Guilty Crown – 03

Episode 03 –

Well, this episode cleared up some (not all) of the plot holes from last week. That being said, the story took a rather interesting turn towards the end; I knew that Shu would be dragged back into the conflicts somehow, but I didn’t quite expect him to be betrayed by one of his friends. Nonetheless, the plot twist does make things a bit more interesting, especially because Shu got separated from Inori. However, while the direction the overall episode took the plot was interesting, the story for the episode itself was a bit too silly and nonsensical for my tastes. Character development and such is even more lacking, with Inori and Shu remaining as bland as ever.

The main thing that really irked me is how Shu was going around in broad daylight using his ability to extract items out of people. If he is really concerned with not being caught by the authorities, using his abilities in broad daylight is a bit too flashy.While the whole ordeal was fun to watch, at the same time it just was outright nonsensical, and wasn’t very fitting to the situation. At least the episode went into more detail explaining the abilities of both Gai and the actual void extractions, and cleared up some of the contradictions so far. But still, if Gai detected that Shu could be targeted, he could’ve thought of a better plan to fight back than the one he told Shu, right?

Anyways, aside from the iffy issues with the conflict this episode, the direction the overall plot took was rather interesting. Shu being reported to the authorities, and being captured at gunpoint was NOT what I was expecting, especially this early into the series. He certainly won’t be living a normal life from now on, especially since his possibilities of escape are low without Inori around. He’ll probably be rescued somehow, but that’ll have to be in the future. Unfortunately, all of this still hasn’t helped Inori break out from her very boring personality, but the point brought up about her sword-shaped void does add some very interesting possibilities to her as a character. I guess she’ll be developing alongside Shu, though it looks like it won’t happen for a while.

In the end, this somewhat silly episode was pretty much meant to be both buildup and explanation; it did a decent job at doing both of those. And yet, the conflict this episode wasn’t very good at all, and unlike previous episodes, there wasn’t much action to compensate. The story, quite frankly, still feels very generic, and the same can pretty much be said for the characters. I’ll admit that there is a lot of room for growth, I’m just praying the creators jump-start the story itself soon. Because, quite frankly, pretty eye-candy won’t be able to do much without the story getting into shape.

Overall Enjoyment: 3.4/5

Screenshots are later in the post.