PARTS 13 and 14: WHEN YOU MAKE A SHOW SO BAD YOU HAVE TO HAVE AN ENTIRE SEASON CORRECT ITS WRONGS

All right so this one's just gonna be one big long post because I couldn't do a real part 13 due to being sick as fuck. One thing I did forget to touch on in my past rants that I meant to get to about GX that I'll just throw in at the start here before I delve into what I actually want to get into for my final big rant subject is how fucking lame and through the motions the final big action scene is. They basically resolve almost everything by Episode 12, the last thing to take care of is Carol herself. So they activate X-Drive (The Symphogear's final, ultimate mode) just like the past two seasons, where it tied in thematically and worked extremely well in both seasons due to the mood provided by the transformation and what triggers it in both instances. In this, it's basically just going through the motions -- they didn't even bother making a new song, they just reuse the one from Season 2's climax lazily, something that almost NEVER happens in Symphogear. It's shoddy and lazy. I don't mind X-Drive appearing as the big showstopper all the time, but at least put some effort in and have it not feel like you're both shoehorning and phoning it in at the same time.


Now, what I actually want to get down to this time is AXZ, the season that follows GX. It just finished airing not that long ago and most people were very worried it wouldn't be good, with how GX had basically destroyed hopes in the writing capability of everyone on staff. But, lo and behold, they in fact made an entire season almost seemingly dedicated to repairing the damage to the franchise GX had made. So, recall how I mentioned that Alca-Noise were a massive letdown on multiple fronts that not only fucked up the action scenes but negated the previous season's accomplishment by the protags? Well, they're back, but they're used in a much superior way. This time, they initially appear as armaments for the military in a strife-heavy region, making it clear that they're supported by a third party. The other times they appear they're in a very minor and supportive role for the antags, whose combat with the Gears is always the forefront of every fight they have -- it's never ruined or brought down by the Alca-Noise being there.


Another thing AXZ does properly is tying its lore into the past seasons', and it even does its best to do the same favor to GX, the standout of the crowd. Alchemy is revealed to have been the creation of the Illuminati (the big bads of AXZ), NOT Season 1's antagonist, but rather with the help of what data and technology she had left behind. More or less, it's their own spin on her deal, not her making some throwaway shit she never even used. The Illuminati doesn't come out of nowhere, either -- they were foreshadowed in Season 2, all the way down to their director's name being dropped. They're also revealed as ones who helped Carol out in building her Chateau whatsyamacallit, but left her to her own devices afterwards. I guess that makes GX's stuff a little less lame, but it's kind of shitty that it took a retcon for that to happen.


The Ignite module was the big stinker that was obviously going to fuck up any future Symphogear seasons, and was one of the primary worries many had when going into AXZ. As just about everyone guessed, at the first sign of any difficulty, they just effortlessly transform into their Ignite forms and deal with the issue. However, they soon put a twist on it: The villains actually have the exact counter to Ignite, gleamed from their analysis of Carol's data. They don't draw out the Gears' defeat this time either, they simply showcase that the villains do indeed have an ace up their sleeve and get it over with quickly. The issue with the losses in GX wasn't that they were there, it was that they drew it out for so fucking long and what the purpose of it all was. Hell, not everything even goes according to the villains' plan this time either -- one of their allies shows up and forces them to retreat because he decides to drop an alchemic nuke to blow the whole area up, with them still in it. The lack of coordination between parties screwing things up is a nice change of pace after Carol's one-man show had everything fall into place so conveniently.


They're left without Ignite as an option and have to fight the villains regardless. They're outmatched, but not by much -- they show a good amount of promise in their ability to fight back, but Hibiki wants to talk things out with the main villain of the trio, thinking they could work together. Said villain, Saint-Germain, wishes to gain control of the Lunar Ruins in order to free humanity from the curse of Balal to eliminate oppression caused by misunderstandings and uneven footing -- Startlingly similar to the goal of Season 1's antagonist, except she wished to destroy said ruins in order to get rid of the curse so that she could create chaos and rule humanity. This ends up as a callback that isn't straight up copying, and the two have a ton of differences in both design and their overall motives, unlike Carol. Anyways, back on topic. The fight ends with Germain becoming conflicted and leaving, with the other two going after her, uncertain of her, well, uncertainty. While unfinished fights are a bit of a cockblock, this is at least better than another straight up slam-down.


In another confrontation, the power of two of the protagonists singing in full unison together manages to outright topple one of the alchemic antagonists, soundly defeating her. Unfortunately, not everyone on the hero team has quite that level of unison together, and will need a bit of a boost to take care of the problem for good. So, how do they fix this? By putting in some actual work with some real downsides. They call back to Season 2, where Hibiki's issues with her relic had created a good amount of extra relic fragments. There's a bit of logic here that I won't bother explaining, but more or less they use the remains of what was left of it to create a barrier that protects the Ignite module from being fucked over. Unfortunately, the strain put onto the Gear from this will make it so that after a single use, it will be out of commission for a good long while -- and not just "one episode", it's for a startling amount of time for once, almost 4 episodes in one case. That's longer than most injured people in this series take to recover!


Another thing AXZ bothers doing is giving Ignite a vehicle theming. This sets it apart from being just "the normal gears BUT STRONGER". It almost made me like the mode a little with how neat some of the shit pulled was. There's even a god damned dragster fight later on! But, the writers knew what they had to do, and so Ignite had to go. In the very final confrontation, the Gears lack the ability to activate X-Drive, and there's no way to bullshit into doing it unlike GX's asspull either. So instead, they make a haphazard move and utilize the energy from an enemy's attack, put a ton of strain onto the Ignite module using it, and make a midway transformation that has to make due. It's nowhere near on the level of X-Drive, but it's strong, and they legitimately don't have much time to use it -- Ignite was always claimed to have a time limit yet it never came up, but this mode winds up running out of gas quite quickly. Again, this is levels beyond better as a form of powerup writing.


Shifting gears once more, there's an extra villain in the mix who has his own plan in the works, which leads to many conflicts with the other evildoers as I brought up before. They don't work well together and hide information from one another , causing many complications in their plans. This other villain goes it alone in the end, betraying everyone else for his own intentions. However, his own plan gets stopped at just about every turn: The villains simply let too much of their plan slip, making them able to deploy countermeasures to stop him from fulfilling things as he wanted to. Unlike with Carol's bullshit, the protagonists are shown in a light that makes them seem intelligent and able of stopping things BEFORE they get out of hand. He has to work around this, and even that workaround winds up leaving him exhausted and unable to really do much to help himself out, leading it to fail and for him to retreat and come back later to attempt just beating the shit out of the Gears out of frustration for fucking over everything he tried to do, leading to the aforementioned final confrontation. He's revealed to have his own motivations during this: He wishes to fight the gods who cursed humanity in the first place, knowing they'll come back eventually. Again, a callback to the lore of season 1 without outright trying to copy it, which is quite welcome.


AXZ does character development better than GX too! They build further on Chris's past and have her move on from bits of it that haunted her, give the three Gears from season 2 a lot of much-needed background and development that GX couldn't manage, don't even touch Hibiki much but still acknowledges conflicts in her heart that Miku soothes (Did I mention that Miku actually shows up a healthy amount in this? She gets a bunch of scenes!), Tsubasa has fully moved on from her sword bullshit and her new conflict is fighting against the stubborn head of her family, it's all around just great. Even Elfnein gets new development in feeling responsible for living up to Carol and doing enough work for both of them, having taken her life to extend her own in the end.


The best part? Top Dad NEVER SHOWS UP. He's never mentioned. They have a fucking birthday party for Hibiki and he's not there either. One can only hope he's gone for good. So yes, they had it in them all along to continue Symphogear's legacy properly, and simply never put it into practice for GX. Lord knows what went so wrong there. Either way, it's in the past, and they've done their part to patch things up, take lessons from their failures, and hopefully move towards a bright future in Season 5.

Fuck Symphogear GX.