__[MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR THE SERIES IN THIS REVIEW! WATCH THE SERIES BEFORE READING THIS...or don't it's on you.]
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The Story/Narrative

Being a mega fan of the franchise, the story, for me at least, was pretty easy to grasp. Essentially, the conflict between Humans and Gears (the Crusades) was starting to finally come to an end thanks to Ky and Dizzy's marriage, but Unika, who later turns out to be Sin's sister from the future, comes in attempts to stop the marriage from happening. This furthers the cycle of humans and gears being at war with each other, exactly like her father, Nerville Hammer (specifically his future counterpart), wants. From there, it's up to Sin, Sol, Jack-O, Johnny, Baiken, Axl, Ramlethal, Elphelt, Leo, Vernon, Dr. Paradigm, and the other gears of Earth to stop him before he tries to take over the world and force his ideals into their time and save their world and everyone in it.

It plays off of some pre-established series lore by mentioning and showing things like the Crusades, Knights of the Holy Order, how Gears function and the types that exist, and the aforementioned conflict between Humans and Gears, as well as character lore that's been established, all of which I found pretty nice, but I know for ABSOLUTE CERTAIN is going to go over newer fan's heads if they aren't familiar with the series' older lore.

It's nothing too crazy, but I think for a series that's this short (and probably was meant to be longer) it's decent enough for what it is and while I would've liked for it to feel a LITTLE bit larger in-scale by including more of the characters, it does the best it can with the eight episode length it has.

The Characters

This part's gonna be a LITTLE bit negative, but I am pretty bummed about how a lot of the cast either doesn't show up in this anime at all or just shows up as a cameo. On top of that, the characters that DO get proper screentime don't really get to do all that much other than fight Nerville's clones and have little quips. Characters like Jack-O and Johnny only felt like they were brought in at times just to help out and basically aura-farm and then leave, only to show up later fighting alongside everyone else with little to no explanation on where they were. I would've liked to see more serious character-to-character moments with a lot of the cast, and sadly, there isn't much of that outside of the Sol and Sin's dynamic, and even then, it's hardly enough and feels more like Sol at times is still babysitting Sin and being the big lug he is fighting stuff with his Junkyard Dog.

Granted, it's not all bad on the character side of things. For example, Bridget and Unika's dynamic and Bridget giving Unika the goal of 'finding her shape' are very wholesome, a nice reflection of her character after Strive, with how SHE found her shape and how her positive outlook on her life is, in a way, passed on to Unika. Unika even goes on at the end of the anime to do just that, and while I found it a bummer she didn't say, at least there's some reason that she's going out to do what she wants to do. Sin and Unika's dynamic is by far the most explored, and while it starts hostile, I do like the fact that Sin's kind-hearted stubbornness eventually does convince Unika to work with him to stop everything that's happening, with them at the end especially bouncing off each other quite well in combat coordinating alongside each other and their sibling banter at the end (which as someone who has a sister can relate HEAVILY too.) Unika's backstory is a little bit of a mess with how it's presented because it's deliberately shown in disjointed parts to give us a mystery that can't be pieced together til later, but once we find out she's Sin's sister, most of the mystery is gone and by the last episode where we see Nerville and Unika talking I was just sitting there wondering "Why wait til the LAST EPISODE to expand all of this?" Granted, it's better late than never, but it still confused me during my watch of it.

Overall, it's a bit of a disappointment, but there are some good character moments and things I do like about the show enough to not make me feel like the characters were mishandled like some people have been saying. If you know these characters pretty well, like I do, you'll enjoy them, but if you're someone who's not super into Guilty Gear...I'd say it's fifty-fifty on if you'll like them or not.

The Visuals & Sound Design

Mostly solid outside of one rather minor (or major, depending on how you view it) complaint.

When everything's looking like how you'd expect it to be from the game, it looks AWESOME, the big scale explosions, the expressions on the characters' faces, the on-point locations, the weight and clashing of attacks and sharpness of the blades, the sheer scale of everything being shown, it's all really nice. The thing that bothered me, and this may come off as a nitpick) is that it does have some reliance on using stills in certain places for things that should've been animated, namely in Episode 7 during the fight to get to Nerville's core (my guess is either time or budget constraints, but I'm leaning towards the latter being the reason for these). The characters look pretty on-model, albeit with some minor touchups, and the fact that Blender was used as effectively as it was here shows just how talented the animators who worked on this were. Episode 8 is probably where most of the show's budget went because of just how abstract they got with the mixed animation styles, and the fights were all absolutely INCREDIBLE.

Sound Design-wise, it's pretty solid. The Japanese voice work is phenomenal as always, with everyone reprising their roles from Strive/previous games, props to Sin's voice actor screaming as much as he did, cause boy does he do it A LOT here, heh. The music's pretty solid, orchestral mixed with heavy rock, exactly like you'd expect from Guilty Gear. One song in particular was repeated twice, but it works for both scenes, and it really emphasized how badass the moments were when it played, so this is most certainly a nitpick. Explosions are punchy and loud, fights have A LOT of weight and impact going on in them, and it's exactly what you'd expect from a Guilty Gear anime.

Overall, the animation has some issues at times with the using stills issues, but when it's not doing that, it's SUPERB and combined with the excellent music, sound design, and voice-acting, it's the best you'll probably get for a Guilty Gear anime and I was pretty happy for the most part with the technical side.

The Verdict

While it certainly has a couple of issues in the Writing and Technical departments, I think, as a companion piece that was mostly meant to introduce Unika to Guilty Gear Strive and the overall series lore as a whole, it's pretty good for what it is. I feel like it certainly would've benefited from being at least twelve or thirteen episodes, like a lot of traditional one-season animes are, but I'm sure there are some reasons behind the scenes for why it is. The team tried their best with what they had, and as a fan of the franchise, I felt mostly satisfied by the end of it.

I'd personally only recommend this series to the more hardcore or at least fairly knowledgeable Guilty Gear fans who know of the older series lore (and Strive, of course) because it relies on pre-established in-lore events for some of its plot. Otherwise, if you're a big fan of Guilty Gear like I was and go in with an open mind, I think you'll finish watching it and be satisfied with it like I was.