Heinzes' 2010s Anime Cleanup Series #3

minor spoilers within, consider yourself warned

>Don't give up on living!

Senki Zesshou Symphogear is not the kind of show which immediately inspires particularly deep reflection unto itself, but it's brisk pace, hooky premise, and overblown action and drama most certainly cover for that. On the point of “immediacy,” the show delivers quite strongly as entertainment, and managed to surprise me with the amount of thought and thematic threads I was able to pick out with the reflection required to write this review.

The series functions as a kind of amalgamation of elements from mecha/sci-fi, magical girl, and idol/music anime influences. As such, the series derives some of its appeal from a fairly unique fusion of elements from these genres, though this also means, inversely, that the story beats will ring very familiar and perhaps a tad predictable to anyone familiar with the typical structures of said genres.

Any feelings of not being particularly dazzled or impressed by the plot or narrative structure aside, it becomes more apparent that the series’ strongest intervention is in the category of its characters, and further the ways in which they play off each other in their consistently escalating situation. The cast is largely endearing, covering all the archetypes you might expect in a show like this in fine form. Our heroine Hibiki proves to present an interesting intervention for the typical magical girl protagonist; with the way her character arc confronts her reasons for fighting and wanting to protect others, we see an interesting and all too rare reconciliation between her altruistic and her more self-centered personal desires to preserve friendships and that which is of importance to her specifically.

Really, if the show can be said to be about anything in particular - aside from the literal plot of transforming singer-heroines who fight techno-drone/alien/mutant monsters - it would probably be about reconciling differences in perspective. This potentially could link the text of this show into a broader philosophical/political discussion about mutualism (though not with any clear gesture toward the conceptualizing of anarchist polities). However, the way in which Symphogear embraces emotional realities and the impact of immaterial abstractions builds towards a satisfying, if somewhat narratively predictable, example of a high-octane action series. Any tangential thought experiments or suppositions it could lead any theory/philosophy nerd like myself down are purely secondary.
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Final Grade: B-