Senhime Zesshou Symphogear 戦姫絶唱シンフォギア Episode 5

was supposed to finish this yesterday but didn't >_<;
oh well. here it is today.

other Symphogear recaps live here.
now, on to the episode..

when we ended the previous episode,
Hibiki was training with Uncle Kazanari so she wouldn't be so useless.
We pick up here in Episode 5 with Hibiki still training and even
getting up early in the morning and skipping school to train. 

Masters speak in riddles.

oh snap.

i'm pretty sure the Gungnir shards within Hibiki gives her extra strength.
If that's not it, then i'd really like to train with Uncle Kazanari sometime.

that face..
;D

Nehushtan girl, who escaped last episode, is named Kurisu.
It turns out she's not really evil, but doing the work for an unnamed woman.
By the way, before Kurisu is shown, that unnamed woman was talking in much awkward engrish for like 3 minutes.

She's not bad after all.

Unnamed woman is nice to Kurisu, yet also tortures her with electric shocks.

Meanwhile, Miku covers for Hibiki's absence.

i'm glad Hibiki's actually improving, though.
so she doesn't get Tsubasa killed.

they then talk about government and political matters and such.

Back to Tsubasa's dreaming..

kireiiiiiii~

Kanade visits her in her dreams once again.

This time they talk about Tsubasa's future and Kanade's death.
In a way, this serves as closure for Tsubasa and Kanade, since Kanade's death was so unexpected and such,
like all deaths are.

^~^

lovely.

After closure with Kanade, Tsubasa is able to wake up from her coma.

Meanwhile, more engrish speakers[it seems this guy was the one talking to that unnamed woman before]
attack government officials that were going to meet Ryouko-san with an important relic.

realistic government official man.

Ryouko-san gets back safe, however.
She wasn't even shown in the scene where the officials get killed.

But on the case holding the relic, there's blood..
which either means Ryouko-san was working with Engrish bad guys
or killed all those bad guys to get the case.

then we skip ahead to a meeting with everyone in the 'Symphogear branch' of Defense.
The relic that Ryouko-san mysteriously got is called Durandal
[that name brings back memories of Hidan no Aria..]
They have to transport Durandal to somewhere else..they mentioned Parliament.. but anyway Hibiki and Ryouko-san are assigned the part of transporting it..
under heavy protection, of course.

Later, Miku question Hibiki's real actions.

poor Miku T-T
she's such a good friendddd.

Hibiki has another talk with Ogawa-san, who seems to like to talk about philosophical things with Hibiki.

at the start of the mission..

they're attacked by numerous amounts of Noise as they transport Durandal.

Hibiki freaks as their escort and protection vehicles get taken out one by one.

Uncle Kazanari hangs out in the helicopter.

They drive to a nuclear site.
Apparently the bad guys wouldn't make such a mess there
because then they could blow themselves, and Durandal, up.

After their last protection vehicle is taken out, Ryouko-san and Hibiki hit something,
causing the car to flip and spin.

Uncle only cares about Ryouko-san ;D

and when they're about to be attacked by Noise, Ryouko-san suddenly blocks it with a forcefield.
duuuude i didn't even expect her to have powers.

and both her bun and glasses get blown off.

she just got 10 times cooler.

a trained Hibiki is a better Hibiki.

she gets to go through the awesome transformation sequence now that she's useful.

she ends up punching the first Noise that attacks her like this.
the Noise then proceeds to explode.

it would actually be quite awesome if Hibiki doesn't use a weapon with her Symphogear, even though at one point she tries to activate the weapon that comes with it [Kanade' original weapon].

Kurisu is the one that summoned the Noise in the first place.

Durandal activates on its own.

Hibiki continues to crush some Noise.

then Kurisu finally gets into the action.

GUARD STANCE..

failure..

turns out Durandal is a sword, and it BURST FORTH from the case it was in.

Kurisu flies to get Durandal but..

Hibiki pushes her out of the way ;D

this pic would be great for a random demotivational poster.

after Hibiki touches the sword, all the color in the world goes negative for a couple seconds.
pretty awesome if i do say so myself.

duuude. Hibiki and Durandal both power up.
at this point Hibiki's actually starting to get a bit awesome.

we see the fangs that we saw at end of episode one, but never really appeared after.
i approve of this :D

aha Kurisu's like whaaaa

then everything gets even better.

and Hibiki turns into that dark shadow thing Hibiki again.
and the sword turns into like a full upgraded one xD

crazy looking Ryouko-san is quite awesome.

Hibiki.
Kurisu has something to say to you..

EHHHH...?

._.

ASDFGHJKL..!

T.T
she runs away again.
which means she'll probably be tortured again by that unnamed woman.

while she was raging, Hibiki ends up blowing up some nuclear facilities with her upgraded Durandal.

Ryouko-san puts up another forcefield.

Hibiki passes out.

she looks like a whole different character.

Hibiki wakes up and sees the nuclear place being cleaned up.

i like how they just left Hibiki lying there after doing what she did ;D

END

this episode was quite exciting.

not only do we have the explanation of Ryouko-san's powers to look forward to, but we also have Tsubasa's return coming up! :D

can't wait.