The Good, The Bad, The Bridget — Guilty Gear: Strive – Dual Rulers Review
So, YLC Gear Strive Dual Rulers just finished up, and I thought I’d make a quick video giving my thoughts in a more streamlined way than I did on stream. I’m not going to give like a super in-depth episode byep episode review since that would mean re-watching the series, so I could take more in-depth notes, and I don’t think this anime was good enough for a rewatch. So, without further ado, let’s jump right into the good, the bad, and the bridg of Guilty Gear Strive: Dual Rulers. Oh yeah, and there will be spoilers throughout this video. You’ve been warned. I was considering leaving this point until the end of the video to kind of complete the and Bridget meme from the intro, but I figured I’d just go ahead and get it out of the way. To start off, I think Sim and Soul are both in top form during this anime. It was nice to see Sin finally live up to his potential of being the main character of the story after it was set up that he was kind of Soul’s successor in Overture. And it was also really cool to see Soul kind of step down into this mental role for Sim now that he’s lost a lot of his power after getting the flame of corruption removed in Stride. I really like how even though he was still a capable fighter, the anime also showed that Soul was a little less powerful and had to resort to using his little gadgets and whatnot instead of just tackling every problem headon like usual. Of course, now I need to talk about the other star of the show, that being Unika. I thought Unika was pretty cool, if not a bit too similar to how Ramoth was in exert for my liking. I did really enjoy her relationship with Sin, and I thought her turn to being a good guy was handled pretty well. But in a series where every character is such a unique story, I did find myself wishing they had done something to really spice up hers since, like I said, it is really similar to Ramoths. And between the two, Ramothals was done way better. Finally, the last major character in this story, Neuro Hammer. I didn’t really care for him personally. I think there were certainly interesting ideas present. Like, yeah, there probably would be politicians using the continued anti-geear sentiment to gain a following. That makes sense. I think part of it is just that he was so openly a horrible guy towards Kai and Dizzy at the beginning of the series that it was shocking to me people wouldn’t automatically suspect he maybe had something to do with the terrorist who was at the same party he was at who had a motive that he campaigned in favor of. That being said, he was a decent villain. I vastly preferred when it was the past version of him who was just leveraging his position to manipulate everyone. I thought the future version that was basically a god who only existed to have a three episode long world ending fight felt kind of arbitrary. Prior to the series coming out, I was really hoping he was Crow since they had kind of have similar designs and also I’m just a huge fan of this random character who probably isn’t ever going to be mentioned again. But after watching the series, I’m glad he wasn’t Crow. Now, as far as the side characters go, they were either hit or miss for me. I thought Johnny and Jacko were handled really well. I don’t really have many notes about them. Dr. Paradigm was a welcome addition and a deep cut that I thought they wouldn’t make given that he wasn’t in Strive. I wish Kai was given more screen time, but I guess it makes sense that he had to seal Dizzy. That about does it for the lightning round, however, because I do have a lot to say about the next few characters. Dizzy, for one, was a very confusing case to me. As far as her depiction, it’s weirdly only kind of in character. By that I mean it is very in line with how she has presented an excerpt but not at all in line with her recent depiction in Strive. In Strive she’s undergone a huge change to her character seemingly having full control over her abilities. This change happened entirely offscreen and I was fully expecting the anime to address it and it just doesn’t. It also creates an issue with the timeline because now Disney’s arcade mode has to take place after the anime, but the anime has to take place after Bridget’s arcade and presumably the arcades of every character who came out before her. So, it creates this weird disconnect of Strive’s arcade modes taking place both before and after Dual Rulers, which is something that really only I care about, but I still don’t like it. Next off, Ramlthal, who I thought was criminally underused. She was just kind of stuck guarding Dizzy and Kai for most of the series, which is something a pair of characters I will talk about later probably should have been doing. And she never even got to interact with Unica despite probably being the one character who really has the personal experience to guide her, having been in in an extremely similar situation, presumably less than a year ago. Her companion character, Alfeld, however, had a lot more going on throughout the series than she probably should have. She seemed to be the character primarily working with Jack Draco to investigate Unika’s past to the point she even had an obviously fake out death since anyone remotely knowledgeable on Elfelt know she can easily tank an orbital laser strike. However, pretty much up until Nerville became world ending threat. I was just asking myself doesn’t she have a bandit with why is she on guard dog dut day with Ramanthol when Yria has capable fighters on payroll who can help with that? But at least her inclusion made some sense, unlike our last two remaining side characters, those being Bikin and Bridget. Now, on the surface, both of their inclusions seem fine because they’re bounty hunters. So, they’d be after Unika. However, the circumstances they appear in is what can be called into question. Bikin, for one, said she was on payroll with the US, even though she’s weaker than Gold Lewis, who is like an official US secretary, yet was mysteriously missing for the whole series. Then there was Bridget who never stated that she was after Unka. She just kind of happened to show up where Unika was like three times and then give her a pep talk that probably should have been given by Ramlithal. If you’ve watched my streams or my VODs, you probably are aware that I don’t really like Bridget, but I was really hoping my opinion could be changed by this anime. Unfortunately, once again, I was proven right that the writers just don’t have any idea what to do with her, and she was half-hazardly thrown into this anime to appeal to her very large fan base that probably wouldn’t have watched this anime otherwise. I feel like Bikin was also just thrown in for marketing reasons as well, which is even more unfortunate because I am a huge Bikin fan and I wished she had more to do. But since Unka’s plot is more based around finding herself than revenge, Bikin couldn’t really offer her anything of value. So, I guess that’s one thing Bridget has over her. Now that I’m done talking about the characters actually in the anime, let’s talk about the ones that weren’t. To start off, let’s talk about May and Testament. What May and Testament have in common is that aside from Johnny, they are two of the characters closest to Dizzy. While I can buy that they wouldn’t be at the first wedding, given that Tessimon is probably still a little wary of humans and Johnny might have feared any jellyfish pirates who attended would get arrested. Therefore, only risking his own neck instead of anyone else’s and telling the others not to come. I think it’s a little ridiculous that May and Testament don’t immediately join Jacko and Elfeld on the front lines of the investigation following Unkah’s attack on the wedding. They’re as close to her family as Jacko and Elfeld. They absolutely would be just as motivated. Instead, they both just get brief blink and you’ll miss it cameos while Bridget is integral to Unika’s arc. The next few characters I’ll discuss are Gold Lewis, Giovana, Zadto, and Millia. What do these guys have in common, you might be asking? Well, all four are members of their respective government’s defense force. Gold Lewis is the secretary of absolute defense. Giovana is a member of the Secret Service, and Zadu and Millia are the top brass of the new postwar administration bureau. And not a single one shows up after the terrorist attacks on their countries that weren’t even a full day apart. You’d think all four of them would be doing something alongside Leo and Vernon. But I guess they all just conveniently happen to take a vacation until you saw a blink and you miss it background cameo of Zad and Millia defending against the Nerville clones. I could live with them not being super major players or whatever. But again, Bridget is essential to Yanuka’s character growth and Bikin is for some reason the only agent operating on behalf of the US. Yet Zo and Millia couldn’t even do their jobs and help defend the crystallized bodies of their boss and his soon-to-be wife. And Golo and Giovana couldn’t even help defend the weapon of mass destruction being publicly shown off at a terrorist attack in Yria. Speaking of, like I said at the beginning, I’m not going to go episode by episode picking apart every little detail, but there are two major story elements I need to talk about. For one, as previously touched on, why in the hell did Vernon think it was a good idea to show off a weapon the US used in the Crusade against Gears? Not even a day after a terrorist attack perpetuated by someone who was openly against Gears. Like seriously, did no one think to push back this peace summit by like a week? the plot wouldn’t have necessarily been affected that heavily by Vernon not being an idiot, but it still kind of grinded my gears while it was happening. Not affecting the plot is something that cannot be said, however, about Axel. You may have noticed I never mentioned Axel in the section about characters. Well, that was because Axel basically wasn’t a character in this show. He was a plot device to allow Unika to exist and allow Nerville to actually pose a threat once Una turned on him. To put it plainly, the plot hinges on Axel traveling to the future and then getting captured by Nerville so he can go to the past, completely ignoring how Nerville managed to keep Axel captured for a prolonged period of time. Why would Axel go to the future in the first place? One thing this anime was pretty consistent on was using the characters older designs from older games to show the time period a scene was taking place in. One example that comes to mind is in the scene where Kai and Dizzy give up send to Soul. Soul is pretty clearly in his X2 design, and Kai seems to be in a transition from his X2 look to his overture look. Another example is in the very first scene where both Dizzy and Kai are in their outfits from X/X2 as the narrator was detailing their first meeting. What I’m trying to basically say is the Axel that traveled to the future and got kidnapped was most definitely Strive Axel who has full control over his powers. The narrator even reinforced in the episode that it was revealed that Axel has full control over his abilities. That brings up a huge question. Why did Axel go to the future in the first place? It seems extremely out of character for him. He’s always been a more in the- moment type of character. So, why would he want to know what happens in the future? Other than just being curious, he really had no reason to go. He’s already resolved not to go to the past since that will destroy the current timeline according to Eno. So all of his friends are in the present. And to make it even odd, his girlfriend Megumi was brought to the present by Eno in her dying moments in Strive. So why would Axel just go to the future on a whim? His entire world is in the here and now. So it just it makes no sense why Axel would just do that. And the entire plot of Dual Rulers hinges on Axel acting out of character. Finally, the last thing I want to talk about is the animation and the soundtrack. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. Both aren’t very good. During the fight scenes, the animation basically boils down to stills of characters interrupted by flashing lights and shapes, which had me feeling kind of lightheaded, and I’m not even epileptic. The backgrounds and even some whole shots in general were also pretty bad and genuinely just looked like they ran out of time. So, they just threw in some storyboard art because they needed to get this anime out on a deadline. As far as I’m aware, this anime was a Crunchyroll exclusive, so they probably had a really low budget and a really low frame of time to make it. I would honestly go as far as to say I prefer how the story modes look in the games, and those look like badass FM animations half the time, or at least I can tell what’s happening. New music is where I was really disappointed. However, the opening and ending were both just kind of generic and really lacked that spark from actual Guilty Gear music. And the stuff in the soundtrack was similarly boring. I was waiting for that one fight scene where they finally decided to play some stuff from Strife, but it never came. Overall, I’d say this anime wasn’t very good. It did some things I liked, and I’m still excited for Unika, who at the time of writing hasn’t been released, but there were a lot of flaws. I honestly would probably be able to forgive all of them if the axle thing didn’t exist, but oh well. I’d say if you’re a fan of Guilty Gear’s story and haven’t already watched it for some reason, go for it. At least for the purposes of understanding Unk’s character when she comes out. But if you’re not a fan of Guilty Gear or even just don’t care about the plot of the series, just skip out and you won’t be missing much. That’s about all I’ve got. So, all that’s really left to say is later, Gators.
Guilty Gear Strive just finished releasing its very first anime, Dual Rulers. So far it has released to critical… well, not really much of anything. So today, I, ThatOnePyroNoob, ask the question: is Guilty Gear Strive Dual Rulers good, bad, or somewhere in between?
MAG.MOE - The MAG, The MOE.