Shah mat
(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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Queen Maria landed a powerful Check on the good guys last episode. Tens of thousands of civilians taken hostage by the Noise, and her Evil Mom’s terrorist group declaring war on the whole world. All with Tsubasa standing right next to this Black Gear disaster, completely floored by the reveal.
This “Finé” terrorist group knows a lot that no one except Section 2 and allies should be aware of. They knew when to ambush the train carrying the Staff of Solomon, and later the Marine outpost. They knew Tsubasa is a Symphogear wielder even though her identity is top secret. I’m not sure just how much of Gear technology was released to the public, but the terrorists somehow knew enough about the technology to make a copy of Gungnir for Maria. They also knew Finé’s name. What else do they secretly know that will end up biting our team in the throat?
Someone has been feeding these bastards information.
GEE, I DUNNO… DO WE KNOW ANYBODY WHO IS PRIVY TO THE AGENCY’S INFORMATION AND WHO IS ALSO MORE SUSPICIOUS THAN THE ONE ONION RING IN A BOX OF FRIES?
Speaking of sharing information, our team blundered on that front last episode.
Snoop Oni and brown-haired guy made the decision not to tell Tsubasa about everything that happened earlier in the episode. She didn’t know the train had been ambushed by Noise, she didn’t know the Marine outpost was attacked by more, and most importantly she didn’t know the Noise-summoning Staff had been stolen. Hibiki and Chris didn’t know who took the Staff, but at least they were able to mentally prepare for the reality that someone out there is now able to summon monsters at any time and any place.
But, from Tsubasa’s end, the Noise that spring up like pop-tarts during her concert come out of fucking nowhere. She didn’t even know this was a possibility she could’ve prepared for. She still wouldn’t have been able to stop Maria, but it sure would’ve lessened the blow a bit if she had time to brace for it. Especially considering what an emotionally significant concert this was supposed to be for Tsubasa.
Snoop Oni as the commander didn’t update Tsubasa about the Staff and include her in the new plan, because he didn’t want to stress her with that phone call before her performance. All this resulted in was Tsubasa being completely poleaxed when shit did hit the fan.
Maria, in keeping with the Opposing Parallels theme, does get a phone call from her commander updating her on the Staff and including her in the plan.
Pull together, team. Your greatest strength has always been your cooperation. If the bad guys have better communication, we’re gonna lose this war.
Let’s see who makes it out of tonight’s mess alive. Hopefully, those thousands of concert hostages won’t be among the dead. Tsubasa will need to pull some creative diagonals along the chessboard if she wants to escape this Check and avoid getting Mated by Maria and wow that last part sounded way less inappropriate in my head.
The episode begins with a refresh of Maria’s Black Gungnir transformation, because it wasn’t upsetting enough seeing it the first time around.
After that, we get the new OP for the season! Plenty to speculate on.
The OP begins with six Relic amulets, representing the six Symphogear wielders we now have. Hibiki, Tsubasa, and Chris for the good guys. For the bad guys, Maria and the two shadowy girls who haven’t yet made a proper appearance.
I’m not sure whose the broken amulet is. It could be Hibiki’s, to represent that she doesn’t have a normal amulet, since Gungnir is embedded in her chest. Or it could be Kanade’s, to represent Kanade’s shattering that led to Hibiki’s inheritance of Gungnir. It could also be Maria’s, since Maria wields a broken/corrupt version of Gungnir. This amulet could even belong to Maria’s unknown Gal Pal who died in the season prologue while holding the Aron Fetus.
Hibiki’s silhouette reaches for that of this long-haired person, who could be anybody. Kanade, Tsubasa, Maria… The hair ends don’t quite match any of those characters, however. Heck, it could even be Finé. All we know for sure is this girl’s hair doesn’t look like goddamn jellyfish tendrils, so it can’t be Chris.
The OP then graces us with this shot of Tsubasa and Chris trying to out-gay each other and failing. Or succeeding?
“In the distance, that day, when the star became music” as the season’s tag line is vague, as expected.
I’m not even going to bother speculating what it might mean, as there was no way in any level of hell I could’ve predicted last season’s tag line of “meteoroid falling” turning out to mean “religious fanatic butterfly woman harpoons a chunk of the moon and sends it crashing toward earth”. For all I know, “the star became music” could be a reference to the Mario power-up star and its accompanying fast-paced music.
This is followed by kick-ass shots of the good guy Symphogears transforming, with mythological backdrops that suit their individual Relics.
We then get shots of the rest of the Section 2 agency, and a Million Miku March.
A buttload of mysterious shots follow. An unknown girl covered in Noise and thorns, Chris struggling to reach someone, and then…
So, these are the two new antagonist Symphogear wielders, the Bebop and Rocksteady we saw in the shadows last episode? They look cool, and pretty menacing! However, it feels weak for the anime to introduce them in flat shots during the OP like this, rather than revealing them in the episode proper like we got with Maria’s gut-punch of a dramatic announcement.
Actually, forget Bebop and Rocksteady. These two girls are now Cherry Coke and Lemon-Lime Sprite.
The OP cycles through more characters. Maria in her Black Gungnir, Evil Mom looming, then young Maria standing with someone who is presumably the dead Gal Pal.
Other shots are less mysterious…
…like Dr. Ver wielding the stolen Staff of Solomon, which surprises not a single person this side of the Styx.
We see the Aron Fetus, and then yesss the three hero Symphogear wielders fighting the opposing Black Symphogear wielders, with a focus on Maria vs. Tsubasa in particular. I am so here for this, give me all the Symphogear-on-Symphogear drama.
The OP concludes with a shot of Hibiki, Tsubasa, and Chris holding hands, showing their strength as a team.
We don’t see Maria holding hands with Cherry Coke and Sprite. Are they also a solid team, or will their undoing be a failure to cooperate and love each other like our girls learned to last season?
After the OP, we return to Snoop Oni and the rest of the agents in Section 2’s base. They watch the disaster unfold at Maria and Tsubasa’s concert, broadcast live all over the world. Snoop Oni gets a call from the Japanese Defense Ministry…
…apparently sponsored by Top Ramen. Buy war bonds, folks.
Oodles of Noodles here tells Snoop Oni that these terrorists caused problems in America, too.
This must be the burning building from the first episode’s prologue, where Gal Pal died holding the Aron Fetus. Still not sure how these people got the idea to name themselves after Finé. There must be some connection, other than that they both wanted to destroy/remake the world in some way so they both picked the French word for “the end”. What are the odds the new villains just happened to pick the same name as last season’s villain?
Noodles tells us the American research lab lost all their data and the Relic they were studying, which could mean the Fetus.
We cut back to Maria up on stage with Tsubasa. The thousands of hostage concert attendees, trapped in the stadium by barriers of Noise, listen in fear as Maria tells the world about her terrorist group.
Diva One-Sock starts laying out her “Finé” group’s demands. If world leaders don’t comply, she warns their capital cities will be flooded with Noise.
You’re demanding all the territory in every country?
Dude there’s only, like, five of you people. What the fuck are you gonna do with the 57 million square miles of all land territory on planet Earth? Build the biggest sock factory?
I feel like Maria is just pulling these demands out of her ass. Like she’s only trying to hold everybody’s attention and make a huge spectacle as some kind of decoy, while the actual plan of the terrorist group will be something entirely different. “I hereby outlaw all music except J-Pop” and “I demand Tsubasa make out with me on this international broadcast” might as well be next on her made-up list.
Maria, in this day and age, turn on the worldwide news on any given day and see for yourself just how wonderfully “leading people to paradise” usually ends for them.
Evil Mom in her surveillance van looks on in fond amusement as she watches Maria be a drama queen on international television.
World leaders also watch the broadcast, including Noodles.
How many noodles does one person need?? No wonder the Defense budget is so high. This guy’s diet is worse than most college students. Heck, no, I ate healthier than that in college, and this is coming from someone who made s’mores in the microwave for dinner at least once a week back then.
You know what never mind, this guy has some good ideas after all. President Idol Maria has my vote.
Tsubasa is officially Done with Maria’s fuckery by this point.
Tsubasa is halfway through singing her Gear activation phrase when brown-haired guy chimes in on her earpiece. He talks her down from revealing her Symphogear identity to the world. If Tsubasa reveals herself, he worries it’ll mean the end of her idol career, her way of carrying on Kanade’s love.
Maria taunts Tsubasa some more, but then surprises everyone.
Maria lets the hostages go, confident that her group’s power has already been made clear enough to the world that they don’t need the hostages anymore.
Now it’s Evil Mom’s turn to chime in on Maria’s headset. She asks why Maria is deviating from The Plan.
“Not my style”? Gee, was it also Not Your Style when all those Section 2 train crew members and Marines were killed by your organization’s Noise attacks and explosion last episode??
I don’t understand Maria’s logic here. If she’s trying to be honorable, it falls flat. Why is she reluctant to kill hostages, but so far has expressed no remorse over the earlier killings?
Maria could try to claim it was okay for her organization to kill agency members and Marines, since these people were trained fighters and armed with guns, which generally makes someone fair game as a combatant. But, that principle doesn’t apply here, since these people were fighting the Noise.
Noise are immune to everything except a Symphogear, so whether the person they’re eating is armed with a gun or has military/agency training doesn’t matter. Civilian or combatant, everyone is equally helpless against the Noise. When your opponent has no way to defend themselves in either of these situations, killing them is just as dishonorable. How is Maria fine with one but doesn’t want to dirty her hands with the other?
Does Maria not know that Evil Mom and Dr. Ver arranged those killings to cover their theft of the Staff? Does Maria think they just hoodwinked the Staff out of the agency’s control by hiding it in Ver’s lab coat and walking off the base with it?
Maria is either unaware of her own group’s evil or seriously conflicted about it. I harped a lot last episode about her Purity and Corruption duality theme, and how it’s even reflected in her name as Maria Eve. If she’s slated for Purification/redemption like Chris was last season, then I hope Maria wakes up and smells the villainy soon. Even if it takes someone pogo-stick-hopping up and down on her head repeatedly until she gets the truth of her organization’s badness knocked into her.
Maria’s mom is intent on cramping her Style of not harming hostages.
Evil Mom, go dunk your face in a jar of warm goat crap. How dare you tell your own kid you don’t care if she becomes some bloodied monster. How dare you have so little regard for Maria’s emotional wellbeing that you’d order her to Give Up On Life by letting herself become tainted. Bad people suffer from being bad. How often do we see a happy villain in this kind of show? They almost always hate everyone else and themselves deep down. Is that what you want for Maria?
Her responsibility is to give Maria the best possible chance at a good life. Instead, she’s grooming Maria to be an asshole and dooming Maria to struggle down a path of redemption, if Maria’s even able to take that path at all. Whether Maria is her biological daughter or not, this is a failure of parenting.
Evil Mom may already be too far entrenched in her own suffering as a villain to be redeemed, no matter how hard we pogo-stick-hop. But, we can still hope for her. Hibiki would.
Myself, I hope this daughter will full-on rebel against her evil mother by the end of the season and carve out her own empire.
Maria stands firm about the hostage thing. Evil Mom grudgingly agrees to let them go. Mom adds that she’s sending the other two Black Symphogear wielders to help Maria.
Thank god, Cherry Coke and Lemon-Lime Sprite have proper names, now. Not that that’s going to stop me.
What is the “real goal” of this concert attack, if the hostages and demands were just decoys?
The goal could be as simple as kidnapping the good guy Symphogear wielders, like how the real Finé sent Chris to kidnap Hibiki early in the first season. Maybe for Evil Mom to use for experiments to boost the Black Gears’ power. But, if all they wanted was to kidnap our magical girls, they sure made a big spectacle out of it. Evil Mom must have some other goal up her sleeve.
The hostages take Maria’s offer and flee the stadium. Jeez… luring her fans to this concert just so she could threaten their lives on international television, and all for the sake of creating some distraction for her mom’s plan, it wasn’t even Maria’s real goal in the end. Letting them go afterward doesn’t lessen the betrayal, nor the trauma. Maria betrayed her own fans, and this will never not be scummy.
Miku and her friends leave with the rest of the hostages. Miku lingers with a look at the stage, clearly worried. She hopes Hibiki is on the way to help. This brings us to Hibiki and Chris, en route to the concert via helicopter. Hamster is as shocked as everyone by the reveal of Maria’s corrupted version of Gungnir.
Shit, son, you’re making me tear up, because of course your Gungnir isn’t gone. The Gungnir in your heart is the embodiment of the Don’t Give Up On Life message that Kanade passed on to you. As long as you don’t give up, her Gungnir will always burn in you.
UNCALLED FOR
Now that the hostages are gone, there are no witnesses to stop Tsubasa from revealing her powers to fight Maria. That worldwide broadcast is still rolling, however.
Brown-haired guy, ever-present as Tsubasa’s one-man support squad, heads to the concert hall’s control room. If he can disable the outdoor cameras, she can Gear up safely.
He bumps into the soda girls, Shirabe and Kirika, on their way to back up Maria. They try hiding from him, but Cherry Coke suggests they just Get Rid Of Him.
WERE ALL OF YOU GUMDROPS ASLEEP LAST EPISODE?
IT’S TOO LATE TO KEEP CLAIMING YOUR GROUP’S STYLE ISN’T TO KILL PEOPLE.
You two girls and Maria didn’t kill them yourselves, but you openly hold allegiance to the people responsible for those deaths. Wise Up, and then Rise Up to overthrow Evil Mom!
Daw, these two are the cutest little terrorists I ever did see. The music in this scene is bubbly and upbeat while the girls talk. Kirika, the Lemon-Lime Sprite, seems the clumsy-nervous but friendly type. Shirabe, the Cherry Coke, seems the cold, humorless type. They have a sweet, contrasting dynamic in their interactions.
Brown-haired guy finds the soda girls and assumes they must be two stray hostages who couldn’t find the exit. Kirika turns down his offer of escort by playing dumb (playing?) and saying they’ll find the exit themselves. She slumps over in relief when he leaves and she doesn’t have to hurt him. If this girl really is about as forceful as a mushroom net bag, so much for Maria’s backup in the upcoming fight.
I shouldn’t be so hard on these two. They come across as younger than the other Symphogear wielders, just based on their body language and interactions. Maybe they’ve already Seen Some Shit in their childhoods, and now they’re just caught up in forces beyond their control in working for Evil Mom and her shady group.
But, to possess a Symphogear is to possess your own Power. No one, whether it’s Evil Mom or Dr. Ver or anybody else, can hold the soda girls or the rest back for long. The Symphogears even pulled down their creator, Finé. Finé made the mistake of underestimating the Symphogears’ power and determination. Evil Mom, who calls herself another “Finé” leader, better tread carefully, or her girls will turn against her, too.
Shirabe briefly thaws when she and Kirika express affection for each other before heading off. Seems I was wrong, Shirabe’s not the completely cold type, after all.
Back on stage, Tsubasa and Maria face off like a Showdown at the Corral, with the wind blowing though the empty distance between them.
Whoa, where the fuck did that come from?
After an entire night of deceit, bravado, and outright bullshit, now Maria is opening up to Tsubasa? Or, is this more of her act? I can’t tell with this girl.
There are a couple sub-themes that usually go along with the Dark Parallels theme the first episode set up for Season 2. One of these sub-themes being Deceit as a big weapon of any shadow-self type of antagonist like Maria.
Maria so far is full of deceit and concealment. She deceived the audience to come to her concert so she could use them as her victims. She furthered the deceit by making up nonsense demands her group didn’t really mean, and then she even deceived her own mom and leader by planning on letting the hostages go, anyway.
Maria also deceived Tsubasa last episode, going so far as to keep up the act during their intimate dance together. Maria joined her voice in a duet with Tsubasa and shook Tsubasa’s hand, all while plotting to betray her. Singing is practically sacred in this anime as a way to connect with others and show your heart’s true feelings, so Maria abusing singing to conceal her real goals for Tsubasa is borderline sacrilegious.
Even the design of Maria’s version of Gungnir furthers her Deceit aspect. The biggest being her heavy cloak that could be used to help conceal her movements in a fight, even if wearing it might impede her. Maria’s willing to sacrifice practicality to preserve that concealment. We haven’t seen a cloak on any of the other Symphogears, even the other bad girls’ outfits in the OP. Maria also has sharp epaulets to cover her shoulders, which neither Kanade nor Hibiki’s Gungnir has. And an extra high collar, much taller than those of the other girls, which partially conceals Maria’s jawline and neck, spots particularly vulnerable in combat, because Maria clearly Does Not Handle displays of vulnerability with any ease.
The anime did everything it could to Obscure her in her Gear design-wise, short of outright giving her a mask. Maria is wrapped up in her own corruption theme, and it’s going to take a lot more honesty on her part if she wants to break out of it and be redeemed.
Maria is melodramatic to no end. A true performer. Makes it hard to tell when she’s being genuine. Where does her Corruption end and her Purity peek through? Does she truly mean it when she says she envies Tsubasa having a place to call home? Or, is it bait for another of Maria’s traps?
On the other hand, if you were coming home to the type of parent like Evil Mom, then I guess it’d be hard for someone to grow up thinking of any place as a truly safe, loving home.
Tsubasa is taken aback by Maria’s confession that she envies her.
Oh ho ho, first name basis already? That’s a surprise. Tsubasa always calls Hibiki and Chris by their surnames. Yet, she also calls Maria “kisama”, ouch. Even Finé didn’t get worse than “omae” from Tsubasa.
Maria’s had enough talking for now, because it’s T-T-T-T-Time To Duel!
YES, FIGHT, I want to see these two face off!
They fence with their microphone-swords. Maria takes a vicious offensive, and Tsubasa just tries to hold Maria off without her own Gear. It’s a completely different dance than their concert dance last episode. At that time, they were moving smoothly in sync with each other, and now they’re in direct opposition. Maria even gets her Matador on and uses her cape against Tsubasa.
The Noise in the empty concert hall shuffle forward to stand spectator to the duel. Probably laying bets.
Maria keeps trying to force Tsubasa to transform so they can fight each other properly. Maria seems bent on making Tsubasa expose her Symphogear identity to the world and risk her idol career. I’m not really sure why. Does Maria have a personal beef with Tsubasa for some reason?
Maria said she envied Tsubasa, so… is this simply spite? Does she just want to ruin Tsubasa’s career to share the misery, considering Maria’s own idol career is probably over after tonight? I imagine it’d be hard for Maria to keep performing publicly now the whole world knows she’s a terrorist who takes her own fans hostage.
On the other hand, “pay extra to be taken hostage by Maria for one night” sounds like a pretty sweet VIP package, so maybe her concerts will continue to sell thousands of tickets.
Hibiki and Chris are still on the way in the helicopter. They watch the live broadcast of Tsubasa and Maria’s fight, worried for their friend.
At the rate this fight is going, Tsubasa ain’t gonna last ten minutes. She tries to kite Maria off stage, out of sight of the cameras, so she can transform without the whole world seeing. But, concert costumes aren’t exactly designed for evasive maneuvers.
Tsubasa stumbles due to her snapped-off heel, giving Maria the chance to catch her and trap her back on stage. Maria lands a kick so hard I think her and Tsubasa’s no doubt future kids will be born with sore abs.
Maria kicks Tsubasa off stage…
…right toward the swarm of spectating Noise.
Without her Gear on, Tsubasa is an ordinary human. If her body touches the Noise, she’ll disintegrate into dust just like all the other victims.
Despite not hesitating at all over that gut-rupturing painful kick she just landed on Tsubasa, Maria actually pulls an Oh Shit face when she realizes she accidentally booted Tsubasa right into the lethal Noise. Maria shouts, “Don’t you dare!” Whether this is to the Noise or to Tsubasa isn’t made clear. Maybe Maria herself isn’t sure.
Tsubasa is out of options. Transform before she lands, even if it means exposing her identity and likely having to give up her idol career that Kanade wanted for them so badly. Or else die, a far worse choice since it means Tsubasa won’t be able to carry on Kanade’s message at all, nor stop the pretender who now wields Kanade’s Gear.
Hibiki, Chris, and the rest of the world watch Tsubasa fall, and then…
BASED BROWN-HAIRED GUY
He succeeded in cutting the concert hall’s cameras, with only milliseconds to spare.
Tsubasa finally sings her activation phrase and graces us with her awesome new transformation sequence!
Transformation outfits usually burst or “bloom” out of a magical girl’s body, to fit common flowery and frilly motifs. I really like Symphogear’s style of pouring the outfit’s sleek bottom layer down the magical girl’s body and then clamping the armor pieces over it one at a time.
Once she’s all Geared up, Tsubasa sings a new battle song. She lays waste to the remaining Noise to warm up for her proper duel with Maria. She even does the handstand-spinning-slashing Leg Thing!! Because Symphogear is a loving god even in its cruelty, and decided to continue allowing us to witness this blessing just like last season.
With the trash mobs cleared, Tsubasa jumps back on stage to resume the boss fight.
Maria still manages to hold off Tsubasa’s attacks, even Geared up with Ame no Habakiri. Tsubasa is taken aback by her opponent’s power. Tsubasa can now see that this Gungnir is a genuine copy, not some off-brand knockoff Maria picked up in a flea market. Maria proudly declares that her Gungnir is the Real Deal.
Aaaand of course Maria phrases her fight-night trash-talking in the most suggestive manner imaginable. Really, would we expect anything else from a diva who styles her hair like cat ears and only wears one sock at a time?
The girls continue to attack each other. Tsubasa slowly gains the upper hand. Maria does very well, considering she’s only had a Symphogear for three months max, since that’s when the technology was released.
Actually, I’m a bit confused on the timing. Gal Pal had her own Symphogear, but that prologue took place years ago, judging by how young Maria looked. Certainly not only three months ago. So, where did Gal Pal get her Symphogear? Did Finé have a secret Symphogear side project going on in America that no one knew about? Is that the “Finé” connection these terrorists have?
Evil Mom watches from her van as the energy signatures flare from Tsubasa and Maria’s duel. Mom tells Maria that according to the displays, Tsubasa’s power level isn’t even approaching Nine Thousand right now, which they take to mean Tsubasa’s not putting her full strength into this fight yet. This worries Maria, unsurprisingly.
Tsubasa goes in for a final attack, singing her heart out as she HOVER-STREAMS FORWARD ON HER ANKLE-SWORDS, WIELDING A SPINNING BLADE OF FIRE HOLY CRAP THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING AND IT IS GLORIOUS.
I love how even though Tsubasa’s main color is blue, her Finishing Moves always burn orange with Kanade’s fire.
Sorry, Maria. You’re pretty awesome, but you just got upstaged.
With Maria struggling after that fiery hit, Tsubasa blazes in for one last devastating strike, trash-talking Maria while she does.
I paused on this frame.
I paused and held.
I got up from my computer. I stretched my calves.
I went and put a load of laundry in the washing machine. I watered my plants. I sorted the pile of clothes on my floor that’s been there for half a week.
As I folded the undershirts, as I measured out the detergent in that silly little plastic cup I always lose, I thought about this line of Tsubasa’s. I thought about it for a long time. I considered going outside to stand under the stars and gaze up at them for answer.
Ponder until my brain is raw. And I still cannot come to an explanation for this line that is not a level of unabashed lesbianism to such heights that it surpasses Tsubasa and Chris’s gay-ass taunts during their first fight.
The only possible, tiniest fraction of possible, interpretation of “You can tell me what’s going on in bed” other than a steamy vigorous hate-tryst between these two, is that Tsubasa meant a hospital bed. As in, “My attack will injure you so badly that you’ll be confined to a hospital bed, at which point I’ll interrogate you to tell me what’s going on with your group’s plan.”
She could have said it much more plainly. “You can explain yourself from a hospital bed” would have done just fine, you wonderful goddamn drama queen.
If Tsubasa and Maria constantly trying to one-up each other as reigning Queen of Melodrama by throwing increasingly suggestive sapphic taunts back and forth like this turns out to be a recurring theme of Season 2, I will go to my grave happy.
Maria is inches away from defeat, when her backup finally swoops in.
Shirabe cuts in with a rain of sawblades for greeting, and Kirika slashes with her multi-clawed scythe. Apparently, Kirika is not so eager to resolve things peacefully when it’s another Symphogear wielder she’s fighting.
The soda girls’ combined attacks are enough to knock Tsubasa off her feet and save Maria from that bed. Whether Maria regrets this is open to interpretation.
Kitty-Ears struts up in a power pose and crows over Tsubasa.
This is textbook villain bravado. “I don’t need my comrades in order to win” is the complete opposite mentality of how heroes operate. Our team wins because they have comrades, not despite them.
Hibiki and Chris dive down from above, because somehow no one on Team Black heard a helicopter hovering right over their heads.
Chris rains down bullets to scatter the bad guys away from Tsubasa. Hibiki punches straight for Maria. Hamster’s got a personal score to settle with this Gungnir pretender.
But, in true Hamster-Jesus style, she doesn’t really want to fight. Hibiki sees three new Symphogear wielders and she just wants three new friends for her team. After all, Chris left the enemy’s side and joined the light, so why not these girls?
Hibiki pleads for the two teams to talk to each other instead of fighting.
NO, HIBIKI, LET’S DO THIS, I WANT TO SEE JUST HOW MUCH GAYER THE TAUNTS WILL GET.
Maria is unaffected, but the soda girls get really riled up over Hibiki’s optimism.
What? Hibiki and her team don’t fight just for the sake of platitudes and ideals. They fight to protect the people they love. Shirabe and Kirika better not be oblivious enough to claim they don’t do the exact same thing:
Shirabe is even angrier at Hibiki than Kirika is.
Shirabe is echoing pre-redemption Chris even louder than Maria was last episode. It would not surprise me if this little edgelord has Linkin Park lyrics tattooed in a band around her wrist.
What happened to Cherry Coke that made her believe good people are just hypocrites who don’t really want to help others? It’ll be interesting, and probably fucking painful, to find out more about her and Sprite’s background.
What even is with Shirabe’s extending sawblade antennae on her head? I swear there’s a Decepticon Transformer somewhere who does this exact thing. Still, I’m glad we have Shirabe now, so that Chris isn’t the only ranged DPS anymore. The hitbox was getting crowded with this many melee fighters.
Since no one on Team Black wants to listen to Hibiki’s offer of peace, the battle resumes in full. The six of them pair off for one-on-one fights. We get to watch them throw their best at each other.
We’ve never had this many Symphogears before, so seeing them all in action at once is awesome. It’ll be really cool to see how the anime handles this many characters fighting all at once throughout the season. Multi-person combat like this can be some of the most intense fights to watch, and really captures the frenetic chaos of What The Fuck Is Happening Who Am I Even Aiming At And What Just Whizzed Past My Head that this many people would feel in a real fight.
Shirabe continues to spit venom, telling Hibiki that she doesn’t want to listen to claims that Hibiki is a hero who helps others.
The survivors grieving over all those people your terrorist group already killed are probably knowing a lot about pain right now. I’m a stubborn bastard and I’m not letting this go until somebody on Team Black either accepts some amount of culpability or admits that they didn’t know those people got killed.
Also, what makes Shirabe think Hibiki knows nothing about pain? Hamster was impaled through the chest during the first concert attack, spent ages in difficult rehab to get functional again, not to mention all the injuries and hardship she endured last season in her fights against the Noise and Finé.
Anyway, even if Hibiki had never experienced pain before, even if she were as pure and pristine as a fresh kleenex, that wouldn’t matter. Being hurt isn’t a prerequisite for being a good person. Suffering isn’t a badge you carry in your pocket and pull out to authenticate your values.
But, all this might tie in with the bigger themes of what this season is shaping up to be. Part of that Deceit sub-theme we talked about with Maria is a corresponding Doubt. In a Fight Your Shadow Self storyline, when heroes are faced with their own shitty reflections like Team Black, the good guys see everything they have in common and go, “Shit, they’re not so different from us. I thought we were the good guys, but are we really as bad as these jerks?” The heroes start to doubt their own motivation, which is exactly what Hibiki is doing right know when faced with Cherry Coke.
Evil Mom, still in the surveillance van, tracks the energy output from the Six Symphogear Skirmish. She’s disappointed the power levels aren’t climbing as high as she wants. Mom says to herself it’s time to use her “last resort”.
The battle is interrupted by a giant green Noise lurching up from the center of the concert hall, presumably Evil Mom’s “last resort” to get our girls to amp up their energy for her.
You’ve seen worse, Hibiki.
Evil Mom orders her girls to withdraw. Before leaving, Maria summons Gungnir’s spear as one last symbolic Middle Finger to Tsubasa. The spear’s attack breaks the huge Noise into smaller clumps, but Maria isn’t actually helping our team defeat it. As Maria expected, the clumps now regrow and duplicate, creating more and more huge Noise for the good guys to deal with.
Satisfied that she worked in one last dick move after an entire night of spectacular dickery, Maria and the rest of Team Black fuck off and leave the others to handle the ever-growing mess.
Hibiki, Tsubasa, and Chris are now faced with a massive, unkillable Noise. When they attack, it only keeps splitting into more duplicates. If they don’t find a creative way to kill it, it will spread beyond the concert hall and eat all the people outside.
Hibiki can think of only one solution.
They decide to combine their three Climax Songs to overwhelm the huge Noise and snuff the entire thing out in one hit before it can duplicate into more. Chris and Tsubasa agree that this plan is So Crazy It Just Might Work. So, the three of them link hands and sing in unison.
Their colors stream together in a radiant glow that fills the empty concert hall. With the flaring energy climbing higher and higher, so does the physical strain of handling this much power.
Brown-haired guy watches from the concert hall’s control room. He explains to the audience the power of a 3P Climax Song guided by Hibiki.
As long as they share the strain, this Climax Song won’t be fatal. It seems trying to fight alone is what kills you. Hibiki’s strength has always been her connection with others, and her friends return that connection by holding her hands through the pain.
The three girls stand at the center of an expanding sphere of magical energy, and work together to cope with its strain. Chris and Tsubasa support Hibiki as best they can while she struggles to contain this much power without killing all three of them.
We now have canon what Hibiki’s face looks like when she Climaxes.
Outside the concert hall, the freed hostages can’t see what’s happening inside, but they see the incredible colors flash and spread out the top of the stadium. They watch in awe, and Miku hopes for Hibiki’s safety.
Shout out to the jarring-as-fuck flat polygon models chilling in the background that made me jump in fright when I saw them lurking back there like a horde of blank-faced zombies.
The girls conclude their Climax Song. Hibiki harnesses all that colorful energy into her gauntlet, compressing it into one hyper-powered punch. Whooo boy, she even gets flashes of her Frothing Berserker mode as she struggles to handle this magnitude of power!
Hibiki pulls that mega punch back, launches toward the giant Noise, and releases the power of their triple Climax Song into one shattering hit. The Noise and all its duplicates are destroyed in a swirling rainbow-colored tornado of gayness that towers toward the sky.
Happy Pride month, everyone.
Because wow. This combo attack with them joining as a team is so magnificent, my pores are clearer just from watching it play out. I adore Symphogear for giving us scenes of the girls’ incredible strength coming from their love for each other. How can the girls’ enemies possibly hope to stand against the power of their gay-nado?!
This combo attack also solves a problem that’s been annoying me all episode. Typing out “the three antagonist Black Symphogear wielder girls” got to be too much, so I went with the easy-to-pick nickname of Team Black. But, that left us with what to call the three good guy Symphogear wielders.
I think “Team Rainbow” will do nicely.
Speaking of Team Black, we see Maria, Shirabe, and Kirika watching the rising gay-nado from atop another building. They realize they may have underestimated their opponents’ power. Just a tad.
Despite the Noise being killed and Team Black driven to retreat… it turns out the bad guys may have actually won this battle.
If a high-level energy output was all Evil Mom needed out of tonight’s concert attack, then the gay-nado gave her exactly what she wanted.
It turns out, all that energy Evil Mom was trying to amp up during their battle was for the purpose of activating the Aron Fetus. Now that it’s Fully Armed And Operational, our heroes have no idea how much shit they are in for.
Still a mystery what the Fetus actually does. According to Mr. Noodles, this little thing is an intact Relic.
The Relic amulets used by the Symphogears are only fragments, while intact Relics have unique powers. The Staff of Solomon summons Noise, Nehushtan was a near-indestructible suit of armor, and Durandal’s special power was being a big fucking sword. What power will the Fetus have?
After the fight, Hibiki, Tsubasa, and Chris dismiss their Gear. Hibiki starts crying. Her friends assume it’s from the strain of their Climax Song.
Hibiki confesses that what hurts is Shirabe’s venom about questioning Hibiki’s motivations for fighting.
I DID NOT ASK FOR THIS, SYMPHOGEAR
GO BACK TO THE RAINBOWS AND HAND-HOLDING
Seriously, where the hell did this flashback come from? The entirety of Season 1 there was zilch about Hamster’s past, and now Symphogear flings this horror at us while we were still cooling down from that rainbow climax??
Just shit on my grave already, anime. Four seconds of screen time yielded so many painful questions. Is this a flashback to Hibiki’s childhood, long before we met her? Even before Miku met her, maybe? Are these people Hibiki’s family? I assume so, since the placard in front of their house says “Tachibana”.
But, why oh why are the outside walls and windows of their home covered in messages of hate? Who did this family “murder” and “child steal”? Are people accusing Hibiki of being a murderer? Most importantly, why has Hibiki never mentioned such a traumatic childhood before?
I’m racking my brain to remember if we got anything about Hibiki’s family in Season 1. This is all that comes to mind:
Unless I’m forgetting something, Hibiki never mentions her family again. She says more than once that Miku is really the only person in her life other than the people she met through Section 2.
I don’t like where this is going. I don’t like where this is going at all. We had one Gungnir wielder admit to a troubled home life earlier in the episode, now we have the other one also doing so??
THIS IS NOT THE KIND OF PARALLEL I ENJOY, SYMPHOGEAR
I can only throw myself at the mercy of this anime and hope that however dark Hibiki’s past turns out to be and how it affects her the rest of the season, she will persevere through the suffering and remain her optimistic determined self. Please.
Hey look, their Climax Song was so powerful it fixed Tsubasa’s heel she broke in her fight with Maria. I guess the repaired heel was pulled from the same void-space that ate Maria’s other sock.
We close the episode with a shot of one more character watching from afar.
We knew Dr. Ver was working with Evil Mom to summon Noise, but now I’m wondering if he’s really on Evil Mom’s team, or if he’s hiding his true agenda from her, as well. Will he turn against her someday, just like Team Black might? Will Ver and Mom have a custody battle over who gets the Aron Fetus?
The episode ends on a troubling note. No amount of rainbow-tornado-spewing simultaneous three-person Climaxes can wash away the foreboding this episode leaves us with.
But hey, new OP also means new ED!
This one’s much less unsettling than Season 1’s ED with all those mutilated bodies displayed in frames like the Most Disturbing Art Gallery Tour Ever. This ED is just flashes of the Symphogears’ energy patterns, and nice, calm, silhouetted shots of the girls walking through the city.
The ED finishes with an adorable shot of our team.
Because we all know by now what a cheerful fluffy schoolgirl drama Symphogear really is!
Wretched fucking anime.
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This episode let us get our breath back a bit, after the lung-clenching madness that was the opening episode. It still packed in some epic moments and a mountain of The Gay.
There’s plenty left unknown about the season’s mysterious prologue, but we did get some more clues.
We found out the Fetus is an intact Relic that needed to be activated by a high energy output, just like we saw with the other intact Relics last season. Maria’s unnamed Gal Pal’s Climax Song was probably an early attempt to activate the Fetus. But, by working alone and not holding hands to soak the damage ticks like Team Rainbow, she was undone by the strain of her Climax Song.
Evil Mom has three of her own Symphogears under her command, yet she still needed to go to these lengths to manipulate the agency’s three Symphogears into activating the Fetus for her. Mom didn’t use the energy output of all six girls, it was that three-player Climax Song at the end that finally gave her what she wanted.
Maybe Evil Mom forbade her girls from using Climax Songs after Gal Pal died from one, so she needed to trick the agency’s girls into doing it, instead. Evil Mom can’t have been 100% certain Team Rainbow would come out of that combined Climax Song alive. The anime made a point of showing how close Hibiki came to breaking under the strain. Evil Mom leeched off Hibiki’s unique ability to combine Climax Songs, but didn’t seem to worry whether Hibiki and friends would be seriously injured in the process, or even die.
All this despite Evil Mom having the direct experience of watching one of her own girls die from a Climax Song, and feeling the ensuing grief. Mom still didn’t give a shit if Team Rainbow’s loved ones went through the same grief she and Maria went through. Lack of empathy like this is generally the number one attribute of villains, which we saw a ton of last season with Finé.
We also learned more about the three characters on Team Black. They don’t seem to lack empathy to quite the same degree as their leader.
Maria did let the hostages go without physically harming them, and she did look shocked when she realized she almost killed Tsubasa by kicking her into the Noise. Likewise, Kirika convinced Shirabe to spare brown-haired guy, and Shirabe returned the gesture with an admission of deep caring for Kirika.
The three Black Symphogear wielders don’t seem wholly bad. But, they also they don’t seem to understand the gravity of the situation they’re in, nor the fact they’re working with awful people like Evil Mom and Dr. Ver, who are willing to kill.
Team Black seems to cooperate okay, but do they have the same bonds of comradeship as Team Rainbow? Kirika and Shirabe clearly care for each other, but I don’t know how Maria factors into that. Would Maria really be able to join hands with them like Hibiki does for her friends?
Hibiki, Chris, and Tsubasa are a big, affectionate, hands-y pile. They hold hands, they reassure and comfort each other, there’s a lot of mutual saves and physical touches even during combat, and Hibiki has bodily grabbed Chris and Tsubasa to haul them to safety a couple times now.
Diva One-Sock so far is a poor team captain in comparison to her opposing Gungnir wielder. Maria doesn’t spare a glance at her teammates when they save her, much less thank them. She doesn’t even acknowledge their help, just puffs up and says – to Tsubasa, not even to Kirika and Shirabe – that she didn’t need them to win. Does Maria consider them her friends, period?
Check it out, Maria doesn’t even look at Kirika and Shirabe during this entire conversation. She only has eyes for Tsubasa.
It’s good that at least Team Black don’t bicker among themselves or sabotage each other, like a lot of antagonist squads do. They do cooperate in battle, and the soda girls seem to accept Maria’s lead. But, the three of them just don’t display the same solid teamwork Team Rainbow do.
Cooperation between the bad guys isn’t as strong as it appeared last episode. We saw Maria defy her mom, Kirika eager to resolve things peacefully, and Dr. Ver lurking in wait to hatch his own plan.
With this many cracks, Evil Mom’s platform is going to crumble under her feet.
Last episode, I thought Maria’s driving motivation would be the loss of her ambiguous Gal Pal. Undetermined yet whether this girl was a friend or schoolmate or family or romantic partner. However, this episode, Maria confessed to wanting a home.
This could be a hopeful sign for Maria eventually living up to her name and becoming Purified and joining the heroes. If what she truly wants is a place to call home, maybe all Hibiki needs to do is convince Maria she can find a loving home with them in Section 2. Tsubasa already has a nice bed picked out for her.
Okay but really though, if Maria doesn’t want a place, maybe she wants a person. Maybe what Maria means is that her old home feels empty and unwelcoming now, without Gal Pal in her life. Tsubasa certainly understands what it’s like to lose someone close to you and struggle for wholeness in their absence.
If Maria and Tsubasa can set aside their Opposites and see all their Parallels, maybe they can slowly find something they lost in each other. Sometimes, a simple “I’ll be your home” is the most loving thing you can say to a person.
Shirabe and Kirika might be won over eventually, as well. If Hibiki can persuade them that the good guys really are fighting for the right reasons and not just empty ideals, then the soda girls will probably also come join Clan Suffering.
The key is going to be more of that communication that makes our team so strong. Talking, like Hibiki wants to do, and demonstrating their good intentions through action, will win over Maria’s trio better than battling them will. With Evil Mom already losing grip, all Hibiki has to do is hold firm. But, that’s gonna be hard to do with that Doubt theme gnawing at Hibiki’s fingertips.
The bad guys cannot defeat the Gay Trinity.
Unless they split it.
Crippling Hibiki with self-doubt is a good way to do that.
Another good way to split the heroes’ team would be to make Tsubasa so angry, she lets herself get baited into going off alone on some vengeance mission against Maria and then getting defeated on her own. Goading Tsubasa into unwise decisions seems to be Maria’s pastime.
Activating the fetus Relic must be why Maria was so bent on forcing Tsubasa to Gear up during their duel. I suppose the whole point of Maria’s melodramatic terrorist escapade at the concert hall was just to get Tsubasa and the rest of Team Rainbow hot and bothered enough to Climax simultaneously so that Evil Mom’s monster fetus could soak up the afterglow.
Why hello, new contender for Strangest Sentence I’ve Ever Typed.
Anyway, Maria was clearly disappointed when brown-haired guy cut the stadium’s cameras. Maria didn’t just want Tsubasa to fight her for the sake of outputting energy. She wanted Tsubasa to fight her for it publicly, to ruin Tsubasa’s idol career.
I feel like there’s more going on here. It may tie in with my confusion from last episode over how well Tsubasa and Maria knew each other before the concert and what colored their interactions. I’m intrigued to learn more, and to find out just how much of Maria’s performance tonight was an act.
Unless it was simply another of her Deceits, then Maria’s personal grievance against Tsubasa might seep down from that envy she confessed to earlier. If Maria’s brief career as an idol was for another purpose than luring victims to her concert, like if it was to boost her own singing power to such a degree that it would activate the Fetus for her mom… then Maria may feel anger or failure at still needing to piggyback off Tsubasa’s singing power like this. Maybe Maria feels second-rate to Tsubasa.
Like, “Mom, I topped the U.S. song charts for you after only a few months of being an idol, and yet you’re still shipping me off to Japan to play nice with some edgelord alter-ego superhero so we can steal her songs to activate our Relic?? Am I not good enough for your Grand Evil Plan? Well, screw your plan, Mom, I’m doing this my own style. And I’m gonna embarrass you further by leaving the house in socks that don’t match, too. Just fucking try to ground me.”
We’ve seen this before, per our Opposing Parallels theme that Maria’s character seems crafted from. A misguided, morally ambiguous girl feeling she must do horrible things to somehow prove her worth to an evil woman whose hold over her she resents, yet who she also intrinsically yearns for approval from.
Being unable to save Gal Pal may also contribute to Maria’s sense of failure. Another link with early Tsubasa, who convinced herself Kanade’s death was her fault for not being strong enough to protect Kanade.
Even in Evil Mom’s assholery, she does seem to care for her daughter a little. She did risk life and limb to shield Maria from falling debris in the prologue. Which is likely why she’s one-eyed and chair-bound now. This might further contribute to Maria’s sense of guilt or failure to protect people she cares about.
The power dynamic between these two seems tense. Evil Mom indulges Maria’s insistence in this episode, or maybe it’s more that she isn’t as sure of her hold over her daughter as she wants to be. Like when Evil Mom asks why Maria is letting the hostages go and thereby giving up major leverage the terrorists had.
Mom’s phrasing and tone are very polite here. It’s not a typical parental “Explain yourself right now, young lady, and no sassbacks!” Maria takes orders in the end, but she sure digs her heels in to get what she wants.
The cooperation between this family may already be weakened. One possibility about the mysterious Gal Pal is that she was another daughter of Evil Mom. If so, then Maria watching her sister die for Mom’s plan probably frayed the ties between Maria and her mom even further.
Add this tension to Maria’s sadness over not having “a place to call home”, and Maria is pretty much just a few feathers away from flying the nest entirely. Evil Mom better shape up fast, unless she wants to lose another of her girls forever.
So, we’ve got Maria straddling the line of evil, her merciless mom plotting something frightening involving the Fetus, Dr. Ver baking up his own batch of disaster, Hibiki gnawed by self-doubt, Tsubasa burning for vengeance, and Chris of all people somehow being the most stable member of the team in comparison… All of these things file together into a big glaring arrow pointing toward rough times ahead.
HAHA BUT I’M SURE WE’LL BE FINE
NO NEED TO WORRY ABOUT ALL THESE TENSE CHARACTER RELATIONSHIPS READY TO EXPLODE INTO A VOLCANO OF TRAUMA
SYMPHOGEAR IS A HAPPY SHOW AFTER ALL
WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
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