Go Team Rainbow!
(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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We have a new header image for the main page! Made by the wonderful @Angeban, who let me commission her art skills for an image that truly represents this post series:
The three Symphogear girls, laughing at my tears as I suffer through the agony and joy of this anime. What else could better capture just what we all endure with this series, episode by episode.
I’ve been grinning for days over this picture. I’m so happy, I almost feel prepared to face tonight’s episode! Let’s charge forward and see just how long that lasts.
Mom’s battle fetus, which she calls “the light of dawn”, was activated last episode. Team Black, comprised of Maria, Shirabe, and Kirika, faced off against our three Symphogear-wielder heroes, who gayed their way to victory by creating a giant rainbow tornado and earning themselves the nickname Team Rainbow.
This episode kicks us back into play with a refresh of the girls’ combined Climax Song and ensuing gay-nado. Because clearly, the anime blew a buttload of budget on this scene and wants us to rewatch it. Honestly, this entire episode could just be 23 minutes of replaying this scene on loop, and I’d still declare it a Good Episode.
After the refresher and the OP, we start the main episode with this abandoned building, where Mom and her so-called “Finé” terrorists are hiding out.
Even bad guys have to make budget cuts.
At least our new bad guys have a base. I was starting to worry they lived in Mom’s party van.
Come to think, who drives the van? Mom doesn’t seem to have the use of her legs, Kirika and Shirabe seem too young to drive, and Dr. Ver can’t drive stick unless that stick is the Staff of Solomon. That leaves Maria. It’s hard to picture Diva One-Sock driving a military-grade windowless surveillance van down the street trying to look as unsuspicious as possible. What if she got fucking pulled over?
Inside the abandoned building base, Mom replays footage she took of Team Rainbow’s Climax Song. Apparently, she also thought it was awesome enough to warrant multiple replays. But, I have no idea how she got those closeup shots of their faces and audio of their voices.
Mom finally gives us an explanation for how Hibiki, Tsubasa, and Chris survived their combined Climax Song when they shattered the meteoroid in the first season finale. Holding hands to combine their powers and absorb the strain with The Power Of Teamwork, like they did to create their gay-nado here, allowed them to make it out of that finale alive. It’s nice that Symphogear explained it… three episodes into the next season. Better late than never, so I won’t complain.
Mom reveals the Fetus is called the “Nephilim”. Which, if I recall correctly from what I know of Christian mythology and a few Diablo III play-throughs, is a powerful entity from both human and angel parents.
Mom calls the Nephilim a “giant that fell from heaven”, but this Relic is pretty small. When the still-unknown Gal Pal from the season prologue held it, it fit in her hand about the size of a tennis ball.
We then get to see the incubated Nephilim, and holy shit:
Mom’s screens are deliberately fuzzy to obscure the monster, so we can’t tell exactly how it looks or how big it is, but goddamn. Is this what the “giant” will look like when they feed it enough whey powder and it bulks up to full size?
That thing is going to Fuck Our Shit Up big time. How does Mom expect to control this monster? Or… does she not want to control it? We don’t really know what her group’s goal is, but in the first episode Maria seemed to think it was ending the world.
Maybe Mom plans to simply let the Nephilim run wild and destroy the world for her.
Mom called the Nephilim “the light of dawn”. Could mean she believes its destruction will bring the dawn of a new world out of the ashes.
We cut to Snoop Oni and the other agents in Section 2’s new headquarters. Gotta say, Good Dad’s fancy computer base is way nicer than Evil Mom’s crumbling computer base.
It’s been one week since Tsubasa and Maria’s concert, when the terrorists summoned Noise and declared war on literally Every Country On The Planet. In that week, all has been quiet.
Well yeah, that concert attack and ensuing dramatic performance are a hard act to follow. Give Maria some time to juice back up, and I guarantee she’ll come out with another big spectacle for us.
The terrorists didn’t follow through on their threat of flooding every country with Noise if they didn’t turn over their territory. So now, no one knows what these people really want.
Brown-haired guy calls Snoop Oni from some dank gangster hovel. He followed the terrorists’ money trail, and found out they’ve been buying black market medical equipment and pharmaceuticals from these gangster money launderers. Brown-haired guy multitasks, shredding the gangsters off-camera like it’s no big deal while he calmly gives his phone report.
Snoop Oni tells him to keep following the trail of this medical equipment and see if it leads to where the terrorists are hiding.
We transition to peaceful shots of the city…
…and then to the academy Tsubasa, Hibiki, and Miku attend.
Finé blew through the old academy atop a Miley Cyrus wrecking ball of anti-moon hatred, so the good guys had to relocate. This new school is gorgeous.
It’s more centrally located. Somewhere in the city proper, instead of overlooking it like the old school. Because yeah, THAT’S a good idea. Put your base CLOSER to where all the civilians live, that way there can be MORE casualties the next time disaster strikes, which of course it will because this is a wretched fucking anime.
Actually, I shouldn’t be so quick to call foul, as we don’t know where exactly Section 2’s new base is. It’s not clear if it’s still hidden inside the school like before. Maybe the base and school are now separate.
Hamster spaces out in class. She wonders how to handle Maria, her opposing Gungnir wielder. She’s also troubled by Shirabe accusing her of not truly wanting to help people.
Hibiki still doesn’t want to fight Maria or Shirabe or Kirika. All Hibiki wants is to get along with the new girls.
The teacher swoops in on Hibiki like a hawk on a bunny, angry over Hibiki spacing out in class yet again. Hibiki gapes like a doofus while the teacher criticizes her for failing to pay attention even in a new school.
School festivals in this kind of anime have only two possible outcomes. Either it will be an adorable night of fun relationship developments and someone will carry a goldfish in a little baggie, OR the festival will be an enormous painful catastrophe and something will get blown to smithereens. Knowing Symphogear, it might pick both options for extra suffering.
We cut back to the terrorists’ base. Specifically, their shower room.
Uh.
When an anime gives me a nude scene of the female characters:
But, when it’s the youngest female characters instead of the older ones:
I guess I shouldn’t freak out too much. Team Rainbow and Miku had nude scenes last season, so why not give the soda girls their turn? Still makes me a bit uncomfortable, but then again, Anime Is Art, so this kind of scene is par for the course.
Surprisingly, Shirabe is also troubled by thoughts of Hibiki. Shirabe’s upset that someone who “has no burdens” is a hero who saved the world. I suppose saving the world is an emo’s job in Shirabe’s view.
This runs into the same problems as Shirabe’s criticisms of Hibiki last episode. For one thing, Shirabe doesn’t know Hibiki, so she can’t assume what burdens Hibiki does or does not bear. For another thing, suffering is not a rite of passage to qualify you as a Good Person.
Kirika isn’t as angry about it as Shirabe.
Maybe this is why the soda girls work for Mom’s terrorist group. They think it’s a “burden” they have to bear in order to accomplish something they want, but they also know it’s wrong? I’m eager to learn more about these two and their stories.
Cherry Coke punches the wall in frustration. Lemon-Lime Sprite gently takes her hand.
The captain of Team Black also wants her turn at a nude scene.
Maria fuccboi’s her way in and turns on the shower next to theirs. She voices agreement with Kirika that they all must do what each of them thinks is right, without hesitation or turning back. Like the other girls and Mom, Maria’s goals remain obscured to the viewers. Even if, uh, nothing else about Maria is obscured right now.
As the camera lingers on shots of water streaming down Maria’s bare body, it occurs to me there’s no soap in this bathroom.
Nor any shampoo bottles, any floofy sponges, nor anything else you’d expect to find where people shower. The girls aren’t actually washing themselves with anything, they’re just turning on the water and petting themselves under the spray. Mom must’ve blinged out her computer monitor rig so much, ghetto-ass base couldn’t even afford soap.
An alert sounds through the empty halls of the base. Barricades slam down to block off corridors, and the base goes on full lockdown. Mom watches her screens as the Nephilim gorges itself. She says it has a “vast hunger”.
Its own kind? There’s MORE of these out there??
Mom says controlling the Nephilim is beyond human power. Dr. Ver Gendo’s his way in with shiny reflective glasses catching the glow from the monitors. He agrees with Mom that no one could ever control monsters like the Nephilim, but then utters a truly bizarre line:
Heroes are… also humans, yeah bro?
So, Ver wants to create some kind of non-human hero to control the Nephilim for him and Mom? I wonder if that means Hibiki. She’s the only living human-Relic fusion now that Finé is Dearly Departed, so maybe that’s what Dr. Ver-y Confused By Venn Diagrams counts as being not fully human.
Team Black runs in. Thankfully, wearing some clothes.
Dr. Ver greets them politely, but Maria eyes him askance even while her mom is talking to her.
Mom reassures Maria there’s no need to worry about her, as Mom only put the base on lockdown to feed the Nephilim. Maria is still worried, but Mom dismisses Maria’s concerns rather than reassure her further. Even as the whole building fucking shakes with howls of the monster’s hunger, Mom insists everything is fine.
Mom says she must leave the base temporarily to do some “Frontier” inspections as part of her mysterious Evil Plan.
This is the first we’ve heard of it. “Frontier” can mean anything from raccoon-skin caps to Star Trek spaceships, so I have no idea what it refers to in this context. Other than the fact it’s probably more fuckery our heroes will need to deal with someday.
Ver offers to house-sit the base while she’s gone and feed the Nephilim for her. Mom wants to leave Cherry Coke and Sprite to protect him. He insists he’ll be okay, she should keep all three of Team Black with her while she inspects Frontier.
Mom’s eyes narrow in suspicion, but she agrees. She takes the Symphogear girls away, leaving the base and the monster in his care.
Mom and Dr. Ver do cooperate as part of their terrorist organization, but it seems an uneasy alliance. Especially since Ver still has the Staff of Solomon he can summon Noise with. We don’t know his angle any more than we know anyone’s angle yet. Watching these two interact, it’s amazing he is somehow the creepier one when she’s the one who owns a windowless van.
I don’t know why Mom is worried about leaving him alone in the base, he looks trustworthy to me!
As we leave the scene, he thinks to himself that he’s laid a trap for someone, presumably Team Rainbow, to step into.
Just fucking great.
Back at the school, Chris runs through the hallways. She bumps into Tsubasa, knocking both of them over. They pick themselves off the floor, and Tsubasa asks why Chris is running.
Chris says she doesn’t want to get involved in the school festival stuff with her classmates. She makes a frustrated little tongue-click that is really cute to me for some reason. Honestly, I don’t think this scene could get any sweete–
AAAAHHHHhhhHHH
Tsubasa is actually pretty gung-ho about the upcoming school festival. She press-gangs Chris into helping with festival preparations, over Chris’s protests.
I really like this new development that Chris now goes to school with her teammates. For one thing, it’s adorable. For another, having consistency and normalcy in her daily routine will be a huge help for Chris adjusting to life as a good guy now, after spending so long isolated from an ordinary life and surrounded by shitlords at every turn.
But, how does Chris go to their school, in the sense of how does she keep up with a high school level curriculum? Her life has been in tumult since she was eight.
Did that human trafficking gang in South America take the time to home-school her on shit like Civ classes and algebra? Can Chris F.O.I.L.? Did those guys even speak Japanese, or did Chris learn Spanish?
Or, is Symphogear telling me Finé home-schooled Chris in the mansion while Chris was living with her?
If nobody kept Chris’s education up to date over the years, then the three months of the inter-season gap must’ve contained a remarkable amount of crunch classes to get Chris up to speed with the high schoolers.
That type of learning setting must be especially difficult for someone as impatient and easily frustrated as Chris. The fact Chris buckles down and even just makes it through class shows how dedicated she is to turning her life around. She may scowl about it and try running from her classmates, but I doubt she’d be here in the school at all if she didn’t yearn for some kind of ordinary life with her friends.
These festival preparations are looking great so far, students! All you need now is a ball pit and “welcome friends” taped across the entrance.
Tsubasa leads Chris to an empty classroom. The music takes a lively turn, and the girls chat while they make decorations for the festival.
Chris looks 100% Done with Tsubasa’s question.
Some of Tsubasa’s classmates come in to help make festival decorations. Actually, not sure if classmates or just idol groupies.
I don’t remember seeing these characters before, and I’m not particularly inclined to commit them to memory. To me, all the background schoolgirl NPCs in Symphogear fall into two categories: TIA-chan and Not TIA-chan.
So, until these new girls get their “This isn’t an anime” on and start hurling themselves upon the Great Fourth Wall like a horde of Mongols, they may as well be placeholders as far as I’m concerned.
Tsubasa, Chris, and the Mongols work together to make decorations. They talk about how Tsubasa used to be much colder and unapproachable, but has warmed up a lot lately. Likely due to her friendship with Hibiki and Chris.
Chris complained earlier that Team Rainbow doesn’t have time to waste on festivals like this when there are terrorists on the loose. But, Tsubasa knows this is exactly the kind of time they need to set aside for everyday life, to keep them from being consumed by their warrior lives like Tsubasa was last season. The heroes need to maintain some normalcy to keep themselves sane and remind them what they’re fighting for, and also what they hope to return to once the battle is won.
The Mongols were right. Tsubasa has changed. I don’t think the wounds of Kanade’s loss will ever be gone, exactly, nor the trauma of the two years Tsubasa spent spiraling down into despair and throwing herself into an isolationist warrior lifestyle.
Even if the wounds aren’t gone, at least they’re scarred over. Tsubasa’s made a new life and a new purpose for herself in carrying on Kanade’s songs and messages of love. Maybe Tsubasa is finally ready to move on.
I wonder if Team Black ever sets aside time for fun. We haven’t seen them do anything together, except soap-free showers.
Like early Tsubasa, Maria seems unapproachable and friendless. Not in a cold way like Tsubasa, more like you just can’t tell what Maria really wants or when she’s being genuine. We’re three episodes in, and I still have no idea who Maria truly is as a person or what her goal is. Her jaded view of the world being a shitty place probably comes from the implied death of her Gal Pal years ago, and she also confessed to longing for a place to call home, but apart from that, Maria’s a master at keeping her true self obscured.
Tsubasa agrees with everyone that maybe she has changed lately. Chris teases Tsubasa some more, but then admits Chris herself could do with being more open to friendship. Tsubasa reacts to Chris’s admission with…
ANOTHER TSUBASA SMILE WITHIN A FEW MINUTES OF THE LAST ONE?//??
This whole scene is calm, refreshing, and sweet. And thoroughly gay.
Come to think, Hibiki and Miku are practically the only ones who haven’t had a scene of The Gay together yet this season. We had the Hibiki and Chris gay-train in the opening episode, wet hand-holding for Kirika and Shirabe, Tsubasa and Maria had a whole hospital bed full of gayness together…
…and now we have these smiles and banter between Tsubasa and Chris. Hibiki and Miku were the reigning Tsarinas of Sapphism last season, but they haven’t had much time together yet this season.
PLEASE REMEDY THIS SOON, SYMPHOGEAR
We’re about halfway through the episode, and so far everything is… nice.
Fun…
Cheerful… almost as if it’s…
Well, this can’t be right. Happy moments in this anime only last long enough for us to enjoy them enough to make the incoming suffering that much more painful.
The rest of the episode is going to suck for our heroes, isn’t it?
Fucken.
Night falls, and Team Rainbow lurks outside the “Finé” terrorists’ base. The bad guys’ hideout is just outside the city in a ruined, abandoned hospital on a little bridged island.
I wonder if this is the place Hibiki wrecked when she activated Durandal. I think I remember that also being some sort of medical plant across a bridge.
Brown-haired guy tracked the terrorists down by those mysterious medical supplies they’ve been secretly bringing in. He and Snoop Oni are on the phone with the girls, and everyone is all for raiding the enemy base. Because yeah, it’s not a trap at all.
Chris and Tsubasa are raring to charge right in and drag their enemies out. Hibiki is the only one who looks worried as they run inside.
Ver, alone in the base apart from the Nephilim, watches the girls on Mom’s computer screens as they move deeper into the dark, empty hospital.
The three of them enter Level 1 of this dungeon, and pull the first pack of trash mobs released by end boss Dr. Ver.
Ver pushes the Fuck Shit Up button from the control room, making the corridor’s vents release a flood of red gas that thickens the air around Team Rainbow. The girls don’t seem to care. They go forward and stomp right into that cloud of gas like it’s just the cologne haze in a nightclub. How do we know breathing that red shit won’t outright poison them to death?
Chris transforms first, since she’s the only member of Team Rainbow who hasn’t gotten a chance to show off her rad new transformation sequence.
THIS IS WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT
Hibiki and Tsubasa summon their Gear, too. The three girls roll up their sleeves and start clearing the trash mobs.
I’m laughing over Chris’s cute, harmless little “Bang!” during her dance, considering she leads right into her new battle song full of death threats and hellfire missile barrages. Chris’s lyrics while she mows down the Noise are metal as fuck, and…
…and they’re also gonna make me goddamn cry in pride for her and how far she’s come.
This should be an easy fight. But, somehow, Team Rainbow isn’t winning. They pant and sweat with strain, and have to close ranks to stop the Noise from surrounding them. In shock, they realize their magical power is dropping for some reason. Plus, the Noise are just regenerating from attacks that would normally kill them if the girls were at full strength.
Oh shit. Turns out that red gas Dr. Ver flooded the corridor with isn’t just poison, it’s a really nasty debuff that weakens Gear. This is why you don’t vape, kids.
Our heroes are trapped, in the dark, behind enemy lines, with no backup, surrounded by Noise, struggling with the strain of wielding their weakened Gear, breathing in more of that toxic gas with each panting breath, and on top of all that, their only weapons against the Noise are almost useless.
HOW COULD THIS GET WORSE?
THAT WAS NOT A CHALLENGE, SYMPHOGEAR
The Nephilim thunders in, drooling to taste some of The Other Rainbow Meat. In their weakened state, they might be easy prey.
The girls assume the Nephilim to be another Noise. They’re confused when their attacks don’t make it disintegrate like Noise usually do when hit by Gear. This creature is a living Relic, not a Noise.
While they try to fight the Nephilim off, we get our first real look at the creature.
Fuck if I know. The thing looks like H. R. Geiger started making beef jerky.
The Nephilim must still have growing to do, because at the moment it’s only about Pitbull sized. The dog, not the singer. Even so, if the Nephilim went from tennis ball sized to dog sized in the mere week since it was incubated, then how much bigger will it get, and how quickly?? I want to know how much time I have to mentally prepare myself before the next apocalypse we face.
We still don’t know what the Nephilim actually does once it’s fully grown. Is it as simple as a giant monster that eats things? No special powers? Even Godzilla has lightning breath or some shit.
Dr. Ver dick-skips his merry way onto the scene. He claps from the shadows as he slowly comes into view.
Guess what, folks… it’s time to play a round of ANIME VILLAIN BINGO! Winner gets a toaster.
Let’s see how many more squares we can check off by the end of the season.
The girls are shocked to see Ver. They realize he must be the one behind the recent Noise attacks and therefore all those deaths. They’re even more surprised when the beast answers his call and calmly retreats into its doggy crate cage by his side.
I don’t think I realized until just this moment that this guy is way overpowered for anybody to deal with. He seemed secondary to Mom in terms of leadership, but now it’s clear he has more tricks up his sleeve than she does.
He can direct the Nephilim like Mom, but unlike her he has sole control of the Noise via his stolen Staff of Solomon. On top of that, he has the red poison gas. It seemed Mom’s command of the three girls of Team Black was the only hold she had over him, but if he has this Gear-weakening gas, then he’s pretty much immune to them, as well.
YIKES, now I’m wondering how he invented this gas… Did he have to fucking experiment on Shirabe, Kirika, and Maria until he found a mixture that worked in poisoning Symphogear wielders? Did Mom authorize this? No wonder Maria doesn’t seem to like him. If this turns out true, then all this guy needs is a pair of white gloves and he’d be a regular old Mengele allusion with these creepy-ass scientific torture experiments on kids and teenagers.
Oh shit, another of Mengele’s infamous experiments was injecting chemicals into peoples’ eyes to see if he could change their color. Is that why none of the three girls of Team Black has eyes that match her hair, when most of the other main characters in this anime do?
I don’t like where these speculation tangents go sometimes. Let’s play more Bingo or something, instead.
So, ordinary humans can’t get past Dr. Ver’s Noise, and Symphogear wielders can’t get past his poison gas. Come on, scissors has to beat paper or something. What’s Ver’s weak point? At the rate the Nephilim is growing, our team doesn’t have long to figure out how to beat this guy before things get out of control.
Ver stands next to the Nephilim’s cage and gloats to Hibiki, Tsubasa, and Chris about how he tricked and betrayed them and the rest of the Section 2 agency. He doesn’t seem to give a crap about all the people who were killed to cover this theft of the Staff.
ARE YOU SHITTING ME
I was kidding when I made this joke last episode:
What other silly, off-the-cuff joke is going to someday become canon? WHAT’S NEXT, ARE WE REALLY GONNA SEE MARIA PULLED OVER BY THE COPS IN HER MOM’S VAN? PLEASE, SYMPHOGEAR, DO THIS FOR ME.
Ver claims he’s the only one fit to wield the Staff, and summons more Noise from it to attack the girls. Chris of course, as the only non-asshole to ever wield the Staff, is the one who tells him to go to hell.
As his Noise advance, Chris takes her favorite route for dealing with all problems.
However, with her powers dampened by the red poison gas, trying to deal that much damage ends up hurting her instead of him, due to her malfunctioning Gear.
Because this is what happens when Ranged DPS pulls aggro off the tank, Chris.
Snoop Oni and the other agents in their base watch their Symphogear wielders’ powers failing. They panic, trying to figure out why. Enough of this Gear-backfire strain could outright kill Chris and the other two girls.
Chris’s misfired missiles blast open the wall of the building. The girls struggle to press Ver and his Noise outside the hospital, onto the abandoned island it sits on.
Tsubasa half carries her injured comrade, one of Chris’s arms slung over Tsubasa’s shoulders. Tsubasa even moves her sword to her off-hand just so she can support Chris with her main hand! Tsubasa’s sword is practically her identity, but right now she’s more concerned with helping Chris than with continuing the fight. Holy shit.
At least the girls are now outdoors and no longer breathing in that poison, but who knows how much damage it’s already done to them. I hope the nearest Poké Mart stocks Antidote.
At Dr. Ver’s direction, a flying Noise carries the caged Nephilim away from the hospital and toward the water. Yeah, I don’t think Mom signed a field trip release form for her baby, Dr. Ver buddy. She’s gonna steamroll right over your ass in her wheelchair when she comes home and finds out how much you suck at house-sitting.
Now that the Nephilim is safely in retreat, Ver puts his hands up and lets himself be captured, plotting to use this surrender to his advantage somehow. Tsubasa leaves Hibiki to care for the injured Chris and keep an eye on Ver. Tsubasa takes off at a run, in pursuit of the flying Noise carrying the Nephilim’s cage over the bridge and out to the water.
Tsubasa sings her battle song as she chases the Nephilim’s cage being flown away. Since her Relic has the highest Agility stat of Team Rainbow, she hopes it’s enough to boost her up into the air and within sword range of the flying Noise. The agents in the base listen to her sing, and they worry that jumping after the monster on her own will be extremely dangerous. But, not Snoop Oni.
I absolutely love how supportive he always is of her. He knows Tsubasa is attempting a dangerous move here and he doesn’t want to see her hurt, but dammit she made this choice, so of course he’s gonna holler the equivalent of a GO FOR IT, THAT’S MY GIRL as loud as he can for her, no hesitation.
It’s especially striking when we look at Mom’s parenting style in comparison. Mom argued with Maria’s decision to let the hostages go last episode, and this episode we saw her dismissively brush off Maria’s worries about the Nephilim. Mom doesn’t have nearly the same respect for her daughter’s choices that Snoop Oni has for his niece’s. I still don’t know if Mom is the blood mother of Maria, nor if Snoop Oni is the blood uncle. Honestly, it doesn’t matter in either case. Both of them fill parental roles, and one of them is better at it than the other.
Tsubasa returns his trust. She literally jumps off a bridge for him, leaping out over the water just like he told her.
He yells at the other agents to make an “emergency surface”, and…
….HOLY SHIT THE NEW BASE IS A SUBMARINE
THAT IS FUCKING RAD, PLUS WE CAN NOW “SHIP” ON A WHOLE NEW LEVEL
Thanks to him surfacing the ship to help her, Tsubasa is able to springboard off its prow and complete her jump toward the Nephilim. Teamwork like this has been and always will be our heroes’ greatest strength.
Hamster and Chris catch up, with the captive Dr. Ver in tow. They all watch Tsubasa, because awesomeness of this magnitude needs an audience.
Wooow. Hibiki handed the Staff to Chris to carry after Dr. Ver fake-surrendered. That’s kinda cruel, considering the first episode showed us how Chris is still struggling with the things she did in her past. Actually, instead of cruel, another way to look at it is the highest sign of trust from Hibiki, that it wouldn’t even occur to Hibiki that Chris might succumb to the temptation of using the Staff again.
At least the Staff is in Chris’s off-hand and not her main hand, thank god. She’s holding her Ichaival crossbow in her main/right hand, which is a good sign that she’s still in control of her “good” side and not overcome by her angry former “evil” side. If Chris planned to use the Staff, it would be in her right hand, like it used to be when she wielded it in battle. The only time I remember Chris holding the Staff in her left hand was when she was doubting her own evilness, like contemplating her loneliness outside Finé’s mansion.
As long as Chris doesn’t start main-handing the Staff again, we should be okay on the Please Don’t Descend Back Into Assholery front.
Chris, Hibiki, and Ver stand on the bridge and watch as Tsubasa slices the flying Noise into pieces, making the Noise drop the Nephilim’s cage.
The cage falls toward the water. Tsubasa is bare inches away from catching it, when… without warning, she’s knocked off course by a spear.
By Gungnir’s spear.
Welp, never let it be said Maria does not know how to make an entrance. I guess Team Black escorted Mom back from her mysterious Frontier inspection earlier than we expected. Or else Mom sent Maria back on her own to check on Dr. Trustworthy.
Judging by where those impact-sparks are coming from, that spear took Tsubasa in the knee. Maria has proven herself powerful enough that we can assume she’s capable of landing a killing blow if she wanted, even on a moving target. Seems Maria’s still reluctant to actually kill people, unlike SOME OTHER SHADY FUCKER I COULD NAME, so striking somewhere like the leg will stop Tsubasa without fatally injuring her.
Maria’s spear strike knocks Tsubasa away from the cage and splashes her into the water. With this scene, I can now legitimately say both, “Maria makes Tsubasa weak in the knees,” and, “Maria gets Tsubasa wet.” Thanks, Symphogear!
Looks like Maria wants to play Anime Villain Bingo with us, too.
Dawn breaks behind Maria, framing her in sunlight as she catches the Nephilim’s cage and stands atop her spear like an idol on its pedestal. (Ha, idol.) She may be a misguided ass, but she never fails to pose well.
Hey, not cool!
Hibiki is our dawn-breaker solar rebirth-god figure! Who let this fucking pink Apep eat our sun symbolism?
I guess Maria switched to sustainable energy and is now Solar Powered, because she’s always been a lunar figure before now. Maria is “multi-faced”, she dresses in pure shining white for her concert outfit, then pulls a black umbral cloak over herself to partially conceal her once she wanes into the next “phase” of her identity by betraying the good guys.
Maria is so much a lunar figure, there have already been three failed Apollo missions to land on her face. So, why is Symphogear suddenly pulling an about-face with her symbolism and making her all Dawn-y Fresh?
Hey, at least we get to see Maria with her hair up in that ridiculous ‘do again, since it was down during her shower scene. That hairdo is like some big pink octopus with pussy-cat ears. …Octopussy?
Octopussy.
(Also, is it me, or did the Nephilim’s cage shrink? Poor little monster all cramped in there. Call your Congress Rep today for cage-free Nephilim raising.)
Dr. Ver greets Octopussy and closes out the episode for us.
Wha… what.
The anime then cleaves open my skull and vomits directly onto my brain.
Maria… is Finé?
Aaaand cut to ED.
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Why couldn’t the anime just replay the gay-nado for 23 minutes after all and call it an episode?
I HAVE NEVER BEEN MORE CONFUSED BY SYMPHOGEAR THAN I AM RIGHT THIS MOMENT
Brace yourselves, folks, because pretty much every sentence from here to the rest of the post is probably going to end in a rhetorical question mark, because those final twenty seconds of screen time completely threw me for a loop and I can only hope future episodes will clarify this truly bizarre reveal.
The majority of this episode was great. We got a look inside the villains’ base and learned more about the relationships and trust, or lack thereof, between them. We also saw some of Team Rainbow’s daily school lives, and how Tsubasa and especially Chris are adapting to new lifestyles. And, we got a rad battle scene that amped up the tension by introducing scary new weapons we will have to fight against: the Nephilim and the anti-Symphogear poison gas.
So yeah, good episode, it’s just those last couple lines of dialogue that deployed the airbag right in my face.
I mean, huh? Maria is Finé re-awoken? That’s just… off.
I thought the themes of this season were going to be things like Oppositional Parallels, and Fight Your Dark Reflection types of storylines. I was mistaken. Season 2 is apparently going to be How Finé Got Her Groove Back.
This reveal doesn’t make sense. Well, okay, that’s the wrong way for me to phrase it. A better way to say it would be, “It’s inconsistent with what we the audience were shown prior to now.”
The whole point of Hamster showing mercy on Finé in the Season 1 finale was to impart a last wish on her.
Hibiki specifically asked Finé to wait to reincarnate until Hibiki and the rest had passed on, so that Finé could earn her redemption by carrying on Hibiki’s message of hope to future generations that Hibiki herself wouldn’t be able to reach. Hibiki wanted Finé to finally, after thousands of years of refusing to change her awful ways, live up to her own butterfly symbol of rebirth and growth.
The two of them even bonded in this scene over their shared status as the only human-Relic fusions, with Hibiki nudging Finé’s chest with her fist and Finé returning it by tapping Hibiki’s heart where her Gungnir scar lies. Finé’s last words were to tell Hibiki to believe in herself, allowing Finé one surprising moment of kindness before she faded. Finé’s death left us with a hopeful sense that maybe she actually would try to change next time around.
And now, not only did Finé come back way too early, but through Maria she is still pursuing her goal of ending the world, rather than helping to save it like Hibiki wanted.
YOU FAILED HAMSTER-JESUS, FINÉ
Maybe Finé didn’t choose to re-awaken. Maybe it happened by accident, and Maria was chosen as the new host by accident. Could even have been Maria’s singing that woke her. Like how Tsubasa’s singing when she was a little girl accidentally woke Finé inside Ryouko.
Even if Finé didn’t choose to go against Hibiki’s wish by reincarnating early, Finé is still choosing to continue her terrible behavior through Maria. Maria is nowhere near Finé’s level of Grand Shitlord, but Maria’s still done harmful things that we talked about in the first two episodes. If Finé is trying to use this new life to drive toward redemption, she already crashed just backing out the driveway. Not a good start.
Is Finé secretly infiltrating Mom’s terrorists so she can, like, defeat them from within, and actually save the world that way instead of destroying it? Is that Finé’s redemption? If so, it’s a really circuitous way of taking it. If Maria-Finé is secretly good and wants to stop Mom, why not just destroy the Fetus? Why shelter Mom and help Mom grow the Fetus/Nephilim into whatever monstrosity it’s eventually going to become?
So much about Maria makes so little sense if she was actually Finé this whole time. Almost nothing about Maria as a character is consistent with how Finé, who except for that brief death scene was a 100% unrepentant selfish sadist, would have acted.
We were told Ryouko’s mind was “devoured” when Finé possessed her, with nothing of Ryouko’s consciousness left to save after Finé’s defeat. If Finé has awakened in Maria, Maria’s consciousness must’ve been similarly destroyed. That means the only time we met the real Maria was the season prologue. All Maria’s screen time since then has been Finé.
If Maria’s consciousness is gone, why does Finé still have Maria’s attachments, like caring for her Gal Pal and her mom?
When we meet Maria in the above scene, she’s humming the same song Gal Pal sang when she (presumably) died, showing Maria is still troubled by Gal Pal’s loss all these years later. Why would Finé give a crap about some girl her host body knew years before Finé possessed her? We never saw Finé give a crap about Ryouko.
What about Maria’s relationship with her mother? Why does Maria take orders from Mom if Maria is thousands of years more experienced and more powerful than her? Why does Maria even still call her “Mom”? And why does Mom not care that some ancient priestess possessed her daughter and devoured her mind?
We don’t even know Evil Mom’s name. We only know her as Maria’s mom. She is literally defined as a character by her relationship with Maria. A relationship that makes no sense if Maria is Finé.
Despite Mom’s awful parenting, she does care about her daughter to some degree. Heck, Mom was permanently injured from shielding Maria with her own body in the prologue. Mom doesn’t care that Finé took over the daughter she protected? Is she just like, “Do whatever you want to my girl, I don’t care as long as you help me Watch The World Burn.”
What about this line, where Mom watches Maria be a drama queen on the international terrorist broadcast. That’s definitely fondness on Mom’s face and in her voice as she looks at Maria. Why would she be fond of Finé, a complete asshole who Mom has only known for a few months?
This conversation between them is now extremely confusing:
What the panting possum. Finé was introduced to the main story of Season 1 by trying to capture Hibiki as a hostage and tool for experiments. And, in the backstory, Finé captured Chris and kept her so long that Chris stopped thinking of herself as a prisoner.
But now, it’s “not her style” to take captives?
WHAT IS THIS
As for Mom’s reply line, Finé was already heavily tainted with blood. Maria is reluctant to kill, but Finé killed more people throughout the centuries than Mom can probably imagine. Why would Mom tell Finé to taint herself with “becoming” a killer?
Check it out, Maria’s hair and shoulders are still wet when she dashes into the room! As soon as Maria heard the alarm go off, she dragged the other girls with her and rushed out of the shower so fast she didn’t even dry off, all so she could run to make sure her mom was okay. When did Finé give one single shit about someone else’s wellbeing like this?
“She changed her ways now with this new rebirth, because of Hibiki’s influence” would be a really abrupt explanation for such a personality about-face. Plus, that explanation would cut out a lot of important emotional development from Finé that we viewers really ought to have seen firsthand, not off-camera during the inter-season gap.
And, what about Maria’s rare moments of vulnerability?
Finé never wavered like this and had to talk herself back up into going through with her evil plan.
Maria hides her vulnerability, uses her cloak to obscure herself. Finé was just the opposite. Once Finé threw off her Ryouko disguise, she flaunted herself as invincible in her Nehushtan armor.
Maria’s longing for a home is understandable if she’s who we thought she is, which is a troubled teenager with a grief-filled past and a rough parent. It’s not understandable if Maria is actually Finé. Finé’s longing wasn’t for a home, it was for her god. Finé didn’t want to find a home on earth, she wanted to destroy earth so she could leave it behind and ascend to heaven. So, where the hell does this Maria line come from?
What does Maria even want, if this whole time she’s been choked so fucking tight under her own coils of deception? What do you want, Octopussy??
I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ANYMORE
Last episode, Maria crowed that Tsubasa could never defeat her, but Tsubasa is the one who destroyed Finé’s Kadingir. Maria was shocked by what she called the “monstrous” power of the gay-nado, but Finé already saw the three girls’ awesome power when they worked together to wield Durandal and slay her Red Dragon. Maria is a pop idol, but in the entirety of Season 1 we never heard Finé sing, despite singing being a major theme of this anime. The discrepancies are racking up.
Nekekur used Recap. Nekekur is confused. Nekekur hurt herself in her confusion!
Maybe Maria doesn’t have Finé’s memories, after all? But, no, that would make even less sense.
Finé is memory. She’s a genetic ghost that wakes in her descendants and steals their consciousness and their body, like a hereditary disease they can’t escape. It functions as part of Finé’s larger character theme of being unable to let go of the past and move forward with her life despite all her struggles and rebirths, in contrast to Team Rainbow, who did overcome great struggles and move forward together.
So, if Maria doesn’t have Finé’s memories, that means she doesn’t have Finé’s consciousness. And if Maria doesn’t have Finé’s consciousness, then how in the world would it occur to Dr. Ver and the others that Maria is Finé re-awakened?
Actually, “Dr. Ver and the others” is incorrect of me. He’s the only one who calls her Finé. Mom and the soda pair still call her Maria. He’s the odd one out in believing Maria is someone other than who she’s presented as.
Maybe Mom just doesn’t know Finé possessed her daughter. Maria doesn’t even seem to like Dr. Ver, but maybe she revealed her identity to him first, and hasn’t yet come out to her mom.
We’re in a weird bind right now, where it’s confusing if Maria has Finé’s memories, but even more confusing if Maria doesn’t have Finé’s memories.
Dr. Ver specifically said “awakened”. That means Finé can’t just be some dormant influence riding shotgun in Maria’s head while Maria sits in the driver’s seat trying to ignore the incessant moon-hating jabbering from her annoying passenger.
If Finé is awake, Finé is the one in control of her host’s body. In all the time we spent with Finé last season, there was no indication to viewers it could be any other way. Season 1’s established rules might need some creative amendments to make a development like this episode’s ending be believable to the audience.
I hope Finé can be exorcised out of Maria’s body so we can meet the real Maria. Then again, I hoped for the same for Ryouko, and we know how that turned out.
Maria being Finé would also put an unsettling slant on the romantic tension the anime has set up so far between Maria and Tsubasa. Tsubasa’s new partner would be a reincarnation of the person responsible for the killing of Tsubasa’s first partner. What the indecent, grave-spinning fuck?
Kanade, how do you feel about this?
To add to the Unsettling aspect, Finé has known Tsubasa since she was a Tinybasa.
LOOK AT THE TINY FUTURE BADASS SHE’S TOO ADORABLE, WAIT I WAS TALKING ABOUT SOMETHING IMPORTANT WASN’T I, WHERE WERE WE
Finé, in her Ryouko disguise, watched Tsubasa grow up. Finé played an older mentor-doctor-support-staff role to Tsubasa, in a position of power and influence over her. We haven’t seen anything yet about Tsubasa’s family other than Snoop Oni, so it’s possible Ryouko was the only adult woman Tinybasa had to look up to while she grew up. Setting Tsubasa up for a romantic angle with Maria, which is what I got the impression the anime was aiming for, becomes really greasy if Maria is Finé re-awakened.
Did I completely fuck up when I thought the anime was developing this pair to be endgame? Am I the Makorra bottles popper?
Ever since their concert, I was thinking these two up were setting up for an enemy-romance type of relationship. Heck, the first time we see them together has their names written out all shippy on the background.
Their pose here looks like a fucking marriage proposal, with Tsubasa taking an arrow to the knee and Maria standing facing her. Followed by Maria loudly declaring she wants to see Tsubasa “unsheathed”.
Maybe I was wrong yet again and misread the tension between them.
Really misread the tension.
Who knows, maybe Symphogear will set Tsubasa up with Chris instead, based on their interactions this episode.
That could work. I thought it was a friendship, but a romance is equally believable. Tsubasa could also decide to just stay widowed, that would be fine. Romantic arcs aren’t necessary, after all Characters can make do without them. …But, come on, we want yuri, admit it.
Maria having a romantic angle with anyone is troubling, considering Finé has a history of sexual violence. Particularly with girls younger than her. I don’t feel safe for Cherry Coke and Sprite now. Would you let two youngsters shower with a confirmed predator?
Maybe that’s why there’s no soap in this shower. They’re scared of dropping it in front of her.
Related to Finé’s predatory past, how will tonight’s development affect Chris?
Chris is finally finding some peace in her life. She “found her thing to protect”, as her new battle song tells us. She also began a normal life outside being a Symphogear warrior. She’s going to school, she’s learning to get along with her classmates, she’s even participating in group activities like the festival, however grumpily.
This is the first time since Chris was eight years old that her life is not a steaming sack of alligator shit. That’s half her lifetime since she’s had an opportunity to be happy again after losing her parents.
Having the ghost of Finé return so unexpectedly could really set Chris back. The last thing I want to see is Chris tossing aside all this emotional progress she’s made the last few months, and descending into her old anger-ruled self. She had a pretty burning revenge-haze for Finé near the end of last season.
CHRIS HAS HAD A BAD NIGHT
Tonight she got poisoned, wounded by her Gear backfire, had to carry the Staff of Solomon and be reminded just how much pain she caused her friends before she turned her life around, and now to airbrush some extra sheen onto the misery, Finé is back to haunt her in the flesh.
SOMEONE PLEASE HELP THIS GIRL, SHE IS TRYING SO HARD BUT THE WORLD JUST KEEPS DUMPING WET CEMENT ON HER BY THE TRUCKLOAD
So, we’ve got Maria-Finé perched all pretty out there in the open like a prime target, and Chris just haaaaaappens to be holding the Staff right this moment and knows exactly how to shoot it at someone, and Chris as a person is prone to violent outbursts when enraged and also held a lot of vengeful feelings for Finé in the past… Hmmm, where might this lead?
Another torment for poor Chris, is what would the possible pairing of Tsubasa and Maria-Finé mean for Chris and Tsubasa’s new bond?
Tonight’s episode took time out of its busy, Nephilim-feeding life to show us how solid these two have gotten. We saw Chris and Tsubasa tease each other, support each other, and encourage each other to adapt to new lifestyles. Their comradeship was seeded last season, and now it’s blooming.
Uh yeah, blooming, let’s go with that nice, decent word.
Please, Symphogear, this relationship was so hard-won. I don’t want to watch Tsubasa and Chris break apart and return to their I’ll Step On Your Head You Bastard days.
All these character relationships, regardless of whether they’re platonic or romantic, become so sordid if Finé is involved. These ship threads are becoming more tangled than a telenovela.
What’s next, will Miku and Hibiki become tainted somehow, too? Will we have any wholesome relationships to enjoy?
Based soda girls.
Kirika and Shirabe don’t interact with Maria in a way consistent with Maria being Finé. They don’t seem exactly friendly with her, but neither do they seem intimidated or awed, like they would be if they saw her as some ultra-powerful ancient mastermind. Maria is just the aloof senior teammate they defer to.
Why would Finé even work as part of the trio of Team Black, or as part of the larger terrorist organization? Finé didn’t have allies, Finé had tools who were foolish enough to think they were her allies.
Finé had two personality settings. Her Ryouko disguise where she pretended to be an airhead and was almost childishly over-intimate with everyone, calling them “chan” and the like. And then her true self, which was loudly condescending and rude to everyone. Maria fits neither of those personalities. Maria certainly isn’t an airhead, but neither is she a loud asshole.
Maria so far is generally calm, except when she’s having tension with her mom or gay-taunting with Tsubasa, which okay yeah I’ll admit does include the majority of Maria’s screen time. Maria is also more polite and calls Tsubasa “anata”, even though Tsubasa speaks much more harshly to her after her betrayal.
Speaking of her lesbianism-coated fight with Tsubasa… Maria and Finé have wildly different fighting styles.
Maria throws herself right into the melee, using weapons like a sword (okay, a microphone-sword) and spear. She’s definitely a Lead From The Front type. But, Finé used whips from a distance, mostly to deflect or to torment. I don’t remember seeing Finé throw punches or kicks at people, except that Miku slapping I’m still traumatized by and that one time Finé thew a tantrum over Hamster. Maria is a much more personal and bodily fighter.
Also, where is Finé’s purple energy shield thingy? That sure would’ve come in handy when Maria was fighting Tsubasa and the others. Finé had that power even when she wasn’t using Nehushtan, so it’s something unique to Finé and not related to any Relic she may be using.
And why does Maria have such shit fashion sense? You’d think Finé would dress herself less tacky.
You know what, I rescind that one.
Maria also doesn’t have the villains’ leitmotif of the season. It’s a heavy, menacing music theme that pulses during scenes with Mom or Dr. Ver. Leitmotifs are an important non-diegetic tool to communicate character setup to the viewer. Symphogear knows how to use storytelling tools like this.
This music theme doesn’t play for Maria. Which it probably would if she’s the mastermind villain of the season, instead of who I thought she is, a misguided gray character who could eventually be converted to the heroes’ team.
The only way this reveal is consistent with the info we have so far, is if by “newly awakened”, Ver means Finé awoke literally just now between scenes, in the time between now and Maria leaving the base with her mom earlier in the episode.
When it comes to Ver, why would Maria-Finé let him wield her Staff? He honestly has the gall to say he’s the only one fit to wield it, when she’s probably the one who showed him how?
All this speculation and comparison between Maria and Finé amounts to one overall question I’m left with for this ending of this episode:
If Maria doesn’t have Finé’s memories, doesn’t have Finé’s past relationships, doesn’t have Finé’s personality, doesn’t talk like Finé, doesn’t have Finé’s powers like the shield, and doesn’t even have Finé’s fighting style, then how is she Finé?
I hate to quote a Republican, but IF IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE A DUCK, SWIM LIKE A DUCK, OR QUACK LIKE A DUCK, THEN IT’S NOT A GODDAMN DUCK.
Because, from what we’ve seen so far, claiming Maria is Finé reborn holds about as much water as claiming she’s Elvis reborn.
It feels like we viewers are missing a huge chunk of the necessary info that the anime withheld in order to make this revelation more shocking. Because of that withholding, the reveal ended up confusing instead of shocking. A cliffhanger like this will no doubt lead into some kind of explanation next episode, but structuring the story reveal like this for the sake of a cliffhanger makes it less intriguing rather than more intriguing.
If Symphogear can bring back old characters, I can bring back old memes.
I really liked the way Symphogear was handling Maria as the mysterious new character who would shape this season’s direction. The anime kept giving us bits and pieces of who she really is and what she really wants, but wrapping it all up in a cloak of deceit, making us question everything even as we got deeper in. It’s been really fascinating to pick Maria apart scene by scene, and unpack all her symbolism and allusions and cool stuff like that, to eventually puzzle out her angle. The anime suddenly ditching mystery and dropping this bomb on us of Upgrade To Finé 2.0 is monkeys-on-helium levels of strange.
I want to fold my own face into a pretzel. Nothing about Maria is consistent with Finé’s portrayal. This can’t be real.
Okay, you know what, it’s Calm Down Time. I’m being too short-sighted here. There actually are a few points of consistency between Maria and Finé.
I spent the majority of the Season 1 Wrap-Up post harping about how Finé is a shitty reflection of Hibiki, Tsubasa, and Chris. And the opening episode of Season 2 showed us that Maria hits that same theme. Being Finé would certainly fit Maria’s sub-theme of Deceit/Concealment, if she was even going so far as concealing her real identity.
Even her name as Maria Eve seemed to me she was meant to be a character who balanced both Purity and Corruption. Maybe it’s more literal than I thought, with the Maria personality as her “Pure” self, and Finé’s influence as the “Corrupt” part of her identity.
Maria wears these hair clips that look like flower petals at first glance, but they could instead be a reference to Finé’s signature butterfly clip.
Maria being Finé would explain how the bad guys knew enough about Gungnir to make a Black copy. It would also explain why Maria was so eager to catch a fade with Tsubasa last episode on the international broadcast and ruin Tsubasa’s idol career out of revenge. But, I’m not sure why Finé would fixate on Tsubasa above Hibiki and Chris. You’d think Finé would want vengeance on all three of them for defeating her last season.
Shit, son. Maria blurts it right out, at the end of the opening episode when she introduces her terrorist group! Fuck me. I assumed Maria meant, like, “I’m the main diva of the terrorists, these other fools are just my backup vocals.” Never in all my speculation did it occur to me Maria meant she was actually goddamn Finé reincarnate.
You know what… even this episode waved the ending reveal right under our noses!
HAHA FUCK YOU TOO, SYMPHOGEAR
FUCK YOU RIGHT IN THE “VAGUE FORESHADOWING” CREVASSE
THE ANIME IS LAUGHING AT MY TORMENT
Maria and Finé are also alike in their shared love of being over-the-top drama queens. Plus, all the boasting and taunts during their fight-night trash-talking of their opponents.
“Road to paradise” might be a sideways reference to Kadingir, the “tower to heaven”. However, we were given the distinct impression last episode that Maria was making these terrorist demands up and didn’t mean them genuinely, whereas Finé was 100% genuine about her Kadingir obsession.
Another thing Maria and Finé have in common is they have to lean forward to see their toes, if you know what I mean.
Finé fused with the Relic Nehushtan to make herself more powerful. Maybe Maria plans to fuse with the Relic Nephilim. An eventual Maria-Finé-Nephilim fusion could be the non-human hero Dr. Ver was waxing about at the start of the episode.
Mom referring to the Nephilim as “the light of dawn” would also tie into this. Speaking of dawn, Maria being Finé explains her sudden onset of Dawn-y Freshness that surprised me when she made her dramatic entrance there at the end.
Finé was definitely a solar figure. Mainly just to match her further as Hibiki’s parallel-opposite. Finé had the shining gold/yellow color scheme, had multiple rebirths, and her death scene even took place at sunset. Now, Finé’s new reincarnation is revealed with the sun rising behind Maria, marking her new beginning.
I assumed Dr. Ver was talking about the Nephilim when he says the above line. But, he says this line immediately after Maria and Team Black run in, and he’s looking right at her when he does. Maria has kind of a flower mini-motif going, with her petal hair clips, her white rose concert costume, and even the belt of her bath robe has a blue rose for the knot.
Maybe Ver means Finé’s possession of Maria hasn’t fully “bloomed”, so to speak, and Maria is still in control of her own body. With Ryouko, we were led to believe Finé’s takeover was a single event, not a gradual process, but what if Maria is special for some reason that hasn’t been revealed yet?
This Finé disaster might have something to do with the mysterious medical supplies and pharmaceuticals which brown-haired guy told us the terrorists have been secretly buying. But, that’s vague enough it could refer to anything. The medical supplies could be for the Nephilim, for Dr. Ver’s experiments, for Mom’s Frontier project, for Team Black getting attuned to their Symphogears, or a bunch of other possibilities. All we know for sure is that soap doesn’t qualify as a necessary medical supply the terrorists are willing to buy.
Overall, the points for Maria being Finé are few compared to the points against Maria being Finé. But, they do exist.
Shit, one more oddity just occurred to me.
Maria’s eyes don’t change in this shot when she opens them as Finé. Change in eye color and shape was the signifying marker for viewers to know whether Finé was being her true self or just using her host’s persona.
Why does Maria keep her tareme eye shape, a standard visual cue in anime for a non-evil character, even after revealing herself as Finé? If Maria were sticking to Finé’s portrayal last season, the smooth tareme slopes of Maria’s eye corners would change to sharp tsurime points, which are anime shorthand for “hey viewers, this person is a bad guy”, to signify the reveal of her true self in this scene.
Maria also lacks Finé’s vertical pupil slits, which were meant to evoke a reptilian look, since reptile references are more of that fictional shorthand to code a character as both ancient and evil, which Finé sure was.
It’s not as if Symphogear decided to leave these design cues behind when starting Season 2. Look at our new villains’ character designs. Mom and Ver are drawn with those “sharp” outer eye corners that you’ll find with Finé and hundreds of other anime villains.
Hell, if we really needed to bring Finé back, it would make more sense for one of these two characters to be Tag You’re Finé Now. Their personalities and methods are more in line with Finé’s than Maria’s are.
Is Dr. Ver just, like… mistaken in thinking that Maria is Finé? Him being wrong is the only explanation I can handle right now. I’m in the Denial stage of grief.
Or… is this reveal another of Dr. Ver’s schemes?
He has lied to our heroes from day one. There’s not enough evidence to believe what he’s saying about Maria is true. Plus, he’s said some off-the-wall stuff before.
Clearly, this man has a solid grasp on reality.
So yeah, I’m settling on the “Maria’s not really Finé re-awakened, it’s some kind of trick” explanation, until Symphogear shows us otherwise.
The most important reason, just from a structural perspective, that Maria being Finé doesn’t work as a story development is that it unravels Finé’s character conclusion in the Season 1 finale.
Maria works so much better as a character when she and the other Black Symphogear girls are contrasting parallels with our main heroes. Maria doesn’t work as a character if she’s the reincarnation of a different character whose arc we already saw completed.
We already saw Finé be the Opposing Parallel to Hibiki, Tsubasa, and Chris. We already saw Finé be defeated by them. We already saw her be offered mercy, and we already saw her still choose to reject love and still want to end the world. We already saw her touching final moments where she tells Hibiki to believe in her heart and then fades to dust. We saw all of that, and it was wonderfully well done. Meeting Finé’s reincarnation lessens that touching conclusion of her arc.
Finé’s arc was already completed, and Maria was already a fascinating character on her own. Why combine these two things? What I want is to get to know Maria, not more of Finé. I want to see Maria have her own personality and motivations and developments, watch her climb her own arc and meet its end, whether that end is redemption or continued evil.
Symphogear’s character development and relationships are the best thing about Season 1, and the biggest reason I adore this anime. But now, Season 2 is devaluing the impact of some of those character developments. I don’t want to watch a story where the moving, heartfelt character conclusions end up being undone by the story itself the following season. If Maria being Finé turns out to be true, then why are we as viewers now motivated to stake ourselves in Season 2’s character arcs after this point, if we’re worried Season 3 will just fragment them, anyway? The anime is making me less invested in itself.
Honestly though, I’ve been wrong about so many of the surprising plot developments of Symphogear before. So, I must admit it’s completely possible I’m wrong tonight, as well. I’m probably losing my cool over nothing.
Maybe “Maria is Finé re-awakened” is just Cliffhanger Bait, and the real explanation will be something completely mundane. That type of solution would create its own problems, but it’d be better than taking what Dr. Ver says at face value.
Symphogear is a well-written show. I trust Symphogear to have a clean, sensible explanation for all of this that I’m just not smart enough to see yet. Next episode will have to tell.
STOP THAT DAMMIT, NOTHING IS HAPPY
Fuck, I just… JUST EVERYTHING IS CONFUSING AND THE BACKS OF MY EYEBALLS HURT AND I NEED TO LIE DOWN AND ALL I WANTED TONIGHT WAS MORE LESBIAN RAINBOW TORNADOS AND AND AND…
…and you know what, forget it, Symphogear is a perfect anime and all is well with the world.
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