Guilty Gear Strive: Dual Rulers has come to an end, but I have been left feeling empty. A friend of mine described the series in a way I found perfectly succinct: jingling keys. There are hints of substance there, and at times truly beautiful artistic talent shown on display, but it all came together to mean very little. The Gear fan in me got threw it because whenever I was getting bored, Sol Badguy did a move from the games or I could gasp in astonishment at a recognizable face from the game appearing (I never expected Dr. Paradigm to show up, but boy did it make me happy). There are even hints at real moments of tension and character development. But for me it just… doesn’t pull itself through.

So, I thought that I’d try my hand at brainstorming a version that I would enjoy. I would never call this ‘fixing’; fixing someone else’s work feels too heinous of an act, especially when the work in question is so obviously a product of love by creators who are a hell of a lot more talented than I. If I had to guess, Dual rulers was made in the following environment: producers through a bunch of artists in a room and gave them a small pouch of money, only for the artists to figure out that none of them had a lick of writing experience. That’s all probably incorrect, though it’s what the series feels like. It truly is an 8 episode backstory for Unika, who came out just days after the episode dropped. She’s fun, by the way. Unga bunga Ky at his finest.

Here are the limitations I’m setting for myself. I’ll plan around an 8 episode series, which I think is much too short for what the goal of it all seems to be: you just can’t introduce a full self-contained story AND the basic gist required to really get Guilty Gear for a non-fan in 8 episodes. I’ll also try and keep the big plot points as they exist here, and not erase Nerville Hammer or any other main character. I’m also mainly going with Guilty Gear as represented in the show, without trying to bring in many elements from the greater Guilty Gear repository. For one, I’m aware of the main points of everything, but don’t intrinsically understand every little detail. I’d also like to stick as close to Dual Rulers as it exists. I also won’t be commenting too much on the cinematographic side of the piece. I chalk most of that up to budget, but I actually do like some of the decisions made there. There are a ton of beautiful still frame images which feel uniquely fighting game-esque, and heaven.png is just hilarious.

Everything being said, there are spoilers ahead.

Preamble out of the way, what are we attempting to change? What should the outcome of it all be? Here’s what I think come out at the other end of this blogpost:

Dual Rulers as written by Khajeet now starts with a completely cold open. The entire first two episodes are dedicated towards Unika in the future. There are two main reasons:

Most of the tension is going to come from the audience knowing what the stakes could actually be. The world in which the gears reactivate and destroy themselves and humanity. Nerville get’s introduced here instead of present day Nerville, which will hopefully give the audience more to work with and make the big twist in episode 5, that Future Nerville is actually only planning to be a god, hit a little more. The same basic gist should occur: Nerville has infected Dizzy with the virus, causing her to send out the self-destruct order and bringing about the second crusade.

Unika won’t know this part, but she’ll be operating in the aftermath. Saving people from still-existing corrupted gears and contributing to her father’s plan. She of course will be unaware of what his true goals are, though on-screen he should be suspicious as all hell. I also want her meeting old Sol. In this timeline, Sol has to shoot Sin to protect others, as he also gets affected by the virus through Dizzy, or maybe gets infected as a back-up plan. Either way, something I really wish happened is that we got the consequences of Sol shooting Sin. This was a part of the show that had emotional resonance to be as a Guilty Gear fan, and I was desperately wanting something to come out of it, only for Sin to pop back up 5 minutes later. Old Sol is dejected and a failure, living out his final days as a human unable to cope with his own sin (pun intended). We also should see some existing character’s in their older ages fighting but inevitably losing. Let’s see Baiken, Johnny, Anji, all humans meeting their demise like the rest of them.

Finally, these two episodes of cold-open must feature Axl Low. This will lead to change 4. The same thing that that happens in episode 6’s flash-forward happens here, with Axl witnessing Dizzy vs Sin and then time-jumping into the future to meet Nerville. Perhaps we make it more ambiguous here that Nerville is the cause of the virus, just for tensions sake. Either way, we end with Unika jumping back in time and kicking into the main plotline.

I like Sin. He’s a fun character, existing as a standard naruto/luffy-esque character. I don’t like him in the driver’s seat here. I don’t really think he needs an arc. In my cut, Sin serves as the one who gives Unika hope and confidence. He’s sort of a hungry, stupid Kamina from TTGL. I also want him to keep some of his scenes with Sol, though. They can be short and sweet.

Here, we start with Sin. I quite like the bear gag, and it’ll serve as a nice bit of relief. We can’t stay there for too long, though. There’s a wedding to be had.

The wedding goes pretty similarly to how it happens in episode 1. The major change will be in the cause of the Ky-Dizzy freezing gimmick. Instead of them doing it on purpose, it is actually caused by Unika. Of course, she intends to kill them— except her pesky subconscious does the unexpected and freezes the pair. We’ll get some hints at why because Sin and Unika will have their little memory-thing happen when they clash, the same thing that happens in their battle later on.

The big reason for this change is that it holds some tension that immediately gets erased in the original cut when Sol tells Sin that they did it to themselves. Now, Sin has two goals going forward:

The next 2 episodes, 4 and 5, will have Unika steal the keycard and have the Sin/Unika duel . It’s extremely tight, but I think we fit it in. We also introduce Baiken and Bridget, same as in the show. Perhaps Unika gets a small moment in which she sees Bridget protecting the innocent and has a small moment of introspection which gets interrupted by a 5 year old and a flagpole.

Episode 6 needs to have the aftermath of Sin/Unika and the Bridget/Unika scene. In my first brainstorms, I was actually thinking about switching Bridget out for Testament, who I felt could play better as a mentor figure. I changed my mind for a few reasons:

Nerville’s mansion also gets shoved in this episode by the way, and some of the other stuff. The big changes at the mansion will be the Unika has to save Sin from Sol’s bullet, remembering future Sol. That serves as her big betrayal of her father, for which he tries to kill her.

For more of the side content happening here, Elphelt also gets her scenes in these 3 episodes, maybe shortened,Dr. Paradigm gets relegated more to a cameo role(unfortunately), and Jack-O does her stuff. Jack-O actually gets one more little contribution to the plot. She gets to tie Axl back into all of this.

There’s an Axl subplot now. Axl is in custody of Future Nerville, for his evil plans. Jack-O, perhaps detecting some timey-wimey nonsense, hires Johnny to try and find him. Eventually, this will culminate with Johnny, Bridget, Baiken working together to save him during the final battle. It gives them something to do while all of the gears/valentines/Sol’s fight the cosmic-horror battle. Speaking of that battle…

There aren’t actually many changes here. Episodes 7 and 8 condense what happens in the final 3 episodes of the original cut. The big change is that Unika will watch Bridget fall in person more towards the end, which inspires her Super-Unika form as seen in the video game. Coincidently, this form also sends out a wave of magic that frees Ky and Dizzy from their icy prison. Eh, it’s the best I got.

I also hope shortening the episode means that the artists don’t have to take the huge budget-saving measures they had to take, and we can get the sick panorama shot, everyone using their supers, and the creepy Cosmic-Body horror shit that all worked so well. I’m mixed on whether Unika kills Nerville or Sin does with the Sol Bullet, either or should work.

Then, we can get credits and finish the marriage in an epilogue, plus Sin and Unika having their goodbyes; I would also put Bridget at the periphery of the scene, perhaps Unika walks towards her in the end to show us what happens between the anime and the game. Dizzy hugging Sol has to happen as well, because damn do I love seeing my boy Frederick Bulsara get some love.

That’s all there is to it. I want to end this post by thanking the original creatives behind Dual Rulers. Though I see things in a different way, it is obvious that there was a lot of love put into this anime.

Also, Thank you Lord Daisuke. I don’t know how much involvement he had in the actual production of the anime, but he created a franchise and characters so great and lovable that I wrote this fan-fic type of post. God damn, isn’t Guilty Gear awesome?