天下制覇

It was only slightly less corny than that.

Impressions:

After nothing happening for the last two weeks, it was slightly bizarre to see Ryoko shot up before the OP even started and then spend the rest of the episode apparently slinking off to bleed in a random building while Noisecraft carriers airdropped their generic slime thingies all over the place. As suspicious as she was (and has been), that’s not exactly expected villain behavior, particularly for an end-boss, although maybe the mass Noise event is because she was hurt and lost control or something… or a distraction for whatever her eeeeevil plan is at Hibiki’s school. I can’t wait to see the rationale for that one. And by can’t wait, I mean "Why, Symphogear? Why?" Then again, maybe she just fell prey to the most dangerous of all characters in the overall animeverse… Gun-Haver.

Anyway, back to what’s more usual for the show. A fairly boring first half besides the short Ryoko bit, then awful CG cars/copters and a decentish fight. Things eventually started moving again, although with Kurisu’s switch to the good guys, it’s disappointing to go back to fighting swarms of random monsters that they’ve been brushing aside since basically episode 1. As much as the show would like to say that they’re super ultra dangerous, they haven’t been since about 15 minutes after killing Kanade. The end with Kurisu’s second song was also cheesy as all hell but at least the musical direction and song itself were quite good. But oh no! Cliffhanger that the school was attacked. Well, hopefully it’s Phine to finally explain what the deal is between her and Ryoko and kick the characters around a bit to decently sell herself as the last boss, although both Kurisu and Hibiki still have their Swan Songs lurking around to undoubtedly rear their ugly plot convenience heads as the show approaches its end and Hibiki’s grave will need to be addressed.

Also, wasn’t there a magical sword that was making Hibiki go berserk at some point too? What ever happened to that whole plotline?