Guilty Gear Dual Rules was really fun. The animation is good, the characters are, obviously, likable - after all we've spent the last 2% years with them, and the world is as always great. I can't even complain about the writing, as it was really solid. Unika is a great character, and even if she feels way different in Strive than how she was in the show, I still love that little lesbian. Yet, the anime still proves to me to be just a 5/10. And it's a pain for me to give it such a low score, because the animation is really great, and a lot of work came towards it, heck, for the most part I didn't even realise it was all CG, its that good. But ultimatly, no matter what, there is one part of this entire spectacle that fails misserably, that being Hammer - The main villain. His premise was simple, an anti-gear politician. Sure, he looked like an ultra generic villain with an obvious motive, but you can do a lot with such a simple idea. Despite that, Dual Rulers fails immensly in making its villain matter, and because they put him up front as the main juice of this story (well the 2nd main juice, right after the Unika-Sin story), seeing him be so horribly written is terrible.

I think I know why his character fails on so many levels.

Him being a human who wans to destroy a part of humanity, that being gears, is a great concept - we're fighting a person filled with hatered to the point where he wants to kill everyone of a certain race (all in all he has a good reason, we all know about the crusades), and this idea behind the villain worked, untill he started to preach some shit about "ouuu the humans didn't like my bioweapon ooo its not just the gear, but the humans too which are wrong and bad" which, like, can be written well - a concept of a man betrayed by his own kin - but in dual rulers he was just a bigass narcissus who wasn't betrayed by his own. Holy order or whoever was he working for didn't want to give him funds for a very good reason, I'd say (developing a bioweapon to fight a bioweapon is just dumb), but still, they wrote this part of his backstory quite well, him becoming a politician fits really well and makes sense, creating an anti-gear movement, gathering funds, trying to get the government to understand his concerns, its all written really well. Then we get actual plot of dual rules, where he has his big plan in action, and that plan isn’t cool politician shadow goverment coup thing, which would be amazing and fit with strive being a bit more politician, also him being an actual genius if not more (considering he was able to turn himself into that purple goo) would mean he could create really complex plot and intrigue, with out main cast having to slowly uncover his plan, but instead he is just a generic villain with a lot of money who wants to kill all the gears still using his virus - he’s so petty, and him still striving to use that damned bioweapon he created is fun, it shows again just how much of a narcissus he is.

Also his design is bad, he looks way too generic and silly, he doesn’t look like a politician, nor doesnt he looks like a scientist, he looks like a cirus worker, and its the main reason why I couldn’t take him seriously when watching the anime. Still, looking back at him, he had some solid writing behind his character - the backstory was pretty fun all in all, and his motivations were clear - even if I feel like Dual Rules failed to make him appeal to me, his concept is good, and his character can be improved in arcade mode or whatever.

Ok, so Hammer is a solid villain concept just executed meh, then why do I think he is a horrible horrible very bad villain. As you may guess, its his future self that makes me hate this character. He doesn’t even make sense. His future self decided to capture axl and use him for ig thousands of years so that he can have infinite time to research and improve his virus and crap. This is stupid. I understand that he is supposted to be a genius and whatnot, but seeing just how much was he able to invient, and when he said “when you have infinite time on hand something something”, it really seems as if he spent just unfathomable amount of time, but didn’t go insane. His character is not insane. “I am a god of the new world” - that is not something a person with infinite time on hand would say. I I I really can’t just the entire concept of him even knowing that axl exists (when humanity is supposedly dead) and him then capturing him and everyting like kam on its just stupid and silly and I dislike it. I just can’t get over the fact that somebody would be just so self centered he would do all this, or I guess I can, but I can never see him actually achieving this. He worked alone all the time. How in the fuck would a single guy be able to do all of this, sure he was a genius, but he was also extremely dumb.
This whole paragraph is just rambling, and its because the entire concept and everything that happened in ep 7-8 is incredibly dumb. Its just bad writing, to the point where I can’t even point out what went wrong - the entire concept is flawed. When it comes to the actual character and why I feel like the concept of hammer turning into a god doesn’t work, that is simple. When you create a character who is supposted to be powerful and menacing, you need three things - his motivations, his aura, and just how powerful he actually is.
Hammer’s motivations? I want to kill everybody because I’m the best.
Hammer’s aura? We all know how the alien looks. It looks silly. It even acts silly. I can not take seriously that fucking purple blop, but, I have to give them something - the ending sequence with Sin in the core and his face flashing was GREAT. It was the first time I actually felt some emotion, some threat, basically anything, from Future-Hammer. If the entire time his character was on screen it had the same aura as in that one scene, I wouldn’t even care about the bad writing, because his pure aura would be enough to make me thing “this guy is BAD”. (ik i said aura a lot and aura is a dumb word but yall get whan im talking about)
Lastly, Hammer is Too Powerful. That is a problem. When I am faced with a monster the SIZE OF WASHINGTON, I don’t feel like he poses a threat, because he poses too much of a threat. A good powerfull character has to be more than just a big blob of destruction, because that doesn’t feel powerful, that’s just cheating. They really need to show me why is he powerful, and not just make his a purple blob. Take for example Bondrevd from MiA, he is pretty similar to Hammer, very much so even, at first he feels like an ally , which doesn’t make sense, he’s supposed to be bad (just like Hammer - at first he tries to work and help our cast), but then we actually see him do fucked up things beyond empathy, we see how he doesn’t look at Reg as a person, we see how powerful he is when he turns into a Narehate. Its, somehow, very similar to Dual Rulers, they even both have a daughter lol. Also, both Bondrevd and Hammer had close-to infinite time to research. And where as Bondrevd turned insane (tbf it was from his artifact play and shit but still), and while we can see, feel, and experience that insanity of him, Hammer is just a scary big blob, he doesn't feel insane, he feels like a big meatball. It doesn’t work. He is too powerful, he doesn’t pose a threat, and FUCK ITS JUST DUMB.

Overall, if they decided to made Dual Rulers more of a small-scale political fight between the pro gears movement and the anti gears movement, involving just 1x1 the plot of Sin and unika, and then some plot of part of the cast vs hammer, it would be great. But even if then really REALLY wanted to go with the Future-Hammer and world domination plot, they could have done it, just, they really really need to ground it up more, and make us fear the villain. Because that is the single main thing that makes me not care about Hammer. Its not just the fact his motivation is boring, its not just the fact that a good part of his writing is bad, the single main reason why he is a bad character is that he never feels scary, in the entire show, besides his literal final scene.

But even with that entire horrendous character, there is a lot of good in Dual Rulers. Like I said many times, the animation is striking (even if ep7-8 are somewhat lackluster), the cast is as always brilliant, its good to see Johnny, Bridge, and even Paradigm on the big screen, and the best thing about the entire show imo is the relationship between Sin and Unika. I won't go too indepth into it, but put simply its brilliant and shows the depth of Unika, as we as establishes a lot of character of Sin, and how will he shape the series in the future. Both of the protaginists made a great showcase of what they can offer to us in the future - because it seems as if ArcSys is shaping them to be the next mascots of Guilty Gear - replacing old men whose character arcs basically ended.

All in all Dual Rules was a lot of fun, yet despide succeeding in one of the things it set to accomplish, it left a big stain on the Guilty Gear lore, and created one of the weakest villains ive ever seen. I think its worth a watch, but don't expect too much, enjoy what there is, and don't think about anything past ep6.

PS If I had to rate just episodes 1-6 I would give them a VERY solid 9/10, the only thing they do badly is try to squeeze too much lore into some of the episodes, kam on, you shouldn't care about the newbies, its only the diehard fans who are watching this show anyways ;p

PPS I said All in all many times, idc, I like that expression, it works well for reviews, meow meow.