Guilty Crown - Final Impressions

In which a whole lot of stuff happens and only some of it is explained.

I won't go into all the nitty gritty details, but basically, Mana is reborn and the apocalypse begins.  There are battles going on everywhere (Ayase vs. Daryl, Haruka vs. Koudou, Tsugumi vs. Kenji), but the main battle is, of course, Gai vs. Shu.

Long story short, the good guys manage to defeat the bad guys.  Shu gets a bit of help from Inori, whose spirit (it seems) is trapped in a crystal flower.
 

Now, let's fast forward to Gai's explanation, which seems like it happens in an alternate reality.  Daath, the will of natural selection, wouldn't let Mana die because she was Eve.  The only way to save Mana was to let her fulfill her role, so Gai assumed the role of the demon king in order to bring about the apocalypse to free her.

When Gai and Mana are finally free, Shu decides to sacrifice himself along with Inori, who is already dying.  Since his Void has the ability to take on the virus, he does so while at the same time giving back the Voids he borrowed in order to save everyone.  Inori has one more move up her sleeve, which is to sacrifice herself instead to save Shu.

Flash forward into the future a few years, and we have Souta, Yahiro, Kanon, Ayase, and Tsugumi waiting for Shu to arrive at a party to celebrate Hare's birthday.  When he finally shows up, he does so with a cane.

At this point, there wasn't much Guilty Crown could do to redeem its absurd and twisted story.  So, Gai decided to play the bad guy to save Mana?  Even though that meant killing, betraying, and sacrificing innocent people?  Oh, ok.  Koudou reveals that the only reason why he did all of this was to "one up" Kurosu?  Then he commits suicide by injecting himself with the virus?  Oh, ok.  Inori was, for some reason, blind at the end?  And then Shu was somehow blinded as well?  Oh, ok.  This really is a shame, since Guilty Crown could have been so much more.  It certainly had beautiful animation.  And the music?  It was absolutely gorgeous.  The plot, unfortunately, was laughable and made me want to face palm every single episode.  Oh well.  At least I can say I sat through all 22 episodes.  Onward to the spring season!