[Mirificus]

Originally Posted by ProtoMan

Aren't people being a little too hard on the show and its flaws? I mean, just as you don't ask pears from an apple tree, a magical girl show with an action twist isn't expected to give you flawless plot execution and super-b developed characters. If you were expecting that, not only are you looking at the wrong show, but at the wrong genre.

I would say that lazy and predictable writing are problems regardless of the genre or media. The way they telescoped what would happen at least half a dozen episodes in advance was hardly subtle.

Sure, it is several notches above those, having for the most part likeable characters so that you can (more or less) feel for them, having internal consistency and being realistic on its own terms, which is a great feat already for this kind of shows.

I don't think we've been watching the same show. You could see very clearly how the plot was dictating how characters would act rather then what their actions being a natural result of what they were experiencing.

But there is a difference between that and asking a series qualities worth of a series of the year. Nanoha is a good show in its own right, considering the limitations of the genre and of the focus it had from the start.

I don't think anyone was looking for series of the year. What they did expect though was for the quality to be a reasonable match for the first two seasons.

I'll agree with you though, that the show suffered from some deep direction problems throughtout the series, but most notable between the first and second half. If there is a flaw within the show that even I recognize, it is that they had no clear idea where the show was going from the start. It almost seems they only had a sketch of the plot and they just went improvising on the run.

That has been a huge problem and a lot of the problems the show has been having are probably symptoms of it.