The Tragedy at the Concert and the Tachibana Family:
2 years prior to the start of Symphogear's main story, the specially classified disaster known as the Noise emerged in the middle of a public performance by Zwei Wing. Combining the numbers of spectators and staff, there were over 100,000 people present at the concert hall. The number of deceased or missing totaled 12,874, a terrible disaster. However despite the fact this occurred on such an unparalleled scale, the tragedy does not end there but continued on.
Of the 12,874 that died approximately 1/3 of them was due to the Noise. The others died as either the result of being crushed by the crowds attempting to flee, or by intense fighting that broke out between attendees trying to secure their escape. This information was published in weekly magazines and quickly set the stage for public opinion. Since the majority of deaths became attributed to other people, the survivors began to experience public bashing. Victims and bereaved families of the deceased also received reparation from the national treasury, and thus the public opinion turned into a harsh debate about one's self-responsibility. Although what had been published and announced in the press was accurate information, a lot of it had been modified to agitate people's emotions, glorifying certain aspects of the story. Using "righteousness" as their guide, many people took to the internet and began to spread their own opinion on the story.
It eventually broiled to the point where even those that were uninvolved or uninterested in the event had begun talking about it passionately, as it distracted them from other problems. Thoughtless slander was thrown around, supported by the majority as having "sound reasoning," not because they had deduced this themselves but rather "because everyone else was saying so." At this point the true nature of the tragedy was lost and had turned into something akin to a witch hunt from the middle ages, or the barbaric persecution of Nazis, fueled by some warped sense of "justice." The goodness of people and their ability to become emotionally attached had been twisted and changed into a drive to hunt down the survivors of the tragedy simply for the reason that "because they survived." Of course at this point there was a faction of individuals who held the opposite opinion, but the majority had already made up their minds and the wave of madness swallowed up any opposition.
Hibiki Tachibana's environment was greatly affected by this. One victim of the tragedy was a boy who attended the same middle school as Hibiki. He was the captain of the soccer team and had a very bright future ahead of himself as a student. Why he had died and Hibiki, who had no redeeming features worth mentioning, had lived was something used to torment her. It all started with a single student, a young girl who had been a fan of the boy, who lashed out at Hibiki yelling in hysterics. It wasn't long before it had consumed the entire school. But that was far from the extent of it.
The daughter of the president of a company that Hibiki's father did business with was also among the list of the deceased. At first her father was incredibly overjoyed that Hibiki had survived the ordeal, but it wasn't long before the news spread around and he found that his contract with the company had been rejected and was removed from the project. Having lost his sense of pride and unable to figure out how to cope with the situation, her father turned to alcohol which eventually led to yelling and even violence within the household. Originally her father had married into her mother's family, taking on her name, but one day on his way to work he intentionally went missing, abandoning the family altogether and never returned to the house again.
Be it at school or at home, Hibiki took on an immense amount of unreasonable torment and harassment. The young girl who puts all her efforts into helping others, is also a girl with a past that had been trampled on by those same people.
The darkness in people's hearts, born of a mutual misunderstanding. Having been exposed to this darkness more than most, Hibiki is still capable of believing in others. Surely this is because she knows that in the space between 2 people, there exists sunlight.
Receptor Children:
A generic term for observation subjects who were gathered to become vessels for Fine's soul.
The biggest weakpoint of Fine's reincarnation system is that those who hold her seal carved into their genes must be exposed to an aufwachen waveform, it's the only point of the system that is left up to an overwhelming amount of simple chance. Regardless of the fact that her vessels can inherit her paranormal powers and memories, if they are not in an environment where those abilities can revive, then idle time simply passes. Thus, in order to overcome the weakness and prepare an "insurance," Fine began the project with the American government's F.I.S. If she lost the use of her current vessel in the middle of her plans, she wanted to assure she could revive without losing any time and restart her ambitions. Thus the receptor children were her attempt to prepare her next vessel ahead of time.
By searching through hospital records and personal information she isolated potential candidates, particularly those with thin ties to society, for example "those with no living relatives" (and in particular "infants and children). Above all, Japan had the highest amount of potential receptor children, and the reason for that is in about 722 BC a branch of a family in the Middle East that held the seal of Fine entered into ancient Japan.
The number of observation subjects that F.I.S. kept contained broke more than 1,000 people, however at the time of Fine's death they were unable to determine if she had been newly revived in one of them. At that point there were plans to dispose of the project entirely behind closed doors, but due to an uprising led by Nastassja and others, the existence of the Receptor Children and their confinement was brought to light and in fear of criticism from the international community the US Government quickly changed their tune.
Currently the subjects have been rescued and released of their own will or provided shelter.
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