Senki Zesshou Symphogear

True they are the weakest but you are underselling Micha here. It does not change the fact that there was two of them fighting one opponent. Anyone else would have likely had a much harder time with Micha purely because of there not being two of them.

Anybody else think that Micha's Super Mode looked a like like Nono?

edited 21st Aug '15 6:48:43 PM by MoreThanBored

Some more info was released on the ignite modules:

The ignite module has a 3 staged safety system. The Nigredo state is the basic state. Advancing to further stages increase your power but also makes the countdown safety thing go down faster. Once the countdown reaches zero the gear is automatically unequipped meaning you're fucked if you're in the middle of a battle.

See, that's kind of the thing that annoys me about this series. Like, who exactly do they think they're fooling at this point? What, girls sleeping in the same bed, holding hands and dramatically shouting out that they love each other is totally okay, but even implying a kiss is just going too far?

Like, what, exactly, is the problem with just making the romance aspect explicit? All this talking around it kind of just makes it feel skeevy- like it's trying to imply we're just a bunch of pervs reading too much into a bunch of totally platonic friendships.

edited 22nd Aug '15 9:56:36 AM by Gilphon

Nah, don't you and your platonic same-sex friend constantly hold hands and shout daisuki at each other while sleeping in the same bed? Isn't that what friendship is all about?

It hurts to live

It's a very common problem in anime. I don't know of any clear exceptions other than Yuri Kuma Arashi which is a criticism of this problem. Sometimes you even get kissing and stuff but then they try to play it off as not a "real" relationship.

Part of it is plain old homophobia. And part of it is that the characters can't be undeniably gay because then they couldn't be a male viewer's waifu. Le sigh.

To be fair to Sakura Trick from what I've heard the anime ended only a couple of chapters before Haruka realizes that what she feels for Yuu is beyond friendship. The whole Bait-and-Switch Lesbians thing was the least of that anime's problems, though.

Also I do think that things are changing a little bit. In Yuki Yuna Is A Hero, Togo is outright confirmed to be in (romantic) love with her (female) best friend. And most people won't deny that Homura isn't in love with Madoka (albeit an obsessive, twisted love), and even Urobuchi gave a Shrug of God that heavily leaned toward "yes" even before Rebellion.

edited 22nd Aug '15 11:54:32 AM by MoreThanBored

They're much less willing to make this sort of thing explicit in anime than in manga, for whatever reason. That's probably why the Sakura Trick anime ended when it did.

It seems like they're cranking up the teasing, but still aren't quite willing to cross the line into an actual gay relationship, without it being "just a phase" or whatever. But it's hard to tell, because even in straight romance anime they like to stop just short of making the pairing unambiguous, and you're supposed to make the extrapolation yourself.

I think that may just be the fact that Japanese society is much more reserved when it comes to relationships and open displays of affection. You wouldn't just have a couple acting super cutesy in public or having public makeout sessions.

@1129: It's frustrating. Anime definitely has a problem with explicitly gay characters ^note  and as Kotomikun noted, romantic relationships in general . See Sound! Euphonium of last season for a really egregious example of this. I think Aoi Hana's the only yuri anime to really engage with sexual identity and what it means to society, because Takako Shimura is cool. Of course, that's out of Symphogear's wheelhouse.

Part of it, besides everything mentioned above is the fact that creators ^note  or the people holding the purse strings – for all I know the Symphogear writers have a burning desire to go full lesbians want to avoid having the "yuri" label applied to their show, since they want as broad an appeal as possible. If you can attract the yuri fans' money without alienating the waifu crowd, success!

It's possible to get way more out there with manga – you can have all the uncomfortable topics, sex, violence and underage drinking ^note  I would really like that particular rule to get struck from Japanese broadcasting standards you want (or as much as your editor allows, rather), since that shit ain't airing on TV. On the other hand, it's not like it's impossible or forbidden to have characters in gay relationships in anime – Shin Sekai Yori springs to mind as a recent example. Though that one does sort of play into Japanese perceptions of homosexual behaviour as a phase of adolescence.

edited 22nd Aug '15 8:59:42 PM by majoraoftime

Well, I mean, yeah, but all appearances are that Miku and Hibiki have gotten past that point.

Really it's gotten to the point where the lack of kissing has started feeling really weird and unnatural to me.

Shin Sekai Yori is an odd duck, in this context. It's kind of portrayed as a more extreme version of the 'just a phase' thing + emphasizing to the audience the cultural differences the characters are subject to. And, well, everyone stills ends up in straight pairings.

I think that there's also a sort of stigma that yuri anime or shows featuring explicit yuri don't really sell all that well; look at Sakura Trick, Yuri Kuma Arashi or to a lesser extent Shin Sekai Yori. I don't see the audience for explicit yuri being all that large compared to waifu fans or even yaoi fans.

You could also argue that the writers of Symphogear want to avoid a Romantic Plot Tumor considering how the action and singing are the crux of the show and the plot is enough of a mess as it is without throwing in romance.

edited 22nd Aug '15 9:27:22 PM by MoreThanBored

Wait, does this make Elfnein a mole or a unwitting pawn? I'm kinda confused now...

That again, Symphogear G did have Chris switched side to the antagonist, which is confusing at first.

and please stay dead carol

edited 23rd Aug '15 2:45:28 AM by flamemario12

Can't really be sure yet, but I'd guess she doesn't know she's a mole, considering that she hasn't shown any hint of sneakiness and the heroes also seem to be unknowingly playing into the Big Bad's hand. Even the Autoscorers' deaths appear to be a win for Team Evil for some reason.

But Carol is cute!

And could totally kill you

Also with Carol back in action it's only a matter of time before the doll are rebuild as well.

It seems like the whole ep7 debacle is finally cleared up:

eps 1 to 6 of GX were full of battles, so the superiors wanted to have more fanservice so Kaneko decided to make ep7 a beach episode. But then he went overboard with it since he realized Maria needed to have her fight as well as set up the next part of the season with the introduction of Hibiki's dad.

He realised his mistake after ep7 finished airing, because ep7 was still full of battles. They even needed to add Chris's swimsuit henshin. Kaneko got scolded by his superiors for adding even more things to draw aside form intense action sequence.

Sadly further episode production also got affected by this but even so the production team keep going without considering their limit.

This is why ep7's pace felt all over the place and seemed rushed compared to other episodes.

And I guess Nana's comment for it was meant for ep6, that must have been her mistake in all her excitement.

So lets give it up to Executive Meddling everyone!

This is why I've felt Symphogear shouldn't be 13 episodes. It really should be 24, at least. Way too many parts frequently feel rushed.

as I recall, theres also a cultural idea that its okay for highschoolers to have quasi-lesbian relationships in highschool as long as they stay chaste, but the second you hit 18 you're expected to become an obedient housewife and throw away such childish notions.

Its hilariously homophoboic, but hey, break the stereotype and watch the angry moral police swoop in.

Even with half of a beach episode, it feels rushed...?

99% of anime are full of unnecessary content to pad out the time. 13 episodes is more than 5 hours, that's enough time for two or three movie-length story arcs. The problem is the standard anime style of dragging-out and circuitousness, used to increase runtime while making it seem like lots of stuff is happening (and providing fanservice)... long bantering, fighting the same enemies repeatedly, transformation sequences and special attacks, y'know. Ironically, if they cram in too much of this stuff it starts to seem like the anime's too short, when it's really too inefficient.

Symphogear is one of the few shows where I actually enjoy the superfluous stuff. (I guess that's why some people can actually sit through shonens.) But making it twice as long would just mean twice as much padding, not twice as much story, and that would get irritating.

edited 23rd Aug '15 9:28:38 PM by Kotomikun

There being half of a beach episode is exactly the sort of thing that makes it feel rushed. The pacing is too fast, and that episode showed everything wrong with moving that quickly. It would actually have been significantly better if the beach half was removed completely.

The first few episodes were fine, but, ideally the characters wouldn't be overcoming their mental issues so quickly and easily. If a simple pep talk can solve your problems, they weren't notable issues in the first place. The speed of things only proceeds to cheapen the whole endeavor and the claim that there's a risk to using that cursed sword as a base for the upgrade. It seems like overcoming these issues is supposed to be a major thing this season, so cheapening it is definitely not what the writer wanted to do.

And while you are correct in that anime likes to drag things out, there's a difference between moving things to a reasonable pace and moving at a breakneck one.

edited 23rd Aug '15 11:44:43 PM by burnpsy

So I'm picking up Season 3. The dolls are so far pretty interesting, but Hibiki's "can't fight" feels forced as hell. (Seriously, she overdue to going White Devil at them.)

edited 24th Aug '15 2:29:59 PM by Adannor

She gets over it pretty quickly.

Yeah I expect her to, given the shortness of the seasons. Still, annoying that it was even there.

edited 24th Aug '15 3:03:09 PM by Adannor