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I enjoyed this manga for quite a bit, which is why I'd been following it this far in the first place, but this is it for me now.

It feels like the manga is non-progressing now, every chapter starts feeling dull and the same as before, I don't even want to follow the dialogue anymore.

Characters were interesting at first, but the way the actual romance aspect has been unfolding, I can't say I enjoy it at all.
I once jokingly said that this manga is Citrus but without the mental torture of reading it, turns out, a lot of Citrus's negative aspects are present here too, even ... if they're not as intense.

I'm starting to feel like the author of this manga just wants to keep this work going for the sake of it and not to actually give the readers what they want and since it appears to me that the manga has been slowing down immensely for the past two years, I will just drop it here.

I can tell that people only like this because it's yuri romance and not because it is a good romance. It's mindless romance, consumed like one would watch a cheesy, stale romance movie and forget about it as soon as the credits roll.

If I had to compare it to another yuri, I'd say it's a worse copy of Bloom into You, with a similar idea, but even worse animation quality.

The animation is a gamble between good or bad, the moment you notice how often they compensate the lack of animation with panning and zooming stills, you can't unsee them anymore.
As well as fade ... out effects like I'm watching a video edited with Windows Movie Maker.
Not to mention, you can also expect very bad background character CG, but that's probably a modern anime curse in general. (Anyone else who'd rather see still frames of hand-drawn background characters? Only me?)
The pieces of actual animation vary from good to okay to what looks like 5fps.

This got to be the most boring yuri i've ever followed. The OST is forgettable, the characters are forgettable, and while the character design is good, the animation and art quality lack strongly at times. It's making an effort to shake things up, but I can't see this story trying something new.

Last edited after episode 4.

As someone who had been really looking forward to this anime since I first watched trailers about it, I'm very disappointed to have to drop it here.

The series begins with us, the audience, thrown into the middle of the plot with very little grasp to what's going on.
I shrugged it off and thought that the next episodes would probably get more interesting plot-wise and explanatory, but I've sadly come to notice that there isn't and won't be an elaborate, complex plot going on.

This anime moves at a neck-breaking pace, there's very little explaining happening, I still don't know what the main characters are trying ... to accomplish and what for exactly, it feels almost episodic and nearly every episode so far feels like the mess that episode 1 was pacing and story-telling wise.

The themes they've addressed by this point have very little to nothing original to offer, it's just another wannabe-complex sci-fi story, but doesn't actually try to stick out from the masses.

It has no engaging themes, it feels incredibly dull and not knowing the stakes doesn't make the fights particularly interesting to watch.
5 episodes of a show that isn't announced 1 or 2 cours by the time I'm writing this review is definitely enough to get an impression of where it's going and I'm getting off this ride now.

This show was the greatest waste of time for me and here is why:

So what exactly is so bad about Senki Zesshou Symphogear?
Imagine you go into this show, hearing from all sides about how good it is and then you watch episode 1 and you think: "Wow! This is intense, dark and dramatic!" and then you watch the rest of the show and think: "Okay... what?"

The first episode is the best episode in this entire franchise and you cannot prove me wrong, afterwards it just turns so incredibly bland and boring, with a predictable plot, some semi-interesting fight sequences and songs that are at best ... comparable to an average idol show and characters like you've seen them 1000 times in anime before. Shush, don't come at me like "But this anime is from 2012!", that doesn't change the fact that there isn't one(1!) character in this entire series, that is so extremely different from the rest, that they make a memorable impression on you.

It is honestly hilarious how this show feels like it's originally aiming for kids, not even teenagers, just kids and then someone in the production team thought: "hey let's add some dark elements", because this is essentially what this show is. A story written for an audience that does not expect a deep plot and deep plot twists.

While the first episode was indeed the best episode, the show still managed to absolutely ruin it for me by the end of this season.
When for no reason ever Hibiki had to pretend she's dead for solid 3 minutes at the very end of the season, followed by everyone being happy and blah blah blah. Like what do you even tease that sad grave moment in the beginning of the series when it has the worst conclusion I've ever seen in anime?

Now let's get back to one of the initial selling points of the show: The dark aspect.
We saw in episode 1 Kanade dying a tragic death, after protecting a stranger (Hibiki), because apparently that's the kinda person she is.
Kanade died from using her Climax song, which is the strongest ability a Symphogear has with great destructive, but self-sacrificing power. Wouldn't you imagine that this makes indeed for a "climax" situation in the anime? No, because after Kanade died, the writer of this series made it so it's incredibly inconsequential using this ability, like absolutely every supposedly risk in this show turned out inconsequential and essentially boring, because the heroines just win and win and win and whenever they're on their knees, someone sings a song, they power up and just defeat the enemy, like no big deal ever.

I wouldn't even have to be so critical about this show if they hadn't given us episode 1 and absolutely ruin my expectations for it. Don't pretend your show is dark, if all you want, is to sell a half-assed wholesome story to the viewer.

To this day I don't understand why this anime was greenlit for so many seasons, especially because I went into it thinking they are all coherent in a way, but turns out they're all own original stories. I've watched 3 seasons and I've given it way enough episodes to turn into something that I now know I will never expect to see.
The producer must have seen Madoka's success and thought they could replicate it, especially seeing Hibiki and Madoka share the same voice actress, there's no other reasonable explanation.