Summary
Guilty Gear Strive: Dual Rulers' 3D CGI animation captures the style of the franchise, overcoming common anime adaptation issues. SANZIGEN's unique approach to 3D animation may be a smart move, fitting in with Guilty Gear's current visual identity. The anime adaptation's simple, stylish animation matches the look of the video game, making for a success.
New teaser for Guilty Gear Strive: Dual Ruler shows 3D CGI animation that captures the style of the fighting game series' most recent entries. While faithfully adapting the look and feel of a video game is a risky proposition, Arc System Works' game has the advantage of having long since perfected the anime look. As a result, Dual Rulers has fewer hurdles to overcome in making its adaptation “look right.”
While there are plenty of incredible anime that use 3D in spectacular ways, series that use the technique often struggle to look right, whether due to low frame rates, lighting issues, or just not achieving that vague “realism.” But what would normally be a warning sign could turn out to be a smart move by SANZIGEN, the studio responsible for the Guilty Gear anime slated for release in 2025.
Thanks to recent installments familiarizing fans with the show's unique look, Dual Rulers' visual quirks can be seen as simply mimicking what the original did.
Guilty Gear's visuals are perfect for adaptation
Flat colors and computer graphics are not prohibited but expected
The Dual Rulers trailer revealed the main cast: Sol Badguy, Sin Kiske, and the new Unika, rendered in computer graphics. Most of the time, those words are a death knell for viewer interest, as they're seen as shorthand for low-quality art. Dual Rulers looks like it's continuing that pattern, with a low frame rate and a look that certainly doesn't compare to game-changing 3D anime like Trigun Stampede or the more recent Girls Band Cry. But in a twist, those decisions just make it look more accurate to today's Guilty Gear, judging by games like Xrd and Strive.
Anime adaptations of video games tend to be hit or miss, especially when the cost-cutting art makes the characters look and move nothing like the original. Arc System Works, meanwhile, has been working on Guilty Gear's cel-shaded animation since 2014 – not only has any controversy over the transition from sprites to 3D models long since died down, but the developers have also shown their characters moving much more like an animated series. With that precedent, SANZIGEN had reason to go with simpler, more stylized, slightly more disjointed animation that simply fits with Guilty Gear's current visual identity.
While a good Guilty Gear show would need more than just scripting, choreography, and music, it at least overcomes the visual barrier. The series has experimented with animation and spin-off manga in the past, but none of them have captured the look of the older games very well. This time around, though, Dual Rulers has none of that dissonance, and it really does look like the characters just stepped out of a copy of Strive. When it comes to adaptations, getting it right is the most important part, and Sinful Toys may be one of the better examples of this.