First post, woo.
Now, StrikerS had a mixture of the good and the bad. I'm going to start by delving into the good points of the series.
The first was that it had new characters I liked. Subaru, Teana and Quattro were some examples, and there are more, even if were not as solidly developed. There was an air to them that drew me to them, and I liked the development of Teana and Subaru especially.
The second were the battles. The major ones. 17 stood out for me in that aspect. I do admit that the majority of the fights were training skirmishes, but, to me at least, the actual face-offs were decent.
The third- Jail. Man, that guy was a character and a half. Sure, some of his monologues were a tad...lengthy(
), but I'd say he's one of the best villains, next to Quattro, to come out of the Nanoha series in a while.
The fourth was generally good voice acting. I always like that in the shows I watch, and StrikerS didn't disappoint me in this department.
There are more...however, there are obvious flaws.
One- things/characters left entirely forgotten/unexplained. A prime example of this is the Relic- we never were told in detail what one was, or what it did, and it faded into obscurity. Another example was the whole limiter bit- it seemed like they would play some importance, but it didn't matter since the Forwards did most of the action and not the Aces. There are also, well, others...and on the subject of forgotten characters, the three examples of this are Hayate(So much room for improvement wasted...), Cinque(Just introducing her then casting her aside for the most part for nine episodes? What's up with that?), and Lucino(Frankly, I don't know why she was introduced- from what I recall, she barely said a word and was rarely ever shown), and Zafira(I don't even want to know what they did to his character). Just forgetting characters when they have room for expanding upon is, frankly, unacceptable.
Two- Animation quality problems. This has been addressed by many before, but...the DVD releases will solve this.
Three- Vivio. I know she isn't the source of all problems but if the developers used her for something else other than a NxF/NxVxF object, she would have had promise. I admit, when I first saw her, I thought she had promise, then my expectations were dashed to shards.
Four- The general anticlimactic feeling. I know it was what the writers chose to do, but having everyone going on full cylinders against the Cradle and the Numbers/drones just made it feel...off. The only one that really had an outstanding moment was Teana. Erio/Caro and Subaru had their time, yes, but Teana stood out there. With the Aces just barging on ahead, and the defeat of Scag, Vivio, the Numbers and the Cradle itself being made so pitifully easy, it just ruined the whole setup.
This is only brief, but it's a summarization of the main points I wanted to put forward. Despite its flaws, though, I enjoyed StrikerS. I still am a steadfast follower of the Nanoha series, and, whilst it doesn't compare to the standards of A's or the first series, it still gets a good mark in my books.
Overall: 8-8.5/10.