Guilty Crown / YMMV

Awesome Music: One of the anime's greatest strengths lies in its incredible soundtrack, featuring some of Supercell's singles under the fictional band of EGOIST, as well as Hiroyuki Sawano's ever consistent score. Considering the latter went on to make the score for critically acclaimed series, this is nothing short of awe-inspiring.
Base-Breaking Character: Ayase is divisive. Some like her for her Character Development, status as a Handicapped Badass Action Girl, and Ship Tease with Shu, while others can't forgive her for her harsh personality and rudeness to Shu in the earlier episodes.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The end of episode 13 reveals that Keido is suddenly the Prime Minister of Japan. Uhhhh... what? This is never brought up again.
Complete Monster: Segai Waltz Makoto is a seemingly polite GHQ Anti-Bodies officer who is introduced hanging a man upside down. Capturing the hero, Shu Ouma, who joined Funeral Parlor, he attempts to manipulate Shu to turn against them. During the Funeral Parlor's raid on retrieving the Apocalypse Virus, Segai traps the members in an empty plane and launches the Apocalypse Virus all over Tokyo via a broadcasting tower. Participating in the Loop 7 massacre, Segai uses it in order to manipulate the students of Tennouzou High School into handing over the disguising members of Funeral Parlor. While tracking a scientist, Segai manipulates several civilians who needed a vaccine for the Apocalypse Virus in an office where several of Funeral Parlor's members are hiding before slaughtering them all. Segai subsequently attacks the last of Funeral Parlor stronghold before meeting his end when trying to kill a handicapped girl with a truck.
Draco in Leather Pants:
- Many fans seem to like Shu better as a Jerkass than what he was in the first half of the series.
- If people dislike Jerkass Shu, they root for Gai. Even though he clearly Came Back Wrong, and even when he was still alive, he was almost as bad as Shu in full dictator-mode. That doesn't stop people from applauding him for taking away Shu's void Genome even though he's clearly on the wrong side.
Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Colonel Dan Eagleman, who was one of the only nice members of the otherwise Obviously Evil GHQ organization. Many a fan found his cheerfulness, honesty and giving credit where it was due to be very endearing. Just as many were dissapointed that he was killed off not even halfway through the series, only a handful of episodes after being introduced.
- Hare Menjou could also be considered one; when compared to Shirley, Hare maintains the former's role as a lover for the main protagonist, but lacks the traits that made the former unlikeable.
Fan Nickname:
- Shu:
  - "Shoe", or more rarely "Oh my shoe!" After Episode 15, people started calling him "Shuhrer" and "Hitler" as well. Spanish-speaking fans adopted it as "Zapato" (the Spanish translation of shoe) even although the pun gets Lost in Translation because it was funnier that way.
  - Shuuzaku and Shoelouch are also thrown about quite a bit.
  - Oumiya Shurou, after getting the third Void genome, which manifests as a replacement arm, and allows him to use any Void he used previously as his own, but with his body degrading more and more. Just like Shirou's situation in Heaven's Feel.
- After her display of Endlave-slashing in Episode 18, Kerrigan the Queen of Blades for Inori.
- Souta is sometimes referred to as "Soda".
- Arisa has been called "The Whore of Babylon" due to her sleeping with one of Shu's lackeys and leading the coup d'etat against Shu.
- "F-ranks" are often shortened to "Franks", partly due to Insane Troll Logic connecting them to Anne Frank.
- Scythe-tan for the girl who wields a scythe.
- Daath/Yuu:
  - He is commonly called "Darth Mugi" due to his thick eyebrows.
  - He is also known as "Bushy Brows".
- "Tsugumi's Rice Cooker" for Funell.
Fan-Preferred Couple:
- While the official pairing is quite obviously Shu and Inori, many fans consider Ayase or Hare better romantic partners.
- Fans were also surprised at the hints of a Tsugumi and Daryl pairing, but quickly embraced it. They were very unhappy at the complete lack of resolution in the ending.
Faux Symbolism: Lost Christmas was instigated by Mana on Christmas Eve in a church. The second season opening takes this several steps further.
Hilarious in Hindsight: In the English dub version of the final episode's epilogue, the casts last words are "To the New Year!", then co-authors are doing a mega crossover fanfic based on New Year's Eve, somewhat an inversion of ascended fanon.
Ho Yay:
- Shu and Gai have a bit in Episode 12.
- Female example: Some interpretations of the distant finale has it that Ayase and Tsugumi are married, or at least live together. Of course, seeing as the two of them have shown previously no romantic or sexual interest whatsoever in any female and both have plenty of interest in males, this seems very doubtful.
I Am Not Shazam: Fans are already prone to refer to the power of kings as the Guilty Crown despite this term never coming up in the actual show. For the time being, "Guilty Crown" seems to at most be a metaphorical way to refer to Shu's powers. Played with in that there is a thing called the Guilty Crown but it only appears in the Lost Christmas visual novel and has no relation to the characters in the main anime series.
Just Here for Godzilla: Even with the show's low reputation the animation is very fluid and the OST incredible, enough so that some people watch it just for the action scenes and music.
Magnificent Bastard: Gai Tsutsugami is the mysterious but charming young leader of Funeral Parlor, a resistance organization against the evil GHQ. With a series of schemes to subvert the GHQ's efforts, Gai has a laser-armed satellite of theirs destroyed and halts drug trade. Sacrificing himself to stop the spread of the Apocalypse Virus, Gai is resurrected by the GHQ alongside Mana Ouma for their Adam and Eve plot and works alongside the GHQ while brutally putting Mana's younger brother, the hero Shu, through a series of hardships to force him to eventually kill Gai and Mana, ultimately stopping the Apocalypse Virus from devastating mankind.
Memetic Mutation:
- "I can't wait to drop this show (again) next week!"
- "Guilty Crown sucks! I can't wait for next week's episode!" (go down to So Bad, It's Good for the explanation of those two)
- Ayase's disability and its implications have been subject to a number of memes.
  - "My hips can't move on their own..."
  - 17%. You know what it means.
  - Ayase won't stand for this kind of abuse.
- HEIL SHU!
  - A variation of this is HEIL MEIN SHUUHER!
  - Another one is How is the Shoelocaust going?
  - Similarly, it seems 4chan has taken to photoshopping pictures of Nazi figures with the characters' heads. Whether this falls into offensiveness or Crosses the Line Twice is... debatable.
- Party Gai: An image of Gai in a white suit leaning against a wall, photoshopped into pictures of other characters, usually with Gai's arm over another character's shoulder.
  - "You can't just photoshop Gai onto everything!"
Moral Event Horizon:
- Keido may have crossed it at one of two points—either when he tried to prevent the Adam and Eve of the new world from being an incestuous couple by sacrificing hundreds of children in horrific experiments, or when he murdered his old friend Kurosu in cold blood for no other reason than seething jealousy.
- Kurosu Ouma crossed it when he agreed to go ahead with the pregnancy that would kill his wife, so that his daughter could trigger the apocalypse by sexing her new brother up. About the best that can be said is that he wasn't too happy about it afterwards.
One-Scene Wonder: The student with a fridge Void, only seen during the montage in Episode 3.
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Shu and Inori have become more popular in later episodes; Shu because some fans just feel sorry for the kid after all the abuse he's been put through, and both for taking levels in badass in order to protect each other. To support this both Shu and Inori reached number 1 in their respective sections of the "Newtype" popularity poll.
The Scrappy:
- Souta immediately dropped to this level when one of his boneheaded decisions got Hare killed.
- Arisa and pretty much all of the students picked up a hatedom after the events of Episode 17.
So Bad, It's Good: Even people who like Guilty Crown typically agree its premise and several areas of its writing are either poorly done or downright bizarre, but many cannot help but be interested in the show anyways. A good part of it is explained by the show's excellent animation and soundtrack, which are unanimously labelled as some of the best stuff from the time, but another huge chunk still obeys to sheer Narm Charm and Crosses the Line Twice. The whole trope seems to be a specialty of Ichiro Okouchi's, the assistant writer of the show; other shows he has written, which fans mainly watch for the sheer amounts of Narm and Narm Charm, include Code Geass and Valvrave the Liberator.
Squick: The Brother–Sister Incest/Incest Subtext between Shu and Mana (and, since she's a clone, Inori), and Keido trying to pull an Adam and Eve Plot on Mana through Inori.
Strawman Has a Point: In Episode 4, we see that the GHQ really did bail Japan out of serious national crisis, and they are still actively trying to get rid of the Apocalypse Virus, though while doing a bit of military research on the side. They even have an entire medical facility to treat patients who still suffer from the virus, and the people they target are ones who have refused to inoculate themselves, meaning they still act as potential carriers. The GHQ also would not have had any reason to commit the atrocities seen in the first few episodes if their highly valuable and extremely dangerous experimental genetic weapon wasn't stolen by an armed terrorist group.
Superlative Dubbing: Putting this on here may be a bit of a stretch, but the trailer's out, and a LOT of commentors on there feel that the very tiny piece of dubbing they heard is superior to the original Japanese, if not better. But again, it's too early to tell as only the trailer is out.
They Copied It, So It Sucks!: The basic setup and much of the first episode did bear a striking resemblance to Code Geass, which caused many fans to complain. Episode 2 somewhat quelled these complaints.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Because of the rapid pace of the story, a lot of characters and concepts were left underdeveloped, and what answers are given are unnecessarily cryptic. The rapid shifts in tone throughout the series and the sudden Gainax Ending seem to suggest that even the creators seemed confused about what direction to take at times.

YMMV / Guilty Crown

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