Shu Ouma holding Inori Yuzuriha with blue Void energy in Guilty Crown key art

Guilty Crown

2011anime seriesclassic

Published August 26, 2026

Guilty Crown is a 22-episode Japanese mecha anime that aired on Fuji TV from October 2011 through March 2012, directed by Tetsurō Araki at Production I.G. The series drew a devoted online fandom despite polarizing reviews, turning into a fixture on anime forums, fan art hubs, and lore wikis throughout the 2010s.

anime manga fandom discourse memes otaku culture memes fandom shipping memes early 2010s memes

Overview

Set in a near-future Tokyo, Guilty Crown follows a young protagonist caught in the fallout of a virus outbreak, in a world Urban Dictionary summed up as 'a mecha anime set in 2039 about some crystal virus' with an 'evil government' and romance6. Ratings capture the split reception: a 7.89 average on MyAnimeList1 and a 7.6 on IMDb3, scores fans commonly read as a strong first half undercut by a messy back half. Rebel leader Gai Tsutsugami is a fan-favorite character often defended online as underrated6.

Fan activity settles into a few habits: character shipping, screencap threads, and 'wasted potential' postmortems that still turn up in anime discussion. Anime News Network logged the series with a very good aggregate user vote2, while the fan-run Guilty Crown Wiki grew past 100 lore entries within three years of launch9.

Origin & Background

Platform
Fuji TV (broadcast) / online anime communities (fandom spread)
Key People
Tetsurō Araki
Date
2011

The anime premiered October 13, 2011 on Fuji TV and ran 22 episodes through March 22, 2012, directed by Tetsurō Araki at Production I.G5. English-speaking fans latched on immediately; a TVtropes page went up the same day as the premiere4. Yōsuke Miyagi and illustrator Shion Mizuki launched a manga adaptation in Monthly Shōnen Gangan a month later, running through December 2013 across seven volumes, with a spin-off novel and visual novel arriving in 20125.

How It Spread

Fan traffic clustered on the usual anime spaces. Threads ran on Crunchyroll, Tumblr, 4chan's /a/ board, and AnimeSuki, with the MyAnimeList entry serving as the main hub for score debates1. Fan-art volume backs the reach: DeviantArt returned more than 12,000 hits for the title7, and Pixiv topped 5,500 uploads8.

The show's official Facebook page pulled past 87,000 likes by May 2015, roughly three years after the finale aired5. tv.com user scores landed at 7.9, in line with the anime's broadly positive but not glowing reception10. Even a decade on, the Guilty Crown Wiki keeps steady traffic as new viewers work through the back catalog9.

Frequently Asked Questions