#ichaival

[its-to-the-death]

Fictional Weapon War Round 1

Riz Gukgak's arquebus (Dimension 20 Fantasy High) vs Ichaival (Symphogear)

Mod comments:

I am a Fantasy High and Dimension 20 fan but Ichaival's ability to turn into a bunch of ranged weapons is pretty cool

[lex-cursus]

Some drafts I got:

Magical girl who reincarnates at the end of her lifespan to serve as an enforcer/avatar of Akasha

Girl under contract with the goddess Idun for nursing her back to health in a dream after a near fatal accident. Eternally youthful as a result.

Plucky twerp down on her luck just happens to have a magic girl lodged in her body that governs her magical abilities.

[sukimas]

you may think i'm joking when i say they put eldigan in a kirby game. i'm not. (well, mostly)

you see, the word mistilteinn in the kirby return to dreamland remake is placed in the title of the theme of fighting a big fuckoff cursed tree. mistilteinn being tree-associated requires a.) you know old norse (or icelandic) or b.) you're associating it with the baldr/mistletoe legend, the latter of which is why eldigan has it. furthermore afaik eldigan is the first instance of this name showing up in japanese media (and of course the reason why he's got it is because of this legend.)

(yes, i'm aware that mistilteinn shows up in the saga of hromund gripsson, but it's not specifically associated with trees there. though it is cursed of course.)

kirby is not known for its norse mythology references. it likely uses references that are well-known to the average japanese game otaku.

therefore, i regret to inform the public that this is likely another ichaival situation on our hands (except more accurate.) congratulations to jugdral for eternally winning on the "cultural impact" front!

[cosmosrebellion]

Guess who's about to ramble about Chris again!

The fact that Ichaival takes the form of a bow in Chris' Amalgam Mode instead of a gun, consistently the form it takes for some of her strongest attacks, right as the lyrics of Take This! "All Loaded" talks about how she's no longer crying and can reach the hand holding her own to represent how she's no longer defined by her trauma thanks to the bond she shares with Hibiki and the others makes me go up the walls.

Especially with how all of this happens right after Hibiki saves her again and asks her to come with her so they fight side by side.

And the cherry on top: It's one of her strongest attacks and it's not used to hurt, but to save three people who are in a very similar position to where she was. Not only can she reach out to those she loves, she can also reach out to others too.

I love Chris Yukine so much you guys!

[cutepresea]

May have gotten a little something today

For anyone wondering about the full track list of the chiptune CD and which song each one is based on since the video preview did not sample the whole thing:

Title (Vitalization)

Stage Select/Enter Password (Dark Oblivion)

Stage Start: Gungnir (Soushitsu Made no Countdown, aka Hibiki's Holy Chant)

Hibiki Stage (Seigi wo Shinjite, Nigirishimete)

Stage Start: Ame no Habakiri (Habataki wa Surudoku, Kaze Kiru Gotoku, aka Tsubasa's Holy Chant)

Tsubasa Stage (Gekkou no Tsurugi)

Stage Start: Ichaival (Hikigane ni Kaketa Yubi de Yume wo Nazoru, aka Chris' Holy Chant)

Chris Stage (Bye-Bye Lullaby)

Stage Clear (Apple)

Maria Stage (Ressou Gungnir)

Stage Start: Shul Shagana (Junshin wa Tsukitatsu Kiba to Nari, aka Shirabe's Holy Chant)

Shirabe Stage (Oukyo Shul Shagana)

Stage Start: Igalima (Yoru wo Hikisaku Shokou no Gotoku, aka Kirika's Holy Chant)

Kirika Stage (Gokuren Igalima)

Boss 1-Character Stage (Next Destination)

Hibiki Past Stage (Gekisou Gungnir)

Tsubasa Past Stage (Zettou Ame no Habakiri)

Chris Past Stage (Makyuu Ichaival)

Boss 2-Past Stage (Meteor Light)

Stage Start-Last Stage (Mune ni Hibiki, Itsuka Sekai ni Michiru Made, aka Hibiki's Superb Song)

Last Stage (Fushichou no Flamme)

Last Boss (Synchrogazer)

Last Stage Clear (Gyakkou no Flugel)

End Credits (FIRST LOVE SONG)

Game Over (Apple)

Bonus Track: Miku Stage (Waikyou Shenshoujing)

[anhilliator1]

Sitting here thinking about the sheer amount of absolute WTF-ery in Chaldea should there ever be a collab with Symphogear.

The remnants of the Ignite Module would raise a question from Sigurd.

Idol X gets along well with the girls. Nero and Elizabeth, not so much as they do tend to pester them a bit too much.

The Prillya characters get along really well with them.

The girls are extremely suspicious of Paracelsus due to him reminding them a bit too much of Adam for their own good. (The voice does not help.)

Basically the entire Norse roster would be giving Hibiki weird looks because, y'know, Gungnir, CasCu in particular for obvious reasons. Nobu remarks that she reminds her of Summer Okita - maybe a bit too much. Is friends and sparring partners with most of the martial artist servants, in particular Li (both of them) due to her fighting style being primarily based on Bajiquan. At one point gets ahold of Durandal and is able to use it, much to everyone's surprise.

Miku is well-loved by a lot of the child servants due to her demeanor, and is probably a regular on the kitchen crew. Has likely caught the attention of a lot of the older Chinese Servants due to them recognizing what the Shenshoujing is and what it can do. Is considered one of the people you do not want to piss off because the nature of the Shenshoujing basically means she can shut down your Noble Phatasm with little effort.

Ibuki-Doji would probably mess with Tsubasa due to her being a divided spirit of Yamata-no-Orochi because said Orochi was killed by the Ame-no-Habakiri, the same relic Tsubasa's Gear is powered by. Chiyome would have a tougher time warming up to her for the same reasons. Tsubasa also probably gets along surprisingly well with Kagetora due to relating over feeling less than human (that and Kagetora likes her voice.)

Chris also gets odd looks from the Norse servants, but this time due to vague familiarity rather than recognizing the weapon due to Ichaival's odd status; on a related note, Okki, Blackbeard, and Jinako are very tight-lipped whenever it comes to discussing it. Tomoe nearly spills the beans but gets told to shush by the other three. Gets along well with the sharpshooter servants, especially those that use guns - except Koyanskaya.

Maria gets weird looks from both the Norse and Babylonian servants, the Norse side due to familiarity with the relic, but it not feeling quite right, and the Babylonians because she weirdly reminds them of Enki when transformed. Bedivere manages to figure it out without her telling him due to him being in a similar situation (having an "Airgetlam" that isn't actually the arm of Nuadha) and both bond rather quickly.

Kirika and Shirabe get a load of double takes from the Babylonian Divine Spirits due to them giving off a feeling similar to both Zababa as well as Ninurta's kids (mostly the former.) Get along very well with a lot of the duo Servants. Shirabe in particular picks up several tricks from Melt. Kirika actually freaks Murasaki out slightly due to both sounding vaguely similar to her as well as the fact that Kirika and Nagiko get along like a house on fire.

[spacecow2455]

Been working on translyrics for Makyuu Ichaival for a vocal synth project down the line and man this song is sort of a bear to make work.

It’s a really weird structure, gets across a lot of complex thoughts in not that many syllables, has random English words for emphasis. I couldn’t make sense of some lines so I sent it to a Japanese translator who came back to me basically saying “yeah some parts of this song are just nonsense that sounds cool.” Much later I learned about Denpa Songs and I think this is in that vein.

There’s a few parts I changed a little as well that are less accurate to the original meaning but I think better maintain the vibe and the general character of S1 Chris.

Anyway I’ve shopped this around with a couple other songwriters I know and while I am not like totally satisfied with the lyrics yet their consensus was more or less “seems good, I don’t know what I would change” so I’m putting them in the public while I work on other stuff. If you use them in your own project just provide credit.

Any lyrics you see (in parentheses) are pickup notes added to make some stuff fit the meter better

[rayar32]

Finishing off the Downpour AU OG Trio with Downpour!Chris where she doesn't change much outside of being half-blinded by Finé's abuse; her Ichaival is the only thing that can temporarily heal her right eye so she becomes significantly more dependent on it.

While Tsubasa is the mellower, more healed person of the Trio (which isn't saying much), she still is extraordinarily messy and Hibiki is just as bad as her. When the Trio eventually moves into an apartment together, Chris is the only one that cleans up their home at first before Hibiki and Tsubasa (eventually) start doing it too.

Also hey, not everything about Downpour is miserable! While yes everyone is very sad and deeply troubled, the girls are able to find comfort in knowing that they are kindred spirits bound together by unlikely circumstances. Hibiki only speaks with Tsubasa and Chris; their presence is comforting and, while she does still dislike the sound of her voice, knowing that it makes them happy to hear it is enough to let her speak in small whispers.

Primary Colors polycule is very much the endgame ship for this AU btw. They all deserve to share a cuddle pile.

[angelcloves]

hey guys! i had a SUPER busy weekend last week at delta h con in houston tx and i thought id come out and share the final cosplay pics now that everythings said and done!! i brought ichaival from symphogear and weiss from rwby since theyre both VERY close to my heart and to my wonderful photographers @runemyth0 heart as well (click for better quality!)

[arbitrarygreay]

Symphogear attack names

@mimeparadox alerted me to the fact that Kirika's attack names are crimes against linguistics, so I started looking at all of the Gear users' attacks. Much thanks to the wiki, which helpfully compiles not only the attacks, but their title cards, the romanization, and the original text!

I'm only looking at anime attacks. From "least cringe" to "Kirika":

Miku: Two-character Chinese phrases. Short, sweet, dignified.

Hibiki: Cheating because she doesn't get attack name cards at all. See post-ranking paragraphs.

Mid-tier: Maria/Tsubasa/Kanade tie. These girls are chuuni, but are relatively self-aware enough to have some restraint. However, Tsubasa might actually be one tier up by a sliver. She's getting away with some shit by doing hers in foreign language calligraphy, but see the post-ranking paragraphs.

Chris: Name that rock band! Golden spot of delightful indulgence. I dare anyone to not smile whenever MEGADETH PARTY shows up like an old friend. Chris has one (1) genre on her music player, and she doesn't give a fuck.

Shirabe: [greek alphabet letter]-style: {[spinning reference] AND/OR [cutting thing/action reference] wrapper addition/s to make it chuuni}

Kirika: Aforementioned CRIMES AGAINST LINGUISTICS. Build a desired phrase. May or may not include kana-ized English referencing a western fictional character. Add chuuni Japanese as necessary. Find phonetic syllables in Japanese that can be represented by tortured kanji readings that fit desired meaning. Substitute other kana with English alphabet letters. Featuring such great hits as:

災輪・TぃN渦ぁBェル

愚焔・PぇtttE炉

断殺・邪刃ウォttKKK (did you know that you spell Jabberwock with "t"s? that's how Kirika rolls, death)

兇脚・Gぁ厘ィBアa

So, like, there are indications that these aren't relic-defined names, but things that the girls themselves came up with. The strongest evidence for this is Gungnir, which has three users across the length of the show. Not only does the show make it explicit that Hibiki is coming up with the attack names herself, as they are called "Hibiki Style", but even the two who are using Gungnir as intended, Kanade and Maria, have their attacks names tailored to them. Kanade's all involve the "∞" sign, which don't show up in Hibiki or Maria's attacks.

Maria and Chris also both present even stronger evidence, as the rare users who have performed attacks across two different relics, and their tailored quirks are present in both. With Gungnir and Airgetlam, Maria's attacks feature the "†" sign splitting capitalized English. With both Nehushtan and Ichaival, Chris features rock band references in Old English font.

And this isn't even getting into the NONSENSE when combo attacks enter the fray, as each girl's naming quirks get thrown into a blender. Not only do we have Shirabe and Kirika throwing their Greek-letter-tortured-kanji-random-romanized-letters shit together into the likes of "禁合β式・Zあ破刃惨無uうNN", but then you add Maria's cross-capitalized-English-chuuni, and get "禁結終Ω式・爍機†TRINITY".

Another canon case of an attack evidently being named by a person is S2CA, which is short for "Superb Song Combination Arts", despite the fact that it makes zero sense in Japanese, where "Superb Song" is "Zessho". Forced acronyms transcend the curse of Balal!

(Tsubasa sidebar: so if we're assuming that attacks are named by their users, then the likelihood that Tsubasa's attacks are actually more chuuni in the original Japanese goes way up. Tsubasa doesn't know what normal is! Her baseline standard is the Kazanari family, and her ninja idol manager! Not to mention that her main transformation song is already borderline self parody in S2. Japanese imagery, sword, sword, blade, sword, blade, blade, I am sword, sword is me, etc. Maria and Kanade's attack names are constrained by being only 1-2 English words. Tsubasa out here throwing out flowery whole scroll calligraphy. Every added character brings her closer to Shirabe and Kirika's level.)

You may notice that this ranking suspiciously seems to follow the level of lack of blood family and divorce from civilian life. Chris, Maria, Shirabe, and Kirika are all orphans who were coerced into exploitation. However, Maria still had Serena, who overtly shares her surname, which suggests blood ties (they still don't share Anastassia's surname).

One step further on this, though, is that Chris was yet still closer to Kanade's situation in that she did know who her civilian parents were before she lost them. The Yukine surname was never in question, which is not necessarily the case for the Receptor Children. It's possible that some of these kids may have chosen their surnames for themselves after being freed from captivity.

Which would explain why you can get a Gundam-ass name like "Maria Cadenzavna Eve", which makes little to no sense in terms of ethnic name origin. Maria is Greek+Latin via Hebrew, Eve is English via Latinized Hebrew, and then Cadenzavna is a nonsense mishmash of Italian and Eastern European.

"Kusanagi Motoko" from Ghost in the Shell is a pseudonym (admitted canonically in 2nd gig), which is something like "(plain) Jane Excalibur". It seems obvious to me that "Akatsuki Kirika" and "Tsukuyomi Shirabe" are similar. The music/sound-based given names apply across most all of the Gear users, but I can easily see these two goobers picking the edgiest surnames (with shared moon connotations!) for themselves. Which, per the first half of this post, is reinforced by how chuuni their self-defined attack names are. (Meanwhile, Maria loses her little sister called Serena, and then replaces her with two girls with moon-associated surnames, eh. Maria, the Eastern European who would have been more likely to watch a dub of an anime than the sub, and wore that odango hairstyle as a child...)

[its-to-the-death]

Fictional Weapon War Round 1

Now that our preliminaries are over, we're ready to fight!

Here is our bracket:

It is kind of ugly and I used the names instead of pictures because I did not want to figure out the logistics of fitting all those pictures (that are probably a bunch of different weird sizes) on here together.

I still need to get all the pictures together for the matchups but I am planning for round 1 to start on Tuesday, July 25. All polls last a week.

Propaganda is always welcome as long as you are being nice. Have fun!

Matchups below the cut. I'll link them to the polls once they start.

Bridget's yo-yo (Guilty Gear) vs Sasha (Team Fortress 2)

Myrtenaster (RWBY) vs Funkfreed (One Piece)

The Wabbajack (The Elder Scrolls) vs Frostmourne (World of Warcraft)

Portal gun (Portal) vs Buster Sword (Final Fantasy VII)

The Punisher (Trigun) vs Orb (Pondering My Orb meme)

The Spear of the Non-Believer (SCP Wiki) vs R.Y.N.O. (Ratchet and Clank 2002)

Bat'leth (Star Trek) vs Nightblood (Warbreaker/The Starlight Archive)

Ness' bat (Earthbound) vs Kendal (Aurora webcomic)

The Throngler (Twitter) vs Shardblades (The Stormlight Archive)

Kurapika's chains (Hunter x Hunter) vs Kenji Kon's butter knife (Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous)

Jack/Sumarbrander (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard) vs Xena's chakram (Xena Warrior Princess)

Soul Evan's scythe form (Soul Eater) vs Lightsaber (Star Wars)

The Master Sword (The Legend of Zelda) vs Ryuko's scissor blade (Kill la Kill)

Riptide (Percy Jackson) vs Rapunzel's frying pan (Tangled)

Riz Gukgak's Arquebus (Dimension 20 Fantasy High) vs Ichaival (Symphogear)

Meta Knight's Galaxia (Kirby) vs Aang's staff (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

Piecemaker (Discworld) vs The List (Critical Role/The Legend of Vox Machina)

Sailor Moon's tiara (Sailor Moon) vs Batarangs (Batman)

Bit Stave (Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury) vs Oathkeeper (Kingdom Hearts)

Meowmere (Terraria) vs The Sword of the Creator (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)

Splattershot (Splatoon) vs Amy's Piko Piko Hammer (Sonic)

Pit's Sacred Bow of Palutena (Kid Icarus) vs Sokka's space sword (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

King Dedede's Hammer (Kirby) vs Shingou-Ax (Kamen Rider Drive)

Gideon Nav's two handed sword (The Locked Tomb) vs Needle Whip (Fear and Hunger 2)

Crescent Rose (RWBY) vs Sting (Lord of the Rings)

Kingdom Key (Kingdom Hearts) vs Ghirahim (The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword)

E.G.O. Weapon Mimicry (Project Moon) vs Dangeresque's Nunchuck Gun (Homestar Runner)

Tissue Compression Eliminator (Doctor Who) vs Spider-ham's mallet (Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse)

Sokka's boomerang (Avatar: The Last Airbender) vs Knife (knife crow)

Gungnir (Symphogear) vs Baby 5 (One Piece)

Oblivion (Kingdom Hearts) vs Brisingr (The Inheritance Cycle)

Martin the Warrior's sword (Redwall) vs Morgoth's mace, Grand (Lord of the Rings)

[qqchurch]

no way there's actually an official AU story from the Symphogear mobile game where Tsubasa didn't pursue becoming an idol and a sword and was raised by Genjuro which leads to her using Ame-no-Habakiri as a hoverboard (and definitely saves budget from the bikes she wrecks in the OG timeline)

and then this leads to the knock-on effect of Chris being rescued from the trafficking ring before Finé got to her so she's less explosive than her OG self and uses Ichaival as a long-ranged support sniper

with being the only Symphogear users in that world, they're also alot closer too... I don't know the specifics but it's very gay 🥺

(fanart source, artist twitter)

[verniedk]

Gungnir and Ichaival, make sure "Kaga invented Norse mythology" is on your Fire Emblem iceberg

[mousegard]

one of my favorite fun facts about symphogear is that almost all of the relics have a basis in real-world myths and folklore—gungnir is odin's spear, ame no habakiri is connected to the legend of susano-o, airgetlam is named after the silver hand of nuadha from celtic mythology, igalima and shul shagana are both references to figures in sumerian mythology, shenshoujing is a type of ancient japanese and chinese bronze mirror...

and then there's ichaival, which is just a fire emblem reference and has no actual real-world basis in any culture's mythology

[cosmosrebellion]

I've bee thinking about how Transformers inspired gears would look like, and I can't stop imagining how cool Miku would look like with a Megatron inspired gear. But even though it make less thematic sense, I also imagine Chris having one, solely because the visual of her using Ichaival to recreate Megatron's iconic fusion cannon for herself is just too cool.