“Good lucc fuccer”
(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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I put this off, then put it off some more.
I wasted time by redesigning the main page, adding FAQs, pretty much anything to avoid taking the plunge.
How could I not?
Nice to know you folks revel in my misery.
We’re one step away from someone flat-out messaging me, “Haha good luck, you piece of shit!”
…I need to find new friends.
It’s no surprise episode 9 would be a whammo. We passed the half-mark of the season and now approach the third act of the story.
Last season, I dubbed this Hell’s Home Stretch, the handful of episodes leading up to the season’s climax. In a 12-episode season, this usually begins around episode 8…
In a 13-episode anime like Symphogear, this can be delayed an episode or two. Last season, episode 10 was our big whammo. I hoped this season would likewise give us one more episode to catch our breath before the gates swung wide and Symphogear rode out on a pale horse with all hades following behind.
I call this Hell’s Home Stretch because from a structural perspective, this is where the characters’ suffering cranks up to maximum. We all know the expression, “Things have to get worse before they can get better.” We’re about to witness the “get worse” part.
In order for a story’s climax to sing out loud and triumphant, the protagonists must first be punched in the throat so hard that they can’t lift their voices in anything but sorrow for a while.
Not that the episodes leading up to this one were a sunny picnic.
Our girls already had a rough time this season. But, Symphogear Is Suffering, so what are we to do but clutch our loved ones close and assume the worst is yet to come.
Here we go. Season 2, Episode 9: The Origin of a Hero.
Are you ready? No? Me neither.
We begin where episode 8 left off:
Hibiki and Miku dangle off Sky Tower, Hibiki pulls her hand away from Miku’s attempt to protect her, then Hibiki High Impacts her way down to ground-level, only to look up and see the ledge where she left Miku explode into fiery death inferno death death death.
Welp, time for our bright and cheerful OP now! Not jarring at all.
The episode proper begins with Noise swarming the burning tower. Hibiki collapses in tears, sobbing Miku’s name. Hibiki’s Gear releases, leaving her helpless to the surrounding Noise. She’s too far down the grief-pit to care about that right now.
We viewers know the anime probably didn’t kill off Miku so easily, but Hibiki has no such reassurance. This is Hamster’s entire world coming to an end, as far as she’s concerned.
Sad music plays. Just for an extra twist of the knife, we flash back to loving scenes of Hibiki and Miku together, while Hibiki cries on her knees.
WE JUST BARELY STARTED THIS EPISODE, YOU WRETCHED FUCKING ANIME
Small chunks of calcified flesh crumble off Hibiki’s chest. Yikes, less than a minute of wielding Gungnir, but already the fusion swallowed more of her body. How can she continue like this?
The Noise charge at Hibiki, but she’s too grief-stricken to defend herself. Her teammates swoop in just in time to save her.
Tsubasa cleans up the Noise on the ground. Chris puts her guns and missiles to good use to destroy all the flying Noise.
Hell yaaaAAASSS, Chris showing her badass and shredding those Noise!
As she fights, Chris thinks about how much fell apart for the good guys lately. The terrorism, the horror of constant attacks on their home turf, Hibiki’s mutilation and now Miku’s death, the many defeats… Everything keeps getting worse.
Ah shit. Chris made so much progress as a person last season and early this season. All that progress is now in danger. Chris’s concept of home, the steadying influence of people who love and accept her as Their Own, is all that keeps her on the path of Good. What if she loses her heroic center and regresses into her old self?
Chris rages as she shoots down the Noise. She blames the Noise for threatening her home and the peace she worked so hard for. But, she knows better than most people that the Noise are only tools. Blaming them is pointless. Still, anger and lashing out violently are how Chris copes.
Chris sings her battle song, which was so proud and upright when we first heard it, about how she has no more regrets because she’s found something worth protecting. But now, her proud lyrics layer over an anguished inner monologue.
AAAAAND CHRIS ROLLS UP TO THE SELF-BLAME PARTY
Now, practically everyone is hobbled by self-blame and a false sense of failure. Chris, Tsubasa, Hibiki, Maria, even Miku. So many of these characters are backsliding into their Season 1 selves.
The contrast between Chris’s proud battle song and her inner monologue full of shame is especially bitter. This should be a kick-ass scene of her bringing wrath down on the Noise. Instead, it’s an impotent, enraged flailing where Chris, despite how many Noise she kills, is powerless to stop the loss of what matters to her. Well done, Symphogear, I say through clenched teeth.
My gums are weaker from all the clenching I’ve done this season. Watching these beloved characters reverse their development is frustrating, but not unbelievable.
It’s telling of how much trauma the girls faced recently that it eroded the progress they made with their individual character arcs. As well as their arc as a team. From Hibiki struggling with doubts over whether she’s a hero or a hypocrite, to Tsubasa pushing her comrades away and lying to them and trying to shoulder all the burden herself, and now to Chris withdrawing into self-blame, too… Team Rainbow is splintering.
Like the other characters, Chris is too smothered by suffering to see reality. If Chris refused to activate the Staff for Finé back then, Finé would’ve just kidnapped another wielder to do it, instead. And Chris would’ve ended up in a shallow grave out back of Finé’s mansion.
Though Chris didn’t choose to fall into Finé’s hands, Chris is still culpable for the other terrible things she willingly did on Finé’s orders. She’s come a long way, but has more to go. Even so, self-blame to the point it further damages herself won’t help.
The scene ends with Chris’s massive missile Finishing Move blowing up the remaining Noise in a huge fiery spectacle. Despite this awesomeness, Chris does not look victorious. Chris stoops over, panting and sweating, eyes wide with panic at what’s being taken from her.
After everyone has a little Calm Down Time, me included, we transition to the aftermath of the attack. Police, emergency crews, and Section 2 agents work to salvage the ruins.
Jeez, I wonder how many people died in this attack. The anime doesn’t give us a specific death toll, but there’s no way everyone evacuated in time. Dr. Ver keeps bumping up his kill streak, episode after episode.
Snoop Oni and that brown-haired guy I always ignore try to piece together why the FISters attacked Sky Tower, and why there’s evidence American agents were killed here, as well.
They conclude there must have been an attempt at negotiation between the terrorists and the American government the terrorists originally split off from.
Understatement.
Snoop Oni figures out there must be a third party involved, who sabotaged the meeting.
He has no way of knowing it was one of the terrorists’ own who betrayed them. The good guys aren’t aware of the rifts within FISt, of how Dr. Ver struck this coup to take power from Mom. They don’t know Mom wanted to negotiate for peace and put an end to her group’s terrorism. Today was a failure for Mom, too, not just for the magical girls.
In the backseat of a Section 2 squad car near the wreckage, Hibiki sits, near catatonic over losing Miku.
Pop quiz, everyone!
When in pain, a Symphogear character will:
A) blame herself
B) cry
C) push her friends away
D) blame herself some more
E) all of the above
If you picked E, congratulations! Your prize is an extra hour of sobbing.
How would that have changed anything, Hibiki? You both would’ve gotten blown up.
Or… is Hibiki saying she would rather have died alongside Miku than live on without her?
WOW, THANKS FOR THAT, SYMPHOGEAR. I didn’t have enough anguish on my plate already. Mmm, thanks for that big heaping extra serving, you wretched fucking anime.
One of Hibiki’s agent friends brings her a warm drink.
OKAY YOU KNOW WHAT, THIS IS JUST GETTING RUDE
THE SUFFERING BOMBARDMENT CONTINUES
I don’t know if I have enough fortitude stockpiled to withstand such a prolonged siege.
Hibiki told us multiple times that Miku is her sunshine. Her warmest, happiest place. And now, Hibiki lost it forever, because she couldn’t protect what was most important to her.
Hibiki cries into her drink. Her agent friend doesn’t know what to say, nor do I. At least I have the benefit of knowing Miku’s probably still alive and will reunite with Hibiki, somehow.
This is just plain depressing.
Can we maybe switch scenes to something more cheerful, please?
Why the fuckity-duckity did I even ask.
Maria and Mom made it back to their Osprey plane parked in the woods. Maria blames herself for the catastrophe at Sky Tower, because that’s What We Do in this anime.
The only deaths Maria is actually responsible for are those American commandos she rage-killed:
These guys tried to kill her and Mom, and callously gunned down unarmed civilians in the crossfire. It’s hard to muster much sympathy for them. Yet, Maria is a better person than I am, so of course she’s twisted up over killing them.
Maria also blames herself for everything else at Sky Tower, but the blame for that rests on Dr. Ver’s shoulders and she knows it.
As Maria keeps sobbing about how her hands are “stained with blood”, she calls out Serena’s name, showing how she still blames herself for Serena’s death, too. That was really the start of the Angst Spiral for Maria. The years since then have only pushed her down further and further.
Sprite and Cherry Coke don’t know how to comfort their big sis who’s wailing like a seal trying to attract a mate. Kirika and Shirabe weren’t included in the negotiation mission, and Maria is so inconsolable she can’t even tell them what happened, so they have no idea what’s going on.
They ask Mom what happened out there to cause such a meltdown into emo wallowing.
Dr. Ver sleazes in, carrying the Staff, and answers the question for them.
YOU DARE SHOW YOUR FACE BACK HERE AFTER YOUR BETRAYAL AND MURDERS TODAY?
The utter gall. I want Mom to let her girls go medieval on him.
Actually… how did he get back here?
How did he travel from the middle of the city to the middle of the woods? He doesn’t have a vehicle. It’s not like he can ride his Noise. He’d die if he touched them, like any other non-Symphogear-wielding human.
So what’d he do, hike his ass all the way out into the forest to get back to their plane? He’s not exactly the outdoorsy type…
Anyway, Dr. Scum-muzzle runs his poisonous mouth to Kirika and Shirabe.
He says Mom went to Sky Tower to sell out their group by working with the U.S. government and abandoning FISt’s failed Frontier plan.
Wait wait wait.
I did not just hear what I flipping thought I just heard.
Ten years?
TEN YEARS?
TEN YEARS?
THIS IS THE MOST UPSETTING THING I’VE HEARD THIS EPISODE
AND THAT’S GOING UP AGAINST SOME STIFF COMPETITION
Symphogear, you’re telling us we have up to ten years before the moon falls and destroys the world?
This orbital chart from a few episodes ago made it seem the impact was almost upon us. The moon circles the entire planet in 28 days. The time it would take to move along that red line would be a couple weeks at most. The red line is labeled Predicted Orbit D, but that still would only give us a maximum of 4 more months until Doomsday, right? Like Snoop Oni said, we have no time to waste. Shit is Real.
More importantly, the urgency of how little time we have left to save the planet was further reinforced by HOW TERRIBLE THE FISTERS’ PLAN HAS BEEN.
Their actions have been so atrocious, so poorly planned, so needlessly cruel, so horrific for everyone involved, even the FISters themselves. I thought this was because the FISters only had a few weeks to cobble their plan together. Or three months at most, since that’s how long since Finé’s original shot at the moon.
I thought their “let’s become terrorists” plan was the Emergency Backup Plan, implemented way ahead of schedule, extreme to the point that FISt betrayed their own government and went rogue, all because they were desperate to save the world when no one else would act fast enough.
And now, the anime is telling us they had UP TO TEN YEARS to form a better plan to save us, but “hire the grime-gagger who loves to massacre people and pet tweens” was the best plan Mom could come up with for her crew???
THIS GUY WAS “PLAN A”??
Mom doesn’t have ten years. Her illness will claim her long before then. But seriously, no one else in the entire extended FISt government organization had any ideas for how to save the world? Mom was forced to turn terrorist and put the mysterious Frontier plan into motion all on her own? What the fuck, Symphogear.
Mom’s plan didn’t even work, after all that needless death and devastation her mini-group caused. She tried to use their Shenshoujin Relic to unseal Frontier, but it failed, which is why Mom turned to peace negotiations at Sky Tower. Mom was ready to abandon this terrible, terrible plan, when she could’ve come up with a better plan to begin with, or designated someone to do it for her once she died.
Kirika and Shirabe see it as a betrayal that Mom tried to abandon the plan and work with the American government. Dr. Ver compounds their feeling of betrayal by revealing that Maria isn’t really Finé reincarnated.
Whoa, he’s seriously trying to fracture the group. Now of all times, it’s fucking insidious.
Divide and conquer. If he can split the three girls’ loyalties to each other and to Mom, that leaves them more vulnerable to his manipulations and makes it easier for him to take control of the group.
Maria can’t even bring herself to face Kirika and Shirabe when she apologizes to them. Low, Maria.
The soda girls are shocked to find out they were deceived by Mom and Maria. Even more painful is that when they hear the truth, they both look at Maria in hurt, not Mom. As if they’re used to Mom mistreating them by now, but trusted better from Maria.
Ow.
Ow ow ow.
Kirika is personally horrified. If Maria isn’t Finé, this confirms Kirika’s fears that Finé awakened inside Kirika instead. However, Kirika still doesn’t tell the others.
Hold up, the scene ends there? We’re cutting away?
What the heck do they do with Ver??
I guess the FISters are on hold for now. The anime moves to a restaurant in the city, later on the night of the Sky Tower attack.
Chris and Tsubasa share a table in the restaurant. Chris stuffs down a plate of pasta, because who needs all that angst and self-blame when you can just eat your pain away. Chris grew up having little to eat, so this might be her version of self-comfort after today’s trauma.
What a messy eater. Still, not the worst “anime girl eating” scene out there…
Tsubasa just sits there stiffly while Chris eats. An experienced angst guru like Tsubasa won’t let something as simple as food slow her angst-roll.
Uh, how will Chris pay? She doesn’t have a job. Unless Team Rainbow get a salary from Section 2 for being Symphogear wielders? What even is their pay scale? These girls are world-saving heroes, you couldn’t possibly pay them enough.
Oh my goodness. I frickin love it that Tsubasa struggles through every day consumed by a false sense of failure and lack of self-esteem while at the same time she worries meticulously about her metabolism to the point she won’t eat past 9 at night.
How very… tumblr.
Chris called Tsubasa here for a meeting. Tsubasa is impatient and frustrated by Chris shoveling down pasta instead of telling Tsubasa what she wants to talk about. Tsubasa could’ve simply turned the meeting down, but has enough trust in Chris that Tsubasa rode out to this restaurant late at night to see her.
Tsubasa criticizes Chris for being so carefree when they both know the world is falling to shit around them.
Chris isn’t being carefree. She struggles with similar issues, just copes with them differently than Tsubasa. These two are a strong contrast. Hot vs cold, red vs blue, outbursts vs stoicism. Despite their differences, they’re still a team.
Tsubasa reins herself in and sits back down. She gives Chris one more chance to explain the reason for asking her out for dinner when there’s so much chaos they should be focusing on instead, from FISt to the falling moon to Hibiki’s fusion.
Chris answers that she simply wanted to have dinner together, to connect with her teammate.
Supremely fucking gay.
Chris and Tsubasa could’ve just gotten lunch together in the school cafeteria or something if all they wanted was to hang out and eat together as friends. Asking Tsubasa out for a “heart-to-heart” late at night to eat dinner alone together at a restaurant smacks of romance. Chris might as well have attempted a Lady-and-the-Tramp kiss over the spaghetti right now.
Chris even offered to pay. As if Tsubasa can’t afford food, hah. On top of whatever salary they earn as Symphogear wielders, Tsubasa is Japan’s top idol:
Japan’s real-life top idol has an estimated worth of more than 70 million U.S. dollars. We can infer Tsubasa is similarly Filthy Stinking Loaded. Tsubasa is pretty humble, so we’ve never seen her flaunt wealth, I mean other than recklessly crashing expensive motorcycles. Even so, Chris should know better.
Oh Chris, I want to pat your fluffy jellyfish hair. Cookies for trying, son.
Chris tells Tsubasa their team must stick together. They all have the same goal even if their hearts come from different places, Chris says.
Hey, that’s a good idea! Work together. Support each other.
You know what’d be a really great way for your team to support each other right now?
NOT LEAVING HIBIKI ALONE ON THE WORST NIGHT OF HER LIFE, YOU FLAPPY FROGLINGS.
Hamster is nowhere to be seen, and the camera never cuts away to inform us viewers where she is or what she’s doing while this dinner date is happening. The last we saw of her was the Backseat Breakdown. If this spaghetti scene intended to show the team repairing their bond, all three members of the trinity need to be shown together.
Chris and Tsubasa, why are you two out at dinner like nothing happened today? Hibiki lost her most important person in a fiery death, at least as far as the good guys know. Now of all times, Hibiki’s teammates should be with her, comforting her.
Instead, they prance off to carb-load pasta while Hibiki presumably just goes back home alone for the night. Home to her dorm, the one she shares with Miku, the one now painfully empty and silent and full of lifeless photos of Hibiki and Miku smiling together. The dorm filled with Miku’s clothes and half-finished homework that she’ll never get a chance to finish now, and bath towels that smell of Miku, and the bed they share that Hibiki can only collapse in and cry herself out some more as the grief wracks her, because “home” means nothing to her if Miku’s not part of it, and holy shit I’m getting upset just thinking about what Hamster must be going through tonight.
Chris and Tsubasa, what the heck are you guys doing? Go keep Hibiki company, for goodness sake!
It’s especially jarring because Tsubasa and Chris know the pain of people you love being ripped from you by violence. Tsubasa lost Kanade, Chris lost her parents. Are Tsubasa and Chris so emotionally damaged by their pasts that they don’t even know how to comfort Hibiki?
They could at least try. Even the background agent lady attempted comfort by bringing Hibiki a drink. For Tsubasa and Chris to do something as simple as just sit quietly with Hibiki to remind her she’s not alone would be helpful. The anime chose not to show us any such attempt at comfort. What is this shoddy support work, gals, shape up!
Tsubasa calls Chris out. It’s a bit hypocritical for Chris to talk big about the team working together while still keeping her emotional distance from Tsubasa and Hibiki by avoiding their names. Chris only ever calls them “hey you” or “this baka” and such. She won’t even use their surnames like Tsubasa does.
Chris is about as ready for this question as a cat is for a thermometer.
The camerawork for these reverse-shots emphasizes the intimacy of Tsubasa’s question. From wider shots of the two girls across the table from each other, the camera tightens to close-ups of Tsubasa and Chris’s faces as they stare at each other, as Chris struggles for an answer, as Tsubasa silently watches her and wonders if she’ll be brave enough.
Chris isn’t brave enough, it turns out. She doesn’t answer Tsubasa’s question.
Tsubasa rises without another word and leaves. She gave Chris a chance, Chris refused to cross that threshold, so Tsubasa is Done.
A running theme of Symphogear is its symbolism of hand-holding. How hand-holding shows the bonds between people, and how offering a hand to someone is a way of opening your heart and trust to them.
Tsubasa and Chris were never big on hand-holding with each other directly. They prefer to hold Hibiki’s hands between them, because No Homo. Tsubasa’s quiet request for Chris to use her name was a nonphysical hand-extension. Chris’s silence was a nonphysical refusal to take the offered hand and the offered intimacy that came with it.
It’s not that Chris refuses to use Tsubasa and Hibiki’s names out of distaste. Chris loves them, she’s just insecure about showing it. Part of her is probably still afraid of losing these friends. Part of her is probably still convinced she doesn’t deserve these friends.
Avoiding the intimacy of using their names lets Chris keep a little shell around her heart, just in case things do go wrong for her like everything else in her life has, in case she ends up losing her only friends, she can convince herself they weren’t close anyway, as if that will make the pain easier.
For all their contrast, Chris and Tsubasa have much in common. Maybe they actually could’ve found something to talk about over a meal.
We return to the FISters aboard the Osprey.
Kirika and Shirabe don’t want to believe it’s true that Maria and Mom lied to them about Maria being Finé, and that Mom tried to negotiate with the American government.
Maria admits it’s true on both fronts. The girls still don’t understand, and Cherry Coke asks:
Sprite adds, wasn’t the whole point of them becoming terrorists to fight the world governments who were abandoning their own people, because the terrorists were the only ones willing to save others?
Oh, girls. Our sweet, misused soda girls. They honestly thought becoming terrorists and threatening/murdering innocents would somehow improve the world. That Mom allowed them to believe this is hideous. Mom’s leadership has failed her daughters on so many levels.
Mom tells them she needed to buy the group more time to keep attempting to unseal Frontier, even if it meant working with the government they rebelled against.
Like “bloodstained” Maria, Mom is wounded by her own failure today. So, Mom doesn’t speak up and tell Dr. Ver to get the hell out of her sight after what he’s done.
I would pay to hear a Samuel L. Jackson “I have had it with this motherfucking snake on my motherfucking plane” out of Mom right now.
Ver points the Staff threateningly at Mom and says he only used it to “protect” their group from her mistake of trying to negotiate. All the carnage he caused at Sky Tower was only to prevent peace talks from happening, so the terrorists could continue with their current plan to save lives from the falling moon.
He says all this un-ironically, ignoring the lives he ended today rather than saved. I don’t know what mental gymnastics you’re doing, man, but you deserve a gold medal.
Despite Mom’s lies and manipulation, despite the physical abuse and disrespect of her slapping them right in their faces that one time… Despite all that, Shirabe and Kirika still protect their adoptive mom without hesitation.
It’s both heartwarming and heartbreaking. As inadequate a parent as Mom is, she’s all they have.
Maria blocks them from harming Ver. After today’s trauma, Maria somehow convinced herself his brutal methods are more efficient. She tells the soda girls:
Maria, what the hell?
Maria wants to save humanity going forward. This is impossible, because Maria is still living in the past.
Maria, we all gotta Move On from our grief. Serena gave her life so you could have a future, not so you could sell your future away to pay for a lifeless shrine to the past. And, not so you could take her sacrifice and use it to bring needless death to others. Serena wanted to protect people.
But, hardening your heart is one way of coping with trauma. Maria seems to think turning herself into someone who doesn’t care about the deaths she causes, will somehow make her better at enacting their plan to save the world and make Serena’s sacrifice worthwhile.
How has Dr. Ver enacted any justice? The only things their group uses its power to enact are: threatening people, attacking and mutilating people, and massacring people, even those children Ver pointlessly killed a few episodes ago. Which neither Maria nor anyone else made him answer for. When justice does someday start being enacted, Maria might end up on the receiving side of it.
Hibiki, Tsubasa, and Chris worked together to change the world last season and save it from apocalypse. They saved the lives of their friends from Finé’s attack on their school, they saved millions of people in the city from the Red Dragon’s fire, and they saved the entire planet from the falling meteoroid.
And they did it without being terrorizing, murderous, evil bastards. So, tell me again how Dr. Ver’s way of doing things is the only way to save people.
Maria is already sucked too far down into the morass of grief and self-blame to see reason. If Maria views herself as “stained with blood” like she said, stained ever since Serena died to save her, then from Maria’s perspective, she has nothing left of herself to lose.
Are you serious? You’re choosing to support Dr. Ver?
But… But, you know this man is a liar, a manipulator, an abuser who cares nothing for the lives of others, who gloats over violence against the weak, who is a sexual predator, who is completely unfit to lead, who has only brought disaster thus far.
You know all of this for a fact, and you’re still choosing to support him?? How could anyone possibly suppo–
Shirabe points out the glaring flaw in Maria’s plan for using their power.
Thank you, Shirabe, for speaking sense in this room full of clowns.
Mom voices neither agreement nor disagreement with Maria. Mom recognizes that Maria is finally trying to decide for herself what she wants, not what others want of her. Maria’s not being the fake Finé or the fake idol or any of the other false faces she’s worn. I wanted this for Maria, too. For her to make her own choice about the kind of person she wants to be.
She chose wrong.
Until Maria recognizes Serena’s sacrifice as a noble act on Serena’s part and not a shameful failure on Maria’s part, Maria cannot move forward and grow into her own person.
Honestly, I can’t throw stones. I wouldn’t have reacted any better at her age when faced with such trauma. However, age doesn’t mean much. Shirabe is younger than Maria, yet Shirabe clearly sees how Maria’s plan of letting Ver get away with these atrocities won’t bring about the future they want.
Mom has another blood-coughing fit. The soda girls tend to her worriedly. Maria starts to join them, but holds herself back from rushing to Mom’s side. Because, ya know, Maria’s a Badd Girl now, ultra Bloodstained, and caring about people is just a sign of Weakness, isn’t it. Dammit, Maria, you silly knotted pool noodle.
Ver is smug that everything worked out in his favor.
The implication is clear. He’ll be adjusting their plans. He’s in charge of the group, now.
His coup to take power worked. He caused a massive terror attack on the city, killed who knows how many civilians, came back and splintered the group’s loyalties apart to further erode Mom’s leadership, and he got away with all of it. It freaking worked. I’m deleting.
We all should know by now that this Wretched Fucking Anime loves nothing better than to hammer the rivets deeper. Things are about to get worse, aren’t they?
You know that old joke, “Every time I think I’ve hit rock-bottom, someone tosses me another shovel…”
…Symphogear just tossed us another shovel.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME
THEY PUT MIKU IN THE SHAME CUBE
They caged her like a goddamn animal, in the Nephilim’s old cage.
Miku can only sit there miserably and hope Hibiki’s coming to save her. Then again, she and Hibiki aren’t on the best terms right now after their relationship schism at Sky Tower, where Hibiki denied – it was gentle, but still a denial – Miku’s attempt at protection.
Miku getting captured and having to depend on Hibiki’s protection even further will only worsen the feeling of powerlessness Miku’s been struggling with all season.
And Dr. Ver said he’ll “deal with” Miku now that she’s in their clutches??
Symphogear, don’t you fucking dare let Dr. 288 near Miku. Especially right now when he’s high off the power of knowing he can do literally any horrible shit to anyone and no one will stop him. Oh crap oh crap oh crap. Miku is not safe, at all.
My tongue is dry from worry. Miku better break out of there or get rescued fast! If Ver lays a hand on Miku, I will find a way to teleport myself through my screen so I can saw off his knuckle joints one by one.
We just hit the halfway point of this episode, and already I want to punch a gummy bear.
We cut to another night. Snoop Oni gathers Team Rainbow aboard Section 2’s submarine.
Hibiki’s in her school uniform. Her SCHOOL UNIFORM. Is she wearing it out of protocol, or did she actually go to school today?
So, not only did Hamster’s comrades leave her alone last night after Miku supposedly died, they let her go to school the next day as if nothing happened, as if Miku’s empty desk right next to Hibiki wouldn’t haunt her with pain and loss the entire time. I’m gonna SHRIEK.
Our heroes finally get some good news. Agents found Miku’s communicator and pulled data from it which proves Miku got out of the tower explosion alive. Although, they don’t know where she went after losing her communicator.
The revelation that Miku survived puts life back into Hibiki.
THERE’S THAT SMILE
Gawd, I needed that. This episode has been a pain-tractor plowing furrows into my soul and seeding them with even more pain-seeds. I can’t put into words the relief I’m feeling now that Hibiki knows Miku’s alive and is about to go save her.
Hell yeah, time to put in some legwork! Let’s charge out there right now, hunt down those terrorists, and save Miku!
HERO TIME! I’M SO READY! GO TEAM RAINBOW!!
Wait what, we cut to the next morning?
That scene on the sub took place at night. Why did they wait until morning to start searching for Miku? She’s in serious danger. Every minute counts!
…They’re…
…They’re actually exercising??
I THOUGHT THAT WAS A METAPHOR FOR FINDING MIKU
I DIDN’T THINK SNOOP ONI LITERALLY MEANT “LET’S DITCH THIS HEAP AND GO EXERCISE JUST FOR FUNZIES”
What are you doing, team?
Miku could be getting killed, tortured, raped, or suffering any number of abuses right this minute, while we’re over here playing an 80’s training montage??
MY EYEBALLS ARE GOING TO POP LIKE TOO-BIG GUM BUBBLES AND LEAVE A STICKY PINK MESS ALL OVER MY CHEEKS
Snoop Oni sings??
What the hell is next? Will Mom sing with her girls, too? Will fucken Dr. Ver sing?
Hibiki joins her voice with Snoop Oni’s, singing together as they run.
Chris is so not into it, but Tsubasa and Hibiki are used to Snoop Oni being this Extra. Chris sighs and tags along.
THEN WHY ARE YOU DICKING AROUND, INSTEAD?
I don’t know what’s more upsetting. The fact this montage is happening at all, or the fact the anime didn’t set it to Running In The 90’s.
Snoop Oni leads the girls through the city, up a mountain, even into a meat locker to practice their punches, singing all the while.
Hibiki’s been training under Snoop Oni for a while, so she does well on these vigorous workouts. And of course, Mrs. I Don’t Eat Past Nine doesn’t break a sweat.
Chris has trouble keeping up. Because why do you need to be athletic when you have infinite guns and missiles at your disposal? Her slumped posture as she trudges up the mountain behind them clearly says, “I don’t care how fast you jocks run, I’d like to see you outrun a bullet.”
This montage appalls me.
I feel like I must’ve missed a line of dialogue, or something got lost in translation.
We went from “Miku is alive but kidnapped” to “don’t be glum” to “let’s go exercise”. I went back and replayed this exchange in case my brain blacked out and I missed something to explain why the heroes would waste time being frivolous when Miku is in serious trouble.
Snoop Oni makes no indication to Hibiki to justify this, like maybe, “Agents are searching for Miku-kun right now, we just need to kill time until they find her, so let’s exercise.” There’s nothing to inform the viewer why Hibiki would be so upbeat about exercising when she knows her most precious person is in dire need of her help.
Even if something got lost in translation and maybe Snoop Oni did imply that agents are out searching for Miku right now… I’d still expect Hibiki to offer to join the search party, or to stay in the base to be the first to get news of where Miku is so she can mobilize to go help her.
How is Hibiki so happy right now? This mood whiplash punctured about three of my spinal discs.
Miku’s alive, sure, and that’s an enormous relief to Hibiki, but…
…but she’s in the hands of terrorists, for frill’s sake. For all we know, Hibiki might soon receive a video of Miku’s beheading. Just because Miku was alive at the time of kidnapping doesn’t mean she’ll stay that way. The terrorists could decide to kill her later, could torture her for information, could leave her corpse somewhere for the good guys to find as an intimidation tool, or the terrorists could simply be making Miku’s life hell right now.
We don’t bloody know what they’re doing to her, so why is Hibiki not worried? I’m worried sick.
Plus, you probably can’t do all these different exercise routines we’re seeing across these various locations in the space of one day. The purpose of a montage is to show time passing. It had to have taken them, like, two days to do all this stuff. And, Miku was already missing for over a day when they started.
This exercise montage seems meant to be a fun little interlude amid the suffering we’ve been subjected to. But, this scene comes at the worst possible time. It’s hard for me to have fun watching it.
Normalizing, humanizing scenes are excellent, and create some of my favorite moments of character interaction. This scene… this scene was slapped on like a nicotine patch. Minimal surface relief from the suffering. I got more emotional impact from normalizing scenes like Chris and Tsubasa’s spaghetti date, or Kirika and Shirabe enjoying the school festival together earlier in the season.
While it is nice to see the three girls doing something lighthearted together, it solves none of their problems as a team.
It doesn’t solve the problem of Hibiki’s worsening fusion with Gungnir that’s slowly eating away at her body and alienating her from the others. It doesn’t solve the problem of Chris’s avoidance of intimacy and her fear of losing her friends. It doesn’t solve Chris’s guilt over activating the Staff of Solomon and the ensuing Noise massacres. It doesn’t solve the problem of Tsubasa’s similar guilt over failing to protect people, or her self-imposed isolation from her friends to shoulder all the burden herself. It doesn’t solve Tsubasa’s crappy treatment of Hibiki and Chris regarding the Gungnir fusion, when she lied to them and tried to drive Hibiki away, which Tsubasa has yet to apologize to Hibiki for.
This exercise montage doesn’t even solve the problem that as far as viewers know, Tsubasa and Chris left Hibiki alone on a night when she needed their support in her grief. The three of them don’t even talk to each other while they exercise. They’re just kinda there together, not connecting with each other.
This scene does not bring them closer, at all. They’re smiling and being energetic and upbeat, but it rings completely hollow.
It’s so… I mean it’s... Oh hell, I don’t even know what else to say about this montage.
After that upsetting scene comes to a close, we transition back to the FISters’ plane.
Maria stands near Miku’s shame cube, singing Serena’s song quietly to herself and gazing at Serena’s broken Symphogear amulet. Probably wallowing over how “blood-stained” she is.
Maria stops singing when she notices Miku staring at her from the cage.
Miku flashes back to how she was captured. After Hibiki let go of Miku’s hand and dropped off the ledge, Maria drilled up to that same ledge, looking for an escape route with Mom.
Miku was one of the thousands Maria took hostage at her concert in the season opener. So, Miku knows who Maria is and her terrorist affiliations. It’s unclear if Maria knows Miku is connected to Section 2. All Maria sees is a girl among burning ruins, and it reminds her of Serena.
Welp, Miku’s last Gungnir girl just pulled her hand away, now here’s another one offering a hand to Miku, instead.
Miku officially reached the Fuck This Rock-Bottom, I’m Ready For The Next Shovel To Get Tossed At Me point in her life that we were talking about earlier. So, she accepts Maria’s hand.
Maria flies off from Sky Tower with Miku and Mom tucked under her cloak.
Makes Miku the first of the good guys to meet Mom, I think. I’m not sure the rest of Section 2 even knows Mom exists, as Mom leads from the shadows. Section 2 only met Dr. Ver and the three Black Symphogear wielders.
Maria saved Miku from the flames and the Noise, but that doesn’t mean Maria considers Miku a friend. She’s keeping Miku in the shame cube, after all. Maria doesn’t have a sadistic streak like Dr. Ver does, but neither does she stand up to him when he hurts people. Even with Maria around, we still have no guarantee of Miku’s safety.
Dr. Ver enters. Without the Staff, this time. Wow, he’s so sure of his hold over the other terrorists now that he even lets the Staff, his only power, out of his sight.
Miku withdraws in fear. Last time she saw Ver, he destroyed cars full of Section 2 agents and tried to kill her, Hibiki, and their school friends:
Maria asks what Ver intends for Miku.
Ver doesn’t let us in on how Miku relates to their plan.
As a hostage or bargaining tool, maybe? But… if he intended to ransom her to Section 2 in exchange for their cooperation with the Frontier plan, he would’ve sent Section 2 a ransom message by now. So… what does he want Miku for if not a hostage?
I DON’T WANT TO KNOW, MAN
I’M AFRAID TO KNOW
Ver plays nice to Miku. He makes his voice gentler, and even his eye lines and facial expressions soften from their usual.
Miku’s too smart to fall for his fake kindness. I hope.
Unless Dr. Ver is just another Shovel to her now.
Speaking of rock-bottom people who keep getting tossed shovels by life, the anime catches us up with Kirika and Shirabe.
Kirika, possibly the most rock-bottom character in this ensemble of rock-bottoms, considering she’s having her soul consumed from within, is understandably afraid. Now that they know Maria faked Finé’s reincarnation, Kirika has no more excuses to explain away her Finé shield power and the visions of Finé invading her head.
The soda girls hang laundry in the woods outside the Osprey.
For some reason, the terrorists own many small white pieces of cloth. Those aren’t big enough to be bed sheets, nor even bath towels. So… hand towels?
Shirabe confesses how deeply she was hurt by Maria’s lie about being Finé, and even more hurt by Maria’s support of Dr. Ver’s cruelty.
Maria betrayed the goals that made Shirabe want to follow her in the first place. Shirabe talks about how, back in their orphanage, Maria was kind and upright toward Shirabe and the other lonely Receptor Children.
The way Maria is acting lately goes against the Maria who Shirabe loved and admired. Now, Maria supports Ver’s plan to prey on the weak instead of being kind to them. With the choices Maria’s making, Maria’s not a leader worth following, any more than Mom or Ver are. Shirabe is without direction now.
Kirika still doesn’t tell Shirabe about the possible Finé reincarnation. She runs off, upset, leaving Shirabe alone.
Frightened as I am for Kirika’s future, I also feel for poor Shirabe when she finds out her partner kept such a vital secret from her and pushed her away.
Add Kirika’s secrecy to Mom and Maria’s manipulations and Dr. Ver’s outright evil… If you asked me a couple episodes prior who might be the first to defect from FISt, I sure wouldn’t have said Shirabe. But now, what ties to them does Shirabe have left?
Aboard Section 2’s submarine, Hamster lies in bed after the exercise montage. Now she decides to think of Miku.
WHY DID SHE HAVE TO WAIT AT ALL, HIBIKI?
A spike of pain stabs Hibiki. The Gungnir in her chest continues its slow fusion with her, no cure in sight.
Hibiki might not have much longer before Gungnir’s corruption of her body renders her unable to fight at all. Which makes it even weirder that she wasted so much time the last couple days.
Morning reveals the FISters in flight over the ocean. Presumably headed toward Frontier once more.
We still don’t know what Frontier actually is, nor how it’s supposed to save humanity from the falling moon. All we know is Frontier is some ancient underwater land mass sealed by magic, the rest is a mystery.
The terrorists’ plan being kept in the shadows makes it even harder to see Maria’s perspective for why she chose to support Dr. Ver:
We don’t know how the terrorists plan to change the world, so we can’t know what convinced her his violent methods are the only way of achieving that goal.
It’s getting to the point I’m not sure Frontier is even supposed to be a mystery, anymore. Maybe it’s supposed to be clear to the viewer by now what the terrorists plan to do, and it’s only me who’s too dense to get it.
Aboard the Osprey, the girls are in cold-weather gear, includ–
—ppffFFFTTTTtt
Hahaha, oh my giggly gracious, Maria, what are you even wearing.
“OOH I’M A BADD GIRL NOW, I KILL PEOPLE, I’M SO ~*~BLOODSTAINED~*~, TIME TO DRESS IN FANCY WICKED EMO BLACK, LIKE MY SOUL.”
She did it. She actually did it. She went full Spider-Man 3 on us.
That ridiculous puffy vampire coat won’t even keep her warm. It exposes the same amount of décolletage as her normal top.
Oh Maria, I love you, you endless drama queen. Of course she had to pick a coat whose design looks absurd compared to the other two members of Team Black. Shirabe wears a scarf and a plain, sensible coat. Kirika seems to have simply tossed a scarf over her usual clothes, because let’s be real, buttoning a coat may be outside Kirika’s range of capabilities.
Kirika asks Queen Black-Stained Diva how Mom is faring after the most recent health scare. Maria replies Mom is bed-bound.
Translation: Mom is out of the story for now. The kids gotta fend for themselves along with Creepy Uncle.
Dr. Ver waxes on, certain his plan is best.
Bruh, the FISters are “leading people to a new land” the way Plains Indians used to lead bison off a cliff.
What even is Ver’s logic for saving people?
How many people do the FISters expect to survive their destructive plan and fit onto this new land? Besides, even if humanity gathers in a new land under the FISters’ control, how will that new land save people from the moon-fall? Unless it’s located on another planet, it’ll get wrecked like the rest of Earth. Their “Frontier” sounds like some kind of portal to another world.
The plane alerts them to a U.S. military ship patrolling the waters nearby. The girls aren’t sure what to do about it.
Ver offers some advice:
Shirabe calls him out on this shitty idea. The only thing it would accomplish is killing more powerless people on top of the ones they already have, she says.
But, Maria is a Badd Girl now, so she agrees with Ver’s idea of destroying the U.S. ship, to the soda girls’ dismay.
Hmm… Send a message. Focus the world’s attention on you. Show everyone your group controls Noise, to intimidate and terrorize the world into going along with your plan to supposedly save people from the falling moon.
If only the terrorists had done something like this before!
Such as… and I’m just tossing out ideas here, completely hypothetical… what if the terrorists revealed their group and their Noise-controlling power at some big public event, and then they, like… made sure what happened at that event would be known around the world.
Hmm, how about an event broadcast internationally on live television? That sure would demonstrate the terrorists’ power to everyone, and it would provide Maria and the others with a platform to get their world-saving plan across, wouldn’t it!
You know, an event such as some big celebration, or a rally, or…
…a concert.
Wow, too bad the terrorists didn’t do anything like that earlier in the season, huh?? Haha oh well, I guess now the terrorists are forced to destroy this patrol ship full of people to get their point across! It can’t be avoided at all. Completely necessary. These random people gotta die, for the greater good.
I MEAN, IT’S NOT AS IF WE HAVE UP TO TEN YEARS TO FIND A BETTER WAY OR ANYTHING, HAHA, HOW SILLY WOULD THAT BE?
Maria says they’ll bring an end to the world where the strong control the weak. How she expects killing weak people will bring this about, I have no idea.
Wow, as if people like Shirabe who are reluctant to kill the weak are just afraid to walk the necessary path. Maria completely Misses The Point of why even an emo edgelord like Shirabe objected to this plan. It’s not because Shirabe is some kind of coward. Compassion doesn’t equal cowardice, Maria.
World-saving intentions or not, Maria’s turning into an even worse leader for the soda girls than Mom was.
The face of dismay when you want to be the most emo of the family, but your prep big sister is being melodramatic and stealing your thunder.
We cut to Section 2’s submarine. The U.S. patrol ship broadcasts an S.O.S. as they struggle to survive the terrorists’ Noise attack.
Are you sure there aren’t better ways to help those sailors, bro? Like, go for a jog or something?
Tsubasa dashes off to mobilize. Hamster wants to come help, too, but Chris snatches her back. Joining the battle would worsen her Gungnir fusion.
Chris is harsh at first, but softens.
Chris isn’t ordering Hibiki to stay behind, nor is she doing what Tsubasa did before, which was lie to Hibiki and call Hibiki too weak to help. Chris asks honestly for Hibiki to willingly stay behind. It’s clear she can’t bear to lose Hibiki. Hibiki is a vital part of the warmth Chris has come to associate with her new home and new family.
Chris fixes Hibiki’s necktie after messing it up during that first grab, and smiles at her.
SYMPHOGEAR, I AM SO ANGRY AT THIS EPISODE
AND YET…
…I fucking live for subtle character moments like this.
Because we already know Chris is sloppy at tying a necktie.
Check out this shot we got from an earlier episode:
Compare Chris’s tie to Tsubasa’s. Chris’s knot is fatter and less precise, not like the tight, compressed knot Tsubasa made. And, Chris’s knot sits more loosely at the throat than it should, stopping the collar from pressing flush against the neck and clavicles. There’s also a deep crease just under Chris’s knot, looks like an inexpert attempt at a Half-Dimple knot that failed. This crease is absent on Tsubasa’s Full Windsor knot, a more traditional and smoother way to tie a necktie, sometimes called a Power Knot.
So, why is Chris bothering to fix Hibiki’s necktie here, when she’s not that great at it? Because fixing the tie isn’t the point of Chris’s gesture, and that’s why it’s such a genius little interaction and so heartwarming.
Chris isn’t trying to fix Hibiki’s tie that she messed up, she’s trying to communicate to Hibiki, “I know I made a mistake, and I’m trying to fix it.”
Chris was haunted by her role in activating the Staff and the hurt she caused her friends:
Chris is trying to set things right and fix her mistakes, in her own clumsy way, by fighting for Good and healing some of the harm she did before.
Like Tsubasa brought up at the restaurant, Chris remains afraid to show intimacy the usual ways. Chris asking Hibiki to stay behind and then fixing the necktie is her attempt at expressing intimacy a different way. Chris shows her love for her teammates even if she still shies away from using their names.
Two seconds of Chris straightening Hibiki’s tie gave me more joy than the entire exercise montage.
The dark interior of the submarine casts shadows over their faces in this scene, another of those little Opposing Parallels with the antagonists that’s been a running theme of this whole season. We get this intimate exchange bringing our heroes closer, despite them being hidden in shadows. Meanwhile aboard the plane, the antagonists are splitting their trust and loyalties further from each other, like Maria further alienating Shirabe, even though it takes place inside their open sunny cockpit with no shadows.
Chris runs off to mobilize with Tsubasa and go defend the patrol ship. Hibiki agrees to stay behind on the submarine with Snoop Oni and the other agents and watch the fight.
Aboard the U.S.S. We’re Fucked, the Noise summoned by Dr. Ver slaughter the sailors.
Ver and the other terrorists stay safe in their plane hovering above the ship, watching the massacre below.
Looks like Emo Wannabe Princess isn’t as hard-hearted as she’s trying to be. There’s still a decent person under that puffy black coat.
Maria and the others witness the sailors’ deaths in detail on their monitors. These killings are just as honorless as those civilians who were gunned down last episode that Maria was crushed to see:
Allowing Ver to kill these sailors is not much different from those commandos killing unarmed civilians. The sailors are as defenseless against the Noise as the civilians were against the commandos.
Guns and other non-magical weapons do nothing against Noise, so it makes no difference that these sailors are armed military fighters. They’re still completely helpless. The only people who aren’t helpless against Noise are Symphogear wielders, since they possess the only weapons which can kill Noise.
Ver doesn’t care about fighting fair. He just wants to kill the people on this ship to send a message of fear.
Shirabe tries yet again to talk some sense into Maria.
Maria can’t bring herself to say yes she wants this. They both know it’d be a lie. So, Maria bites her lip harder and tries to steel herself.
BASED SHIRABE
I’m so proud of our little rollerblading edgelord. She’s leaving to go put a stop to this massacre. She had the courage to stand up to Maria, to Dr. Ver, to all these people telling her their cruelty was the only way to do what’s right. Shirabe knows what they’re committing is wrong, and she’s going to do something about it even if she must act alone.
Rock-bottom tossed Shirabe another shovel, but she’s using it to dig stairs instead.
Kirika reaches a hand after Shirabe in worry. Shirabe tells Kirika she’s also doing this to “help Maria”. Shirabe can see Maria is in pain, that the hard-hearted killer isn’t who Maria really is, that the kind Maria she admired is the real Maria. If going against Ver and Maria’s plan is Shirabe’s way of knocking sense into Maria, then so be it.
Over Kirika calling her name, Shirabe jumps from the plane and falls toward the deck of the U.S. ship to stop the Noise. She sings out her Symphogear activation phrase.
WE FINALLY GET TO SEE HER TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCE
THANK YOU, SYMPHOGEAR
I AM SO HERE FOR THIS
The anime held off a long time in showing us Shirabe’s transformation. It’s no accident the anime chose to reveal it to us now, in the moment Shirabe finally stands on her own and makes her own choice to do what’s right.
In all magical girl anime, transformation sequences represent the Actualization Of Power. Power can be used for good or evil, but the choice must be the wielder’s, not some shadowy asshole manipulating the wielder and leeching her power. Shirabe transforming into her Gear here shows her taking her own power into her hands.
The fact we haven’t yet been shown Kirika’s transformation furthers the notion that Kirika is still struggling to find herself and stand on her own. And, sadly, it furthers the gap between Kirika and Shirabe. Kirika keeps secrets and acts distant with Shirabe lately, and because of that, Shirabe now feels she can’t even rely on her own partner and must make this decision alone. The soda girls are growing apart.
Shirabe lands on deck. She wastes no time slicing the Noise apart to stop them killing any more people.
Singing her battle song, she rollerblades around with her sawblades whirling. We’ve never seen Shirabe fight monsters solo like this, and she gets to impress us with her deadly skills. She spins and weaves gracefully, like an ice skater.
A Noise almost gets the drop on Shirabe. Kirika dives down just in time, scything up the Noise before it reaches Shirabe.
Oh thank god. Kirika did the right thing, after all! I’m sorry for doubting you, Sprite.
I’m so happy for these two. Not only am I proud that Kirika stood up for Good, but this is great news for the two of them as a pair. Now they can mend the rift that’s grown between them, no more secrets and distance.
I 100% adore these little moments showing how the girls love and support each other. From Chris straightening Hibiki’s tie to Kirika guarding Shirabe’s back. It’s even more touching because Kirika knows wielding a Symphogear will open her further to Finé’s influence, something that terrifies her, yet she chooses to wield it anyway because of her loyalty to Shirabe.
Little touches like these never fail to lighten my chest and remind me that even with the endless suffering, Symphogear is not after all a—
—A WRETCHED FUCKING ANIME
Sweet Jesus on a lightly toasted bagel. The betraaaayal.
I’m howling in a confused, miserable rage, the kind you usually only hear from coyotes at 4 A.M..
Shirabe falters from the injection. Kirika pierced her with a syringe gun from Dr. Ver. Instead of his usual power-boosting green LiNKER, this looks like the red poison he once used to incapacitate Team Rainbow’s Symphogears.
Shirabe throws back her head in pain and anguish as the poison takes effect. Her Gear dissipates in a flash of light, leaving her weak.
Shirabe’s brave battle song dies the instant Kirika injects her. Sorrowful music strikes up in its place.
Shirabe has lost everything, now. Her faith in Mom, her admiration for Maria, her belief that their group was doing the right thing to save the world, and now even her trust in her Kiri-chan. Shirabe has never been more alone and defeated than she is right this moment.
If her transformation sequence was meant to show Shirabe taking power into her own hands, then this de-transformation shows all that power and agency being forcibly stripped from her.
By the person she trusted most.
How could you do this to our soda girls, Symphogear? Did this entire painful episode not sear our hearts enough already?
KIRIKA, INTO THE SHAME CUBE WITH YOU, RIGHT NOW.
Shirabe quivers and clutches herself from the physical trauma of the poison, too weak even to stand up straight. Who knows how long it’ll be before she recovers enough to summon her Gear again. Until then, she’s defenseless.
Kirika looks torn. But, she doesn’t apologize. Kirika tries to justify her betrayal, tries to explain that she committed such a violation out of caring.
Kirika tells Shirabe they must support Dr. Ver’s plan to save the world. If the possession takes Kirika’s soul, she wants to ensure the world will remain. That Shirabe will remain, because we all know that’s what Kirika is truly fighting for.
Once again, we have Symphogear’s hand-holding symbolism. While Kirika tries to justify her betrayal, she holds out a hand pleadingly.
And Shirabe doesn’t take it.
They went from this:
To this:
Will these two ever hold hands as partners again? Trust is the hardest to rebuild.
Kirika’s voice trails so small and helpless on that last line. With the world falling to pieces, with no leader to guide her, and with her own head trying to kill her, Kirika is backed into a corner.
Kirika, Maria, everyone, they’re scrabbling around like lobsters desperately trying to escape a boiling pot. It’s no wonder they’re making such terrible decisions for themselves and everyone near them.
Kirika realizes Shirabe won’t take her hand. Kirika lets her hand fall right when she says she doesn’t have a choice anymore.
Kirika said the same when Ver lied to her and Shirabe and manipulated them into singing life-threatening Climax Songs for him:
At that time and now, she’s only allowing Ver to manipulate her. Kirika does have a choice, and that’s what’s sad. Everyone in FISt has a choice. Shirabe was the only one who made the right choice. And now, Shirabe is punished for it.
Our pain-party gets interrupted.
Tsubasa, master of the Dramatic Entry, shows Chris a thing or two about making your presence known…
…BY JUMPING TOGETHER OUT OF A MISSILE LAUNCHED FROM UNDERWATER.
Section 2 responded to the American ship’s distress call to fight off the terrorists. Tsubasa and Chris jump out of this SLBM shell like Grade-A Badasses, and land on deck with Kirika and Shirabe.
Chris’s main concern is recapturing the Staff and preventing any more deaths from it, to atone for Chris activating it in the first place.
Alone, Kirika is heavily outmatched against Daddy Longlegs. Tsubasa defeats her fast.
Hibiki and Snoop Oni watch from the submarine, while Maria and Dr. Ver watch from the plane. Looks like Section 2 won this fight.
Ver says it’s time to “tilt the scales” back in FISt’s favor.
I really don’t want to know what Dr. 288 considers “romantic”.
A purple light descends from the Osprey toward the American ship. We hear another Symphogear activation phrase sing out.
Wait, an activation for “Shenshoujin”? The Relic the terrorists use to stealth-mode their plane and to unseal Frontier?
Well, who the fribble-frop is wielding it? It’s not Maria, it’s definitely not Mom, so who’s wield–
…No…
No.
No.
No no no no ｎｏ ｎｏ ｎｏ ｎｏ ｎｏ ｎｏ ｎｏ ｎｏ ｎｏ ｎｏ ｎｏoooo
Nope-ity nope nope nope.
This Is Not Happening.
No, Symphogear. Just no.
This episode has been H I D E O U S. Since the opening scene, we’ve been forced to endure: Hibiki’s breakdown over Miku’s death, Chris hollowed with self-blame for activating the Staff, another Hibiki breakdown in a car, Maria’s spiral into supporting Dr. Ver, Kirika and Shirabe losing their trust in Mom and Maria, Tsubasa and Chris neglecting to comfort Hibiki, Ver getting away with murder and taking control, Miku caged like an animal and subjected to who knows what abuses, Hibiki and the others prancing around happily while Miku suffered, and finally the shining gem of misery: Kirika betraying Shirabe and rending asunder the one remaining nice ship we had to cling to amid this swirling torment whirlpool.
SO DO NOT TELL ME
THAT AFTER ALL THAT AGONY I JUST LISTED
SYMPHOGEAR WOULD NOW SINK TO THIS LEVEL OF ROCK-BOTTOM
IS THAT THE CLINK OF A TOSSED SHOVEL I HEAR?
Well, fuck me with a fauchard.
------------------
Episode 9 wasn’t as bad as I feared it would be.
IT WAS WORSE
This is by far my least favorite Symphogear episode I have yet experienced.
I’m this close to turning these posts into a Keijo liveblog, instead.
…Scratch that. I guess we’re sticking with this wretched fucking anime.
Hell’s Home Stretch barreled into us like a stampede. After stitching my limbs back together from the hoof-crushing, I try to reassure myself that such a terrible episode was necessary for the story.
I have to believe things will get better for our girls from here. The nadir is always followed by an upswing, right? Right??
Honestly, things might only get worse from here.
Never would I have guessed “Miku becomes a Symphogear wielder” as a twist Hell’s Home Stretch would hit us with. This episode was fraught with upsetting choices, but this ending scene went Above And Beyond upsetting.
Miku becoming a magical girl is just…
…wrong.
Like, wrong as in structurally untenable. Structurally untenable to the point the foundations of the building will collapse.
It’s not that Miku can’t become a magical girl like the other characters. Everyone deserves the opportunity to fight for what they want to protect. Miku has as much right to wield a Symphogear as Hibiki and the other girls do.
But, for the anime to change Miku into a wielder seems to Miss The Point of why Miku’s character exists in the first place.
I’ve talked previously about how Hibiki and Miku embody the difference between Might and Strength. Hibiki is a Mighty character, as in she has enormous physical and magical power and could punch your face into a half-gobbled pancake with minimal effort.
Whew, I need a moment to fan myself just remembering that screencap.
What was I talking about? Okay yeah, Miku is a Strong character in contrast to Hibiki’s Might.
Miku has no magical powers, no mightiness she can use to enact her will. That doesn’t fucking stop her.
Strength doesn’t mean looking into danger and saying, “I’m not scared, because I know I’m powerful enough to win this fight.”
Strength means looking into danger and saying, “I’m scared shitless and probably can’t win this fight, but I’m going to give it my best anyway.”
Excuse me while I rack up Miku’s kick-assery. Giant orange Tentacruel Noise corners her? Miku risks her life to distract it long enough for Hibiki to save someone else. School gets invaded by Noise? Miku leads evacuations. Mega-powerful villain in spiky platform heels ambushes her in an elevator? Shoulder-checks that scumbag! Villain hacks the base’s power supply? Miku organizes a team to bring it back online. Noise attack her again while she cries over Hibiki’s grave? No biggie, Miku just drops everything and drags a complete stranger to safety, shielding the stranger with her own body.
That’s not even a complete list of Miku’s Season 1 awesomeness. Miku’s had less screen time so far in Season 2, but she’s no less badass. Sky Tower gets attacked and she risks herself to evacuate people, even while Noise crash through the windows and fire explodes around her. The ceiling collapses and Miku tackles Hibiki to safety, then saves Hibiki again from dangling off the edge.
Miku’s strength is contagious. Miku leading other non-magical people in a song is what reaches Hamster in her lowest moment. Miku’s Strength returns Hibiki’s Might to her.
Without the strength Hibiki gets from the people she loves, Hibiki is a hollow fist.
Miku’s love and support is all that keeps Hibiki human. Without her partner, Hibiki would fall down Tsubasa’s prior path of devoting herself solely to battle and losing herself in her warrior identity. Miku is the steadying influence that reminds Hibiki what’s worth fighting for, and what’s worth surviving for.
Miku shouldn’t become a Symphogear wielder, because Miku doesn’t need a Symphogear to be strong.
Wow, now I realize even this episode’s title craps on this concept.
Miku already WAS a hero, dammit.
I’m going to assume instead that “the origin of a hero” refers to Shirabe finally doing The Right Thing this episode, and isn’t a slap on Miku.
Miku didn’t need superpowers in order to be a hero, to be someone brave and kind and willing to sacrifice herself to help others. This contrast between hero and superhero was Miku’s core purpose, her straight line in our character grid.
We already have six magical girls in our ensemble. Eight if we count the fallen, Kanade and Serena. Did we really need a ninth magical girl? More than we needed our one non-magical girl?
I love witnessing awesome, kick-ass magical girls, but I also love witnessing an awesome, kick-ass non-magical girl. The superheroes are inspiring, and so is Miku in a different way. If Miku can be brave in the face of pain and failure, even without any powers, then so can I! I’ll never have superpowers or mightiness, but I’ll always have opportunities in my life to be strong.
Shirabe says it best in her battle song:
True strength is courage.
With Miku joining the wielders, we lose more than we gain. The other non-magical supporters don’t make the cut. Snoop Oni, brown-haired agent guy, TIA-chan and the other schoolgirls… They’re fine, but they have way reduced screen time and influence compared to Miku. Miku is our Miku, our little green garden gnome. She’s in a league of her own.
Now, Miku’s just another magical girl. Giving her special powers actually makes her less special.
Unless… is this a temporary thing? Will Miku return to normal before the season finishes?
I hope with every last pore and pixel she doesn’t.
You made this choice, Symphogear. Damn well stick with it.
Same reason I was upset at the anime’s choices when Maria was revealed to be Finé, but even more upset when Maria was revealed to be faking Finé. Or Hibiki’s loss of an arm. Good grief, Hibiki’s arm.
I am so tired of this season faking out these huge developments, even within a few minutes in the Farewell To Arms case. It’s hard to get invested in these big, shocking developments, because they aren’t developments. The twists get erased and feel pointless. I’m still half-expecting the Kirika-Finé possession to blow over, as well. When your audience’s reaction to a major twist is, “Meh, it’ll probably go away soon,” you have failed as a storyteller.
If “Miku becomes a magical girl” ends up another fake-out like “Hibiki loses an arm”, I will CLEAVE SOMETHING IN HALF WITH A GIANT AXE.
I AM NOT EXAGGERATING.
It would be weird and imbalanced for Miku to join the troupe as a Symphogear wielder from now on. But, it would be even weirder for her to return to being a normal person after this. I’m trying, but I see no good way this twist can turn out. Which makes me less invested in how it will turn out. When the only two options you can see are Bad and Worse, it’s harder to care about the end result.
I think Miku becoming a Symphogear wielder is a bad decision, but I don’t think it’s a badly written decision. You can dislike something while still acknowledging its quality.
My favorite aspect of Symphogear (apart from all the ass-kicking set to rad music) is the strength of the individual character arcs and how these arcs tightly parallel – or sometimes jaggedly zigzag – the arcs of other characters.
Miku wielding a Symphogear comes as a shock. But looking back, it’s consistent with her character arc this season. Even reaching into last season, we see the threads.
The catastrophe at Sky Tower brought Miku’s issues to the front and forced Hibiki to acknowledge them. It was consistently reinforced throughout this season that Miku feels left behind, Miku feels useless to Hibiki, Miku worries she can’t protect Hibiki from the escalating danger, Miku can only stand by and watch her Hibiki come home from battle after battle with new injuries each time, while Miku is powerless to help her.
Miku can’t see the larger picture. She isn’t useless, she’s vitally important to Hibiki. Hibiki couldn’t go on without her. But, Miku blames herself as Not Good Enough, just like every other character does.
Miku is still shadow-coping with the grief of Hibiki’s death last season. The fact Hibiki soon returned from that death doesn’t erase the trauma of dying on Miku begin with. Fear of losing Hibiki once more has become the most pressing concern sandpapering away inside Miku’s head until every other thought or rationality is dulled.
Despite Hibiki coming back from the dead, this pair has grown more distant.
At the beginning of this episode, when Hibiki believes Miku died, she flashes back to happy times they spent together. Every single one of these flashes comes from Season 1. That’s how little bonding Hibiki and Miku have done lately. Hibiki draws a freaking blank trying to remember recent closeness. So yeah, I can see why Miku might feel a neglected wife.
The one time they do spend quality time together, Hibiki spaces out with the fishies instead of enjoying herself with Miku.
Hibiki isn’t bored with Miku, nor deliberately neglecting her. Both girls are victims of awful circumstances surrounding them which they can’t control. Relationships are difficult work even for regular people. When you compound everything with Symphogears and moon-fall and terrorism and Gungnir fusion and arm-tearing and kidnapping… I can’t imagine how impossible it becomes.
Hamster means well, but she’s never been great at managing her relationship with Miku.
The problem between Hibiki and Miku isn’t that one of them has a Symphogear and the other doesn’t. The problem is poor communication from both halves of the pair. Miku taking up Shenshoujin doesn’t fix that.
Miku is courageous and I love her for it. But, her courage falters when it comes to speaking up about her feelings, something even the bravest people hesitate over.
This is a believable relationship problem for the anime to structure. It hurts to watch, but it’s fully understandable.
Both parties share blame. Miku flubs up by not speaking up about her fears of inadequacy. Hibiki flubs up by being too dense to notice Miku going through this. Hibiki has her own fears of hypocrisy and inadequacy to distract her, too:
Hibiki also doesn’t share much information with Miku when it comes to the superhero problems she’s dealing with. Heck, Miku didn’t even know who Kirika and Shirabe were until they showed up at the school, despite the fact Miku is an External Agent with Section 2 and really should’ve been briefed on who their enemies are. That’s how in the dark Miku’s been kept about what Hibiki and the others are doing lately.
Hibiki doesn’t realize Miku was worried for her until one of their classmates points it out. Even then, Miku doesn’t speak up about it, just admits it with a sheepish look.
Miku’s shyness and Hibiki’s denseness are a tough combination. Miku’s too scared to reach, and Hibiki’s too oblivious to notice and reach back. They couldn’t make communication work between them, so now they’ll have to try reaching each other across a battlefield.
Miku’s with the FISters now, but I don’t know how loyal she is to their cause. I doubt she’s on board with the whole terrorism thing. It depends how in control of her faculties Miku is at the moment.
She looks kinda blank-eyed, which could indicate some form of mind control.
But really, would the FISters need to mind-control her? It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Miku agreed to wield Shenshoujin.
This is everything Miku wants, isn’t it?
Miku wants to feel useful to Hibiki, to be able to stand with her in a fight instead of watching from the side, to guard her from any more hurt, and above all to stop Hibiki from dying again, for real this time.
This must be what Dr. Ver meant when he told Miku he could “help” her. He helped her by giving her power.
The power to protect Hibiki. And the power to stop Hibiki from leaving her again. Whether Hibiki wants to or not.
Did Miku buy into Ver’s manipulations, same as Maria and Kirika? He’s always there to gobble up the scraps of other people’s misery and re-purpose them for his own ends.
He may have offered Shenshoujin to Miku, but it’s unlikely this bargain will get her what she truly wants. And, it’s unlikely she’s paid the full price for his “help” yet.
There’s something else lurking in the background of Miku becoming a Symphogear wielder. Looking back, it makes the heroes’ exercise montage even more upsetting than it already was.
At the time this montage was happening, we didn’t know what scary shit Miku was being subjected to. We could only imagine. But now, we have enough information from this and previous episodes to make a good guess what she was being subjected to.
Becoming a Symphogear wielder doesn’t just happen.
Dr. Ver’s “help” for Miku probably came in the form of LiNKER injections. Attuning to a Relic via LiNKER is an extremely painful process. The anime demonstrated this to us in explicit and disturbing detail during Kanade’s attunement to the original Gungnir:
Miku likely underwent the same type of training and injections to attune to Shenshoujin. Whether or not Miku agreed to this procedure doesn’t lessen the torture.
Miku was getting tortured…
…and Hibiki smiled and went for a jog.
I’m going to replay that exercise montage, intercut with Kanade suffering from LiNKER. Except, imagine it’s Miku suffering instead.
DO YOU SEE THE TONAL WHIPLASH NOW?
Kanade isn’t the only example of LiNKER suffering we’ve seen. Kirika and Shirabe nearly died from the strain of too much LiNKER, and these are people accustomed to renewal injections. For a newbie like Miku who’s never been exposed to the drug before, LiNKER could only be harrowing.
Maybe it wasn’t painful. Maybe later on, we’ll find out Miku’s attunement was as easy as getting a vaccine. But, the anime did not show us that possibility so far. It only showed us examples of LiNKER being hellish and dangerous.
This is the information we viewers were given up to this point. This is the information we must go on. If the anime wanted me not to be horrified that Miku went through this, then the anime should’ve shown me some evidence that LiNKER could be anything other than traumatizing.
I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to enjoy that exercise scene. The scene itself is fine, but the context makes it unbearable. Knowing Miku was alone and in pain while everyone she cared about was happily unaware and unconcerned. The anime could have placed this montage in any other chronological context this season, and I probably would’ve loved such a fun, upbeat scene of the girls together. But, not like this.
NOT LIKE THIS, SYMPHOGEAR.
Now that Miku’s attuned to Shenshoujin, it raises interesting speculations. Each Symphogear is unique. What kind of weapons and abilities might Miku have?
Shenshoujin’s main function is creating an invisibility field. I wonder if Miku will be able to turn invisible! Or maybe her Armed Gear, her summoned weapon, will be invisible, and therefore practically impossible for her opponents to block its attacks.
Invisibility would tie in with Miku’s character struggle. She feels “invisible” to Hibiki.
Her helmet design is pretty cool, too.
That vice-like jawbone clamp is hella intimidating. It also makes it seem Miku is still suffering even with her new power, as if she’s bear-trapped inside her own Gear. Like she escaped the shame cube’s cage only to end up inside a different kind of cage in the terrorists’ hands.
Well, either that or she looks like she’s halfway down the throat of a Mario plant.
The music is pretty awesome when Miku makes her glowing crash onto the ship’s deck. The song is a wordless chant spiked with a threatening pulse that prickles low on the spine, as the smoke clears and everyone just stares at her in paralyzed shock.
It wasn’t clear during Miku’s interactions with Maria and Dr. Ver whether they recognized Miku and her ties to Section 2. Ver recognizes it by the end:
He could only call Miku’s sudden appearance “dramatic and romantic” if he’s aware of the irony of Miku fighting people she knows and loves. If Miku were just some random girl Maria nabbed, there wouldn’t be much dramatic impact to her joining the battle. Besides, if the terrorists wanted a random girl to wield Shenshoujin for them, they could’ve kidnapped anyone before now.
As intimidating as Miku looks in her Gear, it’s hard to imagine her as a fearsome opponent. Am I honestly supposed to worry Team Rainbow will be defeated by her? Defeated by this:
Wow, look at this terrifying warrior. I tremble.
Miku, brave as you are, you still strike me as the kind of person who jumps when the toaster pops up their waffle. No one is scared of you. On the Fear-Inducing meter, you rank way at the bottom, only slightly above “lop-eared bunny”.
This is gonna be the most pathetic showdown. How are Miku and the other wielders even supposed to fight each other? No way would Hibiki raise a fist to harm her sunshine, regardless of what side she’s on. Tsubasa and Chris are friends with Miku, too. It’s hard to imagine any of them fighting her.
Besides, Miku is a scrub who’s worn a Symphogear for a few days max. She doesn’t have the combat experience to face the other wielders in a fair fight.
Oh shit… Maybe Miku doesn’t need to fight fair:
Now there’s a truly scary thought. We were told Shenshoujin is not only an invisibility Relic, it’s an anti-Relic Relic. It strips magical power from other Relics.
Uh oh…
Dr. Ver doesn’t specify how Miku wielding Shenshoujin relates to their plan. But, the anime provided us enough information to figure it out.
The FISters tried to use Shenshoujin’s “Remover Ray” to neutralize the seal keeping Frontier underwater. Shenshoujin failed at that because, according to Mom:
Maybe this was the missing link! Maybe they needed a person to wield Shenshoujin, not simply fire it from their plane like a cannon. What if Shenshoujin must be wielded by a living, singing person to unlock its true power.
Ver could leech the energy released by Miku’s battle to activate Frontier. Same way he and Mom leeched the energy of Team Rainbow’s combo-Climax to activate the Nephilim at the start of the season.
So, if Miku’s special Shenshoujin ability isn’t turning invisible, then it might be the Remover Ray, some kind of anti-magic attack that renders other Symphogears powerless. She could be like Sombra, whose Ultimate Attack is an EMP bomb that incapacitates other fighters.
I was so wrong that this would be a pathetic showdown between Miku and Team Rainbow. Our little lop-eared bunny gets scarier the more I think about this situation.
Miku’s fears are of being voiceless, useless, powerless. How darkly appropriate it would be if her special ability inflicts that powerlessness on her friends.
On the bright side, if Miku can neutralize a Relic’s effect, will that help Hibiki’s fusion problem? Maybe Miku could force Gungnir to take a chill pill and stop corrupting Hamster’s body.
When Mom told us Shenshoujin has this extra ability, my mind jumped to exorcising Finé from Kirika.
This could instead foreshadow Miku exorcising Gungnir from Hibiki. Not just halting the fusion, but disabling Gungnir’s power permanently. Wouldn’t that turn things on its head! Leaving Miku the magical girl, and Hibiki the normal girl with no magical powers remaining. Miku wants to help Hibiki, doesn’t she, no matter if it takes away Hibiki’s choice to fight as a hero.
I THOUGHT WE WERE PAST THIS
I thought Hibiki and Miku overcame their communication problems when they defeated the Tentacruel together. Still tied for my favorite scene of Season 1!
They talked out their feelings and reconciled.
“Reconciled.” Right. Sweaty, leg-tangling, mussed-hair, cowgirl reconciliation.
Just gals being pals.
But as we know, every character is backsliding into their Season 1 damage, like a scab cracking and letting blood return to surface level.
Hibiki and Miku’s relationship has excellent communication when they commit to working together, like their coordination to defeat the Tentacruel. But, they bust their own kneecaps and trip into awful communication when they’re having problems.
Ugghh, Hibiki and Miku need to talk with each other right now, not fight. Miku has valid issues she deserves to be heard on.
Actually, that’d be fantastic. If Hibiki and Miku were to get all Geared up, ready to battle, while Dr. Ver laughs diabolically at the chaos about to be unleashed by his machinations… and then the girls just sit down together on deck and talk out their issues peacefully, to his extreme disappointment as he watches from the plane.
Oh shit, THE PLANE! I just realized something. The anime wove in a subtle clue for this shocking climax.
This establishing shot of the Osprey flying over the ocean shows it in plain view. Previous times we got shots of the plane in flight, it was in invisibility mode.
I figured, “Whatever, the FISters are miles out to sea. No one is around to see them, so they aren’t bothering to hide.” We now know the real reason is that Shenshoujin wasn’t available for its usual job of stealthing the plane. It was already with Miku.
Hang on, let’s go back and check something…
…Whoa, the clues just Went Deeper. Look at the angles of these shots of the cockpit. Look at what the camera deliberately doesn’t show, compared to previous episodes’ shots of the cockpit.
Symphogear cleverly frames the scene of Team Black and Dr. Ver in the cockpit, using only side and front angles, carefully showing every view of the cockpit except the one that would make Shenshoujin visible.
It’s not until the very end of the episode, when Ver is about to drop the Miku bombshell on us, that the camera allows us to see the empty space where Shenshoujin should be. By then, it’s too late to brace ourselves for impact.
The expert framing of this scene went right under my nose! Probably too distracted by the Spider-Man 3 coat.
DAMN YOU FOR BEING CLEVER, SYMPHOGEAR. I want to hate this Miku-wielder twist, and I do, oh I do. At the same time, I can’t hate it.
From little clues like the visible plane and the craftily framed shots of the cockpit, to larger buildup like Miku’s season-long struggle of feeling powerless and left behind, I gotta admit… Symphogear put thought into this twist.
It’s actually kinda genius on a meta level. The anime recognized that because we have many new characters to develop this season, last season’s supporting characters such as Miku must be pushed aside and not get character arcs like they did before. And then, the anime had the brilliant idea, what if Miku’s character arc is that she feels pushed aside? This fulfills a character purpose and a structural purpose at the same time.
The decision to make Miku a wielder is still a poor one for the overall structure of our character ensemble, as I complained about earlier, but hey… credit where credit’s due! This disaster is a well-orchestrated one.
Symphogear is smarter than me. There probably is a way the story and characters could recover from this catastrophe, I’m just not prescient enough to see it.
The Miku Maximum Mayhem wasn’t the only painful part of this episode.
This was the episode where every relationship fell apart.
Romantic, familial, platonic, any kind of relationship. No one is closer to each other by the end of the episode than they were at the start. People only got more distant.
What a roster of fraying ties. Chris attempted to bond with Tsubasa, but was too hesitant to cross the threshold. Hibiki’s fusion kept alienating her from her comrades. Hibiki fiddled while Miku burned. Team Rainbow ignored their massive internal support problems, such as Tsubasa’s earlier dishonesty and both Tsubasa and Chris’s failure to support Hibiki when she needed them. Then, Hibiki and Miku grew so far apart they’ll probably be facing each other on a battlefield now.
On the antagonists’ side, Mom lost her daughters’ loyalty and lost control of FISt. Maria lost the trust and admiration of her little sisters because of her fake-Finé deceit, then worsened it by aligning herself with Dr. Ver’s evil.
…aaaaand of course to cap off the “every relationship broke apart today”, to fucking put a crown on the already rotting, decapitated head, we have the soda girls.
Boy do we have the soda girls.
I CAN’T MAKE THIS FUNNY
THIS JUST HURTS
Okay, I’ll try to calm down. Let’s approach this “Et Tu, Kiri-chan?” from a different angle. Compare it to what Shirabe did to Maria this episode.
Did Shirabe betray Maria?
Maria made the choice to support Dr. Ver and kill people with him. Sure, he manipulated her into it, but he didn’t force her. Maria has agency, she has culpability. That coat didn’t take itself out the wardrobe and put itself on her.
Shirabe goes against Maria’s choice. Shirabe knows Maria made the decision to aid Ver in killing people, and Shirabe deliberately counters Maria’s decision by leaving the plane and destroying the Noise before they can complete the massacre Maria and Ver sent them for. Likewise, Kirika jumps after Shirabe and deliberately counters Shirabe’s decision by taking away Shirabe’s powers and therefore her symbolic ability to enact her own agency.
So, is Kirika taking the choice away from Shirabe any different from Shirabe taking the choice away from Maria?
YES.
It’s wholly different. Because Shirabe asked Maria.
Shirabe acts against Maria’s plan, but she doesn’t betray Maria. Shirabe was honest, she was open, she communicated. Shirabe talks to Maria first, gives Maria a chance to explain her rationale, and asks if Maria is truly complicit in this plan of oppressing the weak.
And Maria refuses to answer, just bites her lip in silent suffering. She can’t even bring herself to lie that yes this is what she really wants. The act doesn’t fool Shirabe.
Only after talking to Maria does Shirabe make her decision.
Kirika doesn’t talk to Shirabe beforehand and ask her what she wants.
Kirika doesn’t explain herself until after the betrayal takes place, when Shirabe’s already de-powered and trembling from Dr. Ver’s red poison. Even then, Kirika doesn’t ask for Shirabe’s input, Kirika only tries to justify it from her own side.
This is what The Snake With The Red Venom pours in Kirika’s ear right after Shirabe jumps out of the plane:
“Bring her back.”
“Help her.”
Both Shirabe and Kirika act out of love when making these choices. I don’t doubt Kirika has positive intentions, as does Shirabe toward Maria. But, their choices come from different head-spaces, as those two contrasting lines of dialogue demonstrate.
We talked in Season 1 about the difference between “saving someone” and “keeping them safe”. One of these is about helping someone, the other is about helping someone by denying their agency and putting them in a cage to reassure yourself. Bring her back.
More specifically, if you want to bring her back. Whether she wants you to or not. Drain all that power and self-determination right out of her body, if that’s what it takes to Keep Her Safe.
I’d bet my favorite boots he said the same thing to Miku about Hibiki when he offered her Shenshoujin.
Kirika is a good person, and her love for Shirabe might be the last thing holding her together through this moon-falling-terrorism-Finé-possession apocalypse. But…
…but holy hell did she fail today. I don’t blame Shirabe for not taking Kirika’s offered hand afterward.
NO, KIRIKA, YOU DIDN’T “REALLY HAVE TO DO” THIS.
Episode 9, alternate title: Dense Blondes Compete To Disappoint Their Partner Harder.
Oh, Shirabe. Your shoulders must be sore from carrying this episode. Emo-blader truly shone today, even surrounded by preps.
Maria is trying to come of age and fill a leadership role. She’s, uh, not good at it so far. But, this episode wasn’t Maria’s coming of age, it was Shirabe’s. Mom failed Shirabe as a leader, and so do Dr. Ver and Maria now they’ve taken charge. When you have no good leader to look to, you gotta step up and become your own leader. That’s just part of adulthood.
Shirabe made her decision about the kind of person she wants to be and what’s worth fighting for, even if it means acting alone and going against the only family she has. Shirabe could probably get away with ordering from the Kids’ Menu, yet her actions today set her as the most mature of the FISters.
Shirabe’s always been the most bitter of Team Black. She hates so-called heroes who fight for what she sees as empty idealism.
Today, Shirabe became a hero herself. She saw that doing what’s right isn’t some empty ideal. She did it for the same reason Team Rainbow became heroes, to fight to protect what they love. This character peak culminates in the ultra-radness that is Shirabe’s transformation sequence.
And because Symphogear is so artful in its infliction of suffering, Shirabe’s moment of Empowerment is immediately followed by a moment of Disempowerment.
For all the major grievances I took with this episode, I applaud the parts it did well, from Hibiki and Chris’s heartwarming moment on the submarine to Kirika and Shirabe’s heartsplitting moment.
“Wretched Fucking Anime” is still a term of endearment.
I love it, but I just… just…
JUST EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS EPISODE HURTS.
MIKU WAS PUT IN THE SHAME CUBE
MARIA WENT FULL SPIDER-MAN 3
DR. VER GOT AWAY WITH MURDER AGAIN
EXERCISE MONTAGE
MARIA FORGOT HER OWN CONCERT HAPPENED
KIRIKA PENETRATED SHIRABE WITHOUT HER CONSENT TO FORCIBLY ROB HER OF HER EMPOWERMENT, DON’T TELL ME THERE WAS NOTHING SYMBOLIC HERE
ALSO THIS ENTIRE TIME WE HAD UP TO TEN YEARS TO THINK OF A BETTER PLAN TO SAVE THE WORLD WHICH DIDN’T INCLUDE ALL THE ABOVE LISTED FUCKERY
T E N Y E A R S
Symphogear, I’m putting you in the shame cube. Think about what you did today.
I’m in pain, from my ankles to my animus. The continuous misery inflicted by this season deepens and deepens.
How am I supposed to cope?
Will… will that really work?
Should I do what Team Rainbow did, go get some exercise to cheer me up?
Yeah… Yeah, I could jump rope or balance cups like they did!
Hell, I’m gonna go hike a goddamn mountain! That’ll fix everything! Let’s do this!
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