(Read the full episode below, or click here for the list of other episodes)
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(The following is a re-upload of my original tumblr post. I’ve altered it in the following ways: fixed typos/grammar/punctuation, made image edits easier to read, clarified confusing sentences, streamlined extraneous content, and added stickers to nude scenes to comply with Blogspot policies. The rest of the original madness is preserved as-is.)
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Today as I’m posting this, it’s Palm Sunday. The day in the Jesus story when he rode into Jerusalem upon a humble ass.
Not what I meant, Symphogear.
Good grief, can I make it through one episode without a reference to Hibiki’s ass?
The point is, in Jesus’s story, today marks only a few days before he’s fated to die. Similarly, the Hamster-Jesus of our story inches closer and closer to her pre-ordained death. We only have three episodes left in the season. So, that prologue from the first episode, where Miku visits Hibiki’s grave, will happen quite soon indeed.
The climax of the season is already in full swing. Chris finally gave up her old hatred of the world, resigned herself to being a good guy despite the struggle it will bring her, and joined Hibiki and Tsubasa in defeating a huge Noise attack at the Tokyo Sky Tower.
Their triumph was spoiled pretty quickly, as the episode ended with a panicked call from Miku saying home base was under attack from within.
We know Finé’s been angling to steal Durandal, the magical sword Relic, from the base for quite some time. Also, we found out last episode she’s a practitioner of the “black arts”, which makes me even more nervous for Miku and the others at the music academy. Finé might use them as hostages to get the Symphogear wielders to cooperate with her evil plan. Worse, she might intend to, like, harness the students’ life energy or sacrifice them to the black arts as part of building her Kadingir.
I’m telling you, if Finé lays one finger on Miku, even someone as merciful as Hamster might not be able to stop herself from kicking Finé’s ass.
Really though, everyone has a claim on Finé. Chris has a huge score to settle with her due to the prolonged abuse and manipulation Chris endured at her hands. Tsubasa has a pretty severe beef with her too, considering Finé orchestrated the Noise attack on the concert two years ago that caused Kanade’s death. On Snoop Oni and the other agents’ end, Finé has been masquerading as their friend for years while secretly working to betray them.
Finé is the Regina George of this show.
We’ll have to gird ourselves and see just how many more people she manages to personally victimize before she’s hit by a bus defeated by our heroes.
The episode opens with a battle scene. Huge Noise attack the music academy above the base and spew out hordes of smaller Noise. Students run screaming for shelter, while soldiers try to hold the monsters off.
Their guns aren’t any use. Only a Symphogear can defeat Noise, and currently our three Symphogear wielders are on the other side of the city at Sky Tower. Doesn’t seem like any of the magical girls has a Hearthstone or a Scroll of Town Portal or even an HM02 to Fly back to base, so these soldiers are pretty much up a creek.
Miku is one of the few to keep a level head in this chaos. She helps the soldiers evacuate her fellow students to the underground shelters. I don’t know how much good that will do, though. The good guys don’t know it yet, but being down there probably isn’t any safer than being up here, since Finé is no doubt already somewhere underground, on her way to Durandal.
Oh look, it’s that “this isn’t an anime” girl. Is she going to dent the fourth wall once again?
Are you kidding me with this girl? Her home is under siege by otherworldly monsters, she must leave behind all her possessions and flee to a shelter before the monsters catch her, and she still takes a moment to reassure herself that this is not in fact an anime.
This girl and Miku’s other friends beg Miku to come hide in the shelter with them instead of staying up here where it’s dangerous. But, Miku wants to rack up some Charisma points, so she refuses in favor of making sure everyone else gets out safely.
We’re treated to a truly family-friendly scene of one of the soldiers being impaled through the chest and then agonizingly disintegrating into dust in slow-motion right in front of the screaming schoolgirls, and then the OP tramples through.
Shit, Palm Sunday is already turning out pretty vicious. I want to turn my humble ass right around and ride back up the Mount of Olives.
After the OP, we – WAIT NEW OP!
Okay, not new, but there’s one significant change:
Chris joined the other girls for the Our Show’s Stars Are Naked Among The Stars scene! She’s officially part of the clan now!
All right, now after the OP, we see Miku running through the school’s empty halls, calling out for anyone who may not have made it to the shelters.
Miku’s horrified by all this destruction. Not because the school is her home or because she’s in danger of getting killed by monsters right now, but because it’s Hibiki’s home that Hibiki’s been fighting so hard to protect.
Oh Miku, precious little green garden gnome.
You’re the place Hibiki is coming back to.
The Noise could raze every last inch of this academy and Hibiki wouldn’t care as long as the people survived, especially you.
These two are so in love it makes my chest clench just watching it.
Three Noise crash through the window toward Miku. That brown-haired agent guy, who’s so normal-looking and nondescript that I never bother using his name, dashes onto the scene just in time to tackle Miku out of the way of the attack.
Uh.
“Wait, honey, it’s not what it looks like!”
Brown-haired guy and Miku can’t Fuck That Noise, since they have no Symphogears, so their only choice is to haul ass. They just barely make it to an elevator and head down to base-level to escape the Noise. Miku lets out a gasp of relief as they descend, but good grief neither she nor this guy has any idea of the Topless fuckery awaiting them below.
Doesn’t look like Finé has struck the base just yet, however. Snoop Oni from the command room calls brown-haired guy on the phone as he and Miku come down. He tells Snoop Oni that casualties have been minimized thanks to the evacuation efforts of Miku and others, but the school’s taking heavy damage. He also says:
Oh? Do tell.
Before he can share what he discovered about Kadingir, something smashes through the roof of his and Miku’s elevator and cuts off the call.
Hey, at least she’s wearing pants this time.
While Miku watches helplessly, Finé in her butterfly-looking Nehushtan armor throttles brown-haired guy and asks how he figured out Kadingir. He tells her he suspects that Kadingir, the “Tower to Heaven”, is actually an underground tower.
…What? Why would you build something underground if your goal is to reach heaven?
Hang on, I wasn’t paying attention to the title card earlier during the battle scene:
“Shoot the Moon”? Is the underground Kadingir… a launch shaft?
Is Finé literally going to catapult herself up to heaven like one of those old-timey circus cannons?
Brown-haired guy says there’s another piece to this whole Kadingir thing, which we viewers can guess involves Hibiki and/or Durandal, but the elevator arrives at base-level before he can tell us more.
He escapes Finé’s Darth Vader throat-grip and gets his pistol out. He lands three bullets right on her exposed breast.
His marksmanship does no good. Nehushtan protects Finé, even the parts of her body it doesn’t physically cover. His bullets fall off her harmlessly. Wow, I’ve seen plenty of impractical female fantasy armor suits before, but this takes the cake. Exposing a lot of skin works, apparently.
Can only an intact Relic like Nehushtan block a bullet? Or can the other girls’ Gear do this? So far, we’ve only seen Hibiki, Tsubasa, Chris, and Kanade take wounds from magic-related stuff like the Noise, other Gears, and in Kanade and Tsubasa’s case, their own Climax Songs. I don’t think we’ve yet seen our magical girls just get shot at with a normal gun.
Welp, I’m sure we’ll find out eventually. They’re lesbians, so one of them is bound to get hit by a stray bullet at some point.
Finé wraps the guy up in one of Nehushtan’s spiky purple shoulder-whip thingies. As his chest is slowly crushed, he forces out a “Run!” to Miku.
Look at the terror on her face. I can’t imagine what must be going through her head while she watches this unfold. Were I in her situation, I’d shit myself. I’d run screaming. I’d lose my mind and just stand there a quivering mess.
Miku does none of these things.
Miku runs up to Finé and shoulder-checks her like a goddamn hockey player.
That was magnificent! Even though Miku already demonstrated how brave she is when faced with monsters, she far and away outdid herself right now, and I am grinning at my screen in delight.
I like this, I like seeing our non-magical characters like Miku and brown-haired guy stick up for themselves and do their best to fight the villain even if they can’t possibly defeat her. That theme originally given to us by Kanade in the first episode, the theme of Don’t Give Up On Life, of ordinary people participating in their own salvation by refusing to just sit around and wait for the heroes to save them, and instead fight for what they want to protect… That theme has been ringing strong throughout the series. Points for thematic cohesiveness, Symphogear.
Of course, this shoulder-check doesn’t actually do anything to the armored Finé, but that’s not the point. Miku is still the bravest little toaster I ever did see.
Finé drops the now-unconscious guy and turns her claws on Miku.
Miku doesn’t understand what Finé means by “used” her. Finé draws in uncomfortably close, strokes Miku’s lips in classic sleazy villain style, and tells the terrified girl that the whole reason the base was built beneath the music academy was so the agency could use students like her as test subjects.
Finé reveals that all the music and singing the students practice every day fueled the agency’s experiments, so they could study the effect those sounds had on Relics. The agency even flaunted Tsubasa, without Tsubasa’s knowledge, exploiting the fact that having a famous idol at the school would draw even more musically-inclined girls there, just like Hibiki was drawn.
Whoa.
My brain is crumpling right now, and not just because of the whole lip-tugging thing.
I always assumed the base was beneath the surface of the music school for convenience. So that our heroes could still be normal schoolgirls and attend school nearby, while simultaneously having the direct metaphor of hiding their magic “beneath the surface”. Attending a musical school also ties in with the whole musical theme of this show.
It never occurred to me the location might be plot-relevant, because since when does stuff like school location matter in a magical girl anime? (Other than Utena, but it’s been over a decade since I first watched that masterpiece and I still don’t fully understand it, so I dunno.) Magical girls go to school, they just do. Symphogear slid this glaringly-obvious-in-retrospect plot point right under my nose without me suspecting a thing. I’m not sure if that makes me slow or the anime clever, but Symphogear has done enough right that I’ll trust it’s the latter option.
(Also, damn, I thought Finé would be the one to harvest life energy from the students for her plans, but it seems the good guys kind of already were?)
Finé leaves Miku behind with a contemptuous laugh. Miku apparently hasn’t met her courage quota for the day, because she’s not letting that asshole just walk away.
Miku says that even if Finé is telling the truth that the agency has done questionable things, Miku knows the people of the agency are still good at heart and are doing their best to save others. Just like her Hibiki is. Miku believes in them, and she believes in Hibiki.
Finé doesn’t take kindly to Miku’s defiance.
It seems strange that Finé turns to anger so suddenly, when a moment ago she was nothing but contemptuous and didn’t feel threatened by Miku at all. But... I think I get why what Miku says hits Finé so hard.
Finé was disillusioned years ago. She’s lost hope. She believes humans are wretched, the world is painful, and it deserves to be completely destroyed so she can butterfly-metamorphose it into something else.
So, after revealing that Miku was used by people she trusted, after sharing the same shitty truths about human beings which caused Finé to lose hope years ago, Finé expects Miku to become broken and hopeless, just like Finé did.
And Miku doesn’t. Even knowing how awful the world can be, Miku still believes in good, she still believes in love, and she still believes she can make a difference.
And that pisses Finé the hell off.
How dare you say this to me, little girl. Look at you, look how pitifully weak you are, you’re a teenage girl with no powers and no way to defend yourself from the horrors of this world. Acknowledge your own powerlessness and be driven to hatred by it, as I was. How dare you be stronger of heart than I was.
How dare you Not Give Up On Life like I did.
I just slammed my fist on my desk.
YOU DUN FUCKED UP NOW, TOPLESS
Wouldn’t those sharp claws on Finé’s gauntlet frickin shred Miku’s cheek? Those were two forceful slaps, and then a throttle and a throw-to-the-floor. Finé leaves Miku in a pile on the floor and moves to unseal Durandal’s access vault. Brown-haired guy gets back up and tries to stop her from reaching it.
She coils her whips like snakes and readies a killing strike.
Snoop Oni does his Earth-bending thing right through the ceiling and lands between Finé and brown-haired guy.
I don’t know how slightly-larger fists will be any more effective than the other guy’s fists, but hey, A+ for bravado and a good entrance.
Snoop Oni says he’s known for a little while that the woman he knew as Ryouko was secretly a traitor.
Uh, okay man, but you still left your base entirely undefended by sending all three of your Symphogears out to battle, and now the villain is right where she wants to be and you have nothing but your bare hands to fight her with.
Good job, I guess…? Yeah, you totally got her…
HOLY SHIT YOU TOTALLY GOT HER
Finé claws back up to her feet and asks how in the fuckberries – she doesn’t put it quite that way – Snoop Oni blocked an attack from an intact Relic. Even normal Relics are super powerful, and Nehushtan is much stronger than those of the other girls.
His answer?
It really was just watching all those Bruce Lee movies that made him this strong.
Finé figures he’s still a mere human though, so she can use her other Relic, the Staff of Solomon, to summon Noise like we’ve seen her do before, and they can just eat him for her. Before she manages to do that, he kicks the Staff out of her hand and goes in for another crushing punch.
As Snoop Oni closes in, she pulls her fake Ryouko persona back on in an instant. Even her eyes change shape from Finé’s sharp tsurime eyes to Ryouko’s big round tareme ones. She calls out pleadingly to him, even adding the affectionate “-kun” they used to tease each other with when they were friends.
That one second of hesitation is all Finé needs.
Oh shit.
Do we have our first casualty of the climax? (Scarier still, will there be more casualties?)
Thank goodness, this strike somehow doesn’t kill Snoop Oni. He lies bleeding on the floor while Miku and brown-haired guy can do nothing. Finé taunts him that she won’t kill him. She wants him to stay alive to suffer some more and witness her Glorious Plan come to fruition, whatever it is.
She leaves the three of them, enters Durandal’s vault, and seals the door behind her.
Miku and brown-haired guy drag Snoop Oni back up to the command room. They tell the other agents that Ryouko’s a traitor and she’s trying to snatch Durandal out from under them. Miku now makes that panicked phone call from last episode’s cliffhanger, the one to Hibiki and the other Symphogear wielders to tell them the school’s under attack.
It’s not in time. Before anyone can stop Finé, she activates Durandal. She also haxx0rs the command room’s computers from Durandal’s vault, seeing as how she designed all the tech in this base anyway, so she has everyone right in the palm of her clawed hand. The good guys lose their electricity and controls, also cutting short Miku’s call to Hibiki.
Miku and the rest of the agents are now locked underground, unarmed, in the dark, with a super-powered killer in their base and Noise attacking the ground above, and can only wait and hope the call to the three wielders made it through.
We cut to Hibiki, Tsubasa, and Chris some time later as they arrive at the school together. They find the place empty and in ruins. The Noise are nowhere in sight, but neither are any survivors. The only person the three girls see is…
Look at Tsubasa’s face when she realizes Chris knew who Finé was beforehand and could’ve warned them about the betrayal if she wanted.
Ryouko gives them a classic Evil Laugh.
She then transforms back into her Finé appearance.
Let me get this straight…
Finé left Durandal’s vault, traveled all the way up the elevator shaft and back to ground level, climbed atop one of the ruined school buildings, stood up there for who knows how long waiting for the Symphogear wielders to make their way back to base, dismissed her Nehushtan armor, put on her old blood-stained doctor’s outfit and lab coat and even her pink sandals, changed her hair color, wrapped all that massive hair up in a bun and clipped her trademark butterfly pin onto it, and finally put her glasses back on…
…all so she could take everything off again for a dramatic reveal to the three girls, one of whom already knew?
That’s some CSI: Miami level of drama queen-ness right there.
Back beneath the base, Miku and the agents creep through the dark corridors. I’m not sure if they’re trying to find a way out, make their way to the shelters where the students are, or inspect the vault to see how much damage Finé did, but they’re all pretty despondent about how badly they got betrayed.
They now know what awful things Ryouko did and how she was probably behind older disasters too, like the Relic Ichaival’s theft ten years ago. But, Snoop Oni, even as he grunts in pain from Finé’s impale-wound and stumbles along being half-carried by the others, can’t make himself believe the entire time Ryouko worked with them was a lie. He wants to believe there’s some good left in her.
That’s why he hesitated when she called out to him in their fight. For all the good that did him. He knew offering mercy was a risk. Being good is a risk. He chooses to be good, anyway.
Speaking of believing in the good in people, we cut back to Finé and the Symphogear girls. Hamster is having the hardest time of them all in understanding Ryouko’s betrayal.
Ughh. We knew this would happen. We knew Hibiki’s Rebirth-Savior archetype who believes the best in people but is still brought down by betrayal would happen, we knew this was coming, but it still hurts to see her reaction.
It’s a shock to Hibiki’s core beliefs to see that despite her faith in others, there really are people out there who aren’t as good at heart as she is. But, even after such a deep-stabbing betrayal, I don’t think Hibiki will lose hope permanently. It’s who she is, both as a Rebirth-Savior figure and as Hibiki herself, to still believe the best in people. She won’t Give Up On Life.
Hibiki asks what happened to the real Ryouko, if she ever existed. Finé replies the real Ryouko’s mind was broken 12 years ago, when Finé took control of her body.
Our villain finally reveals her backstory. Finé was a priestess of the ancient civilization that created Relics. Apparently, this civilization required its priestesses to wear outfits somehow even more revealing than Nehushtan.
Finé says she laced her consciousness into her genes, so that if any of her descendants encountered an activated Relic, Finé would awaken and possess them.
So, the real Ryouko was doomed before she was even born, just by who her ancestors happened to be? Damn, that’s a rough deal.
I suppose it’s too much to ask that the real Ryouko be saved somehow? Hibiki is all for redeeming others. I want to believe Hibiki can somehow exorcise Finé from her human host and give Ryouko back her own life. Ryouko doesn’t deserve Finé’s shitlord-ery. Heck, maybe Hamster-Jesus is so pure she can even convince Finé herself to let go of all that hatred and give this world another chance.
What Relic-related incident happened 12 years ago which caused Ryouko to become possessed? Durandal wasn’t activated until a few weeks ago, Kanade activated Gungnir 5 years ago, Ichaival was stolen 10 years ago and given to Chris 2 years ago, and… Oh fuckity fuck, we’re forgetting someone important, aren’t we?
Finé reveals it was Tsubasa’s song to first activate her Ame no Habakiri Relic when she was a little girl that caused sound waves which awakened Finé inside of Ryouko, a young scientist researching that Relic for the agency.
This reveal is so upsetting I can’t even properly appreciate how adorable kindergarten-aged Tsubasa is.
So, this means it wasn’t Ryouko who invented Symphogears after all, but rather the awakened Finé, based on knowledge from her ancient civilization?
Finé has more madness to reveal. It turns out, Ryouko wasn’t her first victim. Many influential figures throughout history were possessed by her spirit.
Every technological advance? So, you’re the one responsible for this crap:
Fucking shameful.
Also, damn son, getting my history degree would’ve been a LOT more interesting if I knew all the historical figures I was writing papers on were actually possessed by the spirit of an ancient sadistic gay priestess. Time to go back to university and write a Master’s thesis. I can’t wait until the panel where I defend this thesis to accredited doctored historians.
Finé continues to gloat about the awful things she’s done. She says creating the Symphogears was just a side project to further her ends.
I said this when Finé/Ryouko’s betrayal was first revealed to the audience around the mid-season, and I’ll say it again because not even the other awful things she’s done since then have changed my mind: I honestly think orchestrating the death of Kanade is the most sinister thing Finé has done as a villain.
Not just the fact she caused a Noise attack that killed hundreds of people as a cover for stealing Nehushtan for her own ends, not just because she didn’t give a damn if the two Symphogear girls she’d known and guided for years were also killed in this attack, but because of what she did to Tsubasa in the two years since.
Tsubasa’s entire character arc, every fucking minute of suffering we’ve seen her endure, has all been about trying to come to grips with the loss of her partner. Tsubasa bent herself into some broken, battered sword because she had no way to cope in a world without Kanade, and because she blamed herself as a failure. And throughout all this pain, Finé in her Ryouko disguise was right there at Tsubasa’s side every single day. Finé stood there and watched while this young girl spiraled further and further down into self-loathing. Finé pretended to sympathize with Tsubasa’s grief, all while secretly crowing over how badly she had Tsubasa and the others fooled.
Tsubasa needed help, and Finé completely abandoned her to her own misery, and that is just cruel. There is no excuse for seeing a person under your care be in pain and refusing to help them. Finé failed as a guide, she failed as an ally, she failed as an adult. And she doesn’t even care.
Hamster is a better person than I am, so she may be willing to forgive Finé for all this, and maybe even Tsubasa could too, but good grief, the truly wicked way Finé betrayed Tsubasa makes me want her dead so she can’t hurt any more young girls like this.
After some more crowing, Finé at long last summons her Kadingir while Hibiki, Tsubasa, and Chris look on.
Finé raises her arms. The ground shakes as the base’s elevator shaft is lifted up like some great big rainbow-colored reverse prolapse. It climbs higher and higher until it really does look like some huge otherworldly tower.
Particle cannon?
So… she’s not going to launch herself to heaven circus-style after all? Then what the hell is Kadingir for?
The moon?
The moon?
The MOON?
Wow, item number 12 on the list of “gifs I never dreamed I would someday find a use for”.
That’s what Kadingir is for? This Durandal-powered tower-turned-particle-cannon is a weapon to blow up the fucking moon yes really I am not making this up this is real life David.
Holy shit, that’s what the episode title means?? I didn’t expect “Shoot The Moon” would literally mean Finé wants to shoot the moon with a giant cannon and blow it up. It’s like an inspirational poster gone wrong.
The Symphogear girls ask why the hell Finé wants to do this.
Be with who? The god she served as a priestess? Is that who the previously-mentioned “Custodian” is?
Finé tells the girls that she was the one who built the original Kadingir thousands of years ago, the heavenly tower of ancient myth, so she could use it to reach her god. But, he struck it down and punished her people, causing the end of their civilization and cursing the rest of humanity forever.
I am increasingly disappointed in my history education. Why did none of my professors tell me about assault-rifle-wielding charioteers? That’s the raddest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.
Finé says the moon itself is the source of her god’s curse, which causes disharmony among humanity. Destroying the moon – and the rest of the world in the aftermath – would therefore end that curse, allowing her to accomplish her goal of gaining power and reaching heaven once again.
No, Finé, shitty behavior from people like you is what stops humans from getting along with one another.
You’re the one who murdered people,
You’re the one who tortured,
You’re the one who sexually abused,
You’re the one who lied and manipulated,
You’re the one who betrayed,
You’re the one who possessed people and stole their will,
You’re the one who SLAPPED MIKU. TWICE.
Even living in this cursed world, there are still characters able to look around and see good in it. Miku, Hibiki, Snoop Oni, even Tsubasa and Chris to some degree. They’re all able to see love and friendship here. Finé, how can you claim you love humanity so much you want to end their curse? Look at that massive list of Shit You Did to people. Have you ever truly loved anyone? Do you even love yourself?
What world will that be, Finé? A world populated only by shitlords like you? I’ll keep our cursed planet, thanks.
The three Symphogear girls are speechless from this whole bizarre reveal. Because really, what are you even supposed to say when someone tells you they want to blow up the moon?
Chris is the first one to speak up and call Finé out on it.
Oh snap, Finé. I think your ex just called you a basic bitch.
Finé gives a typical villainous I AM BEYOND TIME ITSELF, I AM THE MOMENT OF ETERNITY AS YOU WAIT FOR THE MICROWAVE TO FINISH COOKING YOUR FOOD, I AM IMMORTAL AND NO ONE CAN STOP ME MUAHAHAH
Hibiki says nothing to all this.
She only sings.
Tsubasa and Chris join in with their own activation songs, and hey you know what’s even awesomer than a transformation sequence?
Three transformation sequences at once!
Watching this and I think I just ovulated.
Now all Geared up and singing their hearts out, Hibiki, Tsubasa, and Chris charge at Finé.
They put up a good fight against Finé and her Nehushtan, working together to use all three girls’ strengths.
Tsubasa rushes in with her sword and does The Leg Thing with her spinning ankle-blades, while Hibiki joins the attack from the side using her fists and feet.
To our (and Finé’s) surprise, Hibiki and Tsubasa were just distracting Finé, while Chris charged up another one of her super-destructive missile blasts… Exactly like the three of them did last episode when they first worked together as comrades to defeat the Noise at Sky Tower.
I cannot express how smell-of-napalm-in-the-morning level of happy and gratified and yes I live for this it makes me feel to see these season-long character threads come together into one seamless team effort for the climax like this.
Give me a hundred more of those awesome transformation sequences or give me none at all, doesn’t matter – I come to a show for its characters and their relationships, and I stay for its characters and their relationships. Sure, Symphogear’s action is a blast to watch, the plot is okay (sans WTF moments like the moon), and a couple of the songs are great, but the handling of individual character arcs and team development is where this anime really shines. Symphogear hits its mark perfectly in that department.
Chris fires her Hyper Beam, but it’s not Finé she aims her missiles at. It’s Kadingir.
Chris rides her own rocket over the rainbow tower, and no I swear that’s not some really inappropriate gay euphemism. Now floating up in the sky, blocking Kadingir’s targeting line toward the moon, Chris begins a new song.
The other girls look up at Chris from the ground and realize she’s singing a Climax Song, that mighty but fatal final attack.
Chris takes this opportunity to throw one last mocking shot at Finé, by using Finé’s butterfly symbol.
This must be Chris’s way of delivering one last “Fuck you for all the abuse you put me through, well too bad because now I’m going to take your wretched symbol and use it for something good instead and you can’t stop me from becoming a better person than you.”
Chris’s Climax Song allows her to release a gun blast that collides directly with Kadingir’s shot at the moon.
We pull in close to Chris’s face. She doesn’t look scared at all. She looks peaceful and certain. After all this time of being lost without purpose in life, she finally found her dream that she gave up years ago when she lost her parents.
No.
No.
NO.
WHO GAVE YOU THE RIGHT, SYMPHOGEAR
Oh Hamster-Jesus have mercy on my soul. I was expecting Hibiki to be the one to die this episode, not Chris. We knew it was a possibility Chris or Tsubasa or any of the others could die, but that doesn’t make this moment any less affecting.
I don’t want our angry little window-smashing jellyfish to die, but…
…If she must die, this is exactly the death I’d want for her character. She earned the redemption she deserved, had the courage to change her worldview and become a hero again after losing hope, realized her life’s dream and what her parents were trying to teach her, and even got to save the world from the abuser who once controlled her, allowing Chris to die with a feeling of peace at last.
Chris, despite hating humanity for all the awful things they forced her through, was able to overcome her own flaws. She Didn’t Give Up On Life.
Chris is the person Finé should have been. That’s why she claimed Finé’s butterfly symbol as hers now.
THIS WRETCHED FUCKING ANIME AND ITS PERFECT CHARACTER ARC PEAKS
But hey, if Snoop Oni can survive this:
And Tsubasa can survive this:
And even Hamster when she was a normal human could survive this:
Then I can hold out hope for Chris.
Even Chris’s mighty Climax Song isn’t powerful enough to stop Kadingir’s devastating shot at the moon, but it knocks the shot off course so it only blows off a chunk of the moon rather than destroying the whole thing, which could’ve been fatal for life on Earth.
Okay but even a meteor that size will still cause serious damage falling to earth and the debris/dust it raises from its impact will affect the climate and not to mention having the moon whacked off-kilter from its normal orbit will change the gravitational pull of the tides and oh fuck it I don’t care I just want to find out if Chris survives or not.
Chris, bleeding and unresponsive, falls to earth in a glittering trail. She disappears from view and lands somewhere out of sight of the other Symphogear wielders and Finé.
The very next shot is an extreme closeup of Hibiki’s eyes as she watches her friend fall. Hamster’s irises shrink, her heartbeat pounds in her ears, and she screams in rage.
Oh shit… We know what that usually leads to:
IS IT FROTHING BERSERKER TIME ONCE AGAIN?
Fuck.
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This episode played like a massive epic climax.
Which is terrifying.
Because we still have two episodes left.
Climb aboard and toss a coin to the boatman, folks. We’re not finished with this hellride.
Whether or not Chris makes it out alive, Hamster still needs to die too and be resurrected. I’m honestly starting to worry… I thought the season would wrap up Hibiki’s Rebirth-Savior arc in the finale, but now I wonder if the season will just end with the cliffhanger of Hibiki dying, bookending with the opening scene of Miku weeping over her grave, leaving Hibiki’s resurrection for next season.
If that’s the case, I salute those of you brave souls who watched this anime during its original airing and had to wait however long the inter-season delay lasted to find out what happened to your main hero.
This episode was awesome, but it definitely jacked up the anime’s What The Fuck level to 11. There were a couple ideas floating around about Finé’s motivation and what exactly Kadingir was, but holy hell… Never in a thousand years would I have guessed “she’s a reincarnated religious fanatic who wants to blow up the moon to destroy the world and get closer to God”. I suppose I just wasn’t literate enough to get all the mythological references.
Still, on the scale of weird anime plot points, even just from yuri anime alone, “blowing up the moon” is only somewhere in the middle, so I can’t scratch my head too hard over it. Anime is art.
Hibiki and Tsubasa, our two main protagonists, didn’t have much to do this episode. That’s perfectly acceptable from a story structure standpoint. This episode chose instead to give our supporting characters a chance to confront the antagonist. And it was rad. Chris, Miku, even Snoop Oni and brown-haired guy, all had their own conflicts to present and overcome. Regina Finé personally victimized each of them, after all.
Now that they’ve all had their shot at Finé, it clears the way for Hibiki and Tsubasa to confront her, which I expect next episode to cover. Hopefully, there is no bus involved.
Despite the important reveals we got this episode, the anime left some questions to keep us busy until the next one. For one thing, I’m not sure what Durandal was for, in the end. Finé didn’t actually take it out of the base and wield it. I guess she only needed Durandal’s massive power output as basically just a battery to power Kadingir’s one big shot at the moon?
I liked the creative design of Kadingir itself. The anime made it this eye-catching swirl of bright colors, yet at the same time managed to give it this dark, frightening atmosphere as it rose up through the night sky.
The idea that Kadingir was just a metaphor, Hazel Grace, wasn’t far off, since Kadingir actually turned out to be a huge cannon and not a literal tower to climb to heaven. However, I was completely wrong thinking this “tower” would involve Hibiki more directly.
This episode made it seem the only reason Finé needed Hibiki for her plans was to awaken Durandal, which Hibiki did in the early-mid season. But then, what has Finé been doing the last several weeks in-story since then? Putting the finishing touches on her tower, maybe? Or, maybe she had to wait until the moon orbited into firing position.
But if so, then why was Finé so obsessed with Hamster all that time? Finé didn’t put up that ominous chest X-ray of Gungnir’s spreading corruption, and also build her stalker shrine of Hibiki pics, until after Hibiki awakened Durandal. So, if Hibiki had already Outlived Her Usefulness by that point, why the continued fixation on her? “She’s really cute” is not an adequate explanation for that level of creep.
I worry there is more to Finé’s plan than what was revealed to us in this episode…
I don’t understand yet. I’ve said it before and I’ll likely say it again:
Palm Sunday came and went on its humble ass, and we moved closer to the fated death of Hamster-Jesus. We’ll see who makes it out alive next episode.
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