(Just the slightest "NSFW" alert for some screencaps near the end.)
Part 5: Bridge Of Blessing
Things are looking bleak, aren't they? The dark goddess Shem-Ha's truth of the world revealed. No matter which way you look at it, humanity and any chance it has for a utopic ideal are cursed. We are cursed by the prison of Balal preventing us from understanding each other, and should that curse ever be lifted? The curse of Shem-Ha's dark enlightenment shall fall upon us, and we shall all be remade in her image. Shit, I thought thematic flip-flopping was my Houdini trick? How in the fuck are we getting out of this one? I'm confident. I have my out, and it's right there in the show. Ironically, this out would never exist if it weren't for Fudo and his executive meddling as part of his master plan to be the monster protecting Japan. We'll have one last laugh at the nationalist old fuck in a moment, but let's go back to our girl Hibiki, and find the way out.
So in battling an invincible god-thing to try and save Miku from Noble Red, Hibiki activated that shiny Amalgam power in order to punch it really really hard. It, like many scenes involving Hibiki punching something really really hard, is generally rad as shit. Remember, though, that part of Fudo's meddling involved making use of Amalgam unauthorized. As everything goes down with Miku being possessed by the dark goddess and Tsubasa's sudden betrayal, Hibiki is punished for breaking the rules with a period of house arrest. Here, with our protagonist stuck at home and unable to go outside, is a Big Mood for our current climate. Resonances the show couldn't possibly have thought of aside, Hibiki's choice of lockdown house is actually staying with her father. Remember her dad? The deadbeat doofus who left his family when they suffered massive harassment and is trying to reconcile with them? The guy who passed down his reckless optimism to his daughter and sparked the flame of utopic ideal within her? Yeah. That guy. He's back and we're stuck in the house with him for the framing of an episode.
There are people who don't like Hibiki's dad because he is a deadbeat doofus who abandoned his family, and feel he does not deserve redemption or forgiveness. I can see where they're coming from, given how I feel about that Nastassja mess from the last season. For me, he's a guy who caused a great hurt and is trying to mend it. He's not instantly forgiven, as evidenced by the fact he's still living in a separate home from his ex-wife. The healing is taking time, a slow process. What it comes down to for me is a lesser evil. Yeah, what he did sucks. This is also a show that has had abusive piece of shit men like Dr. Ver, Adam Weishaupt, or Fudo Kazanari. The motherfucker isn't running around murdering people so he can rule the world as a fascist king. The dumbass is actually trying to be a better person. I appreciate the effort.
So it is, then, that while all the gonzo bullshit of Episode 9 happens, we are framed with Hibiki in quiet contemplation with her dad in lockdown. While Fudo is becoming a monster, while Tsubasa and Maria are clashing, while Shem-Ha is murdering Noble Red and rebuilding them as perfect monsters... we have Hibiki and her dad. Shit gets real with Shem-Ha, as we'll discuss in just a moment, and Hibiki's lockdown comes to an end with the full authorization of Amalgam. It's here, just like in the desperate moments before the final battle in Symphogear GX, that Hibiki's dad the deadbeat doofus does his best to deliver some sage words of wisdom to inspire his daughter in her fight. Apologies for the wall of images upcoming... but basically every part of this is key to how we're finding the light within the darkness. With that, I give you Mr. Akiba Tachibana's zen advice to his little girl:
I know it sounds like the raving rants of a big doofus... but look at the blog header again. I am inclined to the raving rants of a big doofus. We'll have to keep that in our back pocket as we run forward into the cold dark night to face off against Shem-Ha's grand plan... and oh good lord, does this dark goddess have a plan. It's a simple plan, a dark mirror of our heroines' deepest desires. The unification and mutual understanding of the world... at the cost of individuality. To put it another way, we will all become Shem-Ha and we will all be monstrous. Naturally, this plan involves fucking with the moon and it's up to our girls to stand tall and stop it. Yatsuhiro Kazanari's last great gift to humanity was mending the rift between Japan and the USA, and the form this took was the plan of a joint mission up to the moon to investigate it. (Half-legit question: did Apollo 11 happen in the Symphogear universe?) Our girls get sent to defend the rocket from the vengeful dark goddess and her new monster-powered Noble Red, but that doesn't go well. The rocket blows up, but it's Tsubasa who charges in to stop them from warping away. Everyone else rushes to help her, they all disappear, and in one of the better shock cliffhangers of the season? We're on the god damned moon.
It's on the moon where we meet a hologram projection of the Custodian Enki, the dude from the cold open of the series who activated the Curse of Balal to begin with. He was opposed to Shem-Ha, and was the one who put her down in a grand battle. He lost his arm in the process to prevent Shem-Ha from turning him into silver, and somehow that arm of his became Maria's Airgetlam relic. We get all the lore about Shem-Ha that I've already revealed, but Shem-Ha has a wilder trick up her sleeve. While our girls and Noble Red are up on the moon, Shem-Ha is activating the power of nothing less than Yggdrasil, plunging the world into blood-red terror. Invoking Yggdrasil is a fun nod to diametric opposition re: Hibiki's Gungnir, but given the high stakes I almost wish she'd invoked Ragnarok instead. We've gone a little plot summary, but I honestly have run out of time here and need to get all the pieces on the board. Forgive me if we rush ahead to the good stuff, but there is some damn good stuff. For the moment...
Back on Earth, Carol is back and throwing down with Shem-Ha to distract her while our girls work on getting home. There's just the faintest threat of bad shit happening here because Carol's riding in Elfnein's body and her alchemy is based on burning memories. So that's bad. The battle doesn't go so well, but we'll touch on Carol a little later. For the moment, we have the ultimate ideological challenge between the Symphogears and Noble Red. Looking out at the blood-red planet Earth, Hibiki asks Vanessa if this is the world of friendship she really wanted. Here and now, their hard-edged facade crumbles. No more using weakness as a crutch to hide their feelings. They may be pure monsters now, but in this moment they're more human than ever. Unfortunately that pure monster connection allows Shem-Ha to assume direct control over Vanessa and hack the moon. This, as we've established, is bad. It will result in universal assimilation into Shem-Ha. Noble Red are ready to help our girls, though, using their Daedalus End labyrinth that's bigger on the inside to build a space tunnel from the moon to planet Earth. The effort, though, burns them away. Another set of antagonists who do the right thing and end up dying for it. What a shame. Or, as Noble Red puts it:
With that, the space tunnel collapses and our girls fall to Earth. In the moment, this is actually somewhat perverse. It's once again twisting the knife with Miku because here is Shem-Ha, in her body, watching as the six lights fall to Earth from the heavens. Watching shooting stars. These stars are shining bright, though, and it's time for the final battle. Time for the final episode of Symphogear. A lot of absolutely gonzo shit goes down in this battle. I want to cut right through it to the heart of the matter. What we have, on the face of it, is a simple trolley problem. Shem-Ha is wearing Miku like a suit, and Hibiki is holding on to the one power that can kill a god in Gungnir. The god-killing fist, which Adam proclaimed held 2000 years worth of curses, could kill Shem-Ha. It would probably kill Miku too, though. Will Hibiki kill her beloved to save the world, or will her love bring about the end at the hands of a dark goddess? Shem-Ha even brings out Miku for a second just to make Hibiki flinch, shitblasting everyone and beginning her plan. With a great lunar eclipse, the reunification begins.
There's one last dark truth at the heart of the story, before we get to the one shining truth that will save it. Shem-Ha goes on about how her plan will mean the end of disharmony and conflict, and no more misunderstanding. It was Miku's own misunderstanding about Hibiki, her inability to express how she felt with incomplete words of a non-universal language, that let Shem-Ha slip in. That one second of doubt, of wanting to unite, was Shem-Ha's invitation to possession. As Carol works to block Shem-Ha's final attack, threatening to burn away all her memories, all seems lost. Our salvation comes, to be clear, entirely within the rules of Symphogear, but I also want to zoom out for my own indulgent gonzo sakes. I hope you'll allow me, since we've come this far together.
In September 2020, in tandem with the writeup of Symphogear GX, I fired off a quick little project called Entropy's Dark Gleam, looking at the magical girl anime Madoka Magica. It was a very good show that you should view if you haven't, but its protagonist Madoka Kaname faced a situation not too unlike Hibiki's. An uncaring universe about to destroy planet Earth, a system of misunderstanding and oppression fueling it, and the protagonist herself was on the trolley. What she did was play within the rules, and then rewrite them. She found the way out. The fact I never hit upon in Entropy's Dark Gleam, that I kept in my pocket for now? Madoka Kaname and Hibiki Tachibana share a voice actress. We're under a curse? Please. Madoka Kaname, the Harmony of Hope herself, has bridged the gap as Noble Red bridged the Earth and the moon. This gap isn't between space, but between concepts. This gap is between a curse and a blessing. She sees the divide between them, and joins them. Thanks to the grace of licensing, I also can bridge the gap between talking about Symphogear and just showing you Symphogear. With that, I present the two and a half minutes of Symphogear that bridge the gap.
Where do we begin? We bridge the gap not just thematically, but in the very Hibiki way of taking her father's advice to heart and trusting in it fully. A curse can become a blessing. As she says this, the music kicks up, she reiterates the running theme of "Even if that's true"... and we kick into Metanoia. It's non-diegetic, of course, but Hibiki's already done it. We've seen this trick before. The hard-edged harbinger of darkness has become an anthem of hope. Right as the theme kicks in, even Shem-Ha seems to realize it as she lets out a horrified gasp. Oh, shit. You have to understand that with Shem-Ha's fuckery, the Curse of Balal has been busted and she was two seconds away from being everyone. We have hit a moment of mutual understanding, and instead of a curse it's a blessing. The world is Hibiki in this moment, and Hibiki wants her goddamned sunshine back. You want to talk about bridging the gap of dichotomy? How about Hibiki's hands? Did we forget? The whole point of her fighting unarmed is so she can punch her foes and extend a hand to her friends. In this moment, those are the same thing. It's glorious, it's beautiful, and it's perfect. An outstretched hand to take Miku back, and a god-killer to send Shem-Ha back into the depths of hell. I could cry.
Of course, we're not done here yet. There's the slight matter of Yggdrasil going overboard. We have to deal with Carol's... deal now. In the first place, it's her that burns away from alchemical memory overuse rather than burn all of Elfnein's happy memories. Symphogear has officially killed every single one of its five season antagonists, some more redemptively than others. I kind of hoped at least someone would live, you know? We also have to deal with the idea of the seven scales. This is some alchemical bullshit, but it's something Carol tried back when the god-thing was rampaging; harmonizing Climax Songs to blast away a god. It didn't work then, but we had Hibiki to punch. Turns out we needed seven Symphogears, as the girls plunge down to the core of the Earth to deal with the out of control Yggdrasil. But where will we get the seventh Symphogear?
Well, as it turns out... When that rat bastard Fudo was trying to shackle Shem-Ha, the method he used was an alchemical Faust Robe created from a Symphogear relic. Which one? Why, Shenshoujin the mirror relic! I thought that thing was blasted into oblivion in Season 2, but here it is again... and a recovered Miku can pilot it to sing and harmonize with everyone. This is the ultimate answer Carol found to her father's final request. She knew the world, and found the harmony within. It's also the ultimate redemption of Finé, in a way. With her creation of the Symphogears, she has created something to truly connect humanity; not to rule it like a queen, but to genuinely save the world. As our girls sing their final Climax Song, the spirits of all who have come before float about in harmony. Finé and Enki reunite, we have the redeemed Illuminati and Noble Red... god, everyone is here--
And then the moment is ruined. Four seasons. Four god damned seasons in a row this idiot has shown up and made me hate everything. This may be the worst yet. An otherwise pure moment of healing and mutual understanding, the utopic ideal, and this jackass shows up. I'm not too thrilled about Nastassja being here either, but that I can sort of understand. Dr. Ver? Fuck him. He was not redeemed, no matter how much GX wanted me to think otherwise. He did not see the light, did not sacrifice himself for the right thing or change his ideals. He died as he lived; a sociopathic madman who wanted personal glory. He was and forever will be a terrible person, and does not deserve to be here in this capacity. Fuck him. Fuck Dr. Ver.
Alright. Let's end this. Yggdrasil blows up but a giant vengeful Shem-Ha ghost bursts out as everyone makes like Return Of The Jedi to escape the oncoming explosion, but as Hibiki and Miku are caught by the ghost we get a final "confrontation" in the dreamscape. And they're artistically nude for... some damn reason. I don't know. I tagged this post at the top, and I will say you don't see anything in this scene that you wouldn't see on a Barbie doll, should you decide to watch the show, but I played it safe and have done some censoring for your sake. A picture's worth a thousand words, and I'm 2500+ in so please excuse the awkwardness and let's just get the point across, okay?
And so, once the credits roll on the brave desire to move forward to a better tomorrow, we go back to where we began. A lonely grave, lonely no longer. It's not Hibiki's empty grave, but Yatsuhiro's... and Tsubasa is not alone. Her friends are here to support her, and Miku's narration even mentions that weird cuckoo phrase which began the show. I still don't know what it means, but there's a more important coda. Miku and Hibiki, on a chilly plain, ready to talk to each other. Here, then, is how Symphogear ends.
Before I regenerate, I have to leave Symphogear behind and make it an eternal part of me.
END PART 5
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