Guilty Crown - Episode 20

Shu Ouma is back, with a new look arm and new abilities!  But is even this enough to take on Gai, who seems to hold more than enough cards of his own within the current scenario's deck.

In preparation for this final face-off, much of this week's Guilty Crown is spent in flashback, chronicling the work of Shu's father Kurosu, and his relationship with Shuuichirou Koudou.  Indeed, the mainstay of this story examines how these two polar opposite characters effectively switched outlooks completely, with Koudou brought from isolation into the importance of working as part of a group with Kurosu ultimately ended up working alone to complete his theory of the Void Genome and its related effects upon evolution and natural section.

Set against this backdrop is, of course, the story of Ouma's children, with Shu and Mana becoming the Adam and Eve of this particular story respectively, with the latter looking for a perfect opportunity to unleash the virus she carries upon the world, ultimately taking the form of Lost Christmas, while her first meeting with Gai proves to be serendipitous after the latter's attempt to escape from the hardships of Koudou's inhumane research.

All of this background to the series does at least square the circle as far as the major points of its story are concerned, but it still all feels a little muddled ad hastily strung together to explain the series somewhat where previously it made little sense.  Then again, perhaps my fondness for the action quotient of the series above all else is the real issue here - it's come to the point where the detailed backdrop to this show is of little interest compared to its ability to deliver slick and compelling set-pieces, leaving this dialogue and information-heavy episode to leave little impression on me where I suspect it was created to move and engage me.  It's arguably another mis-step in Guilty Crown's mismanagement of its assets as a whole - perhaps we would have been more interested in the core concepts of the show had some of these items been explained and outlined earlier in its run rather than at this late juncture when its overall direction has been set in stone (with every pun intended) anyhow.