First Impressions / Senki Zesshou Symphogear

「繋いだ手だけが紡ぐもの」 (Tsunaida Te dake ga Tsumugumono)
“Bonds Formed from Holding Hands”

For the first time in my life I had to use subtitles to understand something spoken in English, I mean, Ingurishu.

I rewatched this episode twice because Ryouko’s words made no sense to me. I thought I’d never have problems with understanding accents but it turns out I do.

I know Ryouko and Finè have the same seiyuu but I still wasn’t sure if they were the same person. However with this episode, I’m pretty sure they are considering the fact that Ryouko can heal herself from a gunshot by an American group of soldiers (and the powers she has used in previous episodes).

The episode itself was pretty entertaining with a lot of action and some cuteness from the girls. I’m a bit surprised they didn’t show anything about Tsubasa’s career abroad though. I really thought she’d be gone, so I might as well tell you now — I tend to be wrong whenever I try to speculate.

So with Tsubasa being in Japan with Hibiki and Kurisu joining the team, what can possibly go wrong and lead to Hibiki’s death? I’m assuming it might be whatever Ryouko has planned. This Kadingir thing she mentioned to Kurisu, or “tower reaching for the heavens” which turned out to be the Tokyo Sky Tower is probably not her main goal. To me, it seems like this Noise attack around the tower was a decoy to lure away the girls. After all, the episode just ended with a phone call from a distressed Miku telling Hibiki that the school is under attack before the call dropped.

From my point of view, it looks like Ryouko wants to attack the HQ but her motives aren’t very clear. I’m also a bit curious about Genjuurou. He seems to know Ryouko’s secret, which makes me wonder if Ryouko is evil or not. If Genjuurou knew and did nothing, is he supportive of her actions or could it be that he only found out recently? I’m not sure where this is going but I certainly want Genjuurou to be a good guy. Especially after he comforted Kurisu and made her reconsider her position.

Speaking of Kurisu, I loved the fight at the end. The Noise stood no chance against the powered-up trio. The fight had so many nice scenes which made it so hard to pick out screenshots for it. As far as I can tell, I think this might be the longest fight I’ve seen in this show (correct me if I’m wrong). There were two songs in the fight; Hibiki’s song softly faded over to a Kurisu song which I thought was pretty cool but I was hoping to hear a song with all three of them. Who knows? We might hear one in the upcoming episodes. We can only hope~

* Full-length images: 05, 32

29 Comments

  2. It was obvious that the attack on the tower is a decoy. Ryouko/Finè has already made the Kadingir in the base: The access duct has the same height that Sky Tower, but in the wrong direction. The fact that the base is beneath Lyrian and Miku is right now at it, is reason enough for Hibiki to use her Zesshou. The problem is that Ryouko/Finè isn’t neccesarily “evil”. Until we know everything about the Relics and the ancient civilization that created them, we can only especulate.
    What we can be sure is that there’s gonna be a helluva fight for the three Symphogear users.

    SeedStriker
    Reply

    1. I agree, this Tower. is like Air Gears Tower. It is build underground.. Just see how many “Floors” the Lift must go down, to reach the Base…

      Perhaps this Tower can even arise overground. The School House structure looks fishy

      Germanguy
      Reply

      1. Third agreed.

        It’s quite obvious that the HQ with the infinitely descending elevator would be suspicious. I’m definitely expecting it to rise up out of the ground, which would probably make it reach orbital elevator like heights (which would harbor some structural stability issues that will surely be ignored).

        Ptolemaios00
        Reply

  4. Hibiki’s Seiyu, has improved her Sing Power 🙂 These little vibrations in her Voice are gone. Now she sounds “pure” like Tsubasas Seiyu. But of course, she need to work a Name in this Industrie

    Germanguy
    Reply

    1. What? It’s Yuuki Aoi, for goodness sake. She’s already popular enough in the seiyuu industry, if that’s what you mean. If you were talking about the singing industry, then you have to be crazy to compare Yuuki Aoi to Mizuki Nana or Takagaki Ayahi, both of who are top-notch musicians. No offense, cuz’ I know you were trying to commend on Yuuki’s singing, but somehow, it just struck a wrong chord with me, especially when you described it so poorly.

      Dusk
      Reply

  5. Could they have made it any more obvious the school was going to get attacked?
    “I feel so safe and relaxed here”
    “You can always call this place home”
    “Hey did you know there’s an evacuation shelter under the school”

    roflcopter
    Reply

  7. @StereoMan: There’s nothing wrong with making a wrong guess, I’m in the same boat.

    About the show:

    Symphogear is starting to be more and more Chris/Kurisu-centered; I don’t know if that’s what’s intended, but it looks that way. Chris is getting a lot more airtime now compared to the other characters, and she’s also experiencing more character growth than the others.

    If I had to compare Kurisu to another character, it would be Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Sure, the villain-turned-hero approach is a well-known trope, but in both Symphogear and Avatar the change in the character’s personality is a lot more human in that it’s slow and doubtful instead of just “Hey Presto! We’re friends now!”, which tends to happen a lot in quite a few shows.

    DCLXVI
    Reply

  8. First off, congrats on your first post, Stereoman!
    ______________________________________________________________________________________________

    “For the first time in my life I had to use subtitles to understand something spoken in English, I mean, Ingurishu.”

    God, don’t even get me started on the atrocity that is Symphogear’s English voice acting. The term “butchering of a language” isn’t even nearly severe enough to describe this mess, as far as pronunciation goes- it felt more like they were making mincemeat of it. And I thought that “Let’s learn English segment” in Ika Musume last season was bad…tch…it has nothing on this…

    Not that I couldn’t understand what they were saying, having being around my share of East Asians with heavy accents, but it just sounded so bad to me that I felt like my brains were going to turn to mush and leak out of my ears if I didn’t stop listening. Consequently, I muted the audio and just read the subtitles, and all was well with the world… 🙂

    …Aside from that though (Which might I add, is tiny, and amounts to something like 3% of the entire show), and some glaring pacing problems due it short length, Symphogear has been quite an enjoyable ride thus far, with likable characters, nice action and lots of other positives…nothing groundbreaking, but certainly adequately competent…

    Zen
    Reply

      1. Believe me, I’ve heard worse in real life…which is why whenever something like this shows up in my anime, hitting the mute button has become something of a reflex action for me…

        Zen
        Reply

  10. Well, I mean. yeah..wow. The ingurishu was bad. real bad. I know understand why Hollywood just let the actors imitate some shitty scottish/russian accent to convince the audience the plot is set in russia. Because, for fuck sake, if the ingurishu (or russlish) was going to sound like that, then fuck authenticity. This just makes the show seem that much dumber.

    And this is coming from a guy who absolutely hates dubbing.

    Who else wants to hear american japanese?

    Stöt
    Reply

  14. ok then looking so far yea indeed slowly soon yea indeed cat out of the bag by next eps?

    ryoko in fine’s mansion got attack by engrish speaker commandos (we’re they taking english speaking from Fran Drescher?) & ryoko sorta heal self & bye-bye commandos.
    hibiki & miku all relax wonder to do while chris arrive mansion see all commandos got “whacked”.
    here genjuro then “i love you sayonara” bomb but defeat genjuro’s kung fu also calm relax hug chris to trust genjuro.
    emergency meeting everyone on call gvie ryoko is on “speakers” (due to shot blast) during which to figure here come air noise attack.
    hibiki & tsubasa gett out number til chris arrive soem quick argue & hibiki calm them.
    here come v3 chris missile attack & all safe
    til bad news call from miku that school is on attack.

    yea next eps indeed cat out of the bag.

    CAPTAIN MAR-KLAC-VELOUS
    Reply

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