Guilty Gear Strive and Tone

Choosing the right tone for a story is only half the battle; the other half is implementing it. Guilty Gear Strive upholds its commitment to ‘stupid fun’ by structuring each of its acts around a major spectacle, injecting the scenes between spectacles with humor, and downplaying the consequences of violence. The first component, structured spectacle, relies on Strive’s unique in-game viewing method. Strive delivers its story in eight discrete chunks, each of which is separated by a menu that gives viewers the chance to decide how many of its four-plus hours they want to view in one sitting. As a result of these divisions, the writers were able to anchor each section with a spectacle that delivers the promised chaotic excitement. These tentpole scenes range from the relatively sedate, like a demon using magic to hack the White House, to the totally absurd, like the White House taking flight and firing missiles at enemy planes. If an entire narrative was framed around a single one of these events, the writers would spend the rest of the story answering the questions raised in the aftermath. Strive’s evenly-spaced spectacles ensure that the audience doesn’t have time to linger on the logistics of demon hackers and flying buildings. By the time the viewer can realize the absurdity of what they’ve just seen, Strive is already onto the next event, which is that much more improbable than the one that came before. 

In the downtime between spectacles, Guilty Gear Strive maintains its gleeful tone by peppering the dialogue and action with humor. The majority of the cast retains a glib facade in the face of danger, shrugging off injuries with jokes and laughing at existential threats. The ironically-named protagonist Sol Badguy is a prime example of this phenomenon. He’s got a joke for every situation, whether it’s a low-stakes encounter with a bounty on the highway or a cataclysmic bout with an all-powerful guitar-witch. Strive often uses him as a straight man who can acknowledge the absurdity of the chaos around him without diminishing it. With a name like Sol Badguy, an outlandish backstory, and powers that let him tangle with Guilty Gear’s gods, Sol’s complaints about his surreal surroundings aren’t critical so much as they are affectionate. He’s an absurd man in an absurd world. Acknowledging that is his way of accepting it, as well as Strive’s way of accepting itself. 

The final way Guilty Gear Strive establishes its tone is by limiting and downplaying the consequences of violence. While most cast members have demonstrated their ability to eliminate enemies with minimal difficulty, they often choose to injure their opponents rather than kill. Even the antagonists are capable of mercy, as I-no the guitar-witch demonstrates in the prologue when she attacks Castle Illyria, resulting in thirty-two injuries and zero deaths. On the other hand, when the antagonists aren’t so merciful, the protagonists are always on hand to mitigate the damage. For example, when I-No’s partner, the demon Happy Chaos, blows up a tower full of civilians, the time-stopping Axl Low uses his abilities to spirit every potential victim to safety. The maneuver requires a ridiculous amount of effort on his part, yet it works because it fits with the theme, and by extension, the tone. It may be absurd for the heroes to be able to mitigate the worst effects of violence, but it’s the kind of absurdity that makes Guilty Gear Strive great.