Re Nanoha StrikerS 17: Told you it was hardcore
Numerous spoilers after the cut.
You knew this was coming. Come on. Come on. Only the weak chicken out after a few episodes of “boring” training. I don’t know, maybe the Time-Space Administration Bureau could have invented something called the Amplifying Rapid Growth Hormone during the 10 year timeskip, thus enabling the possibility of an epic battle like Nanoha A’s in the second episode?! The first episode, obviously, would have our four young ones being injected with said ARGH.
It would’ve been lame, though, to see battle after battle at the beginning without any reason to care for the characters’ beam spam and transformation scenes. As a result of the especially long and, according to some quarters, difficult episodes where NOTHING HAPPENS, people began to whine. The only other feasible option would have to be putting the training scenes in flashbacks during the battles, but who wants to see Teana thinking about the time she got her ass kicked by Nanoha for fudging up a battle session right in the middle of war when you can see it first-hand?
I know I wouldn’t. As a result of all that getting to know the new cast during the 10-odd episodes so far, the few battles so far have been gripping. It says something when you cheer silently or burst into loud exclamations at what’s happening on-screen, not because you’re being noisy, but because you care about the characters and what might or might not happen to them. This is also why the battles in Harry Potter 7 were the best ever — it wasn’t so much the writing as it was what was at stake. Anyone could die and faced a very real possibility of being snuffed out as you turned the page.
Anyway, enough about The Boy That Sort Of Lived. I’m sure you’ve read enough HP7 commentary in your anime blogs as of late to know how good it was ad nauseam. I digress. Back to my thoughts about awesome.
this needs to happen in one of the later episodes and I can die a happy fan
I still don’t get the mismatched battle at the beginning of the episode. Vita’s more suited to range, not melee battles, right? Or does the magic style mean that Belkan magic fares better up close and personal when compared with Midchildan magic regardless of class? I wouldn’t call Graf Eisen exactly sharp bar for that retractable pointy end mode, and unless it was attacking another blunt weapon like Nanoha’s, taking out the Big Hammer mode against Zest wasn’t exactly wise in my opinion.
Shocking Revelation #1:
Dr. Scaglietti: Erio, I AM YOUR FATHER. Oh, and Fate’s too.
Each Striker had their moment of awesome this episode. Teana redeemed herself from the Teanemo arc by doing a massive Kage Bushin no Jutsu. Erio redeemed himself from constantly riding pillion on his adopted sister’s dragon and that accidental molest attempt by doing a bit of manly flying, which was really manly considering how it was mid-air, and he didn’t have the higher ground. Caro never needed any redemption, bless her, but they had to make her weep pitifully in front of Section Six in the burning rubble before summoning Bahamut. And Subaru?
Shocking Revelation #2:
Subaru: I’m actually a cyborg. This explains why I can disable two enemies all on my own after going into Super Saiyan mode seeing my sister’s mangled body being stuffed into a suitcase, although it doesn’t explain why I groped at my best friend’s chest to wake her up in that one episode.
What are our beloved heroines doing all this while? Oh, that’s right, you can’t bring your devices into the conference area, nevermind how there’s been a bleeding prophecy that this place is going down, even if it’s in a vague prophetic metaphor. Let’s lock down the whole place when we’re attacked instead of sending our S+ mages out to kick droid butt! What an excellent and strategic move.
Wrong Place For A Revelation lol #3:
Vice: I’m that formerly-awesome sniper mage guy who now drives the helicopter for Fate, or something. I went from mage to chauffeur because I like talking to my helicopter, and I shot a girl in the eye by mistake when handling a kidnapping situation. This gets me owned because Lutecia walks in when I have a clear shot at her and I begin to have a traumatic flashback, evidently mistaking a helpless girl hostage for the same thing as a insect-wielding, S+ summoner mage.
I believe the best is yet to come, though. I mean, just look at the future episode names and tell me you don’t smell major conflict incoming. “Decisive Battle”? “Pain to Pain”? “Stars Strike”? I’m already sold. Despite what looks like a “boring” 18-20, I’m sure nothing bad will come of it.
Not Really A Revelation #4:
Vita: When Reinforce and I combine, my dress gets a palette change to white! <3
I was going to reply to long overdue comments, but I had to write this after watching the episode, as you can understand, and now my hands hurt so much I need to go to bed. Apparently the symptoms come after 500 words or so, which means I’m about 500 words over my limit as I end this. It hardly matters, since vindication is sweet. StrikerS, finally awesome? I don’t know what you’re talking about. StrikerS was always awesome.
Loading ...
It goes without saying that episode seventeen was indeed amazing.
As before, I largely agree with your assessment to the show – the much-maligned training portions of the show were necessary to build up the new characters enough for the viewer to care about them, and I didn’t find them nearly as boring as many people claim they are.
That’s not to say that I’ve been entirely pleased with the series at this point, though. In short, the show seems to be trying to do too much at once, and as a result not much of it has been done very well. Just think about everything that the show has tried to accomplish in the seventeen episodes so far:
- Sufficiently develop the four new trainees in an effort to make the viewer care about them
- Continue to develop Nanoha (x Yuuno), Fate, and Hayate, or at least find ways to give them meaningful screen time
- Weave a story of internal political intrigue within the TSAB
- Slowly reveal the nature and intentions of the “bad guys”
- Make the cast and the viewer attached to Vivio, since she’s surely going to be important to the plot down the road
- The Vice (x Teana) subplot
- The subplot involving Subaru, Ginga, their mother, and the combat cyborgs (though this might turn out to be involved with the main “bad guys” plot)
I’m sure some are still missing, too. It’s as though the writers decided that they had twice as many episodes in, so they should try to cram in three times as much content, but in doing so they move away from what made the first shows popular.
Much of the appeal of the first series and A’s seems to have been their simple and straightforward nature– they avoided all pretense and simply presented the viewer with an entertaining, well-scripted storyline that discarded all pretense, and yet at the same time was an effective amalgam of two genres usually not associated with each other. StrikerS, on the other hand, is trying to be too much that the Nanoha franchise generally hasn’t been up to this point, and I suspect likely what is alienating many existing franchise fans.
All that said, I still enjoy the series and will watch it to the end, hoping that it will not be lacking in traditional Nanoha-style awesomeness as it approaches its conclusion. But you do need to ask yourself, “Would I still be watching this if it wasn’t Nanoha?” I’m not quite sure I would. But because it is Nanoha, and I am a hopeless fanboi, I’m sticking with it to the end.
>>Much of the appeal of the first series and As seems to have been their simple and straightforward nature they avoided all pretense and simply presented the viewer with an entertaining, well-scripted storyline that discarded all pretense, and yet at the same time was an effective amalgam of two genres usually not associated with each other.
QFT.
JRoxas:
Well, if by “wasn’t Nanoha” you mean “wasn’t the third in a series” then yes, I would find it rather hard to continue. StrikerS has my trust that it can do no wrong for the reason that there’s so much promise within the storyline from what I can make out of it, and immense potential just screaming to be tapped.
Gotta agree with you about the complexity of StrikerS vs the first two seasons; it’s mostly an attitude of being resistant to change within the fandom that I see as being the problem here. StrikerS is saying “look, we don’t have to follow what the first two did in order to have AWESOME” and the English-speaking fanbase is going “NO U, give me my beam spam and Vita”. We’ve got a lot of the latter but hardly any of the former, and I’m guessing that’s where most of the vocal backlash has originated from so far.