天下制覇

"Oops, no. I was useless again."

Impressions:

Let’s see we started… the Joker finishes his coup, kills Sportsmaster while Daryl kills his dad and mistress and then apparently just wanders off again while the rest of the soldiers mill about confused (and mind you, this berserk rage was apparently all part of the Joker’s plan) so for some reason, it’s up to Shu to… I’m not even sure what he was supposed to do, but what he actually did was call a bunch of other students and then ignored them while he angsted over what Gai would’ve done before using Hare’s void to fix a robot. Yes, her void is apparently a magical robot-fixing bandage. It also repairs bridges. I don’t even want to think about how that works. He then convinces everybody to go help terrorists by telling everybody that they believed in him. 

Actually, so far… it’s only mildly inane. In a lesser series, it may have passed as just an overly eventful episode with a few quibbles here and there, but given everything that’s come before, I think it’s more of just a happy coincidence that the writing came together for a few brief moments. But this is about where everything turns back to the usual Guilty Crown ‘fun.’ By the time Shu gets around to actually doing anything, Inori’s already singing and making things better. Then after a montage of Shu using all their powers to fight and reach her, some random guy literally teleports in behind her (the guy lurking in the window), literally teleports in, grabs her void, and then teleports out again.

So yes, after Shu’s big speech and insert playing over his entire "I’m finally a big boy now!" moment, he ends up doing absolutely nothing useful. Then Gai coughs up blood, collapses, and the show goes on a two week break for the holidays. It’s like you can pinpoint the exact moment when someone said "Oh crap guys, we need a cliffhanger here, better stop half-assing the writing and do something GREAT! I know! An EVIL Shu!" Maybe you could stand to be a little less ambitious, eh, IG?