Girl as Jar is Just Plain Bad Plot
Or: I am not a Prize to Be Won
Was that a subtitle that gave me an excuse to link to Feminist Disney? You bet your ass.
So, I got into it a bit with the guys over at Beneath the Tangles about Inori’s role in Guilty Crown. This was awhile back, but my complaint remains the same: Her role in the plot is as a jar. I bring this up now because the most recent episode has elevated her from an unfortunate main character in Shu’s coming of age story into a full-blown plot token. And I think this angers me.
This Post Will Contain Spoilers for Guilty Crown
To catch all the non-watchers up to speed, the basic shape of the plot is as follows: Shu Ouma lives in Japan that exists under military dictatorship designed to contain a strange virus released on “Lost Christmas Eve” about five years prior. Due to a strange series of events, Shu comes into possession of something called the “Void Genome” which grants him a mysterious power that a terrorist group called Undertaker wants him to use to help liberate Japan. With me so far?
The power known as the “power of the king” allows him to use “voids” that exist inside of people younger than 17. These voids are objects that represent the deepest fears and inner desires of the person from whom they are drawn.
Which brings us to the problem with Inori. Like many of the characters in the show, she currently has a mishmash of interesting traits banging around: She’s well-trained in firearms, she’s a pop Idol, she’s bad at cooking. But she’s also 1. painfully quiet, and 2. her main use to the story is her way over-powered void.
We’ve had ample opportunity to learn why Shu likes her and see how he feels about her, but what we know of Inori is very little and most of it inferred. So, when she’s abducted at the end of the eleventh episode, the audience empathizes more with Shu’s plight: That Inori has been taken from him.
From where I sit, this development reinforces Inori’s primary role as a jar, less a leading lady and more a prop. True, there’s lots of interesting other plot-related chaff flying around, but Shu’s relationship with his father and the conflicts surrounding GHQ and the Undertakers were plenty interesting as it was. Moreover, the show now needs to walk a fine line if it wishes to provide good characterization to Inori and still close out its other threads (there is only so much time to devote to her versus Shu versus everyone else).
These characters were plenty interesting as they were. Reducing Inori to a plot token via her capture all but eliminates her potential development and all of her agency (although, maybe this whole thing is Magic Knights Rayearth?). This development is both unoriginal and unfair to the series female lead.
