Guilty Gears Strive: Dual Rulers Episode 1 Review

What to Expect 

In the future, magic has become predominant over science. Bio-weapons known as Gears are engaged in a conflict with humans. 

Ky Kiske – the guardian of humanity and Dizzy, who has the blood of Gear King, and whose automatic Defense system – Necro and Undine will fight till death to defend her, engage in multiple battles. Ky wanted to save Dizzy’s humanity but her defense system defied her will and defeated Ky. Their second battle led to him rescuing her and in the third, they fell in love. Ky became the king of the land and Dizzy stopped losing control of her defense system. Their son, Sin Kiske was born with the blood of a Gear. 

“Guilty Gear Strive: Dual Rulers” starts off with an enigmatic opening theme introducing most of their important characters and a few of their traits that we will get to see during the show. 

The first episode, titled Ceremony, begins with Sol Badguy (former member of the Sacred Order of Holy Knights, also Sin’s mentor and adoptive father) and Sin preparing for a battle against… a bear. There seems to be an ongoing battle against the nature of a being to be determined by their birth, whether human or otherwise. Years after the Crusade, Ky, once a guardian of humanity was now getting married to one of the humanity’s biggest enemies has been the topic of discussion among many. Even as the King, he had to wait for years to get married to Dizzy. This seemed to be a parallel portrayal of how humans are divided by their caste, creed, gender and whatnot but with love, even the greatest of enemies can be united.  

A fight breaks down at the wedding ceremony between Ky and an unexpected guest, Unika (who honestly is dressed a bit like Mikasa Ackerman). Unika tries to push Dizzy into a rampage to showcase to the world how dangerous Gears still are. In order to save Dizzy, Ky performs a spell to contain her potential rampage. Sin and Johnny, Dizzy’s former guardian, fight Unika and she ends up flying away from the scene of the battle. At the end, Ky and Dizzy are frozen in an indestructible barrier casted by Ky himself. Sin and Sol are in search of Unika to understand her reasons behind the attack.  

The episode ends with the entrance of Baiken, who seems to be a bounty hunter in search of Unika.  

Verdict

The episode, in its essence, wanted to display the fact that it doesn’t matter how far into the future we venture. Humans will always be humans. We will be divided by what we don’t understand and by the differences that one has with another. Overall, the episode seemed a bit fast-paced with the character introductions and introduced more than 10 characters that seem to play some sort of a pivotal role to the overall arc. The introductions could have been a bit slower for the viewers not familiar with the video game series to form a rapport. A bit more depth could have been built to the story of Ky and Dizzy. Sin has been introduced as a fun-loving character who seems to have a huge amount of power but is not permitted by his adoptive father to use them just anywhere. His character seems to be a bit of a mix of family-loving, infused with dim-wittedness. From the looks of it, he will be the protagonist or one of the protagonists of the series but the background that sets him up to take up the mantle seemed a bit rushed.