Eighth Day of Anime: Let’s give her a hand, folks!

I’ll admit that as of this writing I still haven’t gotten around to watching the last five episodes of Symphogear G, but it still manages to earn a place on my series of Twelve Days posts.

It’s the last few minutes to episode 5, in which our three heroines are confronting Professor Ver and dealing with his pet monster, the Nephilim. Which before I get into the moment this post is dedicated, I’d liked to point out how it’s preceded by Tsubasa and Chris getting trapped by a sticky white liquid shot from a large, pillar-shaped Noise. That just has to be an analogy for a penis.

Now aside from that these last few minutes towards the end of the episode seem pretty typical of Symphogear, where Hibiki does some cringey singing while she pummels away at the Nephilim. Some contrived moral dilemma then comes up where Ver says to Hibiki “Though your fists may be able to protect a few, think of how many more lives they have taken!” Which doesn’t really make sense since we’ve only ever seen Hibiki punch through Noise before, plus a handful of evil Symphogear users. No civilians or anything like that. But of course, Hibiki is still thrown off balance by this as if she actually has taken the lives of other people before, which allows this to happen:

My mind was already fairly preoccupied by the penis monster and Ver’s weird comment, but then out of nowhere the Niphilim chomps down on Hibiki’s arm; the soundtrack goes silent, and Hibiki simply looks at the beast in confusion before it rips her arm off and eats it. A huge stream of blood gushes out of where Hibiki’s arm used to be, and she lets out a wailing scream before the episode ends. It was an intense moment that caught me quite off guard, and much like Hibiki I merely stared at the screen in disbelief and confusion.

But of course, this was resolved within the next five minutes of the next episode when Hibiki goes “beserk” and grows back another arm, so her losing an arm in the first place  was really just shock value. But gosh, it sure did succeed at being shocking.