It’s been a while since I touched the ‘magical girl’ genre, and while not everyone would call the Symphogear franchise something that would be strictly ‘magical girl’, it still operates on the plot of one initially dull girl put in highly extraordinary circumstances and ending up becoming a Messiah or Mary Sue character of sorts. We had this with Usagi in Sailor Moon, and Madoka in Madoka Magica, and so after discovering a piece of Symphogear armor lodged in her chest after an incident at a concert two years prior, Hibiki Tachibana has been forced to step up and defeat the Noise, an alien race that is slowly destroying human life.
I began watching season 1 way back in July, as part of my Otaku Theater column, but I have since been convinced to watch the entire franchise – all 5 seasons, including this most recent one in this cour. Back in July, I went into this totally blind; I had heard of the franchise, but I didn’t quite understand why people liked it so much. Was it one of those revolutionary magical girl shows, or was it one of those incredibly-cheesy-yet-entertaining shows that appear every now and then? I’m no stranger to so-bad-its-good shows; they all remind me that anime shouldn’t always be taken so seriously, and is meant to entertain us, not for us to heavily critique and analyze. So as I’ve already watched episodes 1 to 6 of this first season, this first part of this epic Symphogear Challenge will cover the remaining episodes.
As far as I remember, Hibiki has had to take over all the duties when Tsubasa uses her ‘swan song’ to fend off the armored girl known as Chris, who herself is being used by the real antagonist of this season. With Tsubasa in a critical condition, Chris ends up being cast aside by her ’employer’ and thrown out, leaving Miku, who is Hibiki’s roommate, tending to the wounds she inflicted. Miku is already super mad that Hibiki didn’t tell her about her new Symphogear duties, and so I anticipated that one of these middle episodes would be them making up…and I was right.
It’s never actually told in this season, but it’s pretty obvious that Hibiki and Miku care for each other in that way. It’s become a general pun now that they are each others’ wives, and has become a fairly important sub-plot of the entire franchise…as it should be, since the two deserve happiness, considering how much destruction the Noise inflict on their city. It’s surprising that people continue to live there in the first place, knowing that their homes could be destroyed the next day by a random Noise attack, with the only thing stopping them being these Symphogear warriors.
Season 1 focus mostly on main protagonist Hibiki, sometimes switching over to stern yet troubled Symphogear warrior Tsubasa, but around halfway through, some of our attention is focused back on to Chris. We’re given glimpses of her really bad childhood (being sold to a child trafficking gang, and eventually rescued), but in time, we see that she has developed some morals of her own, and was fighting the wrong people.
By the time we reach episode 10, all of the plot points seem to turn into one: the creation of a weapon to destroy the Moon, thereby disrupting the Earth’s gravity. Chris has turned her anger squarely on Finé, so with some reluctance, decides to fight alongside Hibiki and Tsubasa to prevent this.
I kind of had suspicions on who the insider was; I mean how long are you going to make the excuse of “oversleeping” and “the garbageman was late” until someone finally catches on? I suppose in an anime like this, deep character designs aren’t really the top priority. Which leads me onto the one thing that plagued me whilst watching this first season of Symphogear? Is this a ‘so-bad-its-good’ show, or was it all intentional? When I began watching, I discovered that a total of 3 animation studios were responsible for making the show: Satelight, Encourage Films, and Studio Pastoral. While Satelight is credited for pretty much most of the show, Encourage Films and Studio Pastoral only had minor roles in the opening 3 episodes. Heck, Studio Pastoral is only credited for making episode 3. I’d have to look further into the nitty gritty details on this one though, because it sounds like an interesting tale of how anime shows and the studios behind them can fall apart so much.
I mean, if they can’t even be bothered to look into translating English correctly, or hiring some better English translators, then what else is there to say?
Putting these studio woes aside, what did I think of Symphogear season 1? Do I think it’s a ‘so-bad-its-good’ show? Well, it won’t be replacing Sailor Moon as my favorite magical girl franchise any time soon…heck, I still have 4 more seasons to watch before I can make that decision. It’s definitely an entertaining show to watch, a show you can just switch off to. Like I said earlier, this is a show I just should not over-analyze, because I think picking out every metaphor and every conspiracy theory would just make the show just not fun to watch for me.
There are some really remarkable characters here, from the superhuman commander Genjuro who finds his strength to take on Symphogear armor from “eating, watching movies and sleeping” (his words, not mine)…to angry bad girl Chris who turns into tsundere good girl. More on her in another post though, as out of all the Symphogear girls, I’m drawn to her the most. Future Symphogear Challenge posts will have me talking more in detail about these girls, and why Hibiki and Miku are a marriage made in heaven, and why yuri energy is just overflowing.
It is good to see the Symphogear franchise get some Western recognition at last though; Discotek Media have acquired the license to release it on home video, and Crunchyroll have all 5 seasons up. As I’m only about 20% through this entire franchise, I don’t think I’ve even scratched the surface of what is really going on, and what will happen with Hibiki, Tsubasa, Chris, Miki and co. in the future. But at least it’s something that I’m actually looking forward to, and not dreading, like I was dreading watching every episode of Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei. Oh, that’s a show I’m never touching again…