PART 11: CAROL AND WHY SHE'S A SHIT (WELL, BESIDES WHAT I'VE ALREADY SAID)
Another reason anticipation for GX was high was because the main villain was really cute, and people expected to like her. Not so! In fact she's fucking incredibly unlikeable and a flat out idiot, in ways I haven't even mentioned yet. So I've brought up Elfnein, Carol's self-clone that she used to do her evil bidding while said clone was blissfully unaware and only wanted to be a good person and help. Now, why is Elfnein, a duplicate of an evildoer, so good-hearted? Why, it's simple: She isn't dumb as hell and realizes from her own records of Carol's memories what he wanted her to actually do. Now, guess who had these memories originally but never figured that shit out? That's right, it's Carol! She swears up and down that her father gave her this goal, deluding herself into a revenge plot as a result. It's like Sonic Adventure 2's deal with Shadow but dumber.
Another occurrence of "I love this design but why must it be stuck on this character".
EXCEPT WHEN SHE'S OLDER WHAT THE FUCK
For whatever reason despite the dolls being able to transfer and absorb memories to use as fuel, Carol -seemingly- can't do this herself and thus has to transfer her consciousness over to a new replacement body filled with memories in order to be able to burn them again. Elfnein was one of these but was defective, so she was re-purposed into part of her stupid-ass plan instead. Carol still has another "proper" replacement in the wings though. Surprise surprise, this fucks her over later! She dies as part of her genius master plan (or maybe that wasn't part of the plan, the show seems incredibly contradictory on whether or not that was what she actually wanted) in the middle of the show and revives in said final body.
Amazing.
Over the course of the second half Carol experiences multiple rejections, which are partially thanks to memories of FUCKING DYING being thrown into the batch of backup memories, but being in Elfnein's head the whole time has also made her realize her entire plan is wrong, especially after the two have a talk together. After all, he wanted absolutely nothing of what Carol is currently doing, and she becomes aware that everything she's done is incredibly stupid. So she burns them all away again out of frustration like an even bigger dipshit but loses in the end anyways. Carol then sees an illusion of her father as she falls from being defeated and finally takes Hibiki's outstretched hand and is saved as a result, accepting that she's a god damned moron way too late. After burning all her memories away she begins to collapse as a person and winds up having to fuse with the "failure", absorbing Elfnein's consciousness into the physically functional but mentally failing main body of Carol. So she can totally do the memory absorption thing after all I guess just she never thought to use it before and instead used a ridiculously roundabout and wasteful method. What.
Define "smart".
Carol isn't a good antagonist from any other perspective either: She effortlessly beats down multiple Symphogear users at once before they use Ignite and effortlessly beat her back instead, which is funnily enough more or less the first victory in the show for the Gear side, halfway fucking in. Then when she's fought again but with the power of song attained from the convoluted Ignite plan, she is utterly and completely unstoppable and able to shield against any attack while firing back with insane firepower. She's so powerful in fact that what ruins her plan is nobody other than HERSELF! She throws a fit in the middle of the climax and blows up her own World Destructor Chime Machine Thing. Technically this is a victory for the Gears and caused by them but the show couldn't even let their plan to counteract the Chateau play out fully and had to have Carol herself ruin it because... I don't know. The writing of this show gives me a headache.
Great job dipshit.
Everything lore-wise related to the villain in GX comes out of nowhere, despite the second season being so well tied-in to the first season's established stuff. Alchemy was not once mentioned but they try to pretend that the main antagonist of the first season created it and just... dropped it I guess??? Despite them showcasing that alchemy is like, the ultimate bullshit do-whatever-you-want thing. (Some people think that Fine uses alchemy in S1 but it sure doesn't seem to match up, she claims to use Black Arts, a form of magic) Another issue with this is that Carol herself is basically a shittier version of the first season's antagonist: Their appearances are incredibly similar overall once Carol has transformed, both were initially good but turned bad after an event in the past turned them astray, have an immortality plan via swapping around between multiple bodies (Though Fine's method of this is way better), and personally interfere with the government's Symphogear division by either being there themselves or being there in spirit. It's just lazy.
Uh-huh.
Fuck Symphogear GX.
Another reason anticipation for GX was high was because the main villain was really cute, and people expected to like her. Not so! In fact she's fucking incredibly unlikeable and a flat out idiot, in ways I haven't even mentioned yet. So I've brought up Elfnein, Carol's self-clone that she used to do her evil bidding while said clone was blissfully unaware and only wanted to be a good person and help. Now, why is Elfnein, a duplicate of an evildoer, so good-hearted? Why, it's simple: She isn't dumb as hell and realizes from her own records of Carol's memories what he wanted her to actually do. Now, guess who had these memories originally but never figured that shit out? That's right, it's Carol! She swears up and down that her father gave her this goal, deluding herself into a revenge plot as a result. It's like Sonic Adventure 2's deal with Shadow but dumber.
Another occurrence of "I love this design but why must it be stuck on this character".
EXCEPT WHEN SHE'S OLDER WHAT THE FUCK
For whatever reason despite the dolls being able to transfer and absorb memories to use as fuel, Carol -seemingly- can't do this herself and thus has to transfer her consciousness over to a new replacement body filled with memories in order to be able to burn them again. Elfnein was one of these but was defective, so she was re-purposed into part of her stupid-ass plan instead. Carol still has another "proper" replacement in the wings though. Surprise surprise, this fucks her over later! She dies as part of her genius master plan (or maybe that wasn't part of the plan, the show seems incredibly contradictory on whether or not that was what she actually wanted) in the middle of the show and revives in said final body.
Amazing.
Over the course of the second half Carol experiences multiple rejections, which are partially thanks to memories of FUCKING DYING being thrown into the batch of backup memories, but being in Elfnein's head the whole time has also made her realize her entire plan is wrong, especially after the two have a talk together. After all, he wanted absolutely nothing of what Carol is currently doing, and she becomes aware that everything she's done is incredibly stupid. So she burns them all away again out of frustration like an even bigger dipshit but loses in the end anyways. Carol then sees an illusion of her father as she falls from being defeated and finally takes Hibiki's outstretched hand and is saved as a result, accepting that she's a god damned moron way too late. After burning all her memories away she begins to collapse as a person and winds up having to fuse with the "failure", absorbing Elfnein's consciousness into the physically functional but mentally failing main body of Carol. So she can totally do the memory absorption thing after all I guess just she never thought to use it before and instead used a ridiculously roundabout and wasteful method. What.
Define "smart".
Carol isn't a good antagonist from any other perspective either: She effortlessly beats down multiple Symphogear users at once before they use Ignite and effortlessly beat her back instead, which is funnily enough more or less the first victory in the show for the Gear side, halfway fucking in. Then when she's fought again but with the power of song attained from the convoluted Ignite plan, she is utterly and completely unstoppable and able to shield against any attack while firing back with insane firepower. She's so powerful in fact that what ruins her plan is nobody other than HERSELF! She throws a fit in the middle of the climax and blows up her own World Destructor Chime Machine Thing. Technically this is a victory for the Gears and caused by them but the show couldn't even let their plan to counteract the Chateau play out fully and had to have Carol herself ruin it because... I don't know. The writing of this show gives me a headache.
Great job dipshit.
Everything lore-wise related to the villain in GX comes out of nowhere, despite the second season being so well tied-in to the first season's established stuff. Alchemy was not once mentioned but they try to pretend that the main antagonist of the first season created it and just... dropped it I guess??? Despite them showcasing that alchemy is like, the ultimate bullshit do-whatever-you-want thing. (Some people think that Fine uses alchemy in S1 but it sure doesn't seem to match up, she claims to use Black Arts, a form of magic) Another issue with this is that Carol herself is basically a shittier version of the first season's antagonist: Their appearances are incredibly similar overall once Carol has transformed, both were initially good but turned bad after an event in the past turned them astray, have an immortality plan via swapping around between multiple bodies (Though Fine's method of this is way better), and personally interfere with the government's Symphogear division by either being there themselves or being there in spirit. It's just lazy.
Uh-huh.
Fuck Symphogear GX.