With their new weapon in hand, absolutely nobody is safe.
What They Say:
In the near future, a meteorite carrying a foreign virus crashes in Japan, leading to a devastating nation-wide infection and total anarchy. Several years later, Shu—a teen with a special ability awakened by the Apocalypse Virus—meets a strange girl who incites him to join the struggle against a government organization’s robotic forces and a secret society whose goal remains shrouded in mystery.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The series went big at the end of the last episode and the attack on Gai was pretty pronounced in its scale. The superiority of the new weapon is certainly there in the voices of those talking about, but it at least lacks smugness about it as they’re ostensibly doing everything in order to protect the population. Yet Gai has survived the experience, though others did not nor did the supplies, and now it’s the time to act. The surprise of Shu and Inori is visible since it’s hard to imagine anyone could survive that attack, and call the damage taken as little more than a scratch, but Gai is one to understand the importance of projecting strength and stability in a situation like this.
While Gai wants to go big because the new system will allow the military to essentially do what it wants wherever it wants by being able to kill and destroy with ease, Shu is finding himself uncertain about what to do and the nature of the attack that he wants to plan before the next satellite goes into place. There’s a lot riding on what must happen and only several hours before things come together, but for young Shu, the idea that his mistakes will cause the deaths of those around him in the mission is painful for him to contemplate. It’s a bit more thoughtful in a way than you usually get with young male leads like this, but it’s a welcome struggle to see him go through with Gai as the two slowly talk it out.
While it is a key part, it’s also important that the action plays out well. It has a lot of good elements to here as the diversion gets underway while the core group gets in to try and deal with everything. There’s a lot of detail to it and the atmosphere is spot on with both tracks that are running here. But as big events are often likely to do, things go strangely wrong with one of the satellites and the danger level goes in an unexpected direction, which forces some odd bedfellows. Bringing Segai into the mix in person is a welcome twist since he’s been intrigued by what’s been going on with Shu, so getting to see him and Gai together and having some potential to fix what’s happening shows a lot about all the characters involved, though it leaves it less clear what the future will be like.
In Summary:
Amusingly, in years gone by, this is where the series would have ended rather than being around the halfway mark. This episode hits a solid mid-series stride though by going big, working the characters just right and having some really engaging animation and level of detail that makes me want this in high definition from the source. There’s a lot going on in this episode and it doesn’t hold back with the scale of events at hand and just how dire the circumstances are, both initially and then even more so when things spiral out of control. Guilty Crown continues to delight because of these things and has me really curious to see where it will go next and if we can start to get more quality time with the characters themselves.
Grade: B+
Readers Rating: [ratings]
Streamed By: FUNimation
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
