Not Red Reviews

Symphogear 11 starts from where 10 cut off: the school is attacked by the Noise and all three Symphogear users are in the other side of town.

This sentence took me a while to figure out. He literally says “the 36 Strategems say it’s not a shame to run” (三十六計逃げるに如かず sanjuurokkei nigeru ni shikazu). When all else fails, run. Apparently 3 orange and pink Noise beasts chasing you counts as “all else fails”.

 

This show is really shameless when it comes to cliches. In this scene Ogawa is about to tell Kazanari about the Kadingir, because he apparently figured it out, but of course the moment before he’d get to the point in his sentence, Fine interrupts him by tearing off the top of the elevator and pinning him to the wall. She really has a great sense of timing, doesn’t she.

 

Ogawa is really a flexible man. So is Fine – Ogawa fires three bullets in her breast but they fall out without leaving a trace. (Which makes me wonder a bit about her anatomy – her nipples are in some really weird position.) There was a really lovely gif of Fine slapping Miku hard somewhere on the net, but I couldn’t find it now.

 

This scene is cool, but the scriptwriters fail greatly again. It’s not as bad as could be, but Kazanari’s lines are really weird. Sometimes I’m considering the possibility that they are doing this intentionally to hide jokes in the script – too bad that if so, I’m missing out on those jokes completely…

This line sounds like it’s a spell, but it’s not. She just switched back to speaking like she was a character from Hamlet. The difference is that Shakespeare was a genius while the scriptwriters of this show clearly suck.

 

I love it how in anime people can survive being pierced through the body without any problem. I’ll need to watch more movies and sleep more if I want to be as tough as the Commander.

 

Ryoko/Fine encounters the girls at the ruins of the girls. I don’t really get it why would she return to her mad scientist outfit and laze around instead of activating the Kadingir right away after she got her hands on the Durandal (which is mysteriously missing in this scene as well).

 

 

Two of the strongest characters refuse to believe that Ryoko/Fine is really rotten to the core. Incoming anime cliche: they’ll try to reach out to her and they’ll manage to win when her genetically suppressed original personality makes her hesitate for a moment. Also note how the Commander is already walking and talking a mere few hours after he’s been pierced. (Anyone sees the similarities with Xenogear?)

 

 

So it turns out that Fine was an ancient Babylonian priestess who built the Tower of Babel as it’s described in Genesis, and she still holds a grudge against God for destroying it and confusing the languages of people. But that’s not all – apparently the new Kadingir is an ion cannon that can destroy the Moon. Because, you know, the Moon is the key of God’s curse and if it’s destroyed then the languages of humans would return to the original and the world would be united and she (Fine) could rule over it. This scheme has so many faults I don’t even know where to start. I haven’t mentioned this before but now I can’t hold it in anymore: how exactly did ancient people construct ion cannons (Kadingir), rocket launchers or gatling guns (Ichii-Bal)? Those relics were supposed to originate from prehistoric times. Then how exactly? Then about destroying the Moon. Let’s presume that it’s really some kind of magic and if it’s destroyed, then the languages would— Wait, are you serious? Languages don’t work like that. Or what, are you going to magically rewrite the entire recorded human history into a single language? Magically teach everyone the common tongue and make them forget their original language? And even if people all spoke the same language, can you seriously expect them to unite? There’s a bit more to conflicts between people than not understanding each other’s language…

Fine again does the most annoying thing possible: inserts random ancient words in her lines. She did it a couple of times in earlier episodes, and it took me quite a while to figure out what stuff like “lulu amel” (worker or slave in Sumerian) meant. In this sentence it’s the Hebrew word “balal”, which means to confuse.

I’ll consider this line a piece of self-criticism from the writers. But then again, it’s confusing how there seem to be such jokes and attempts to break the fourth wall, but it’s always too subtle to be sure. Like in an earlier sentence Chris uses the verb tsurumu when she mentions that Fine worked with the Americans. First of all, that isn’t how a teenage girl would say it. But the funny thing about it is that while if it’s written as 連む it means “to accompany” or “together”, if it’s written as 交尾む then it means “to copulate”. (Fun facts you find in your dictionary, chapter 208.)

 

 

Next episode will be epic.

This entry was posted by Vale.