Some people aren't satisfied with how Hibiki's dad issues got resolved but did anyone honestly think they wouldn't make up? The backstories can be dark and countless innocents can die, but things are way more on the positive side as far as our protagonists in the here-and-now go.

Adult Carol again, Carol's song, Hibiki's more or less back to her old self now, the action

- giant doll fight, over in ten seconds in one shot completely anticlimatically, which kind of set the tone for the rest. Like it was narm as [radio edit].
- Carol's motivations are stupid as shit. Based around like, hilarious misapplication of logic that she somehow never corrected despite having hundreds of years of memories. And that as Ver points out, she has no goal beyond knowledge, no reason for doing anything. It's even stupider of a motivation than Ver's, because at least Carol is rational and not just generic "mad scientist."
- Did Hibiki ever use that phrase before as her catchphrase? And this entire thing with Hibiki having doubts or feeling bad about her family basically neeever came up in the series, so it feels really shoehorned in. There were a lot of nice flashbacks and it's great seeing what Hibiki went through, but it doesn't really feel connected to much particularly in GX.
- Noise continues to show up and do absolutely nothing or even move at all as they're slaughtered, so there's no sense of danger or actual combat there. Like, Noise were usually active threats before, but for the past episodes they've just been wall decor for the villains to routinely summon (and then not do anything). At least they vaguely threatened Hibiki's dad?
- Ver obviously existed just to be killed here, even if his dialogue was pretty kek. Silvy immediately said "Little girls can't be heroes" when he brought up Carol having an elementary schooler's body. I was hoping Ver's words would actually spark some character development in Carol about having a dream or something, or that Ver vs. Carol would become an actual thing, but they just went for the "omg u cold" backstab instead
- Also, I was thinking, how did Carol even retrieve her relic from last time if it was on her body when she burned? Okay, I'll maybe give you "memories re-uploaded," but how does the Relic work?
- And then that ending literally sent me into a gigglefit of "WHAT." That's definitely when the show reaaaally jumped the shark for me. Just, despite Nastassja's body being sent to the moon, suddenly she's alive again.
If it is "bring back the dead" that might be a bit more interesting - like if Carol's goal was to take apart the world, "fix" it and thereby bring back all the dead to life, that would both a) revive her father, because she really wants to see her dad again and b) tie into the whole "apocalypse of all creation" thing she brought up in episode 1. It would also bring a much more sympathetic angle to Carol as a villain and provide opportunities for the cast to really have a "hard choice" put in front of them -- if Carol would take apart the world and maybe bring the dead back to life, would you let her do it? Tsubasa seeing Kanade, Chris having her parents back, ditto the FiS Gears and Nastassja as well (who apparently seems to be back anyway).
But no, Carol's just like "hurr I want to take apart the world because"

I thought when she forgot the reason before there'd be a much better reason behind it to be revealed later, not this shit. It's as bad as Fine's "I'll rise from the chaos and become the ruler of this planet!!11shift" angle.

I do think that the flashbacks with Hibiki were great, and the scene with her father was kind of okay even if predictable in arc, Hibiki punching Carol and then the latter Gilgamesh'ing Hibiki was great, and Carol's song sounds like it'll be good, buuut... the things that went wrong here are things that colour the rest of the season as a whole, and basically marred the tone of the episode too much to really enjoy what good there was.

Considering people went to the moon to get Mom's body and she even has a grave where she's probably buried, it's probably just be a homunculus or something else related to the Chateau.

Carol draws her relic out of space like Gate of Babylon doesn't she? She had already detransformed back into a little girl when she burnt herself.

Ah, that works for the relic.
And yeah, we'll have to see what's up with Nastassja, but it was literally "FiS gears effortlessly beat up by a mecha robot guard, then it turns around and ZOMG IT'S NASTASSJA DUN DUN DUUUN"

I notice you didn't address anything else

I've been talking about how a lot of the character development has been disconnected from the rest of the series and shoehorned in for a while now. Basically the only one that was definitely connected was Maria (and Tsubasa to a much much lesser extent).

Carol's probably misinterpreting her father's last words because 1. She hated the world so much so that colored her interpretation and 2. She was like 8 so it's been ages and ages and she also eats her own memories, essentially.

Also Nastassja being back was dumb but it wouldn't be the first retcon in GX with Ver having Nephilim's arm back and Serena's relic not being shattered into pieces anymore.

Hibiki has definitely used "heki" before at least.

Ver appearing in this season was dumb from the get-go so I'm not surprised his death was anti-climactic at least Carol delivered the stinger of all stingers when she did it.

>effortlessly beat up

I just assumed they had a long fall, considering it's not like Mom's suit was hiding anything.

I didn't address anything else because Carol's motivations ARE lol but I don't care since her song is 2good

>Symphogear
>best song isn't from a gear user

This could've actually been a really interesting twist and would've made Carol way better. It also would tie in well with alchemy seeing as the goal of disassembling and analyzing is usually to create something new from that understanding, which in this case could be making a new world where death isn't a factor. You could have some great dialogue based around that conflict of whether or not a utopia where people don't die would take away the "value" that people place around life, seeing this from the perspectives of each main character.

and yeah, the characterization is so shoehorned in for this season outside of Tsubasa and Maria, with Hibiki and Chris you almost wouldn't even need to watch the first seasons to get their character since they have such little relation to the character development that happened before. It was really hard to take Chris's "I gotta be the senpai" despair seriously last episode because of this, it just came out of nowhere and you're left scratching your head thinking "when is she just going to start blowing shit up again?"

That start of the episode was hilarious and anticlimactic as hell and the episode was mediocre for the most part, but hopefully we'll get some sweet fight scenes with Carol coming up. It looks like the animation quality is really slipping up again with those single-frame noise and lots of other parts this episode.

Carol's song was alright, I think the vocals were a little too high in the mix but it was cool.

rip LAST ACTION HERO

Super Ignite Mode 3 X-drive Infinity designs look freaking badass, though

Yeah, my least favourite of the three seasons. I still enjoyed it and the overflux of main characters for a 12 episode series was nowhere near as bad as I feared. If anything, the main issues was retreading old ground on the cast's development, I.e Hibiki not wanting to fight and Chris's episode. Tsubasa and Maria in comparison felt fresh in comparison and I loved their development.

Carol had potential but was squandered as a character. Definitely the worst of the villains, and while more sympathetic, not as endearing as Fine/Ver. I liked her magical girl form at least. I think Satty's idea of rebuilding the world and reviving the dead would have made her a lot more interesting and likeable.

Also I'm sad Radiant Force didn't play in the final episode but it IS a Hibiki/Chris/Tsubasa oriented song so I can understand why it didn't.

l
o
l

At least her crying a couple of times made it seem like she might have had some character development, but it has to be like "NOPE FIGHT" anyway for basically no reason.
And the fight scene with her wasn't even good, it was basically "she shoots some lasers and then gets roflstomped by the Gears"

There wasn't even that much tension, since I never doubted for a second that they'd win basically without casualties, and after they went triple omega super saiyan in the last episode nothing even touched her.
And Carol's random "one-winged angel" form was silly as hell

Also, I kind of found Elfie annoying, but she at least improved at the end

Even if that is how I actually feel