Senki Zesshou Symphogear

Okay, okay. But seriously, I'm not hallucinating things, am I?

No, no you are not.

... It gets better, doesn't it? There is more awesome stuff like that, right?! Dammit, I'm putting this on my Priority One list!

This show: BRS done better.

I liked BRS, but I can agree that this show is significantly better.

I don't see how this is anything like that to be honest.

I greatly liked BRS, and find this show only enjoyable as a trainwreck. So, I disagree

Also, they're not really all that similar

How is this anime a trainwreck? .-.

First, keep in mind that the fact that I enjoy it as a trainwreck still means that I enjoy it

But, I find that it manages to take a lot of ideas that should be interesting and completely mishandle them. The noise start out as a great, horrifying enemy beyond humanity's understanding, then quickly become little more than mooks, replaced by a generic Dark Magical Girl. Kurisu herself doesn't add anything to the plot beyond a few chances for Fine to Kick the Dog. The whole 'black Hibiki' thing completely failed to matter. Similarly, Fine's backstory and the curse of Balal, which would have great potential if the story was competently written

In more general terms, I find that reverse Cerebus Syndrome just doesn't work. They spend a lot of time showing us why everyone should be traumatized and living in terror, then expect us to accept a bunch of happy, upbeat episodes? Also; putting Tsubasa's character arc at the beginning and end of the show really wasn't a very good idea. Sort of stop caring about her by the time she's back

Animation quality is mediocre. Not good for an action series. And I can't claim to like the art style either, but that's a matter of taste

edited 26th Mar '12 9:09:30 PM by Hylarn

I disagree on just about every point you made. .-.

But I have an essay to write, so I'll just leave it at that and spare you the wall of text.

Do you have to? I like a good debate

By "an" essay, I mean, like 3 really long final law essays due within the next few weeks and worth 30-40% of my score in each of those classes. No time to get into a debate on my end, and I'm not a very good debater anyway.

edited 26th Mar '12 9:14:32 PM by burnpsy

There's also the whole "cutting the original 26 episodes down to 13 due to budget" thing, done in one week.

I heard that this show was made to promote Nana Mizuki's songs?

That was done in one week? That'd explain a fair bit

If it was, then her songs would play more often...

You weren't aware of the sudden budget slash?

edited 26th Mar '12 9:25:07 PM by burnpsy

I knew the episode count got halved somewhere in the planning phase, but I'd thought they'd had more time to work things out than that

IIRC, it was actually after they'd started, which is pretty weird.

But I suppose that explains why Phine had to explain absolutely everything on the spot for them. :/

edited 26th Mar '12 9:33:23 PM by burnpsy

/whistles

'tis impressive they managed to come up with something watchable after that.

I actually didn't mind Phine's little explanation, it seemed appropriate.

Wait, if this show was made to promote Nana Mizuki's singing then why isn't there more of it? (She has the same amount of songs as Ayahi Takagaki)

Now I can't stop imagining a 26 episode version of Symphogear with every moment in between the scenes from the 13 episodes being Tsubasa singing for 20 minutes straight .

BEST EPISODE EVER: SYMPHOGEAR!

@Hylarn: How was Berserk!Hibiki not important?

Also, I doubt anybody was living in terror even during the first few episodes, I mean, watch them again, everybody not directly involved (Or being attacked) was pretty chilled out.

How were the curse and Phine not explained properly? We don't need an entire flashback episode to go over it, it was (mostly, anyways) simple stuff.

edited 27th Mar '12 2:48:12 AM by fourteenwings

I'm sure a full budget two cour symphogear could be cool, considering what we got is pretty awesome on it's own already.

Dear god yes.

How was it important? The entirety of it's effect on the plot was to take Hibiki out of action so that Tsubasa would have to sacrifice herself (itself pointless!). The same thing could have been achieved by having Fine beat the shit out of Hibiki instead. Which would probably be preferable; Fine could really use a danger upgrade

Though, thinking about things a bit more, it seems like there was supposed to be a greater emphasis on the power of emotions, with it being the only part of that plot thread that survived, up until the last episode upgrades. I suppose that makes it a bit less pointless, but still not handled well

They were. That's kind of the problem; they're interesting ideas that got no use. We suddenly get a weird villain with a weird goal, but it has no effect on the plot and almost none on the tone. If Ryouko was simply a traitor who wanted to use Kadingir as a weapon of intimidation all that'd be different is that we wouldn't have those shots of the broken moon

Yeah, basically, Symphogear had a lot of cool ideas that got bogged down by execution. In its defense however, it still managed to be better than Guilty Crown, which has similar faults but on a different magnitude.

That may or may not include the duets she sung with Minami Takayama.

Also, is Kanade getting a character CD?

Oh, something kind of related: In addition to the budget cut and subsequent episode reduction, I think part of the problem is that it's fairly blatantly Xenoseries fanfic with the Serial Numbers Filed Off. Fine has a weird past not because it's important, but because she was originally Miang. The Noise are around at all because the author wanted to include the Gnosis