Despite a visually promising concert scene in the beginning of the first episode, the story falls to pieces almost immediately. It seems almost as if the organization working with the Symphogear girls expected the Noise to attack the concert where the girls were singing in order to revive a powerful relic. So why risk the lives of thousands of eager concert-goers who get caught in the fray when the Noise do show up? This may seem like a minor plot problem (aside from the hundreds of carbonized dead bodies), but similar plot issues like this build up after a while and become difficult to ignore. The two girls, Kanade and Tsubasa, who had been performing then change their songs and begin fighting the Noise in order to save the frantic mass of people who are all scrambling for the exits. However, our main protagonist, Hibiki, gets trapped while trying to get away and ends up getting injured despite the singers' efforts to save her. Since mentioning some things that happen in the first episode would be a spoiler, I'll stop the initial summary there.
There are many more problems with the story, but most of them occur with several sudden changes in characters' personalities in addition to the nonsensical ending. The characters in this show get over their anger at others in the most illogical ways ranging from having someone clean their room to just deciding out of nowhere that they should be friends again. The Swan Songs (which are the girls' ultimate attacks) also deal less and less of a self-damaging recoil every time they occur in the anime for some unexplained reason.
As for the characters themselves, they are hardly unique at all. Hibiki is basically a weaker and more annoying version of Kaname Madoka who accepts her power a bit faster (they are also both voiced by Aoi Yuki). As for the other main characters, they are a girl who likes to fight alone and dislikes Hibiki for reasons in their past and a tsuntsun girl who has a hard time understanding other people's perspectives of the world. The villain is just an annoying sadist who enjoys being nude and has no appeal aside from her excellent voice actor (who still couldn't save her from being annoying).
Being an anime with a heavy focus on music, you would expect a great soundtrack. While this is the strongest category, it's only barely above average. For much of the earlier episodes, the music plays almost non-stop switching from track to track with hardly any break. It got to the point where I was grateful for some of the scenes later on when they finally paused the soundtrack for part of a scene. None of the tracks stood out much either aside from one hard rock track that was used to accompany Yukine's fights. Much of the rest of the music consists of the j-pop/techno combinations used for both the songs sung by the characters' as well as the background music. There were also some problems with the volume of the music/singing when used while characters were speaking at times.
Oh, and this anime has some of the worst Engrish I've ever heard to the point where the subbers provided subs for it and even fixed the grammar at some points to make it more understandable.
The animation is the most inconsistent category. It looks like a quarter of the entire animation budget for this show was used during the two concert scenes. Compared to these scenes (especially around episode 3 and 4) the animation takes a nosedive. That's not to say it's all bad aside from those two scenes, however there are some moments where a single motionless shot will stay for almost twenty seconds or the animation just looks like a couple gifs pasted on top of each other. There is also one scene where a character is looking down out of a library window and sees two characters in a hospital room, but when you see out of the window from the hospital room, there is no library (or any buildings at all) in sight. Similarly to Evangelion, this anime also reuses the same shots of the main organization's headquarters many times.
Story - 3/10
Animation - 5/10
Sound - 6/10
Characters - 3/10
Enjoyment - 3/10
Overall - 4/10
The many faults in this series build up over time and prevent it from being very enjoyable. It's uncreative premise of saving the world from mysterious creatures which has been done much better hundreds of times doesn't allow for much right from the start. The bland characters, mediocre soundtrack despite being a music anime, and the inconsistent animation don't do much to save it either. I recommend skipping this anime and watching something like Gurren Lagann, Evangelion, or Madoka Magica if you want something similar but much better.
