Guilty Gear hasn’t been “metal” for years now. It’s hard to remember the last time the franchise lived up to that descriptor considering Strive’s been clinging to life as fuel for internet culture wars in between DLC releases that get leaked half a year before they come out. I remember a time where people refused to shut up about these games and what they represented, and the world was better off for it. There was an unsurpassed edge to Guilty Gear that attracted an audience of players as eclectic as the range of its aesthetic inspirations; metal, punk, 2000s rock bands your emo friend always played in the car, sexy men and women and men who looked like women - the cast of characters had something for everyone, and a self-awareness and optimistic outlook on the world and the people in it that was deeply uplifting underneath the kickass heavy metal veneer. Throw in rewarding gameplay that emphasized technical mastery, a phenomenal OST and a storyline that became more realized and complex with each entry and you had a series that diehards absolutely raved about. Daisuke Ishiwatari (the driving artistic force behind the series, basically the ideas guy, the concept artist, the music writer and even voice actor all rolled into one!) was heavily inspired by music and manga including Yasuhiro Nightow’s Trigun and Kazushi Hagiwara’s dark fantasy epic Bastard!! which had a similar inclination towards hard rock and heavy metal - not that you’d be able to tell by looking at Strive. On all levels, the newest game in the series is a far cry from its predecessors - artistically, mechanically, and spiritually lacking, devoid of the divine spark that animated Daisuke’s creation for all these years. The gameplay is “accessible” (read: casualized) beyond the limit of acceptable player hand-holding what with the homogenized character playstyles, autocombos and comeback mechanics, the storyline is the most convoluted it’s ever been, the character design philosophy was sterilized to remove any trace of sexuality unless your name was Baiken - the worst part was that by the time Strive’s story mode was over, the escalating conflict and stakes were practically negated so the cast can be all buddy-buddy all the time. It’s marketable, but it’s not memorable. I can’t emphasize how drastically opposed GGS is to its predecessors, it’s like tuning in for Kill la Kill and getting Steven Universe. It’s utterly castrated. And like I expected, these flaws are more apparent than ever when it comes to the “anime adaptation”, or else you’d be reading this on Backloggd.

The main question I have to ask is “Why are we here?” There was no need to keep this going. Strive’s story was a paradigm shift for the franchise, trying and mostly failing to explain six games’ worth of lore through a miniseries’ worth of cutscenes (and sometimes fights) while flipping character dynamics on their head for the sake of subversion: old players felt alienated while new players were left scratching their heads. Sure, you can tell them how “That Man” created “Gears” and started a world war, or how science was outlawed and replaced by magic, but what about Sol Badguy or Dizzy or Ky Kiske or Justice or Testament or the Valentines or I-No or Universal Will…add onto all this loredumping, we have the end of Sol Badguy’s story, loose ends being tied, and so many character interactions it’ll make your head spin. But for better or worse, it’s done. The story’s basically concluded. GGS was as good a time as any to close up shop and move on, but we’re still here for some reason. And for what? Money? If that’s the answer, it doesn’t show here.

Anyways, the cast: Who even is Sin Kiske? Basically…he’s Gohan but boring, and he’s the main character now. So lemme break it down for you; there was a big war with the Gears, people hated them and then people liked them, Certified Man of God and best theme in fighting game history holder Ky Kiske knocked up a Gear (homunculi, basically) named Dizzy (thankfully not sporting her soulless redesigned outfit) - not that it matters because they do NOTHING for over half the runtime - and thus Sin was born because main character Sol Badguy could only be examined under so many lenses.

So his parents are getting married now and suddenly, gasp, there’s this new donut steel OC named Unika (GET IT?? UNIQUE???!) who wants to kill all Gears because, gasp, she’s from the FUTURE and she’s actually Ky and Dizzy’s DAUGHTER and Sin’s SISTER and she can CONTROL GEARS and THE MAIN VILLAIN IS CONTROLLING HER and she is the STRONGEST and she’s BEST FRIENDS with fan favorite BRIDGET - just write a fucking fanfic at this point, what are you doing? The entire show revolves around this unironic Mary Sue, a term I never thought I’d have to use while discussing Guilty Gear, because the writing was never treading the depths of AO3 before Strive. Unika and everything revolving around her are just completely fucking pointless to the overall canon and the fact that 90% of the show’s screentime is dedicated to her nonsensical time travel plot instead of characters anyone likes or cares about makes me ANGRY. There’s no fun cameos to be found outside of a few shots on computer screens in episode 7 and the massive list of characters is totally ignored in favor of the most recognizable ones in GGS. Sin is boring and unfunny, Jack-O and Ramlethal amount to nothing, Sol, Ky and Dizzy are irrelevant until the plot needs them for a hype moment and Bridget’s there to be cute because she’s popular online. Baiken’s tits are still awesome, thankfully. But the atrocious dialogue and “humor” do little to carry the filler that is the overarching narrative of this horribly paced and structured show, which spastically jumps from point to point every five minutes like my reviews whenever it’s about something bad like this.

Speaking of nonsense, remember that main villain I mentioned? Nerville is about the furthest thing from complex, but he’s incomprehensible all the way through the show. He’s terribly designed fop who wants to destroy Gears because he’s a racist, but actually a self-loathing racist because he’s actually a Gear who can time travel and his future self is more evil than his present self and actually wants to kill everything, except no, he’s actually a multidimensional entity who can - fuck this, who cares? Why are we doing this? We already did Gears, we already did Gear racism, we already figured out how to control Gears, why do we need to go through all of this again? Do something else. Do anything other than this. This show is so lacking in confidence that instead of doing something the fans old and new would like, it just rehashes the plotline of the average Naruto movie - main character meets new character, new character gets manipulated by unmemorable villain, everyone gets together for a big MCU-style climax to beat the villain, new character goes back to being non-canon and then it's done. At least Naruto movies LOOKED good.

Among Guilty Gear Strive’s accomplishments is that it’s a phenomenally animated game with energetic cinematic ultimates and gorgeous story mode cutscenes. Dual Rulers is perhaps the biggest disservice to the merits of a game that did not need any more insults piled on - it’s cheap. I never comprehensively watched any of Sanzigen’s Bang Dream anime, but the clips I have seen impressed me with how their visual language was translated to 3D animation. Dual Rulers has zero excuse to be as stiff, poorly choreographed and lazy as it is considering it’s merely eight episodes - I refuse to believe a reputable studio could stretch its talents THAT thin in such short order. When I say this show is lazy, I mean it’s LAZY. It’s panning shots over closeups over speedlines over single frame over a thousand more panning shots and closeups every single episode. Episode 7, the climactic battle, literally STOPS BEING ANIMATED ENTIRELY and becomes a slideshow presentation during what’s supposed to be a climactic battle. (seriously if you don’t believe me it’s right here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFN0Ches0yU , why are we allowing this level of incompetence from a major studio in 2025??? look at this and tell me it’s anything other than disgraceful)

How do you manage to squander the supposedly unlimited potential 3D animation brings to the table? The posing is awful compared to the games! There’s no dynamism like the character intros and win screens. This entire show could’ve been done in digital 2D with the same budget as every other seasonal cashgrab, because that’s all this is, a cashgrab. There is none of the iconic music from the games, 90% of the game’s legacy is either violated or ignored, it’s disgustingly cheap and does nothing to justify its existence as a continuation to a game that is honestly undeserving of this kind of degradation. This show is such unfettered dogshit it made me actually start defending Strive unprompted, I’m keeping that in because I want you all to understand how much I actively hate this show.

With all this time travel it’s impossible not to imagine a timeline where this wasn’t the end result of the Guilty Gear franchise. Dual Rulers is the absolute worst outcome imaginable; newcomers will be stuck wondering what’s going on half the time, veteran fans will be infuriated by how little it amounts to anything in the grand scheme of things, and casual watchers who came expecting sakuga will be let down if they don’t drop it after the first two or three episodes. After watching Dual Rulers, I can imagine why Daisuke must feel burned out. Guilty Gear needs a ten-year moratorium. I don’t want people to argue about the game more than they play it anymore. I don’t want to buy the new Unika DLC. I don’t want to see more beloved characters get retooled into safe, toothless facsimiles of their former selves. Either do it better or don’t do it at all.