial to Gai, Inori’s boss. However the Evil Oppressive Government is pissed and comes calling before they finish their chitchat. Gai runs off to command his forces, but before he does, he of course takes the vial from Shuu and uses it to receive the Void Genome powers…not. He tells Shuu to hold onto the vial instead. Not to anybody’s surprise, Shuu accidentally ends up using the vial and gets the powers for himself. Gai is mad at Inori for letting this happen because the Void Genome was meant for him. Way to go, hotshot.

Now, we’ll assume the baddies never figured out Shuu’s identity from their mechas’ video feeds that showed a high school student swinging a big sword around. He gets to go back to school after his heroic deeds, fine. But it sure is nice of them to let Inori waltz around the education system despite being a known member of a terrorist organization. Hell, you’d think her role as a high profile vocalist would already ring a lot of alarm bells, but apparently in the future education is taken very seriously. They may have uneducated terrorists in the Middle East but not in my back yard! Though Gai does state that terrorists aren’t granted any human rights…oh well, lol.

Finally, in the4th episode 3rd episode (looks like my brain already shorted out while just writing about this) we’ve got a junkie who likes to get his stuff from the around terrorist hideout. Gai wants Shuu to find him because he’s a witness who could blow their cover, having seen Inori and Shuu together – like every soldier out there they actually fought? It still baffles me that in the future where mechas are remotely piloted nobody figured out to check the incoming visual feed from the machines if they need to identify enemy combatants. Not to mention that Inori should already be pretty damn known terrorist, having been captive at least once. Oh oh oh guys I just got a great idea! How about we send her to a public school to do nothing at all while Shuu is sent on a quest for a person nobody knows anything about, except that he attends the school, and what his Void looks like?

Oh wait, how do they know which school the witness attends if they don’t know his name, what he looks like, or even his god damn gender?

This would all be forgivable if the show had at least something going for it, but that’s the problem: Guilty Crown just doesn’t have anything to call its saving grace. It looks good, sure. But this isn’t the year 2007, chrissakes. We’ve got good looking shows around every corner because the industry figured out it’s easier to cut back on anything but the visuals rather than the other way around. People like to compare GC to Code Geass, so fair enough, let’s do that. Geass was full of stupidities and plot holes, and the second season was just pure trolling on Sunrise’s part to see how far they could take the bullshitting. However, in addition to looking decent Geass relied on its character chemistry to carry lot of the stuff through. This is a critical part where Guilty Crown just fails to deliver – its character cast is so utterly insipid and standard with a Shinji-clone protag, main female with the personality of a cardboard sign, a mentor character whose “brilliant” plans are just complete nonsense, and a bunch of bad guys probably borrowed from Team Rocket. In this regard Guilty Crown is even worse than Shana – it tries really hard to be flashy and cool, all the while being a stale pile of colorless, odorless mass.

We’re watching this so you don’t have to.