The Harmony Of Hope And The Dirge Of Despair: Part 4 (Senki Zesshou Symphogear AXZ) [4.2]

(Continued from 4.1)

Part 2: Requiem Of Regret

Alright, there's going to be a lot of wild shit to play with later, especially considering the Bavarian Illuminati. I'm going to leave it on the back burner and instead focus on some other assorted resonant plots within Symphogear AXZ. Regret is a powerful thing that runs through some of these plotlines, both main and B plots, as we go through the story. It's very much an umbrella of sorts, but it will help consolidate everything together. Let's start with something I am hesitant to peck at. We get to start by talking about World War 2 and Japan's perspective on it! Which... okay, I'm lying, we're not going to go full tilt with that. I don't know. I'm a white person from the other side of the world, I have no idea about the complex feelings of Japan's thoughts on World War 2 and what happened there. What I can do is what I've always done. I can peek at what's here and make something of it involving the regret theme. Let's do that, then. It'll be kind of like looking at a Godzilla movie. I'm going on in without a guide this time, but I think I can handle it. Well, I hope I can.

We already invoked World War 2 by having the mysterious crystal lady the Bavarian Illuminati tracked down in Val Verde brought there via a fleeing Nazi. It gets invoked again in episode 3 when Maria and Tsubasa return to Japan from Val Verde. They stayed behind to track down some important documents while everyone else came home, but it's their return flight which has them attacked by two of the Bavarian Illuminati just before they land. You know what, I haven't actually named the members of the Illuminati yet. Let's do that so we don't have to be so vague. The leader of their trio is Saint Germain, an elegant lady in a business suit with her own hangups. We then have her two partners in crime, the flirty but murderous Cagliostro and the sometimes reserved, sometimes hotheaded Prelati who clutches a cute frog plush all the time. Great. Anyway, it's Cagliostro and Prelati who go after Maria and Tsubasa by summoning Alca-Noise to fuck with them, but Tsubasa transforms, saves Maria and the documents, and they get away. Unfortunately the documents are encoded. However will we break the code?

World War 2 era ciphers, baby. These documents were German in origin, no doubt from the fleeing Nazi glimpsed in flashback. It's directly stated that Germany in World War 2 was absolutely relic-crazy back then. Think the Indiana Jones movies, and how half of them have the Nazis going apeshit to get their hands on some religious artifact to consolidate their power. Now realize this is a world in which relics and Noise can damn near split the world in half. Scary stuff, but Germany ended up sending a lot of the relics to their WW2 ally Japan for extended research. That's the dark history at the heart of this utopia; the power we've been using to try and make the world better was once in the hands of fucking Nazis trying to use it for their own gains. This becomes just a little more horrific when you realize Gungnir was part of this relic exchange, and how that ties into Norse mythology, and how that ties into fascism and oh dear god can we go back to the plot summary please. We can. For now. Right, so they need to decode these German documents at the backup headquarters, which was formerly the Kazanari headquarters and an old WW2 base of some import. Tsubasa's bloodline is caught up in this too. Oh, Christ.

Oh but it gets worse. It's also here we get to meet the elder statesman of the Kazanaris, Kamakura. Tsubasa's grandfather. Commander Genjuro's boss. He is an absolute scolding asshole here, as he pops up on screen right after a failed attack by Cagliostro on the base to chew Genjuro out for allowing a foreigner alchemist so close to their valued HQ. Kamakura is also a gigantic xenophobe who repeatedly insists that he is the last line of defense against the barbarians at the gate of Japan, and that everyone else is fucking up massively for letting these alchemists run wild. There's something here involving Kamakura being a xenophobic old man and the WW2 invocations, but as Symphogear takes place in the near future, this guy would have to be old as fuck to even have been alive during WW2. Doesn't preclude him from being a xenophobic dick, though, and still running with that theme. But I am getting ahead of myself. We should talk about that battle with Cagliostro real quick. Well, I don't want to talk about the fight per se. It does have a funny moment where she thinks Chris is wide open, only for Hibiki to cover her and gut punch Cagliostro several feet away. 

The Frontier trio's what I want to talk about, as they're on patrol duty since they can't transform for more than a few moments without massive feedback damage since they have no LiNKER. We will deal with the LiNKER thing in a moment, but in the meantime they encounter a sweet old lady harvesting her tomatoes. I initially thought that she'd be a veteran of the base from World War 2 or something, but then I remembered the near-future setting and that she'd have to be pushing 100 in order for that to work. Anyway, the tomatoes. This is an important metaphor for later, so let's just clear our ears and listen up. This old lady's tomatoes are really sweet, and the Frontier trio think they're really tasty. It's when Maria finally tries one, not really caring for tomatoes but taking a polite nibble anyway and marvelling at how yummy it is, that we get the fabled tomato metaphor.

Again, hold onto that one, it'll come in later. For now though, this episode ends with some wild shit involving the Bavarian Illuminati. I don't want to be specific on what they unveil here, as I want to save some gas in the tank for another binary opposition conflict that comes from this. For now, let us just say that there is some alchemy power creep bullshit which negates the power boost of the Ignite Module and shitblasts any Symphogear that tries to use it against the alchemists. As if that wasn't enough of a show of strength, the Controlling Director of the Bavarian Illuminati shows up. Adam Weishaupt (Oh Christ, with all the WW2 invocation you just had to make my day worse and give this fuck a German last name, huh?) arrives on the scene, wasting no time in flexing his strength... and boy, does he flex. He can transmute gold, you see, and said transmutation also creates a gigantic flaming sun above his head which he proceeds to drop right onto the old Kazanari HQ, absolutely vaporizing it and leaving nothing but a red-hot crater. Commander Genjuro calls the power of this thing a Tunguska-class explosion. You know, after one of the most powerful natural explosions in recorded human history. Of course, since we're invoking WW2 left and right, I can't help but think of two other devastating explosions that may or may still be a sore point in Japan... and if you think I'm reaching there with an alchemy explosion as that metaphor? Just wait for the climax of the series, we'll have an even more explicit invocation of it.

Listen, I'm going to level with you. All this WW2 invocation, these multiple dots laid out on the table... It's a real problem. In the wrong hands, you can connect those dots in a really fucked up way. Like, a fucked up way that would be a billion times worse than any character assassinations from Sailor Moon. It's my job now to try and find the way out of that fucked-up dot connecting. I believe in this utopic ideal (and, being honest with you, have way too much of a sunk cost fallacy with this series and this project at this point) to want to condemn it in that matter. We're going to try and do what we do best, though. We're going to use the belief in the utopic ideal to cut against that shit. Well, that and placing other important dots on the table to connect out a different picture other than a terribly problematic one. I can't do that immediately, though. We have to put that reckoning on the back burner. I have to work up to the tools in which we can cut against that. Instead, let's focus on more regret, and more of the dark cost of the soul that war provides as we talk about Chris again.

To put it simply, war sucks ass. The hellish experience Chris went through as a child in war-torn Val Verde, seeing her parents blown to fuck in a senseless attack... it stuck with her. As did the memory of her blaming Sonya in a fit of angry grief as she looked over the burning wreckage. We mentioned the synergy of revisiting old plot points in a series where Chris revisits the site of her trauma, and we also mentioned the split-second decision Chris took to save Stephan's life by shooting off his leg before the Noise could carbonize his whole body. Sonya is just as angry with Chris now as Chris was with Sonya in the past, an anger born out of grief. The tables have turned, and now it's Chris who's sitting there, feeling guilty as this woman who was like a big sister to her blames her for the pain caused to Stephan by blasting his damn leg off. As she ponders on the back of a truck in Val Verde after the fact:

The regret over this leads Chris to be just a little reckless and determined to do the right thing in a fight, as she's the one who rushes to battle Cagliostro when she shows up to start trouble at the old Kazanari HQ. It's later, when Chris sees a news report about Stephan coming to Japan to get a sick new artificial leg, that she hits upon a wisdom of the world: sometimes in war there isn't a right choice, a choice that will lead to nobody being hurt. All Chris could do in that moment, as Stephan's life hung in the balance, was choose the lesser of two evils... but she did save him. No matter how mad Sonya is, she saved his life. A little later the Bavarian Illuminati launch a massive attack to both wear the Symphogears down and distract from some business the Frontier trio are up to that we'll get to. It's therefore up to Tsubasa, Chris, and Hibiki to fight off a ridiculously tenacious series of hydra Noise which continue to split into smaller hydras the more they get attacked. The hydras manage to isolate everyone, and that's when the Illuminati uncloak their flying fortress, getting Noise ready to attack Lydian. Hibiki's in a panic and worried about Miku's safety, and that's when Chris pipes up:

There's one more bit of Chris's regret over her hasty actions that will come up, but I want to save the circumstance of that for a big section all its own. Let us instead jump ahead to episode 8, in which Sonya and Stephan want to meet up with Chris for coffee to talk about things. At first Chris doesn't want to see them, still caught up in her regrets. Thanks to the support and love of her friends, however, she builds up the courage to confront her regret head-on and meet with Sonya and Stephan. With Tsubasa at her side to support her during the meeting, Chris hears from Stephan that the pair are heading back to Val Verde soon. Sonya has work to do with helping the wartorn kids of Val Verde, just as Chris's parents did. It's here we get the full flashback of how her parents were blown up by a bomb hidden in relief supplies, and Sonya saving Chris from the blast in the nick of time. It seems like this memory is about to bring a heartfelt moment of healing between Chris, Sonya, and Stephan. Pity, then, that Cagliostro blows the wall of the cafe open with Alca-Noise to throw down. Typical. We'll be circling back to the fight itself in greater detail, but it's worth mentioning that midway through, Chris is left to 1v1 Cagliostro and it doesn't go well. Getting shitblasted back into the cafe lets her see that Stephan's wheelchair is stuck under some rubble. Cagliostro's about to waste all of them when Stephan rises to his feet on his new leg and kicks a chair leg at her. Pro move, Stephan. Now we get the utopian moment of healing that was so rudely interrupted:

It's lovely stuff. Later, Chris will get assistance from an ally and together they'll stop Cagliostro's attack, saving the day. Again, we're going to get back to the finer details of that, but I wanted to focus on the Stephan arc. Having healed the rift between them, and gaining some new understanding of each other, Sonya and Stephan head on back to Val Verde, leaving Chris a little wiser, a little more understanding, and a little less regretful of one tough choice in a crisis. Many more tough choices will come, but for now in this moment she's feeling good. That's one regret eased and soothed, but there's lots more stuff to delve into with this season. Like what the Frontier trio have been up to, for example... 

(Continued in 4.3)