Hello everyone,
Today we'll talk about another new anime series of this winter season 2011/2012 named "Senki Zesshou Symphogear" who is turning out to be a rather nice pick for the action genre.
My first impression on the episode was "Oh! Is this Macross fused to Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica? Where is Kyubey?!" just as they started to fight (after a lengthy transformation sequence) while singing.
The whole episode was perfectly paced with action, new informations and plot advancement. While I'm not a fan of the animation style during the song (3D or something?!) I liked how they played out this first episode.
The story revolves around Hibiki Tachibana, a normal and extremely cute girl who end up involved and nearly killed in an incident with a mysterious enemy named Noise. She is saved by a girl who is able to battle against these monster using weapons and "songs"?!
While the premise is quite generic and clichè, the whole pace they animated this first episode with never let me get bored. Be it for the yuri undertones between Tsubasa and Kanade at the beginning, be it for the marvelous battle scene soon after.
The characters are quite charming and I'm curious to see what is their past and how their relationship will grow up during the series. I'm especially interested in knowing if Kanade will appear again in the future as part of Hibiki "soul"!
Hibiki is so damn cool! I was in awe at the scene of Hibiki running away from the Noise while protecting a little child. It was emotional to watch her fight against odds using that will-to-live passed over from Kanade, and I really hoped for her to manage to run away.
She instead get cornered and in order to save herself and the child goes berserk and activate some kind of Gungnir power (norse mythology for the spear of Odin) just as the ending song is about to start.
If the series will follow the classics of this genre, she'll destroy all the enemies in few minutes and get recruited by the army to save the earth somehow using this newfound power. :P
At the moment my favourite character is definitely the protagonist Hibiki (Voiced by Aoi Yuuki, that is the same seiyuu as Tooru from A-Channel), with her energetic personality (I'm a sucker for energetic and lively characters) and terribly cute voice.
Next episode will probably focus on Hibiki destroying monsters with her new power and soon after being introduced to the army as a new recruit to fight together with Tsubasa.
What I'm not sure is how Tsubasa will welcome her. She is probably still deeply scarred by Kanade's death and she won't forgive down Hibiki so easily for being the "reason" of her death...:(
Senki Zesshou Symphogear is, for me, a must-watch of this season and I hope to be able to blog about this regularly in the future as well.
See you soon,
feal87