Guilty Crown was an original Production IG work. That was kind of the oddity of it, to start. It was an obvious Code Geass send up with a touch of NGE, but with a lot of the early 2010s trappings. Technically, it's a PTSD Protagonist story. Realistically, it was some great visuals & amazing sound work put to what was a clearly "written at the last minute" amount of story. Given the entire plot of the series is in the major songs, it seems like they had an outline and an ending, then had to try to fill in 2 seasons. Ran out of money and ideas, so you end the first season on a break point/ready to take on the world... and then they shove everyone into a walled city and go all Xmen Eugenics in a school out of nowhere. Because anime writers cannot process not having a chunk of a series set in a school.
It also didn't help that only interesting characters are Hare, Dan and Segai. Everyone else has the personality of a cardboard box. They also killed Hare off at the wrong beat, so Shu can't even get a redemption arc from going full Khan on things. They just got bored of running a Darwinian Caste System and move the story onto something else. If you haven't seen the show, yes, it's that much whiplash.
Between Bakemonogatari and Guilty Crown, you pretty much have the genesis of the Utaite scene. Guilty Crown is a deeply influence piece of the proto-Vtuber scene, even if the series is absolutely trash.
I hadn't realized that Guilty Crown ran at the exact same time as Mirai Nikki (Future Diary). I'd forgotten that. Mirai is, also, absolute trash. But the original creator absolutely knew that and that's what makes it a much better show. Also, A+ ending.
