seeing Ver, since now she's not a pushover he can just walk all over anymore. Considering her lowest point in G was completely falling into Ver's clutches, it's a waste to not have her meet him, though I'm sure that'll happen eventually.

Not to mention Tsubasa's the one that Chris seems to feel most likely to open up to, what with the whole wanting to heart-to-heart talk with her and the senpai thing in G. Not to mention that when Tsubasa couldn't take her "dad"'s coldness anymore when she tried to Ignite in episode 6, reaching out for Chris's hand is what saved her. If Tsubasa opened up to Chris it'd be a nice way to reciprocate things.

It was "I don't deserve friends because they'll all die because the world's a horrible place"

Which makes no sense given her goal in s1 to beat up everyone who wanted to go to war for the sake of the world/peace. That is, even when she was an edgy villain and all she had were her past experiences and no friendship with the protagonists yet she never thought the world was inherently horrible itself.

And then that's all just lazily ham fisted into her pre-established fear of being alone and her desire to be the cool senpai. The latter of which, as Peo said, was better done when it was just something she wanted to do (getting mad at Ver for making her look bad in front of Shirabe/Kirika was as far as it should've gone) to be cool or something instead of a serious complex.

There was no rehash. They literally made up drama on the spot for her and forced it because she already used up everything she actually had before.

All of the drama/kill the doll episodes after Maria's had some general quality drop and this was the absolute worst of them.

Shirabe/Kirika's was very clumsy but at least what they (somehow) learned from it was good and a nice callback to the hypocrite line.
Tsubasa's was rushed but it was fine otherwise.
Hibiki wasn't part of these episodes but hell even if it makes no sense for her to feel that way now, her no fighting thing was at least something she had before.

Chris's episode forced the unnecessary drama by far the hardest, and it couldn't even do anything new to break the formula of doll stomps->DRAMA->Ignite->protagonist stomps despite the fact that Ver just came back to shake things up.

Okay, you've sold me on it. 8D It would've been nicer if they sent Tsubasa and Chris together, and Maria to the other place. Buuut then we would've needed another episode for collecting the cursed melodies, and you're right that the doll stuff is getting formulaic. At least it's mostly over now.

Quote:

 

Which makes no sense given her goal in s1 to beat up everyone who wanted to go to war for the sake of the world/peace. That is, even when she was an edgy villain and all she had were her past experiences and no friendship with the protagonists yet she never thought the world was inherently horrible itself.

Lol I forgot her motivation in S1 was that dumb, considering she doesn't really fight anyone who wants to go to war.

But you're right, there was basically no where else for Chris's character to go, she's all played out 8D

I wouldn't say she's quite "played out". Not wanting to be alone is an issue she has, it just hasn't shown to be crippling or on the same level as the other girls' issues until now/maybe episode 6. Why her freak out focused on the fact that "the world is horrible because it makes me lonely" instead of "I want to be strong enough to protect my friends so I won't be lonely" makes no sense. Especially since the latter fits into the senpai thing they're pushing.

Even accepting that most of her serious issues are resolved though (how she doesn't have more issues from being a slave is beyond me but), that just means Chris could be used to help the other characters develop, like how Hibiki helped her/Tsubasa in the first season. But nope, have to fit the formula.

Well, she thought she had actually already failed and presumably that Shirabe and Kirika were dead, so her freakout comes after her role had "protector senpai" had failed.
Unless you mean the freakout in ep 6, kek.

Actually, maybe some of these issues come from the slave thing you mentioned, like Fine always telling her that the only thing that binds people together in the world is pain, that the only thing that matters is pain, that that's just the kind of place the world is.
It'd be nice if they made an explicit link to that in the show, but I guess we'll see if the keywords have anything to say on the matter.

Either way the action was pretty cool, and with Symphogear that's all I really care about, so

Watching Genjuro and Chris argue this episode is like reading Saturos and Boyd's argument in this thread.

Boyd

 

-To reiterate, this literally only works because SONG just so happened to send Maria with Tsubasa instead of Chris

More like it played out this way because Carol knows literally all of SONG's plans.

Boyd

 

Not to mention Tsubasa's the one that Chris seems to feel most likely to open up to

All of Chris' character developing scenes this season have involved Kirika/Shirabe because the writers decided to throw this "muh kouhais" thing in out of nowhere. Sending Chris with Tsubasa would make sense IF the writers showed any desire to connect GX to G but they obviously don't since Ver has Nephilim again and Argetlam wasn't in pieces.

Saturos

 

But you're right, there was basically no where else for Chris's character to go, she's all played out 8D

Pretty much. The best way (imo) for this episode to have gone would have been for Ver coming back to show Chris still has issues with her "i did evil things in muh past and i have to atone for them" stuff from G. They could have even connected their forced "muh kouhais" stuff from this season to it like "I need to be a good senpai and protect my kouhais even better because I helped cause some of this stuff." or something along those lines. They didn't, though, so it's dumb and feels forced just like Tsubasa's daddy issues and Kirika/Shirabe's whatever they argued about.

I'd still put this above Kirika/Shirabe's doll episode, even if it was pretty underwhelming.

And Ver should have stayed gone. jfc

Mostly unrelatedly to anything, I couldn't help but laugh at how slapsticky Kirika and Shirabe getting [radio edit]ing rekt was.

*CLANG*
*sploot*

All Carol is doing is spying on them, she can't tell them what to do. Do you really think she'd have done anything differently if Phara couldn't Sword Break both gears? Hell, Phara didn't even know that Airgetlam was a sword.

Well, between SONG making a tactical error and something that would've required significant rewriting of the show (since either Tsubasa or Chris would have their cursed melody/doll fight, you couldn't do both), I think SONG making a mistake is easier. They probably didn't count on Chris losing her cool and going with superpowered missles (she has no problem firing normal missiles and so on).

Given that Micha was perfectly fine recording two melodies simultaneously a combination between Tsubasa and Chris would be plausible.

Leiur would be left without a flashy way to die but it doesn't seem like she's down for the count anyway yet.

Leiur definitely didn't put on enough of a show yet.

SONG sent their gears to the places in advance, without knowing which one was going to be hit.

It'd be cool if Leiur wasn't done yet. At least we have her sister to entertain us in the meantime.

Carol confirmed best song

GENOCIDE

AND

GENOCIDE

edgy as [radio edit] though

SYMPHOGEAR IS FINALLY BACK TO FORM

Conversely, I thought that episode was [radio edit]ing awful and easily the worst writing in the series

The only good bit was Hibiki's bit with her dad, even if it was ham-fisted

and Carol singing, I guess

The rest was roflmao bad, like holy shit

JFC Carol is such a hero.

The episode didn't feel like it had a whole lot of content though? Like I'm not sure what could have been so awful or so good. Apart from the after credits scene, which was dumb.

It was fun.