This post was last modified: Oct 12, 2017 at 7:16 AM by Draku.

PART 4: THE IDEA AND CHARACTERS OF SYMPHOGEAR AND HOW GX FUCKS THEM UP, SECTION III

Time to finally focus on Maria, a character I haven't really brought up much before now. She served as one of the primary antagonists of Season 2 (G), despite doing everything she did for the sake of what she thought was right. Maria's main character flaw was that she steeled herself too much while not actually being that cold of a person at heart, which weighed heavily on her and caused her to buckle once the pressure became too immense. She does wind up redeeming herself at the end and devises a way to save the world and lends a hand (quite literally, this series is really something) towards the heroes's efforts. So GX had a great opportunity to be a nice and fresh start for her, and they actually do have a decent idea for her arc... but botch the execution completely. They begin building it up in an earlier episode of season 3 rather than have it be confined entirely to its own single episode like many of the other character "developments" (aka reused ideas from prior seasons) which is decent, but the moments are ruined by circumstances and other characters.

Maria's self-mantra that she yells out loud as part of her strong act.

Since this is a prime opportunity to, I'm going to bitch about a particular scene involving her that also happened to be part of what made Hibiki's character so bad in GX. Hibiki and her friends are under attack by one of the antagonists and their goon squad, but Hibiki can't muster up her ability to sing because she's conflicted about hurting people even though every single thing threatening her and the people she loves isn't human and by not doing anything she's sacrificing all of their lives. Because that makes sense. Thankfully, Maria swoops in, takes Hibiki's Gear (actually Maria's but that's not important right now) and transforms using it while having no LiNKER (again, the compatibility drug some of the team needs to transform without suffering immense physical damage) and has a fucking hardcore moment where she takes on the threat and nullifies it all while having bleeding eyes. It's awesome. She then even goes back to return Hibiki's Gear, and--

THANKS FOR NOTHING, ASSHOLE. I WAS TOTALLY USING THAT THING JUST NOW.

Hibiki swipes it away from her while yelling about how Maria stole it. What the fuck? Maria uses this as an opportunity to tell Hibiki to not be such an idiot and not run away from her own strength. All around, a seemingly nice moment for Maria even if Hibiki has been dragged through the god damn mud as a character (there is no way in hell she would ever act like that in the first two seasons) to achieve it. Except actually Maria didn't achieve anything but slightly delaying the inevitable just then, as it's later shown that the villains were really just baiting Hibiki to transform so they could destroy her Gear as part of their incredibly convoluted plan and there was no real threat to anyone that Maria was overcoming. Of course, later this very episode Hibiki goes ahead and transforms and her Gear is lost. Oops.

They literally go out of their way to have a highlight reel of all of her fuckups in G at the start of her GX focus episode. Harsh.

Fast forward to Maria's episode where she reflects on her many attempts in the past to be strong, and wonders how she can truly attain the strength she feigns having. Now, hold on, a minute, I said "Maria's episode", but actually she's fucking shelved for half of it because this is the obligatory beach episode Symphogear suddenly needed despite never having one before. So instead of giving Maria's plight much time they instead just show a bunch of the girls in their swimsuits. Now, I myself don't really give a shit if a show wants to give fanservice, but if you're going to make your show an episodic piece of fuck that can only give a character some development or the light of day in general during a single episode and maybe one or two other moments, at least dedicate the 22 minutes to them when it's their time. When it's finally Maria's time, she winds up being the only member of the cast to truly fuck up using the Brand New Sooper Powerup That Lets Them Beat the Bad Guys and goes berserk, looking like crap in comparison to literal children on the cast. I mean, I appreciate that they went ahead and showed off the bad possible side effects of the powerup some more after touching on it in the previous episode, but when looking at it from outside the context of show-writing, it does nothing but make Maria look worse in comparison to everyone else.

As Maria is made out to look like shit, the villain in the scene decides to foreshadow their greater plan by spelling it out and then teleports away.

So after no one is suspicious of the villain ditching the place after beating up berserk Maria slightly despite inciting the fight, Maria revels in how useless she is and ponders further on how she can become strong. Then another character tells her that Maria told her the key earlier that episode! That's right, Maria was apparently so dumb that she gave helpful life advice to one of the supporting cast members that she paid no mind to herself. I guess that is realistic in a way, but it makes her look stupid in a work of fiction being viewed from the outside. She then uses this advice, which is to "just be yourself", the classic cliche, to break through and activate her powerup module and fight off the villain, who is screaming about how she's gonna be the first to die and is super happy about it. But no one pays that any mind, that would be thinking a tad too hard. And so, Maria wins the battle and defeats an enemy who was purposefully trying to lose. That sure develops her well, doesn't it? It doesn't sting as much when it happens with the other antagonists because their jobbing is both less obvious at the time (Hell one or two of them were legitimately trying to win) and the development of the respective episodes wasn't trying to close up an arc that had been going on for one and a half seasons in the process. But it's still dumb each time. Really dumb.

Life lessons!

Next time's target: This stupid fucking evil plan I keep mentioning.

Fuck Symphogear GX.

jus b urself breh