Grotesque “Guilty Crown” Blu-Ray Cover Art

lucarion says:

You’re right; he should watch it and make his own judgments as to whether or not GC deserves praise or all the hate it gets.

As for MY judgment, though it had a myriad of problems (which, if I were to discuss in length would probably be longer than this article)here’s my PRIME reason why I think Guilty Crown is not only the most disappointing anime of its season, but also one of the worst I’ve ever watched:

Shu is THE WORST protagonist EVER! He rubbed me off wrong from episode one and instead of getting better as episodes went along, he instead went full horrible. When the show is called Guilty CROWN and is making a lot of allusions to messiahs and other kingly figures that pathetic excuse of a protagonist is FAR from anything resembling someone deserving of that kind of power. When I first saw him-all socially awkward, self-deprecating, frustrated, I immediately pegged him as being like that so he can become a stand in for anti-social, loser teenagers everywhere and make them feel as if their “personalities” were actually somewhat “noble” or “regal”. It’s laughable. But you know what? I could have liked him despite that. What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with the “hero” just being normal? I was expecting too much-the studio needs to sell after all and this is a good formula; I should just try to have fun with this.

No. It didn’t even give me that. In one episode alone, Shu completely ruined the anime for me. And by five episodes in, I hated it with a passion.

The reason I disliked Shu immensely from the moment I saw him was not because he was weak and whiny (though it was a big factor) but because of what I perceived to be his reasoning for being so: he was too self-conscious and too concerned with how others feel about him. The show tried to depict this as “kindness”-that he was careful not to hurt other people’s feelings-but it didn’t strike me as that-instead I saw him as both cowardly and disgustingly selfish. He didn’t really care about the people he was with before the “plot” starts, he didn’t respect them enough to share his true feelings with them, and failed to forge real emotional connections-something that anyone who is not afflicted with dumbass syndrome should at least be capable of doing to a degree-is it really any wonder why people were always betraying him left and right? He also got a lot of things wrong: he read people and situations wrong; he expected things to play out as he initially and faultily assumed and seems downright surprised when they don’t. (Which is funny, because a lot of other things in this story seem to play out all too conveniently for him…while other people court lady luck, she’s already throwing herself at him but like the dense MC he is, her efforts apparently fail to register with him). After episode 5, I dropped the show and picked it up again when they said Shu finally got some (yay!) character development.

So…whiny MC’s turning into a Hitler expy was supposed to be cool?

Actually it just made things look worse…It only further reinforced the idea that Shu NEVER deserved nor made good use of his powers to begin with. Despite everything that happened to him, he was still a dumbass and despite his newfound “assertiveness” my main problem still persisted: I felt no heroic glow from him, no kingly spirit. He was normal teenage loser who was given godlike powers…and he used it like a normal teenage loser. That is just plain vexing… at this point I should praise GC for being somewhat realistic…but for everything else…no way in hell.