Do Gears dream of music sheep?
(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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Last episode left us in a rough spot. Hamster was nearly kidnapped for unknown reasons by the mysterious evil Madam Underboob. She wields the stolen Nehushtan Relic, although we still don’t know who she even is.
Enough. No more Bane quotes.
Tsubasa was able to drive her off by out-gaying her, but is now comatose from the injuries. Atop all that, there’s a traitor hiding somewhere in the agency.
Hibiki, now the sole good-guy Symphogear wielder at the end of the episode, realizes she needs to get her Big Girl pants on. She seeks out Snoop Oni and asks him to teach her how to become Kung Fu Hamster.
What kale-reeking hipster yoga hemp outfit is Snoop Oni even wearing here? Coulda sworn I saw this exact same outfit on that guy who sells organic chai out of a Volkswagen down in Malibu.
Snoop Oni agrees to teach her martial arts and pushups and that log-hauling shit from one of the Rocky films. We get a kickass training montage of Hamster learning to be Swift As A Coursing River, With All The Force Of A Great Typhoon.
An essential part of this training involves…
… watching Bruce Lee movies?
That is twelve kinds of awesome. And fitting. Bruce Lee’s style of martial arts is best defined as an amalgam of other styles. Lee believed in studying a variety of styles, picking the best techniques from all of them, then combining them into what most suited you as a fighter. He also knew that practicality always trumps everything else. Winning the fight by whatever methods you can is all that matters in a brutal street fight for your life.
This amalgam-style suits Hamster, since she has no martial arts background to focus on one particular style, and she has zero time to Git Gud. They need her to be a hero right now, since Tsubasa is out of commission. A practical, no-frills, solid but adaptable fighting style is exactly what she needs.
Okay, that last one isn’t a real Bruce Lee quote.
Not sure if they’re doing a Monkey Stance here, a Jeet Kune Do southpaw, or if they’re just about to drop some sick lyrics.
What are you looking at, Snoop Oni?
Why did I even ask.
I haven’t seen it yet, but The Force Awakens looks great.
After that fun montage, it’s time to start episode 5 proper!
We begin with Miku waking up to a lesbian’s worst nightmare: the other half of the bed is empty. Hibiki left a note saying she’ll be skipping school in favor of more training. She hasn’t yet revealed to Miku what this “training” is for.
Wow, this really is turning into a Rocky movie.
After the OP, we come back to this title screen:
Gee, with a name like that, I can tell this episode is just gonna be bundles of fun for us all, isn’t it.
We then cut to…
Um.
You guys, that is inch-for-inch a recreation of a real-world object called an Iron Chair, a torture device.
I do not want to see my Symphogear girls put in a torture device. Don’t do this to me.
Also, for extra charming-ness, the spikes on a real-world Iron Chair weren’t the worst part. The torturers would put a burning brazier under the chair that heated the metal, causing the victim’s flesh to be burned. But, the victim had to force themselves to keep still while roasting alive, else the spikes would do even more damage to them.
Good god. Next thing you know, they’re gonna subject someone to a Pear of Anguish on this show. Is watching this anime the real torture device?
What the hell? Oppai aren’t going to distract me from the horrors we saw two seconds ago, anime.
When did I accidentally tune in to a Castlevania hentai?
We see this mysterious topless woman in this mysterious mansion having a mysterious conversation in a mysterious language (Engrish). She toys with some kind of Relic, using it to summon and un-summon Noise, like we saw Madam Underboob do in the fight against Tsubasa and Hibiki last episode.
Shit, what am I gonna call this new lady? We can’t have two Madam Underboobs bouncing around.
SPEAKING OF MADAM UNDERBOOB, WHO THE FUCK IS THAT
Was I right that she is under some kind of mind control by the villain? What have they done to her? Did they put her in the Iron Chair??
This woman is on the phone with an Engrish speaker, plotting about how they plan to steal Relics to gain supreme power. The man on the phone clearly thinks it’s a partnership, but you bet your ass Topless here is going to betray him as soon as he Outlives His Usefulness.
I’m sure somebody out there who watched this had their “Staff of Solomon” activated…
Topless taunts her prisoner, and yes that is indeed last episode’s Madam Underboob. Guess she was a manipulated minion of the villain, after all.
Okay, this removes any doubt: this character is now 100% for sure going to get a redemption arc and join the hero’s team.
Turns out her real name is… Chris?
Chris? Really?
That is the most normal, mainstream, least intimidating name for a bad guy you could possibly come up with. I don’t care if she’s an unwilling bad guy or not, “Chris” does not strike terror into the hearts of your enemies. You might as well have named her “Betty” or “Jane”.
Topless villainess here is upset that… Chris… failed her mission to kidnap Hibiki last episode.
What vile fucking hold do you have over this girl, Topless? What “wish” did you promise to grant poor Chris in exchange for becoming your tool? Why didn’t you just refer her to the Make A Wish Foundation, or even Kyubey?
And Chris, are you honestly naive enough to think this woman is going to fulfill her end of whatever bargain she made with you?
Topless isn’t nearly finished with Chris, though.
Yikes, first an Iron Chair, now electro-play? These last couple minutes got way too kinky for me. This does not look “safe, sane, and consensual” at all. I doubt she even gave Chris a safe word. Can we just go back to shots of Hibiki’s ass and call it quits in the fanservice department, please? I’d even accept a couple more Tsubasa panty shots.
Topless here continues to torture-fuck poor Chris – fucking up a perfectly good Gear wielder, look at her she’s got anxiety now – and through it tries to tell her that Topless loves her and that this pain is proof of that.
I was gonna call bullshit, but then I remembered that connecting hearts with my friends is what led me to the pain of watching Symphogear in the first place. So yeah, can’t really argue with Topless here.
After that, uh… scene (hah, never thought that’d be a pun), we cut back to the school. Miku has to make excuses to the teacher about why Hibiki skipped class. Miku is understandably upset that Hibiki is doing this to her.
Hibiki, Snoop Oni, and a couple MIBs chill in the base after a training session. The MIBs tell Hamster that since their agency is top secret, they are required to “step on a lot of toes” to keep the whole Symphogear thing under wraps, to the point that even some other parts of the government don’t like them. Other countries’ governments who are also privy to this secret envy Japan’s sole control over Symphogear power. This means the villains could be foreigners working in conjunction with parts of the Japanese government.
I dunno, Hibiki, I’d rather have complex political intrigue mumbo-jumbo than more torture play.
Let’s change scene to something more cheerful…
…like Tsubasa still in a coma.
Tsubasa is dreaming. Drowning in her misery, wondering why she couldn’t save Kanade and why Kanade had to die in the first place. A memory of Kanade floats to the surface, wearing that jumbo-sized altar boy outfit they inexplicably wore in their introductory scene in the first episode.
This ties in with my first assessment of Tsubasa. I thought of her as “hard, but brittle”, and Kanade here seems to agree with that. There’s another way of phrasing this line of thought:
“Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.”
Guess who that quote comes from:
I also thought Tsubasa might someday fall to the dark side because of this flawed, too-harsh-on-self thinking. Now that we know the villain takes pleasure in turning Symphogear girls into her minions, that seems like an even realer possibility. If Tsubasa “snaps”, as Kanade put it, at the wrong time, in front of the wrong person, the results will be disastrous. I am not looking forward to it.
Tsubasa has some more heart-to-heart with Kanade’s memory. Tsubasa admits that even though she has thrown herself wholeheartedly into being an even better Symphogear fighter in the last two years since Kanade’s death, the emptiness inside hasn’t healed. Kanade gently tells her there’s more to life than battle.
Tsubasa, renewed by talking with Kanade (whether it was really Kanade’s spirit or just Tsubasa’s memories of her doesn’t matter, Tsubasa still has a lot to learn from Kanade either way), wakes from her coma. While the doctors tend to Tsubasa, she promises herself, and Kanade, that she Won’t Give Up On Life.
We cut elsewhere to some government officials from another department, including the official Defense Minister. They were supposed to be meeting with Dr. Perv on some off-base site for a regular update about the Special Disaster Team, a.k.a. the Symphogear agency. But, Dr. Perv couldn’t make it to the meeting due to a giant Plot Block in the road.
Annoyed, but knowing they still depend on the Special Disaster Team to protect them from Noise attacks, the government officials drive home. Suddenly, a van full of commandos ambushes them.
Never thought I’d see both types of “commando” in one episode.
Yeppp, just another happy, upbeat Symphogear episode. Fun for the whole family.
The government officials are quickly ripped to shreds like those election-season political spam ads you get in the mail. The Defense Minister tries to escape and protect top secret documents about the Symphogears.
The commandos are speaking Engrish, so they must be henchmen of that guy on the phone with Topless earlier. When the screen cuts away, we hear more gunshots, implying they shoot the Defense Minister before he can escape with the documents.
If the villains’ goals are to steal more Relics and capture more Symphogear girls to use as minions, the fact those top secret documents about the agency have now fallen into enemy hands is gonna put our heroes in some pretty deep shit indeed. Last episode, the good guys deduced that the villains must already have a traitor working for them inside the base. Now, the villains have even more information which will allow them to get closer to kidnapping Hibiki and Tsubasa. Presumably, Snoop Oni, Dr. Perv, and the rest of the crew will get a nice friendly bullet to the brain in the process, as well.
Atop that, we were told about a MacGuffin a couple episodes back, which the team worries their enemies are seeking. It’s an ultra-powerful Relic named Durandal, currently hidden beneath the good guys’ base. Snoop Oni’s team hasn’t been able to activate this Relic yet, since it requires an enormous amount of Phonic power, the song-energy wielded by the Symphogear girls. But, if someone were able to activate it, the results would be devastating. If these bad guys steal Durandal like they stole Nehushtan…
…we’re in trouble.
Dr. Perv, blissfully unaware of the volcano of shit that erupted because she couldn’t make it to that government meeting (unless she is secretly evil and she’s the one who set them up, lol), breezes back into home base, just in time to see Snoop Oni and Hamster flailing over this development.
Snoop Oni and Hamster are relieved Dr. Perv is alive. She wasn’t answering their phone calls.
Are you really that air-headed, or is something else going on he–
OH FUCK ME WITH A TRIDENT YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME
DR. PERV HOW COULD YOU
I WAS KIDDING ABOUT YOU BEING SECRETLY EVIL NO WHY
WHEN WILL I LEARN TO WATCH MY GODDAMN MOUTH
…
I had to AFK a while and make myself some hot chocolate to try to compose my thoughts about this in a more rational way than screaming obscenities.
Honestly, I… I’m speechless. I really thought that mundane brown-haired guy from last episode would be the traitor. Dr. Perv has never once pinged my “evil” radar. I thought she was just a sort of comic relief, a slightly dirty but still kind lady who is also the tech-genius for the team.
This makes zero sense to me right now. Dr. Perv is the one who invented the Symphogears from the Relics, right? She’s been with the team from the start. If she was working for the bad guys the whole time, how has their agency survived this long?
And, if she’s been bad for so long, why only now is she making more open moves, like assisting in assassinations and helping the villains try to kidnap Hibiki? What changed for her to suddenly decide she needs to move their plan into action and they need to start cappin’ some fools?
Is…
Is it Hamster??
All this kidnapping and assassination shit didn’t start until right after Hibiki joined the team. And Madam Under– um, Chris specifically said her goal was to capture Hibiki last episode, not Tsubasa, so if they wanted to steal Relics in general, you’d think they’d also want Tsubasa’s. So, is there something special about Hibiki which makes her valuable enough to the enemy that they’d risk exposing their most useful tool, the traitor who’s been inside the agency for years?
But... there’s nothing special about Hibiki.
Well, yeah, there’s that. Is that what the bad guys want?
You know, I’ve been overlooking something this whole time. Hamster does have a special condition, unique among all other Symphogear girls:
Her Relic is embedded in her body.
Hibiki gained power in the first place only because fragments of Kanade’s Gungnir broke off in the concert battle and were lodged in her chest. This surprised everyone, including Dr. Perv, meaning something like this has never happened before.
This whole time, I thought this condition made Hamster weaker than other Symphogear wielders. She’s only working with fragments of a Relic instead of a whole, fully-functional one like Tsubasa and Kanade and now Chris are. I thought this was the reason, for example, that Hibiki couldn’t summon Gungnir’s spear, because she’s not powerful enough.
But, her condition might actually make her stronger, in a way. The other girls carry their Relics around as amulets when they’re in normal girl form. So, by just taking their amulet away while they’re in normal form, you would effectively render them powerless. (Well, not powerless, I’m pretty sure Tsubasa could still put a boot up your ass and take her necklace back by force.) Hamster, on the other hand, since Gungnir is part of her body now, can never be “disarmed”.
Gungnir resonates with her with every heartbeat, infecting her with power. The more I think about it, this might even be the cause of her Frothing Berserker mode. It’s possible Hibiki is too close to her Relic, unable to put up a mental barrier between herself and her Gear, resulting in her too-intense battle lust and wild, reckless power.
If the bad guys want Hibiki for this unique condition, that must mean Frothing Berserker mode is extra powerful and rare, a tool the villains really want to get their hands on.
For that matter, if Topless and the bad guys want to kidnap Hamster, why didn’t they have Dr. Perv do it, instead of having Chris and her underboobs make a big dramatic scene?? The base where Dr. Perv works is literally right under the school Hamster attends. Just drug her or snatch her after school or when she’s asleep in her dorm, right?
And, if you were somehow worried Hamster would smell the betrayal coming and Gear up on your traitorous ass, then you could’ve just fooled her and said you were taking her on a special field trip or something. Hamster seems the kind of person who’d get into a stranger’s van for the promise of candy, so I honestly don’t think it would’ve been hard for Dr. Perv to come up with a scheme that didn’t require her boss to reveal they had Chris and Nehushtan in their arsenal.
Of course, it’s possible Dr. Perv isn’t doing any of this willingly. We’ve already seen how Topless (who may or may not be the Final Boss villain) manipulates and forces people into doing her bidding. Maybe she has some hold over Dr. Perv, too. Fuck, I hope so. This traitor reveal has really thrown me. (Hell, maybe even Topless herself is under some form of mind control by an even bigger villain.)
Check it out, similar butterfly sigils worn by both Dr. Perv and Topless. I guess it was right in front of us from the start of the episode that they were working together??
Just…
Just… fuck. Fuck me, this is bad for us.
The team, including Dr. Perv since no one knows her true colors, holds an emergency meeting with all its members. They conclude that their enemies are in fact after Durandal, which is revealed to take the form of a pretty bitchin’ sword.
For security reasons, the higher-ups in the government decide to move Durandal out of the team’s base to another, safer government base. Snoop Oni and the team don’t think highly of this idea, as it’s pretty risky. But, orders are orders, so there’s nothing our team can do but agree to escort the transfer and see Durandal arrives at its destination safely.
I’M SURE NOTHING WILL GO WRONG WITH THIS PLAN AT ALL
Hamster goes home after this crazy day, intending to get some rest before she has to help escort Durandal in the morning.
But, rest comes not for those lesbians who have an angry girlfriend waiting at home!
Miku has no idea where Hibiki has been all day, why Hibiki skipped school and made Miku come up with lies to their teacher for her, what the hell “training” Hibiki has been doing, nor why Hibiki is acting so weird and vague, lately. Miku is officially Tired Of Your Shit and demands an explanation.
Will Hibiki finally come clean? Will she finally open up and confess everything to Miku, knowing that Miku is trustworthy and that their relationship deserves honesty, and that it’s just going to poison their relationship if Hamster keeps lying? Will she do the right thing?
Or will she run away from the confrontation like a scared little sugar-glider?
Hibiki flees back to the base, knowing she won’t get any sleep at home with a fuming Miku lying next to her and making her regret every decision she has ever made.
Brown-haired guy shows up and gives Hibiki the good news that Tsubasa woke from her coma.
Shut up man, I’m so over you, we have bigger shit to worry about now than your way-too-normal-looking ass.
He tells Hibiki that Tsubasa needs to stay in the hospital for a while, so Hamster will be solo’ing that Durandal escort mission tomorrow morning. I just hope none of the NPCs walk super slow, or it’s gonna be a real nightmare.
He tries to offer her some encouragement.
Yeah well, there are also lots of people behind her SO THEY CAN BETTER STAB HER IN THE BACK.
Morning arrives, and the team (including Dr. Perv) assembles to transfer Durandal to the new, supposedly safer government location.
OH MY GOD HAMSTER IS RIDING ALONE WITH DR. PERV
I TOLD YOU SHE WOULD GET INTO A VAN WITH A CREEP
THIS WILL NOT END WELL
Of course, Shit Goes Wrong pretty quick. The Noise attack, no doubt summoned by our villains to ambush the caravan.
The other cars are picked off, and Dr. Perv has to pull some serious Tokyo Drift to avoid getting hit. She and Snoop Oni realize the Noise aren’t going to target her and Hibiki’s car directly, because they don’t want to damage Durandal’s crate inside it. So, the team tries to lure the Noise to a better position to fight them.
You and me both, Snoop Oni.
The Noise catch up to them. Dr. Perv and Hibiki’s car is flipped. Snoop Oni, in a helicopter above, can only watch and pray.
Surrounded by Noise and without a car or backup, Dr. Perv suggests to Hamster that they just drop Durandal’s crate and run away. (Dr. Perv must figure her bad guy accomplices will come pick it up.)
Hamster refuses. She promised to run this escort mission, and by golly she’s gonna give it her all!
Things aren’t looking good.
Things really aren’t looking good.
A burst of energy from the Noise threatens to take out Dr. Perv and Hamster both. Dr. Perv has no choice but to reveal a special power which blocks the attack.
Has this anime finally driven me mad, or is she supposed to look like Topless in this shot?
Are they the same person, or is that too bizarre even for this show?
And what the fuck is this power she has? More importantly, why isn’t Hibiki questioning it? I feel like I missed something somewhere.
Out of options, Hamster transforms into her Gear and charges at the Noise.
Those Bruce Lee movies must’ve really helped, because she’s actually holding her own pretty well now, even without having to use her enrage mode! She’s still not at full power, but she’s sure laying down a pretty righteous ass whoopin’ and singing her lungs out.
This surprises Chris, who watches from atop a building like Every Anime Villain Ever. Hibiki was a weakling the last time Chris saw her.
Chris jumps into the melee with a kick-to-the-face by way of hello.
The two girls battle. It’s a tense struggle, but Hamster is fighting so well that her song-energy activates the dormant Durandal. The sword Relic bursts out of its crate, levitates into the air, and starts glowing. Powerful objects always levitate and glow. They just do.
Chris tries to grab Durandal. Hamster beats her to it and takes hold of the weapon. You know serious shit’s about to go down, because they clicked the “invert color” filter as soon as Hibiki touched it.
Trying to wield such a powerful weapon pushes Hamster to her limits of self-control.
Uh oh…
We all know what that means…
OH SHIT SON, YOU FUCKERS ARE IN TROUBLE NOW
YOU BETTER MAKE YOUR PEACE WITH BUDDHA
Wielding the massive golden energy beam discharged by Durandal, Hibiki blasts Chris off into the air like Team Rocket. This energy beam also demolishes the remaining Noise, plus an assload of buildings and real estate. Hopefully, there were no civilians nearby. Even so, how the hell is your government going to cover up this:
JUST A CASUAL MUSHROOM CLOUD IN DOWNTOWN TODAY, CITIZENS, NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT, AND NOW WE GO TO JIMMY WITH THE WEATHER FORECAST
Hamster passes out from the force of delivering such an attack, leaving her alone with Dr. Perv, who uses her weird energy-shield technique again to protect the two of them from the explosion. Dr. Perv actually looks pretty gleeful, in an evil way, about what Hamster did. If power is what Dr. Perv wants, having a Durandal-wielding Hamster under her control would certainly go a long way toward that goal.
Hamster wakes up a short time later while the good guys try to clean up the mess of the battle. She’s not sure how exactly she accessed all that power or what it means, but Dr. Perv puts back on that airhead-good-guy persona and assures Hibiki not to worry. Dr. Perv even manages to evade Hibiki’s question about her purple energy-shield thingy.
After that complete disaster of an escort mission (Hibiki, you are getting a serious exp penalty for this failed quest), the government decides yeah maybe we shouldn’t move Durandal from the base after all, mmkay, the property damage alone is going to cost us billions.
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What the fucking fuck.
I was not prepared for this episode.
We went way, way too far down the rabbit hole with this one, folks. Things are getting curiouser and curiouser.
(The best part of all this will be when they get back to base and tell Tsubasa what happened with Durandal while she was stuck in the hospital. “You did what?”)
This episode wasn’t as horrifying as the previous one...
Still, it left us with an industrial-sized shipping container’s worth of problems. Dr. Perv and Topless, if they really are the same person (an idea I’m going to roll with, even if it turns out disastrously and hilarious wrong), will not be an easy takedown.
Dr. Perv is the person who invented Gear. We saw her conjure some kind of energy shield, and at the start of the episode we also saw her summon Noise by casually shooting off Chris’s gun. (…I was about to deny that that phrase was some kind of euphemism, but with this show, I just don’t know anymore.)
I don’t think Topless/Dr. Perv is a full-on Symphogear wielder, but she clearly has some Gear-related tricks up her sleeve. No one knows this technology better than she does, which is really going to give our heroes trouble in defeating her. Hell, for all we know, she’s built some sort of failsafe or self-destruct mechanism into all the Gears she’s created which prevents them from defeating her.
It’s also frightening because she has full medical access to Hibiki and Tsubasa, and has been secretly doing who knows what procedures or drug injections on the two of them under the guise of just being their doctor.
It adds another layer of cruelty to her character if she was indeed the one who ordered the Noise attack at the concert as a cover for stealing Nehushtan, as Chris implied last episode. This means Dr. Perv is ultimately the one responsible for Kanade’s death. Even though she helped Kanade become a Symphogear wielder in the first place.
And this, this traitor has been living and working alongside Tsubasa these past two years, watching this poor girl Dr. Perv helped shape since childhood, as Tsubasa shatters herself from her own pain, with the grief over Kanade shriveling her up, all while Dr. Perv is right there, watching and knowing, pretending to sympathize, possibly even plotting how to seize Tsubasa for Dr. Perv’s own and break her further. It’s really just… vicious. This character got extremely evil extremely fast.
Also, this line from a few episodes prior, when Dr. Perv bites Hibiki’s ear seductively:
…which on first view just seemed like sleazy lulz, is terrifyingly sinister in retrospect, since we now know “make you mine” involves “breaking your mind and electrifying the shit out of you”.
In addition to hitting Tsubasa hard, it will definitely hit Hibiki like a ton of bricks when she finds out about this betrayal. One of Hamster’s defining traits is that she sees Good in everyone, sometimes to her detriment. Being disillusioned and used like that by someone she trusts is really going to twist her head into ugly knots. Likely the nadir of Hibiki’s character arc will come once this betrayal is revealed.
I really hope Hibiki is able to, I dunno, talk some sense into Dr. Perv before this villain goes off the deep end. It seems too much to ask that Dr. Perv comes back to the light in the end, but Hamster won’t give up without trying. She’s a Hero. Saving people is what she does. She’s the type to believe no one is beyond saving.
…Even if it turns out Dr. Perv is the one who kills Hibiki, and that’s why Hibiki was dead in the opening scene of the first episode. God fucking dammit with this show.
I really thought the whole “traitor” thing would be dragged out over the course of several episodes, with the big reveal of the traitor’s identity coming at a much later juncture in the season. Symphogear, never gentle, took the much more sadistic option. They revealed to the viewers who the traitor is, but not to the characters.
This is a form of Dramatic Irony. In the most basic definition, Dramatic Irony means “when the audience knows something the character does not”. I call this the much more sadistic option because we the audience are going to spend the rest of the season, or however long this painfest endures, with that knowledge hanging over our heads.
We are going to have to sit there and watch, watch while this evil character goes about her evil ways right under the heroes’ noses. Watch her continue to lie to and use them, watch her plot to hurt them even further, watch as she lays her plans to bring them down, watch as she lures them into her traps, watch powerlessly and know there is nothing we can do to help our precious girls.
Fuck you, Symphogear.
There’s another troubling aspect to this character that I feel I should try to address: how sexualized she is.
Her fanservice level is Over Nine Thousand, and the reason for that is simply that she’s a bad guy.
Yeah, she’s a killer and a cruel torturer and a liar, and that’s what makes her evil, but her overt displays here add to that characterization. I’ve talked before about how anime uses visual cues to establish a character’s alignment, and they really amped up her sexualized appearance to drive home that yes she is evil.
Heck, even just wearing lipstick or gloss can mark a character out as sexual and therefore wicked. Compare Topless to the other girls, who don’t wear lipstick. Or even compare how Homura started wearing lip gloss at the end of Rebellion after she decided she was all “evil” now.
Okay, but we’ve had fanservice before in this anime, right? So, what’s the difference between this kind of fanservice:
And this kind of fanservice:
They’re the same, right? So, why are dirty shots of Topless meant to be evil and the others are not?
The difference here is participation.
Hibiki and Tsubasa didn’t choose to show their asses or panties or what-have-you. They aren’t flaunting their sex appeal, we’re supposed to believe the camera just kinda “landed” on them that way. This shifts control over the sex appeal from the character to the viewer, because the camera is just the eye of the viewer.
The audience, likely intended to be a straight man, is the one doing the looking, without the character’s knowledge or consent that they are being displayed in such a way. The viewer is, in a way, “peeking in” on the girls’ bodies, putting control over her sex appeal into the viewer’s eyes. Even art paintings of nude women often won’t have the subject looking directly at the observer. If you’re familiar with the concept of “Male Gaze” as a narrative mechanism, this is exactly it.
Topless here, on the other hand, is flaunting her sex appeal. She chose to go naked, to display herself, to engage in overtly sexual acts and dominate her victim/lover. She is participating in her own sexuality, and females controlling their own sexuality is a big no-no.
This is a much older, bigger, and uglier problem than just this character, so I can’t put the blame on Symphogear. We could stay here for hours writing a PhD-length thesis about the subject of female sexuality in fiction and mythology/religion. But, ain’t nobody got time for that, as I want to go sanitize the knife-wound in my back from this episode. So, we won’t go too deep into this subject. Suffice it to say, sexualized female characters are usually villainous or immoral in some way, whereas heroic female characters are usually intended to be more “pure”. This goes for yuri characters as well as straight characters.
This anime will likely never show a healthy sexual relationship. Instead, any overt sexuality will probably continue to be nonconsensual and flavored with disturbing images like this torture scene, because the makers believe Sex Is Bad And Girls Shouldn’t Enjoy It. Even in her normal Dr. Perv persona, this character was presented as inappropriately overt. (Hence me nicknaming her “Dr. Perv” in the first place.) However, I never imagined the anime would take it any further than a few dirty jokes here and there for comic relief.
This is also why even though Hibiki and Miku are obviously a couple, it’s unlikely the anime will ever show them doing anything remotely sexual together, probably not even just kissing. Doing so would taint their perfect pure pure-ness and make them less of good-side characters. Any sexual acts between “good” characters in the episodes to come will probably be off-camera, or vague, or silhouetted, or can’t-quite-tell-if-they-did-or-not. The characters can’t be direct about it, or that puts them into sex-immoral territory.
Enough of that heavy stuff. One last thought about this episode before I leave you folks so I can go curl up and cry:
An interesting point is that the anime chose a butterfly as Topless/Dr. Perv’s symbol. It’s pretty clever.
Butterflies can mean “nice-looking, but fluttery and airheaded and nonthreatening”, which suits her false persona of Dr. Perv. But, butterflies also commonly symbolize change, metamorphosis, transformation, and rebirth, due to their former caterpillar status. As the inventor of the Symphogears which transform the magical girls, this character is tied in with the symbolism of “transformation” pretty thoroughly. It also reflects her transformation from apparent good guy to villain.
This may also give us hints toward her ultimate plan. I was thinking she just wanted power for the sake of taking over the world, but maybe she actually wants a broader “metamorphosis”. A common theme for anime villains, as opposed to Western villains, is a kind of nihilism. Many anime villains are fed up with the world and want to destroy it, leading to a butterfly-esque “rebirth” of a new world order under their control. It’s possible Dr. Perv is one of those people who believes Humanity Was A Mistake, and she wants to invent a new type of being in the form of Symphogear wielders under her control, who will make the new world with her. Her “transformation” theme also likely means she will change shape yet again later in the show, becoming a more powerful and threatening being that our heroes have to defeat.
Whooof. Things are getting curiouser and curiouser indeed.
“I knew who I was this morning, but I’ve changed a few times since then.”
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