After all the stress of recent times, Shu probably deserves some time for rest and relaxation down the beach, and that seems to be exactly what he has planned along with some of his schoolmates as this week's Guilty Crown begins.
Of course, nothing is simple or relaxing for Shu these days, and this little trip is in fact organised at the behest of Gai, as he eyes another operation against GHQ and, more importantly, he needs a particular Void to do it. That Void happens to belong to Souta Tamadate - someone who Shu doesn't exactly get on with but chooses to humour in the name of helping his comrades.
This, the plan is formed and it's left to Shu to pull his usual Void extraction bit, with the only troublesome element for him this time around the need to use Inori as bait for the besotted Tamadate - an issue which leads to him embarrassing himself in front of the rest of the Funeral Parlour's masses, incidentally. Still, the Void is extracted, and the plan swings into action... however, it seems that for once somebody has managed to get onestep ahead of Gai, and what's more he seems to have links (as does Gai) to Shu's father.
I'm not too sure what to say about this week's episode of Guilty Crown... oh wait, yes I am - it was formulaic, clumsily presented and really rather dull. Now, I've enjoyed this show thus far for all of its flaws, but this time around it seemed that everything that has been poor about this series has come to the fore - there was no tension or excitement surrounding the week's mission, and Shu's part in proceedings has become far too much of a case of "rinse and repeat" to elicit anything of note either, no matter how cool the properties of the various Voids are. Right now, Guilty Crown is beginning to feel like it would work better as a big budget video game than as an anime production.
Given all of his recent adventures, you might imagine that Shu would be happy to return to school and relative normality - except, of course, that given the nature of his arrest by GHQ not so long ago he's very much at the centre of the rumour mill upon his arrival back at his normal class.
However, it seems that Shu isn't alone - putting Inori aside for a moment, he finds himself being defended by student council president Arisa Kuhouin, who succeeds in turning the rumours swirling around in Ouma's favour to make him the talk of the school in a far more positive manner. Not that this is the end of Shu's troubles mind you, as the return of his mother Haruka to the apartment leaves him with some awkward explaining to do regarding Inori's presence, although his mum doesn't exactly seem to mind so much.
Of course, these additional characters haven't been added to the series just for the sake of it - with Funeral Parlour running low on funds and looking for a partner to bolster their financial position, it seems that the Kuhouin Group, to which Arisa is heir, is the perfect fit. However, the group's resistance towards GHQ's way of doing things has marked them out as a potential "enemy" by the powers that be, leading us to a scenario where a party aboard a boat held by the Kuhouin Group brings together Shu and Gai as interlopers while GHQ's plans put Haruka, Arisa and the rest of the ship in danger. Of course, this can mean only one thing - it's time for Shu to get involved in some red hot Void action to save the day!
Held up against the rest of this series so far, this is just another day at the office for Guilty Crown - it still looks pretty, but its plots still feel largely forced, a little contrived and very much unlike your typical noitaminA fare as it serves us up its fan service and slightly bombastic story ideas. That isn't to say that this week's episode is dull or otherwise poor - it's as fun as ever in many respects, which is worthy of some praise, and its nicely paced to boot - but there's really nothing to get your teeth into on a deeper level, leaving us with a slightly vacuous experience overall.
For all of the talk of Leucocyte as their next big target, last week's episode of Guilty Crown ended with a rather grandiose demonstration of its power - a demonstration which held the very real possibility of putting an end to Gai's campaign altogether.
Of course, the Funeral Parlour leader is made of sterner stuff, and despite a comrade in the process he somehow manages to survive this otherwise lethal attack from a satellite above, meaning that's he remains well and truly alive and kicking to head up the plan to take Leucocyte out for good - a mission which will require the abilities of both Ouma (to extract a Void) and Kenji Kido (whose gravity-defying Void is necessary) to complete their plan.
But will Shu even take part in this mission? Perhaps predictably, his immediate answer is "no" given the risks involved - a decision changed only by his seeing a less confident and assured side to Gai. Well, either that or the all-out fist fight between the two of them. With that settled, it's off to attack the core which controls the Leucocyte satellites, in a plan which seems to be going swimmingly until the appearance of Daryl Yan to put the skates under everything with a spectacular lack of care which puts the whole of Tokyo in danger, in turn allowing Inori, Shu and Gai to all show what they're best at as they attempt to save the innocent lives suddenly thrust into danger.
There's nothing smart or particularly clever about this week's episode of Guilty Crown (again raising those awkward "should this even be a noitaminA series?" questions), but as a set-piece episode in its own right it works pretty well - once again it's gorgeous to look at, it has some slick action, and a few nice scenes and moments to keep things ticking along. On the downside of things, Shu remains as wishy-washy (and more importantly, as indecisive) as ever to the detriment of the series somewhat to the point where even seeing him get punched in the face twice doesn't help, while Inori's deadpan attitude isn't much better. It doesn't feel right calling a show from this programming block "mindless but shiny entertainment", but that's exactly what Guilty Crown serves as for me right now.
Shu may be freed from captivity, but is he free of his captors? While he carries with him the ability to signal his position to GHQ and thus spell doom for Gai and his Funeral Parlour forces, "freedom" seems too strong a word.
Regardless, for now Shu is very much central to Gai's plans as he outlines his next aim - to steal something called "Leucocyte". With a complex and alarming number of possibilities to their next mission, there's plenty of hard work ahead for those within the Funeral Parlour - not least for Shu, who is clearly in need of a significant amount of training.
Enter Ayase to perform this task, as she pulls no punches in introducing Shu to the various individuals and their specialities within Funeral Parlour's arsenal - not that he shows much hope of getting to grips with them in the training montage which follows. In lieu of failure after failure, Shu continues to mull over his situation and sounds out the possibility of leaving the group and taking Inori with him. Inori, of course, has no intention of doing such a thing, as she makes her loyalty to Gai all too clear. Still, when push comes to shove (and thanks perhaps to some words from Ayase), Shu decides to face up to the test Ayase has planned to see if his abilities are up to scratch, with his particular unique trait ultimately serving him in good stead. Any celebrations are short-lived however, as news from Gai's mission to take the Leucocyte filter through.
Shorn of the slick action of previous episodes, this was a pretty middling instalment of Guilty Crown - it offered us little new information about Shu's personality (we pretty much have him summed up now) and didn't really delve into Ayase's persona as much as we might have liked either. Sure, this episode gave us some important progress, mostly in term of seeing Shu accepted into the Funeral Parlour fold a little further, while also filling in a blank or two surrounding Gai, but that aside the gorgeous visuals and great soundtrack made this feel like a work of style over substance, something whichGuilty Crown can't afford to be... well, guilty... of too frequently.
Just as it looked as though Shu had completed his latest mission for Gai flawlessly and without bloodshed, he suddenly finds himself very much thrown to the wolves by the friend he thought he'd saved thanks to his actions, as Yahiro Samukawa casually pushes him straight into the hands of the waiting GHQ forces on the way to school the next day.
Needless to say, GHQ have a lot that they wish to learn from Shu about the nature of the Funeral Parlour group, and more specifically Gai - information that Shu is naturally reticent to give. In fairness to GHQ and the man handling his arrest, Galty, torture, detainment and the like are foregone in favour of an all-out attempt to convince Shu to give up his secrets by showing them the positives that the group have brought to the world as they vaccinate the people and treat those suffering from the virus which caused so much damage and decimation to the country. Is that enough to gloss over the people we saw killed by those same forces earlier in the series though?
There's little time to ponder such questions as things soon move forward apace, with Funeral Parlour commencing a raid on the internment facility where Shu is held - not, admittedly, as a direct attempt to free Shu himself, but rather to release a supposed serial killer named Kenji Kido, although of course they'd love to have Shu on-board to help with the operation. Cue another fast-paced, excellently animated action scene which kicks into gear as Shu realises that Inori is disobeying orders to come and save him, complete with a sweet gravity gun and, of course, Shu making full use of Inori's Void to escape his situation. Is he now well and truly a fully-fledged member of Funeral Parlour? The door is still open for him to betray them at any moment...
Despite its flaws (most of them residing under the name of "Shu"), and in spite of a pretty poor instalment last week which took a hefty chunk of the energy out of the series, this was another highly enjoyable episode ofGuilty Crown that gave us a look at the flip side of the coin as it pertains to GHQ's function in its world before delivering some more great action scenes that seem to have become the show's hallmark. Yes, it still doesn't feel much like a noitaminA series in a lot of ways, but it has a lot of entertainment value (especially when Inori isn't over-used) and that's good enough for me right now.
After impressing in terms of the power and organisational abilities at their disposal, Shu might have thought that he could finally distance himself from the Funeral Parlour group - at least that was the plan, until Inori appears in his class as a new transfer student and a red mark appears on my face thanks to my palm hitting it out of the clichéd stupidity of these development.
Of course, this isn't all that Shu has to put up with - not only is he going to have to share his classroom with Inori, but it also appears that he'll have to share his home with her two as she invites herself to stay in that detached, plain-speaking manner of which she is so fond. There is, to be fair, a reason behind her entrance into Shu's life like this - during their previous operation, Gai identified a witness to their work outside of his control, and more importantly that witness is also a member of Shu's school. So, how is he expected to find the culprit? By extracting their Void and finding one which matches Gai's description (his power, incidentally, being the ability to know the shape of a person's Void before it is drawn from them).
Of course, this causes Shu not inconsiderable grief in the pursuit of their suspect, as not only does he have to memorise the rules of Void extraction (including the obligatory "you can only perform it on someone under seventeen" rule), but he also has to learn to make eye contact with people and, perhaps most importantly of all, not get caught doing it. After some initial failures which turn his reputation to dirt around the school, Shu gets the hank of this whole Void extraction malarkey... but who is the witness to his deeds last episode? Not only does his discovery of the culprit prove to be a personally difficult one for him, his fondness for the person in question could prove fatal...
After a really good episode last week, I'd probably bestdescribe this third instalment of Guilty Crown as "functional" - it does its job in terms of progressing the plot and setting out a few important points and rules that the series will continue to carry throughout, but the way this information and progression is presented veers from the irritatingly clichéd (i.e. pretty much everything Inori does) to the pointlessly comical, with only its final scenes delivering an impressive kick to the teeth which makes some of what we've just seen worthwhile. Still, even Code Geass had episodes like this, so as long as it doesn't make too frequent a habit of it I'm not going to let this put me off Guilty Crown majorly for the time being.
Shu Ouma's ordinary, boring world was turned up upside down come the end of Guilty Crown's opening episode, equipping him with quite the impressive power in conjunction with Inori - power that he has little choice but to immediately wield in the midst of the battlefield in which he finds himself.
Thanks to this power, the Funeral Parlour group manage to win their immediate conflict, taking care of the Endlaves they were pitted against with only minimal casualties themselves - however, their wider mission is considered a failure by leader Gai on account of the fact that the so-called "Void Genome" they'd stolen for him to use via Inori is now ensconced within an ordinary school kid. Not exactly what they wanted from the "Power of Kings", to be honest.
Still, with the Antibody group seeking to take their revenge by capturing a large number of refugees in a supposedly safe underground garage hostage with a view to interrogating (and moreover exterminating) them, Gai decides that this might just be the time to make a stand with a show of force using their new ally and power - thus, a complex plan is devised within which Ouma and his power is particularly vital, culminating in an ambush and some calculated risks that would make Lelouch vi Brittania laugh maniacally.
In fact, that Code Geass reference isn't entirely accidental, as this episode of Guilty Crown (much like the first instalment) feels very much like it owes a debtto the aforementioned series in some ways, and certainly when it comes to pulling off a seemingly reckless plan thanks mainly to the special powers bestowed upon the show's protagonist. Beyond simply comparing this episode to other anime (and goodness knows we could match up similarities to numerous other shows), it has to be said that Guilty Crown is an utterly gorgeous visual feast - surprisingly fan service-laden for a noitaminA show, but utter fantastic to look at from beginning to end. Thankfully, this second episode also had some brains to back up its visual brawn, delivering some tasty action and smart set pieces that felt engaging while holding just the right amount of dramatic tension. The only thing which breaks this spell is the horribly cliched ending to the episode - do we reallyhave to go down the whole "mysterious girl who I've just found alongside has suddenly transferred in to become my classmate" route? It was done to death decades ago, and it takes the sheen off what was otherwise a great episode. Guilty Crown doesn't particularly feel like a noitaminA series at this juncture, but who cares when it's such a luscious viewing experience that with an exciting plot to boot; if this episode is anything to go by at least.
