Guilty Gear/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Dizzy: Then...please be gentle, this is my first time...
Ky Kiske: Um...that's not very appropriate for the situation.

  • All There Is to Know About "The Crying Game": Bridget's gender is perhaps the reason some people stumbled upon the Guilty Gear series.
  • Alternate Character Interpretation
    • Sol is either a Marty Stu who's ridiculously powerful and full of manly attributes, or an interesting former scientist who became immortal, an atoner, and a Byronic Hero who's an Unwitting Pawn.
    • Either Ky's a one of a kind heroic character who gets significant character development as his idealism battles with reality, or a generic, self-righteous, blonde knight. Variations are plentiful whether you know his character well or not, which includes his workaholic cop life or his love for teacups.
    • Either Dizzy is a three year old trapped in a mature porn star's body or a symbolic character. She's a Half-Human Hybrid, has both demonic and angelic elements, either peaceful or destructive. Either way she's very, very vulnerable.
    • Jam is either a cute, strong and ambitious Genki Girl or a simple-minded bitch because of her flirting with Ky and a Shotacon for recruiting Bridget.
    • Thanks to Slayer's story in Accent Core Plus and his advice to Venom on not getting too attached to Millia, more than a few fans have latched onto the idea that Venom is bisexual or only gay for Zato, interpreting his attachment as harboring a love-hate complex for Millia instead of vengeance/jealousy taken to the point of obsession.
  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: Accent Core Plus is coming to Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, and arcades.
    • And now it's called R and has new balance changes, and Kliff and Justice are tournament legal.
  • Angel/Devil Shipping: Let's just say that the Axl/I-no pairing is really popular.
  • Anticlimax Boss: Gig.
  • Awesome Ego: Johnny.
  • Awesome Music: This doesn't need explaining. It even has its own page.
  • Best Known for the Fanservice: Notice how many times Bridget and Dizzy are mentioned?
  • Broken Base: Bridget declaring himself to be a girl at the end of his arcade mode on STRIVE caused immediate, huge fractures through all the spectrum of the GG fanbase. That is less to do with transsexualism and more to do with Bridget's backstory involving she being born male but forced to dress and act female because of local superstition of her village. Fans more to the left quickly made the link with the unfortunate implication Bridget had accepted her childhood abuse forced on her by society; others said ASW and fans supporting the change were invalidated the idea of men dressing like women by implicating they're transsexuals; the more conservative(!) parts of 4chan said it was outright anti-gay and transsexuals were "stealing" a character of their Yaoi fantasies.
  • Cargo Ship: The in-game galleries have some... interesting pictures of I-No and her guitar.
  • Complete Monster: I-No is a complete and utter bitch, she knows it, she LOVES it, she's proud of it:

    she loves torturing Dizzy. In Guilty Gear XX, she pushed her off the ship a thousand feet from the air, but that didn't make her happy. When she landed on the ground in pain, I-No beat her up while she amuses herself with her screaming.

    In the drama CDs, after befriending and flirting with a teenager Ky, she watched as Gears tear his body in Rome, and she left him there choking on his own blood. She was laughing in amusement. And we have to consider that Ky was fighting there to look for her, wanting to make sure that she's safe.

    She just likes to pick up fights when encountering characters in her story paths. Reason? She's a troll bitch.
  • Crazy Awesome:
  • Creepy Awesome: Bedman and Raven. Zappa too when he's being controlled by ghosts.
  • Die for Our Ship:
    • Dizzy, as she got in the way of the popular Sol/Ky pairing as of Overture.
    • Jam Kuradoberi gets hate from both the Sol/Ky and Ky/Dizzy shippers because of her flirting with Ky. Canonically, she has no chance in winning though.
    • Ky, too, as he is accused of stealing Dizzy away from Testament. He also recieves his share of hate from Dizzy fans who didn't want her to have a canon love interest.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse:
    • Faust/Dr. Baldhead.
    • Robo-Ky. Despite being being a Ky's evil robot twin, wearing the same clothes and even copying some of his moveset, Robo-Ky earned a distinct, separate identity and a lot of love.
    • Bridget, thanks to Memetic Mutation.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: I-No. See Evil Is Sexy below.
  • Even Better Sequel: While the quality of any individual entry is up for debate, there are a few that have really stood out as improvements.
    • XX from X was a real standout. While X itself improved on Missing Link in a large number of ways, it was both an early PS2 game, was still one of ArcSys's early fighting game efforts, their first one in 640x480, and it was a bit barebones as a release. XX featured a much larger roster for more depth of gameplay and accommodating more playstyles, even better music, a number of further mechanical improvements to gameplay, better balance, and a story that could actually be followed. XX is the game most older FGC players will first think of when thinking of Guilty Gear, and it was the game that really defined Guilty Gear in the zeitgeist, both in and out of Japan.
    • More recently, Xrd -REVELATOR- to -SIGN-. Sign was a near-revolutionary update to the way ArcSys made fighting games, and was an excellent game in its own right, but it still had some rough areas due to being the first iteration of the game with this technology. Revelator made a number of small and large improvements to the mechanics, introduced several absolute fan-favorites back to the playable roster, introduced a few other characters with very unique mechanics, advanced the Guilty Gear story in a neat way, and has been specifically noted for having one of the best and most comprehensive tutorial and training modes in the entire genre, from fun minigames to teach movement all the way up to giving advice and setups for specific character matches.
  • Evil Is Cool: Most of the villains are this, but especially Zato/Eddie (before his return as more neutral in Xrd), I-No, Raven and now Bedman.
  • Evil Is Sexy: I-No. And how!
  • Foe Yay: Sol and Ky.
    • Valentine with Sol; heck, she looks exactly like Sol's girlfriend in past, Aria, and has memories of her.
  • Game Breaker:
    • In the original games, Sol had a powerful combo that has been given the Fan Nickname of "the Dust Loop". It involved comboing certain moves together in such a way that the opponent would be locked in the corner. This is promptly followed by, as the name implies, a seemingly infinite loop with his Air Dust, resulting in a ridiculous number of hits, ending in a Volcanic Viper combo when they started to slip out of the loop. For Massive Damage. This was eventually toned down in later games and removed completely in Accent Core, though unfortunately, it came back in Accent Core Plus, but only for Order-Sol's EX mode, which is based off of his Guilty Gear 1 incarnation, but with added Reload stats.
    • Eddie. The top tier in the first edition of Guilty Gear XX was called "Eddie tier" for a reason.
    • Justice. As she is only in the console versions and is horribly unbalanced, she is banned from ALL tournaments along with Kliff and sometimes Robo-Ky. In an effort to revert this, however, Justice and Kliff are now properly balanced for the first time in the series in the Accent Core Plus R update. To wit: Justice can no longer dash in any capacity and can only double jump along with Michael Sword now being only one hit, although she gets a new Dragon Install-style Overdrive (Omega Shift) that powers her back up to her old self.
    • Zappa's Confusion Fu. Getting Raoh out is tough to do, but Zappa with Raoh is arguably the strongest character in the game, boasting superior strength, speed, and reach, and possessing a very powerful Overdrive.
    • In the first Guilty Gear, pick Millia, let her health drop below 50%, and spam her Iron Maiden Overdrive nonstop. The opponent has very little chance of getting close to you.
    • Ky in Slash, who was considered de facto top tier due to the biggest contender being the buff to his Stun Edges providing notable frame advantage on block, allowing him to apply ridiculous and easy-to-pull-off pressure like no other.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: Japan is destroyed in the backstory of Guilty Gear (and by destroyed, we mean it's a hole in the ocean). It wasn't clear exactly what had happened until Xrd though, and the 2011 earthquake/tsunami/possible threat of nuclear meltdown and mass radiation poisoning events that hit Japan felt a little on the nose...
  • Launcher of a Thousand Ships
  • Magnificent Bastard: That Man. And all that implies.
  • Marty Stu: Actually pulled off successfully with Sol Badguy, whose seiyuu is the game's creator himself, but still manages to be a well-rounded and likeable character, Stu-ness notwithstanding.
    • Justified by a number of flaws. Despite his Marty Stu characteristics, what Sol did was to spearhead the Gear Project and spent a hundred years trying to correct it, efforts in vain. Compared to Ky who has contributed greatly to mankind's victory in his teens, Sol seems utterly inferior. Sol was also not able to get revenge on That Man, and was defeated after he meets him. To boot, he's an Unwitting Pawn in That Man's plans.
  • Memetic Badass: Slayer.
  • Memetic Molesters:
  • Memetic Mutation:
  • Memetic Sex God: You may have heard this before, but: Everyone. Is gay. For Bridget. Unless you're a lesbian. Then, you're straight for Bridget.
    • Zato-1/Eddie. We understand you Venom.
  • Mind Game Ship: Millia and Zato's relationship. Did they really love each other but were only separated by different views or was it all a horribly screwed manipulative one-sided obsession?
  • Moe: May, Bridget, April, Dizzy and Elphelt.
    • Dizzy is probably the first and only Moe boss in fighting game history.
  • Most Annoying Sound: Zappa's tendency to babble constantly in battle.
  • Needs More Love: Fanny.
  • Never Live It Down: The entire franchise is never gonna live down introducing Bridget.
    • The fandom's not gonna let Johnny live down his accidental flirting with Bridget any time soon.
  • Polished Port: The PC port of Xrd is generally well done, and pretty well optimized.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: The turn button in Isuka. Many felt that it crippled an otherwise decent spin-off title.
  • So Bad It's Good: The Guilty Gear XX N.y/L.a vocals. The lyrics are out of character, barring the lyrics to "Awe of She", which is about getting away from the fighting. "Awe of She" is, of course, the theme of pacifist Dizzy.

Ky: "Oh no... I'm falling."

  • Suspiciously Similar Song: Given Ishiwatari's musical influences, it's no surprise.
  • That One Boss: When the AI controls I-No as a boss, she has the Megalomania attack, one version of which fills the screen with projectiles and if ONE so much as hits you, you're good as dead. Has reduced many inexperienced players to controller-chewing rage.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Overture, along with the shift to a mix of Dynasty Warriors-style Hack and Slash and an RTS. None of the original cast return save for Sol, Ky, and Dizzy (the latter in a cameo; That Man and Raven are also present and serve as bosses) and the series trademark, its rock music, is (mostly) traded in for orchestral pieces. Not helping matters was that it was only ported to Xbox 360, halving its audience.
  • Tier-Induced Scrappy: Millia. In the first Guilty Gear. Next to the Final Boss Justice, she was by far the cheapest character in the game, capable of throwing direction-changing projectiles and keeping you at hair's length. And her super involved firing a myriad of slow-moving, large, homing projectiles that guaranteed you could never get anywhere close to her. And if her health dropped below 50%, she could spam that move forever. It was very difficult to get close to her, and there she was even more dangerous. Thankfully, she's never come close to that level of cheese since then, as she no longer has the old super and her projectiles work much differently now. Plus, her Iron Maiden is now a completely different move that's now her Instant Kill instead. Millia in X was still a top pick in tournaments.
  • Toy Ship: Bridget and May (kinda subverted courtesy of May being 22).
  • The Unexpected: When Befman's silhouette was first revealed on the Xrd website, there were all sorts of wild theories on who it was, ranging from a returning character like Robo-Ky to a boss character. Instead, we got Bedman.
    • Like Bedman before her, Jack-O was revealed through a silhouette, the most common theory was her being Bridget. Instead, we now have That Man's third servant (who had been seen briefly previously, heavily-robed) as a fighter.
    • Absolutely no hints were given at all that Answer would become a playable character. He even beat out fan-favorite NPCs like President Gabriel.
  • Unfortunate Implications: Potemkin, a black man who was a former slave...
  • Viewer Gender Confusion: Justice.
  • Villain Sue: That Man. Not only is he stronger than pretty much all of the cast, including Sol in his full Dragon Install form, but everything has been going just as planned for him thus far, and he can access the Backyard with little to no difficulty. And unlike Terumi, That Man has yet to suffer ANY type of defeat.
  • The Woobie: A.B.A. Poor kid just wants a friend.
    • Dizzy in Guilty Gear X. She was driven away from her village when she began to grow wings and a tail, separated from her beloved foster parents and was forced to live in a cave. It Got Worse though, as humans were abusing her. She does her best to defend herself without hurting anyone seriously. She ran to the grove and lived there alone. She wanted friends. In the drama CDs, she was able to make friends with a blind girl named Josephine; however, when her eyes got healed, she was horrified to see Dizzy and called her a monster. It Got Worse again when the UN issued a very huge bounty on her causing almost every member of the Guilty Gear X cast to hunt her down. What's her reaction?

Stay away! I don't want to hurt anyone!

    • Testament. In the drama CDs, we learned that he was once a very king young man who just wanted to make his father proud. Sadly, his desperation pushed him to undergo Gear conversion and that resulted into his lost of humanity. He hated and killed a lot of humans and even contributed to his father's demise. This is even sadder when you learn that Testament actually loved children and has a taken in orphans in the past. He continues on atoning for his mistakes.
    • Jerkass Woobie: While Zato was an assassin and a really vain and selfish one at that, the drama CDs did show he actually cared for his underlings and especially Millia (even if he eventually got a bit strange with that), making the knowledge that he's eventually consumed, driven insane, and killed by his shadow a bit hard to take. Even Eddie, the shadow in question who goes out of his way to taunt the people who cared about Zato and spend every game attacking the rest of the cast, constantly shows that he's desperate for a host because he's afraid of death and taunts those people in order to be remembered.
  • Woolseyism: Xrd's English translations for lines from Slayer's haiku are pretty creative and funny.
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