天下制覇

This episode had a lot of… precious bodily fluids.

Oi. If it wasn’t bad enough that it’s so late, WordPress ate my post for the first time in months. Sigh.

Impressions:

You’re dead, Kanade, why are we getting flashbacks of you off of a cliffhanger of something else entirely? At least it had blood, vomiting blood, etc. She’s a whole lot less stable than was previously intimated, although I’m not sure if I like that it’s part of her that’s making Hibiki go crazy. Then she learned feelings again by pulling people out of wreckage. Well, it’s a light touch I guess, but they coule have probably used a little bit more to get from jamming strange chemicals into herself and leaving blood-marks all over walls to sacrificing herself for Hibiki. The last third was a little weak though. Tsubasa’s allowed to be a little angsty here. She’s having dreams of her dead friend and using attacks that explode her insides. Hibiki on the other hand, has had about three interactions with other characters in this entire show so far that haven’t involved her staring in doe-eyed surprise. Also, it’s impossible to take her seriously after she spent about 8 minutes covered in… goo. I’m just hoping the training montage in the ED will take the place of an actual training arc.

The middle was excellent all around, although I’m not really sure what to say about it besides wishing that more action shows were like it. Solid animation, decent choreography, didn’t get bogged down in monologues. They’re still keeping a fair amount of information to themselves, but that’s preferable to the alternative and I am glad that they’re keeping the focus firmly on the characters, even if Hibiki is pretty weak while Tsubasa’s angstiness could definitely come down a peg or two and still be sufficiently moody. There were certainly a few moments where the art tended to… drift shall we say, but besides the unintentional humor of HIbiki covered in viscous goo the whole thing, they did a great job with it. The Noise girl is based on Hebrew mythology as opposed to the Symphos. I doubt that actually means anything though besides "has cool words" and "we’re tired of using German for everything."

And no, don’t think I didn’t miss the shot of Tsubasa with her legs splayed and crotch against the camera. Thanks, Symphogear.