The Harmony Of Hope And The Dirge Of Despair: Part 3 (Senki Zesshou Symphogear GX) [3.1]

(Here we are again, and so soon, too! One last magical girl push before spooky marathon coverage. Since we were here last, one very exciting thing to acknowledge: in a month's time there will be an official physical release of the first season of Symphogear! Even better, they've already announced plans for a Symphogear G release in 2021. In a year's time, we could even see the season we're about to cover on Blu-Ray! How thrilling it is! How mournful it is for my wallet! Anyway, let's get on with the show. You know the drill by now: Massive spoilers ahead for Symphogear. You've been warned. Now, how the hell am I going to start this thing...?)

(Continued from 2.5)

Slap your knees and hold onto your asses, it's round 3 of the eternal clash between the Harmony Of Hope and the Dirge of Despair! Okay, that's a weird way to start off, but sometimes you need to just say fuck it and throw out the first opener that comes to your head. See? Now we're in the thick of it, and we've begun the marathon deep dive magical girl exegesis ahead of us. Yes, it's another marathon because I don't know how to sprint. So, then. Another go at the coffee shop, just you and I. Last time on Symphogear we dealt with a great many things. A slow and steady corruption from within which threatened our entire utopic ideal. Betrayal that was happening left, right, and center as everyone and everything we loved lost their ability to understand us, if only for a heart-stopping moment. The duality of heroism and nobility, in which our protagonist learned to reject the mantle of hero and our antagonist couldn't let go of it because he was the worst, most selfish little fucker alive. Enough about him. I don't want to talk about him ever again if I can help it. Instead let's do what we came here to do, and talk about the third season of Senki Zesshou Symphogear: Senki Zesshou Symphogear GX (hereafter referred to as simply Symphogear GX).



What we get is... Well, structurally and tonally interesting. If you like ideological and self-reflective challenges to the opinions and states of mind of the six main magical girls of Symphogear GX? Here are some more obstacles and ideologies for their hopes and dreams to face off against and overcome. Whether or not said obstacles and ideologies are well-worn variants of ones these girls have already overcome in previous series of Symphogear is something we'll get into. For real, I don't have a definitive judgement call on that yet. What I can judge is a remark another Symphogear-watching pal of mine has made regarding Symphogear GX; that it's the "Sailor Moon season". I wrote 20,000 words about that show two years ago (and, given how long these writeups end up now, I still had some goddamned brevity back then) so this intrigued me. I've already been reading Symphogear as a successor to Sailor Moon's magical girl crown from my experience, so what does "Symphogear does Sailor Moon" look like?


Power creep and four bickering generals of the main antagonist who build up regular rivalries with our main magical girls. That's what it looks like. We will have interesting readings and nuance to talk about regarding these, but that's the basic gist of what it takes from Sailor Moon; new foes to battle and bicker with who are super duper tough you guys holy shit they're kicking our asses we need to POWER UP! I'm not going to burn the gas I have in the tank regarding that here, but Symphogear finds a very Symphogear-like way to tackle this well-worn anime problem of escalation that was originally created to like sell toys or whatever. What that answer is, we'll discover, but let's get into it. Let's set up the new threat and what it is, and how it threatens our girls. It's about to get really crunchy, because... well, look at the title of Part 1. Just down there.


"You know when grown-ups tell you everything's going to be fine and you think they're probably lying to make you feel better?"
"Yes."
"Everything's going to be fine."


Part 1: Allegro Of Alchemy


Symphogear GX opens weird, y'all. I've got a story about the first time I saw this, but before that we have to hit contrast with the other seasons. The first season started at the end, with Miku visiting Hibiki's grave as we lamented the dark inevitability of it all before seeing how this dead girl lived and loved. The second showed us a world where love and justice did win out, but was ever-vigilant against the corruptive forces that attacked it. The third, then? A straight-up disconnected pre-credits adventure, not unlike something you'd see in an old James Bond movie. It's here that I should reveal the first time I saw this. It was mid-November, 2019, immediately after I finished the first season of Symphogear. You may be wondering what in the fuck I was doing watching the third season of Symphogear immediately after the first. The answer is I misread the damn things, because there's only one letter between Season 2's G and Season 3's GX. I realized my mistake pretty quickly and shut off the episode once I realized I had no idea who half these people were, but this also meant I did know one inevitability going into Symphogear G.

YOU'RE DAMN RIGHT IT DOES

So our opening is a little wrap-up from Symphogear G. You may recall Dr. Nastassja, the leader of FIS, who got shitblasted into outer space by a certain selfish prick who shall remain nameless during the climax of that season. A space shuttle went up into orbit to retrieve her body, as well as some ancient tech in the little piece of Frontier that was her makeshift rocket. The shuttle has a bit of a mayday, though, and it looks like it'll burn up with everyone inside. Poor Dr. Nastassja, who gave her life to help save the world, won't be able to return home. Lucky we have magical girls in space. What follows is one hell of an action setpiece, all as the Frontier trio of Maria, Kirika, and Shirabe watch this rescue mission from some sort of prison. I don't have much to say here, surprisingly, apart from gushing at the moment where the shuttle is about to hit a mountain. No, not just a mountain. Fucking K2. You know. The second highest mountain in the world. Anyway, Chris shoots the shit out of it and Hibiki Tachibana, who fights with her fists so she can hold hands with allies and punch foes, punches a hole through the second highest mountain in the world. I fucking love this stupid show. With some other thrilling bits of punching and suplexing, our three heroines manage to save the shuttle and save the day! Hooray!


Now let's jump three months ahead, where the newly-formed Task Force SONG (basically just the old Second Branch from the previous seasons, only internationally sanctioned now), are hard at work and on the lookout for any relic-based shenanigans. The Frontier trio are out of jail now, at least; Kirika and Shirabe attend the Lydian Academy now as Hibiki, Chris, and Miku's underclassmen. Tsubasa and Maria, meanwhile, are on tour together now and participating in a Live Aid-like concert all the way in London. This... has me worried. The first two seasons of this show have opened with idol concert duets, and both times the fun has been interrupted by the goddamned Noise showing up and murdering half the people. For God's sakes, can't someone go out to hear girls singing live without the risk of getting Thanos snapped by a fucking monster? Well, as it turns out, this song goes off without a hitch! Well, okay, there's a relief! Maybe we can watch a concert live in this show without dying. Yeah, about that. The show itself goes off fine, and the crowd isn't threatened. Not so much for our performers, or the general public back in Japan... because shit is being stirred up.


Whatever enemy is plotting, they're plotting out a pincer attack of sorts. In Japan, a small child is fleeing a mystery woman who Jojo poses on rooftops. In London, Maria and her bodyguards are suddenly ambushed by a different mystery woman, once who wastes no time in deflecting the bullets of the first and delivering some sort of succubus soul-sucking kiss to drain the life force and energy of the other. Thanks to a whole bunch of shit we'll get into involving plea deals and broken relics, Maria doesn't actually have a relic to defend herself. Lucky thing Tsubasa comes in... but this strange being, known as an "Autoscorer", is determined to make them dead. All absolute hell is breaking loose in Japan as the other mystery woman leaves a trail of destruction while pursuing her quarry. Kirika and Shirabe, thanks to a whole bunch of shit involving plea deals and a lack of LiNKER (that special medical concoction which helps a user attune with their relic, for the reminder), can't come with. It's up to Hibiki and Chris to deal with things, and the pair split up in a perfect way. Chris, ever the hot-blooded girl with big guns, will pursue the source of this rampant destruction. Hibiki, our determined protector, will assist in rescue operations to save folks from a burning building. That all goes well until Hibiki sees one more person watching the destruction...

Well then. Say hello to Carol. She's our antagonist for the season, she wants to destroy the world, and she's also an alchemist. As we'll learn later, alchemy is a different branch of ancient power from the "heretical technology" of the Symphogear system. It is also, at face value, more powerful than a Symphogear relic. This is the power creep at work, and boy howdy will it do its work over the series. I want to save specific talk about that for the next section, but come the end of episode 2 we'll see the power of alchemy at full work in threatening this show. For now... a complaint. It's not the fault of the show, but it is a letdown that occurred in the process of localizing it. You see, Chris has encountered the mystery woman doing this rampage: another Autoscorer who uses coins as her weapon. Chris engages her in battle here, and we hit a problem. The show up until now has had our girls singing songs of battle as they fight, with the lyrics being thematically important to their character arcs. The subtitles I've had for the first two seasons have transcribed the lyrics to said songs at the top of the screen while the fights happen, delegating dialogue to the bottom as per usual with subtitled anime.


Here in GX, though, for whatever reason, they sometimes don't translate the songs! This is a bit of a letdown. The entire theme of the show is of understanding, and how the emotion of song transcends the barrier of language to create mutual understanding. It's disappointing to lose that, both practically and thematically. Oddly enough the songs do get translated in other episodes, so it just feels at complete random what does and doesn't get translated. I had to go to a fan wiki to look up the lyrics to Chris's song here. Looking at them now, there isn't anything I want to talk about now... but they absolutely tie into her character arc and self-doubts for the season. I just had to bring that up here, but for now we can leave Chris and her fight behind. She battles the Autoscorer, doesn't do too much to her, but encounters the mystery child the Autoscorer was chasing. This is Elfnein, and she'll be very important going forward. For now, though, how are things going in London? Well, after unloading holy hell on the Autoscorer there, Tsubasa knows three things for sure. One, this is not a human being. Two, she's after Tsubasa specifically. Three, she's mad strong. Maria, taking all of this in, decides to follow in the footsteps of other famous denizens of London and RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY! Right. Uhh. How about Hibiki, then? Well, Carol is still blasting at her with alchemy and generally making big craters in the ground.

That's my girl. Wouldn't have her any other way. Of course, this being Symphogear, we're on familiar ground. Last time around, Hibiki extended her hands in friendship and utopic understanding, and her foe was insulted by it, creating a challenge to her utopic ideal. Carol isn't as personally offended as Shirabe was back in Symphogear G, but she is ready and willing to poke and prod at Hibiki's desire to not fight. Hibiki gently asks Professor Zaroff Carol why she wants to destroy the world, and eventually Carol prods at Hibiki. Hibiki, for all her talk of peace, did fight to save the world during the Frontier Incident. She had a truth she desired, and so she fought. Hibiki denies this. She doesn't want to fight using a power that's meant to save people. This is the first hurdle for Hibiki this season, and we will delve into it. We get a brief tease of the second as well, once Hibiki points out that she caught Carol crying as she watched the world burn. Instead of trying to punch her in the gut, she wants to know why the little girl in the witch hat is sad enough to cry.


Carol isn't interested in this. The destruction of the world. The scientist's dream of supreme power. This is a challenge left behind for Carol by her departed father, who we see in her memories being burned at the stake. A legacy left behind by her father. Hibiki should have something like that too, but as Carol fades away, simply telling Hibiki to fight next time they meet... Hibiki muses that her father didn't leave her anything like that. In an earlier little slice of life scene, the girls of Lydian mused over who would come to their graduation ceremonies. Hibiki stated to all there that she didn't have a dad. One could assume, given the utter hellworld this place is with apocalyptic calamities every three months, that he got dusted offscreen or something. This is not quite what happened, but Hibiki's feelings about her father will form another ideological hurdle for her utopic ideal to deal with. All in good time, though. For now, we have a real problem with those goddamned Autoscorers.


A third one actually showed her face during Hibiki and Carol's confrontation, sucking the life out of some poor bastard trying to film the encounter to sell to TV. We might as well use their names now, since it will come up eventually. The one just mentioned is Garie. The one Chris has engaged is named Leiur. The one after Tsubasa and Maria in London is called Phara. There'll be one more to come into play later, but those are the Autoscorers going wild at Carol's beck and call. They're basically alchemically-created clockwork dolls with full command of alchemy, but that is by no means the only trick up their sleeves. As Leiur uses a shadow colossus to hurl goddamned boats at Chris, and Phara cuts the taxi cab Tsubasa and Maria have commandeered in half, one can see that they have lots of powers. Oh, and one more thing. They can summon Noise. After all that hard work Miku did to huck that fucking Staff of Solomon into the void, now some windy bitch with gears can summon a shitload of them with alchemy. Tsubasa and Chris aren't sweating, though. They're Noise. Please. What can these dumb idiots do that we haven't seen before--

Oh. Oh dear fuck. POWER CREEP. These are not just Noise. These are Alca-Noise, enhanced by alchemy, and strong enough to shatter a Symphogear relic. Two of our girls are out for the count! This really isn't good. I'm afraid, with this set up, that things are going to get worse before they get better. A new threat has emerged. Alchemy is stronger than a Symphogear... so how will our remaining wielders deal with this sudden inadequacy, and their new foes?

(Continued in 3.2)