Music! Swords! Guns! Fancy costumes!

I wanted to like this show. I did not.

The animation (and especially the character designs) are gorgeous. The music’s good. It generally looks great. Unfortunately, there is no substance to it. The story is the forgettable kind of thing we’ve seen a million times before, journey across the country to save the world and your girlfriend. I did like how it was set in America but it was an America so unrecognizable and generic it didn’t matter. Also they mostly just forgot about the girlfriend as the series went on and it ended up with him making out with the parasite which infected her corpse. Oops, spoilers. Not that anyone will watch this without realizing this will happen after the first episode.

I think the biggest problem with this show is that the characters have no depth for them. The main guy looks cool and is obsessed with music. The main girl is kind of weird and likes to punch things (she is the best by far, but also doesn’t grow at all). The other girl is just kind of there to yell at the other two. The side characters are not interesting at all. The main three were enough to entertain you for a couple episodes with their silly arguments, but it was not enough to carry the show, especially when they attempted to take things seriously.

• Storytelling – D – Not much point to it.
• Voice – B – Cool costumes I guess.
• Characters – D – The silly moments could be ok, but not the serious ones.
• Attention Grab – F – Show I watched first every week, because I wanted to get it over with.
• Production – A – Looks quite good!
• Overall – D+

Recommendations – Symphogear