Hello everyone,
Here we are to talk about the 11th episode of the shounen action anime series named Guilty Crown that continues to develop on the "shounen way" killing off the protagonist's mentor (Gai) and kidnapping his love interest (Inori) in order to make him grow and become a more bearable character.
The development in this episode was fluid and well animated, but extremely predictable. From Dan and Gai's death to Inori's song and kidnapping, everything just moved along the script just as I imagined it.
The most negative part of it was the fact that the whole episode was so damn cheesy that I really felt embarassed to watch it. It's not much about the plot devices used, but more about the reactions these devices created in the various characters.
The episode start by showing us the dire situation caused by the resonating singing cristal leaving the rebels without a chain of command, a dying Gai and no chance to strike back.
Apart from a couple of "funny" scenes (at least for me), like Daryl killing off his father and Shu acting cool in front of his friends, the outlook for the rebels looked really grim.
We even get to know, from the mouth of the old-evil-scientist that took control of the GHQ, that this was all a plot to defeat the rebels.
I have to say that it is beyond me trying to understand why an army powerful like GHQ have to worry about a small rebel group made by angsty teenagers...
So in the end just as alex almost predicted we have the plot device worthy of a Macross franchise with Inori's song magically healing people around the city.
Hey, to add up to the clichè we even have a extremely funny remark from Haruka saying "her synchronization rate is going over 3000!". This may well become the next meme together with the "it's over 9000!". :P
On the positive side, Inori's voice is truly marvelous and I'm always in awe when she sings. I'm extremely eager to get all the singles they'll release focusing on her...
Going back to talk about the story the writer, in order to make things more cheesy, decided to make every other character shout "Shu!" at least once during the episode.
It was honestly unbearable to watch Ayase shout "Shu!" while her rack was giggling on the whellchair due to the damage she received by another Endlave...
The episode conclude itself with a nice cliffhanger showing us a boy, with the same exact same void power as Shu, killing Gai and kidnapping Inori away after making her unconscious.
Next episode? I think there are two possible way for the story to continue. One is letting Inori remain kidnapped taking us to a second half filled with "Shu running around gaining EXP points to save the princess in distress".
The other is focused on Shu saving Inori straight away leading us to a time-skip development. A time-skip that will take us right into a world where all of Shu's friends are now members of the rebels under his leadership fighting against the anti-bodies plans.
Concluding, Guilty Crown is still a rather entertaining average shounen series that I'll continue to watch and blog about.
See you soon,
feal87