(TW: blood, descriptions of violence)
(For John S., whose journey through life ended as this text journey was ending.)
Symphogear XV, the very last season, does not have that Sailor Stars feeling the previous season did where it threw old plot elements into the kitchen sink to mix it up and be nostalgic. Plot-wise, it definitely has the feel of a culmination, building on a bunch of elements the previous seasons put into play. Tonally, however, it feels like a back to basics approach. I'll be delving into that for the next God knows how many words, but XV steps back a little from the weird super-alchemy show Symphogear became in its middle seasons. In its place is the show it was at the very beginning. One other advantage of being all caught up with the show is that I can actually Wiki dive now! I can tell you, for instance, that the XV stands for... XV. As in the Roman numeral 15. As in the Major Arcana number for the devil in a tarot card deck. Spooky, I know. We'll get to where the devil is in this show, but let's begin. Take a nice warm sip of that coffee, insulated from the late winter air, and let me tell you about Symphogear... one last time.
"You wait a moment, Doctor. Let's get it right. I've got a few things to say to you. Basic stuff first. Never be cruel, never be cowardly. Remember, hate is always foolish. and love is always wise. Always try to be nice, but never fail to be kind. Laugh hard, run fast, be kind. Doctor... I let you go."
Part 1: Verse Of Violence
For now, though, this is a cryptic mystery. Some guy with blue hair has been mortally wounded and is leaving a trail of blood as he desperately moves to do a thing. That thing, as we discover in a short moment, is nothing less than the activation of the lunar ruins. And he apologizes to Finé as he does it! Yes, we're back once again with poking at the mystery of the Curse of Balal. You know, that bullshit about how mutual understanding is currently impossible because the moon is a piece of ancient technology keeping us all from understanding each other? It's a riff on the Tower of Babylon myth? Just about everyone in this show has tried to blow up the moon to end the curse, or for their own bullshit ends. Now that we're in endgame, we're going to learn the how and why of the Curse of Balal, but before that how about an episode of magical girls fighting a kaiju?
Now that we've had our cryptic flashback with no context, here's our bombastic spectacle. Our six Symphogear girls, in Antarctica, fighting off a really big monster. This thing is actually a coffin, and it going hog wild is what last season's villain, Adam, wanted to prevent. As we'll see, six Symphogear girls do eventually beat the shit out of it and win in an exciting action sequence. Adam and his Illuminati pals probably could have taken it, so it turns out there was no need to unite the world under his rule in order to stop this. That being said he still would have done it anyway because, as we established last time, Adam is a fascist piece of shit with delusions of grandeur who wanted to rule over humanity like a king. Whatever, though. He's dead now. Hibiki is concerned about his dying words, though. For your reminder:
Ah yes. Directly calling out the name of the project, now I remember. It's not exactly an easy victory for our six girls, mind. The way the episode's structured is two halves of the desperate battle with this giant monster. The first half ends with it shitblasting them all with supercooled ice that, quote, "can interfere with the laws of the universe via outer physics." That's Elfnein technobabble, but by this point in the show we've dealt with a fuckton of alchemy, we know power creep when we see it. The brief moment of everyone passing out lets us do a flashback in the middle of episode 1 to calm from the nonstop action, explain the mission in Antarctica, and for some cute fluffy Hibiki/Miku moments. We actually should mention that in screenshot form because of this scene where they're out on a date riding a Ferris wheel together, so here we go.
No worries, Mr. Chekov! Your rifle is nice and safe up on the mantle there! I'll make sure nobody does anything unsavory like fire it wildly. Sorry, what was I talking about? Oh right, fighting a giant monster. It's a cool fight, but just a step down in energy from "punching a hole through K2" or "smashing up tanks and blowing up a paramilitary air carrier". Still, it's a very cool fight which ends in a sextet song of our girls working together, giving our girl Chris the opening she needs to take a perfect sniper shot right at the exposed core of the monster to blow it up! Sure, we got some mysterious figures watching the fight play out, but that's nothing to worry about yet... Well, what we might want to worry about is what we said earlier, that the monster was actually a coffin. Episode 1 ends with it opening, and inside is a mummified body of what is presumably a Custodian, or Annunaki, or whatever you'd like to call them. Spooky stuff!
So now we're on episode 2, about 1000 words in, and I need to talk about the music. We've not talked about the music in this musical fighting show for a while, actually! The opening themes have all fallen under a specific style, upbeat energetic pop songs of a sort. I'm just going to be pre-emptive here; by episode 2's end we are going to see some shit. In keeping with that, episode 2 is the first of XV to actually have an opening theme attached. The beginning and end of the shows excise this for that extra 90 seconds of cool shit happening, but thanks to the magic of Crunchyroll's Youtube channel, you can (hopefully if region locking isn't a big bastard) take a peek at the opening to Symphogear XV, just down below.
Now, I'm no music critic, which is why I settled for writing a literal book on a magical girl show... but to me that song has a harder edge than other Symphogear openings. Electric guitar riffs echoing menacingly into the night, sharper synths, that powerful echo of the main theme as the logo pops up... Paired with the visuals, it does foretell the return of something. Not just the main antagonist, lurking within the wings. Not even the secondary antagonist, about whom we'll talk... about, in a bit. I mentioned Old Testament before, and that's still quite apt given what's going to happen. To be more accurate, episode 2 sees the return of Old Symphogear. The horrific dystopic hell world where the threat of being violently murdered by Noise is a constant existential crisis. That Old Symphogear. Our new opening is a warning of that. The dinging cloister bell of a Dirge Of Despair. Take my hand and venture forth into its depths, won't you?
There's something quite interesting that happens here, as we go into Episode 2. Like the fourth season, XV has a trio of misguided alchemists who will serve as antagonists/personal rivals for some of our Symphogear girls. Quite unlike the last season or even the one before, however? They're not pulling power crept alchemical bullshit out of their asses. We will deal quite heavily with this in our second segment, but for now we have Kirika and Shirabe encountering one of the new antagonists attacking an American battleship. The cramped quarters at first limit Kirika and Shirabe's ability to fight, but with a little adaptation (and the power of being in lesbians with each other) they beat the heck out of their foe and she retreats for the time being! America, it seems, is taking the lead on investigating that Custodian mummy. That doesn't seem so bad, right-
Oh christ. This guy again. We've got a little housecleaning to do. In the last part, I thought his actual name was Kamakura Kazanari. Kamakura is actually just a nickname for him in Japanese based on where he lives. His actual name, the one we'll use going forward, is Fudo Kazanari. You remember this old fart's deal, right? Angry old nationalist bastard and head of House Kazanari, hates America, Tsubasa's grandfather (and biological father due to some grody bullshit involving bloodlines). To be fair, America did try and nuke Japan to solve the god-problem of last season's climax. To also be fair, Tsubasa's father the diplomat helped to try and smooth over some of this shit and now the US and Japan are working on a joint mission to explore the moon. I mention this idiot because he's going to be important later, and also he's talking about blood. Blood is going to run right through this series, but we're not going to deal with it in the way he means just yet. No, we're going to get literal. There's no avoiding it. Let's talk about the scene.
I mentioned Old Symphogear before. Cast your mind back to how all of that began. Not the in media res at Hibiki's "grave", but where Symphogear began. The Zwei Wing concert where the Noise attacked, Kanade died, and Hibiki was nearly killed. At the time, fresh to Symphogear and coming to it from the relatively safe Sailor Moon, the brutality of this Noise attack made me sit up and silently go "oh holy fuck". Later seasons of the show have had concerts go wrong; G had FIS and Dr. Ver summoning Noise at a concert, but nobody was killed. (Honestly, given that it was fucking Dr. Ver, I am more shocked at his restraint in not causing a massacre, the prick.) Season 3's big concert went off without a hitch, the Autoscorer attack on Tsubasa and Maria occuring backstage. With all that being said, XV has a big Tsubasa comeback concert with Maria coming on stage and performing a duet, a lovely bit of camraderie for both. How sweet. Then it's all ruined.
In some ways this is worse than the Zwei Wing incident, from a visual standpoint. People there were dying horrific deaths, but they were being atomized into dust. A more painful Thanos snap effect. Those were regular Noise. The way the Alca-Noise tear into this panicked and screaming crowd of innocent people who just wanted to watch some pop songs is arguably worse. It's the way the people dissolve into red mist, cut up by spinning buzzsaws and shit. It's just visually striking enough to make your brain think you're seeing an actual bloody massacre on screen. Oh, but XV isn't content to just use visual trickery on your brain. No, it's about to get way worse. Tsubasa and Maria fight back, but we have one of the alchemist antagonists here to screw things up as well. After a bit of a back-and-forth battle, Tsubasa goes in for the kill, and...
Welcome to Tsubasa's ideological conflict for the season, by the way. We'll set that aside for a moment because JESUS CHRIST! I couldn't even show it to you but trust me when I say, JESUS CHRIST! Two episodes in, and XV has played its hand. That cold open with the bloody handprints, that hard-edged opening theme, this utter and complete bloodbath on a scale not seen since Hibiki's damn arm got bitten off... This is endgame for the Dirge of Despair, and it's playing for keeps. A cliffhanger in two episodes' time will have Miku in danger from this same antagonist, ending in a launched attack and just an absolute fountain of blood gushing from some unseen offscreen source. We'll deal with that later, so consider it a shocking teaser. There are other shocking bursts of violence that we'll touch upon later, but we need to segue into our next theme, so consider what our antagonist girl said just before she did that to that innocent concertgoer. Weak. Incomplete. Odd words for an alchemist in Symphogear. It's an odd little theme in general. Let's dig deeper into that.
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