Guilty Crown – 15

Shu’s character development feels a bit like an unstable rollercoaster.  Not only have we seen his progress go through  ups and downs and venture all over the place but at times it feels very unsure of itself like it isn’t certain it wants to do the things it does or how it goes about implementing such developments.  At first, you could understand where Shu was going as a character.  Now, after the past few episodes or so, it has become muddled and irrational leaving Shu’s character to lose any established identity and causing him to suffer as a result.

The fifteenth episode of Guilty Crown introduced yet another twist in Shu’s character development, this time turning our compassionate and concerned protagonist into a ruthless and vehement individual drunk on his the power of his authority and the Voids he controls.    In the episode prior, Shu lacked the confidence to lead even himself but after being influenced by his friends, he summoned the power within to restore order to the school and assume the role of School President.  And right before that, Shu was a withdrawn individual distressed from Gai’s death but acted impulsively, something akin to Gai, to save the school from invading renegades.  That’s three episodes now with three clearly distinct and dissimilar paths taken by our protagonist, going from Gai-wannabe, to confident leader in his own style, to an emotional and troubled person who only cares about his own selfish desires.  Let’s not forget there were a variety of other developments Shu faced in the first half of Guilty Crown, too, that, together with what has happened recently, has lead Shu down a variety of character routes.  Because of all this, Shu is lacking any consistent character development save for an evolving lack of identity.

Something needs to change and change quickly with Shu as his character is beginning to resemble a different person each episode.  Guilty Crown seems to write Shu inconsistently from episode to episode for him to adhere to each specific outline and plot.  Or at least that’s the way it seems to me.  It seems like they had the ideas for each episode to tell a discrete story but never considered the consistency of the characters between each.  The results are some decent plots for each episode but confusion and headaches with the characters.  It’s one of the biggest problems Guilty Crown has and it doesn’t look like it will be addressed anytime soon.

Although I’m not very fond of the Shu that we saw at the end of this episode, I would be happy to see the anime take this current state and personality and run with it for a few episodes to see where it goes with the story.  The only problem I have with that though is that this will not be Shu’s final form and he will change for a better personality before the end of the anime.  In that sense, I’d like to see Shu change to his final personality as soon as possible but then we’d be obeying what my complaint has been this entire post.  It’s become very frustrating to follow Shu’s character with all these random developments and personality changes.  Until Shu reaches a consistent and final personality and the anime works on that, I don’t see the point of following Shu’s character since it changes as frequently as he changes his underwear.  And now I’ve left you with an unpleasant image in your mind.  Gee, thanks Shu.

Could someone explain to me how Endlaves work?  I’ve been meaning to ask this since the first episode but the whole pilot/mecha system doesn’t make any sense.  First off, you have a pilot in an offsite location who navigates the mecha remotely.  That’s a great idea, especially since you can switch your best pilots between multiple mecha without losing any human lives or anything like that.  The problem occurs when the mechas take damage and the pilots subsequently feel pain.  Why the hell would you ever program these machines so the pilot feels pain?  It’s completely asinine.  Who the hell thought it’d be a great idea for that to happen?  Second, why does it seem like these machines are not piloted remotely and have people in the cockpits?  That defies logic again because you’re putting your most valuable resources, the pilots, into danger for no benefit.  Why would you risk your pilot’s life when they can be in an offsite location and pilot the same mecha with no clear difference?  Hell, it’s even better their offsite because if they are removed from the battlefield, they can be transferred to another mecha where the pilots needed and the other mecha can act as a drone or be commanded to return to the base or whatever.  These Endlaves were one of the concepts of Guilty Crown I was excited most about when the anime began but they’re being used ineffectively and have backwards logic for such an advanced technology.  If I’m making a mistake or have completely missed something about the Endlaves, please tell me because otherwise they’re one of the stupidest things about Guilty Crown.