Guilty Crown 22 – notes and the like This entry was posted by Vale.
After watching this episode, you should rewatch the opening. You’ll realize stuff.
The Japanese title (祈り inori, prayer) is again different from the English (convergence). It’s a fantastic pun on Inori’s name.
With Kerrigan Mana back in control of the Swarm crystals, suddenly the whole planet is surrounded by a web of pink resonance. Kenji is still cooler though.
Yeah it’s really nice to use the Void of a yandere mutant, but it still makes me wonder how does that turn the floor into a hexagonal world map, how does that clear all the crystals from that area and how does that raise the whole platform. They must be really good friends, because hell, this is magic.
But wait, it gets better. Mana starts ballet dancing on that world map, while some German song plays in the background (it’s on the OST if you’re interested), and wherever she steps, beams of pink light turn everyone into crystals. The military detects the nuclear launch genomic resonance way beyond that of the Lost Christmas, but they can’t do anything about it.
Gai really loves three words. The three words are Apocalypse (黙示録 mokushiroku), evolution (進化 shinka) and selection (淘汰 touta). These phrases have been overused all along the series, but apparently the writers believe that they give the show a more serious atmosphere.
Someone could really explain to me what just happened here. Shu grabs a crystal flower (apparently symbolizing Inori) with some red strings that remind me a lot of the blood manipulation from Deadman Wonderland, and this knocks the life out of Mana and the whole resonance trick (and mysteriously slows down Kenji’s computer as well). In the background the first ending song (a very slow version of it) is playing. It’s really fitting and this mix makes the whole scene feel… grand.
Kenji stays the most awesome character to the end. At the same time, Shu’s sword and the whole setting around him and Gai remind me a lot of the word of Tron. I wonder if this is intentional.
Also explain to me why the old maniac commits suicide. Especially like that. And why isn’t Ayane’s Endlave affected by Inori’s counter-resonance.
The force field in front of Daryl’s Endlave reminds me of the AT Fields from Evangelion. Considering how he’s trying to be himself, this is very fitting. And suddenly Inori appears by Shu’s side mid-air. It still baffles me how these people can keep falling so dramatically for so damn long and still stay alive after landing.
Gai and Shu converse in the “next world”, the world where everyone would turn into mental images inside the crystal. The world you can see in the opening. Gai uses Biblical analogies again, but if this was the Apocalypse, then who are the four horsemen? I also find it really amusing that he claims he intentionally chose to become the Devil who brings about the Apocalypse, since I doubt he had much of a word in the matter. Dead people don’t really agonize at the matters of the world, and once you’re revived as a crystal mutant, I don’t think you have a choice. But sure, let’s take his word for it: he chose to do it. The last flashing red hexagon symbolizes Inori I guess. Who turned blind for some reason.
Suddenly Shu gets the ability to absorb all the crystals around the globe and all the Voids as well. But if it’s that easy— Oh well, never mind.
He really says Savior. The way they use it in the Bible, of course (救世主 kyuuseishu).
The epilogue is not worthy of mention. I was just wondering why is Shu blind as well. Or that why is he dressed like a 19th century French poet. Anyway, it’s over.
The slow version of the first ED is a remix by Boom Boom Satellites. It’s a great remix of the song, I actually prefer it over the original, but it’s a tad long at 7ish minutes.
Da`at was supposed to be the personification of natural selection, right? I still don’t have a clue what that’s supposed to mean.
I have no idea what it’s supposed to be in the universe of the show. In my previous post about GC, when the name of Da’at came up, I wrote about what it is supposed to be… I guess that in a sense the means through which humankind can reach God can be considered a personification of natural selection, if only the most perfect can reach divinity.
The show never had any consistent fictional logic to it, so I didn’t expect it to make sense. But, it’s still damn odd.
The implication might be something more like “Ghosts in the Machine”, but something that just doesn’t really exist in a Japanese context (or at least not easily). If we thought of Da`at as the personification of the “will” of nature or some other BS like that. It still doesn’t make total sense, but it would make a lot more than what we were given.
Oh, and the blind thing only makes a slight amount of sense. After Mana was taken by Gai, Inori is mostly turned into crystal and is blind at that moment. How she “gave” her blindness to Shu with her “thread of life” is beyond me. Considering that’s a massively mixed metaphor. I just assume they screwed up the Biblical references and were thinking of Sampson and not Jesus, when it came to the blindness.
I think Crazy Old Guy’s suicide makes sense, at least. His overarching goal was to see the evolution of mankind into crystals-the apocalypse. Survival was never his goal. At that moment, it looks like his cousin will shoot him. So, thinking he’s seen the Apocalypse through, he chooses to enter the crystal state rather than die as a human.
Otherwise, logic was never this show’s long suit. What strikes me is that (until the end) they got the emotion in this episode right. Yes, flagrant abuse of random symbolism and a complete ignorance of all things physical or rational was shown, but in the end, I think that was something that the writers finally got in the last few episodes that had been lacking all season. And I think we’d care less about inconsistency, gaping plot holes, and deus-ex machinas if all the episodes had been executed this way.
That is, up until the end. The writers completely failed at creating catharsis; even having been drawn in by the rest of the episode, I was irritated by the cliched “Let’s celebrate after all this time!” scene, and that turned to being appalled when Shoe walked in blind with that getup. And that basically sums everything up-some awful writing ruining what could otherwise have been an enjoyable (if not exactly monumental) series.
I have a question, what’s the german song Mana dances? You mention it is on the OST but I don’t think it is. Any thoughts on this?