I’ve quipped on Twitter how each week, I really only want to watch about half of the shows on my docket. Symphogear is my top choice right now, but apparently only Commie subs it, and that is really shitty because it takes them 48-72 hours it seems to release an episode of it. Must be hard when you don’t have a HS/CR release to copy from, eh? But I digress. Let’s go over some of the screenshots from the raw instead and DISCUSS SYMPHOGEAH because I am bored and I don’t want to clean my office.
Once again, Hibiki’s death flag has been set by the continued spread of Gungnir fragments all throughout her body, fusing to everything. The double-edge is while this gives her nearly God-like powers over her Symphogear as a result of being more closely integrated with it than the others who tap into theirs externally, she runs the risk of having it totally contaminate her body and likely kill her, or turn her into something less-than-human and unrecoverable. So after the events of episodes five and six where she lost her arm, went berserk, regained her arm, and beat the shit out of Nephlim, naturally this causes the staff and Tsubasa to be concerned about her continued usage of her gear. Tsubasa attempts to sideline her from the action in the harshest, Tsubasa-style possible, but even Chris was concerned for Hibiki’s well-being and joined in as well. Unfortunately, you can’t keep Hibiki from the fight. As soon as she tries to go about her life, Dr. Ver shows up again with Nephlim’s heart and attacks her. In order to protect her friends, she gears up and starts unleashing hot fury on Ver and his escorts.
Overdrive Hibiki is a fearsome opponent indeed, but after the Trans-Am wears off, she is vulnerable to the sheer output Gungnir is exerting on her, which is more than she can handle. Ver responds by injecting the girls with something which I presume helps them max their power output with the swan song without dying? But in response, Hibiki swan songs and seemingly absorbs their power unto herself and blasts it back out into space similar to before in the venue.
Obviously this act does not go unpunished for Hibiki, requiring Tsubasa to water her down just so they could touch her and get her back to medical. There, Genjurou tells everyone the same truth he told Tsubasa, much to their dismay. Meanwhile Ver goes over his new plans for Nephlim while the others contemplate what has happened, and what will happen.
We got plenty of hints in the first season on how Hibiki was going to die as the result of her fusing with Gungnir. This was after the repeated death flags set by using the swan song, first by Tsubasa, and again by all of them in the end. But she managed to overcome a lot of those hurdles, even with her Dark Hibiki mode, which still hasn’t been fully explained I believe. I sincerely doubt she will die in this season either, and I say that not only because she is essentially the main character, but because of the unknown associated with her fusing with a relic. As Genjurou stated before, no one has ever been fused with a relic before, so it’s difficult to tell if she will simply die from it, or if she will turn into something not-human. Chances are, she will likely shift into some kind of Symphogear God, an evolution of being fused with the Gear. Either than, or they replace her body parts with cyborg parts and she becomes the unholy combination of GGG’s Gai Shishiou and Nanoha StrikerS’ Suburu Nakajima. That seems like the best idea ever.
My hypothesis for the last half of this season is that Hibiki’s condition is either manipulated by, or resolved by, Fine and “Mom” somehow, or has something to do with Maria’ Gungnir. It stands to reason that if Maria has it, she also was present during Kanade’s fight and somehow obtained a piece of the relic at the same time Hibiki gained hers, and that by either fusing it to Hibiki or Hibiki drawing it from her somehow, she will form a complete Gungnir that will either reform the relic outside of her body, or fuse the relic inside her body in a complete form that no longer threatens her life. Either way, Maria seems to be the natural choice for a connection to Hibiki being users of the same relic, even if they are somewhat different. Shirabe and Kirika likely also have a role in this as they start to have less of a reason to fight Hibiki and the others, believing they all will suffer at some point being Symphogear users entangled in Dr. Ver and “Mom’s” plans, which likely will not save the world from anyone.
I know this is a bit over-the-top, but Symphogear is a seriously fun show. I haven’t felt a show like this since Godannar or GaoGaiGuard, because it reminds me greatly of those shows. It’s a classic monster-of-the-week that threatens humanity with a complex web of underlying twists within the bad guys that threatens the heros and their friends at every turn. It’s typical of the main character to become involved to where it affects their very lives, but they always break out and save the day, and I’m hoping Hibiki keeps that trend up, because she is one of the best characters of the show, as is Chris and Chris-tits. Tsubasa… eh. She’s okay, but her tsundere is so bad.
Maybe I’ll have something better to write about next week.
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