You folks ready for some goddamn Symphogear? I know I certainly am! Season four’s first episode didn’t so much conclude as it ran out of frames mid-sentence, with the Main Gears still in the midst of battle with some nefarious alchemists, while the Auxiliary Gears squared off against a giant magical sand worm. The gang hasn’t faced a giant magical sand worm yet, but I suspect they’ll approach it using a tried and true method: singing about their feelings while beating the shit out of it with various weapons, possibly with a transformation sequence or two tossed in there for flavor. Now that we’re all back on the same page, let’s dive right into the continuing adventures of SYYYYMPHOOOOOGEAARRRRRRRRRRR!

Episode 2

We open on a vision of the past, likely indicating it’s time to learn the story of our alchemical foes. I know it’s the past because there’s a grainy filter over the video, the music is sad, and everyone is wearing brown clothes. In the past, people only wore brown; it was only with the discover of idols that humanity learned to color-code their clothing, leading to the diverse menagerie of color-themed outfits that Symphogear users enjoy today

Look, I told you the first time that Symphogear is too silly for me to conventionally critique, so I hope you’re ready for the occasional fun fact that is entirely bullshit

Apparently we’re witnessing the relic’s appearance at Valverde. We also learn that these folks are some genuine nazis, presumably remnants of the nazis that fled to Central and South America after the war. History rarely provides such an unambiguous and universally reviled force for evil as the nazis, so those nazi holdovers have been working overtime in fiction ever since

The relic girl appears to be encased in amber, presumably from trying to lick sap off a particularly large tree

“By shedding many tears, the reality you face is…” A suitably overlong subtitle, but it can’t compete with “That day, when the star became music” 

Fun OP, though. I really like this montage of the whole team training – the animation of both Hibiki and Maria’s martial arts is both fluid and convincingly impactful, based in strong underlying choreography

Terrific actual fight animation, too. The team is just large and diverse enough in its powers that every fight now feels like a dramatic ensemble climax

I believe the girls mentioned this was their last LiNKER dosage, but I’m not too worried. In terms of action styles, Symphogear is about as far from “tactically grounded action” as you could be – at any point, any of its characters could unveil new powers out of nowhere, simply because the writers thought they would be cool. The show works because those powers generally are cool – the show is one moment of thrilling spectacle after another, with little sense of dramatic weight or consequence, but enough visual and worldbuilding flourish to keep energy high regardless. When Symphogear wants to give a fight genuine dramatic weight, it leans on the relationships between the characters; purely narrative obstructions like “we’ve run out of LiNKER” will undoubtedly be resolved the moment the show wants these two to do something cool

Why is the little kid driving the truck. Apparently our Symphogear users all have licenses to kill, but not driver’s licenses

Elfnein’s job is to decode the LiNKER recipe, which isn’t all that dramatically exciting. It’s a binary conflict with no real meat to it – which means in this case, it’s more a way of expressing Elfnein’s feelings of self-doubt and displacement in this group

The Bavarian Illuminati want to “return history to its rightful owners,” which is an acceptably nonsensical motivation

Shirabe’s hair-saws remain an incredibly silly-looking attack. I know most of the traditional weapons were claimed by the main team, but c’mon, Shirabe

“I’m always helpless and in the way!” Yeah, I think we’ve pinpointed Elfnein’s character journey this season

I wonder if this will be the first time Symphogear manages to make an entire season out of OP-style action scenes. Some real “why not make the whole plane out of the black box” big brain thinking here

“If it’s nullifying the damage, I just have to hit harder!” That’s our Maria

Maria’s attack frames are so nice. A sort of faux-Christian typographic style combined with embellishments that look like stained glass windows. A good fit for her name, I suppose, since Maria’s another name for the Virgin Mary

“A phenomenon beyond the laws of the universe, which reverses the irreversible.” See, this is why I don’t pay any attention to Symphogear’s tactical back-and-forth – it is the kind of show that is perpetually inventing powers that invalidate all of its prior powers

The main team arrive at the village, which is being terrorized by one of the remaining nazis

Some nice use of dynamic color contrasts in Maria’s relatively one-sided battle with this worm

The second string team escape by train, while the villains head back to their amber-clad friend, whose name is apparently Tiki

Goddamnit, Stephan’s pulling some seriously misguided acts of heroism in this hostage situation

Stephan gets his dumb ass caught by a Noise, so Chris actually blows his leg off to prevent his complete disintegration. A choice like that takes tremendous courage in the moment, though I doubt Chris considers herself a hero for it

And now Sonya is blaming Chris for maiming her brother. Wonderful. Obviously it’s only because of Chris that Stephan’s dumb ass survived at all, but considering these people are unfamiliar with the Noise and her brother just lost his leg, lashing out isn’t that surprising

“It’s good to be back at HQ. I feel so relaxed.” Smash cut to the two jeeps full of characters without names who died because this asshole forgot to put his laptop on mute

“Getting this data just about killed me.” OH COME ON

Maria pinching Elfnein’s cheeks is adorable. Her mom powers only grow

It helps that Misaki Kuno might have the most adorable voice in all of anime. Log Horizon’s Serara, Momo Kawamoto, Kate Hoshimiya… if you want a character to sound like a baby speaking through a mouthful of food, accept no substitutes

Oh my god, magical pirate Fine from 400 years ago. What an amazing look

The alchemists casually reveal that they’ve already taken down the US government, which to be fair is looking like a less and less arduous task by the day

Cagliostro is still mad about getting cut in the last fight, and decides to go beat up our heroes. Aside from Dr. Ver, Symphogear’s antagonists are generally pretty endearing characters, too

This Chris drama is an interesting wrinkle in the narrative. Dealing with the trauma of war, and learning how to forgive in a situation like this, are conflicts of a magnitude and complexity that Symphogear, with its general focus on adolescent friendship over all else, is not particularly well-equipped to handle. As a result, this conflict feels a bit clumsy and simplistic, since it’s reducing a complex conflict to a version it cannot exist in without feeling inherently reductive. That said, given that initial act of simplification, the show’s still doing a fine job of presenting Chris’s feelings as complex and human, and also acknowledging that there are no easy fixes for these feelings (particularly since we’re four seasons in, and Chris is still scarred by her past). Basically, I don’t think it was necessarily a good idea for Symphogear to attempt to introduce a conflict like this, but given the inherent limitations of Symphogear’s storytelling, I think it’s doing the best job it can in the circumstances

Time for Maria’s transformation sequence! The teal of her eyes and costume compliments the pink of her hair so damn well

It’s interesting to see Symphogear still embracing some of the cinematographic tropes of conventional, limited animation anime production even as its animation improves by leaps and bounds. We’re still getting cuts framed as if the characters were performing still attacks over speed frames, but they’re now animated in full, fluid motion

They’re undoubtedly easier to choreograph, but I certainly prefer the shots where they create more of a sense of space in the frame, and hopefully embrace the fact that this is an ensemble melee, like in this excellent cut of Shirabe and Kirika trading off attacks

Ooh, this sequence of Maria and Cagliostro fighting in the flames is wonderful. The shifting flames allow for some neat camera panning, as the camera appears to “spin” around them by moving the flames at a different speed from the characters

Who the fuck is still directing planes into an airport on fire

“I know exactly what you’re thinking, Kiri-chan!” Extremely married girls

Woof, phenomenal cut preceding Maria’s final attack. These cuts feel like a perfect balance between fluidity and pose-to-pose impact, which seems like a result of their close adherence to martial arts form. As genuine martial artists, Hibiki and Maria tend to get the best action cuts

And that explosion! Phenomenal use of full color splashes, great impact frames, and a resolution that lets her distinct profile be highlighted against the billowing smoke. Great shit

AND HIBIKI ARRIVES! She punches through their invincible worm through the power of NOT GIVING A SHIT AND PUNCHING ANYWAY!

And Done

Whoo, what a rush! This season has been truly ridiculous so far, offering barely a moment to breathe across two full episodes of non-stop, beautifully animated action. It was unsurprisingly the B Team that got the lion’s share of this episode’s theatrics, and they certainly made the most of it, with Maria in particular earning some of the most beautifully animated sequences of the franchise so far. Symphogear is a franchise that runs on pure, unfiltered energy, and it seems to have arrived at a point where its production actually possesses the resources to maintain that energy via dynamic fight sequences from start to finish. Symphogear has grown far too powerful, and none of us can stop it now.

This article was made possible by reader support. Thank you all for all that you do.