Nanoha StrikerS - Overall Series Impressions & Total Series Rating

[zrdb]

Originally Posted by roriconfan

REVIEW TIME

Consider this a review of all three seasons and the 2010 movie.

Nanoha is a mahou shojo that messed with the archetypical formula in an attempt to not bore the viewers with a Sailor Moon rehash. Although that partially did the trick, in the longrun it felt victim of its own inability to change or make use of its own duration.

ART SECTION: 8/10
- The production values are good as far as the artwork goes. Nanoha’s setting blended the modern world with the magic of the past and the technology of the future and thus you are offered three-in-one. It has a certain variety that sets it apart from others of its kind and, when the animators were paid fully, it looked very eye-catchy.
- The characters are all drawn to be cute and most of them are kids for most of the story. Being a mahou shojo means that almost anyone important to the plot is a girl, with funky uniforms and magic gizmos that create all sorts of energy attacks. I can’t say I liked their looks; they were all quite generic and not really memorable. Plus, the animators went for fan service and thus there are lots of scenes where the girls are naked or with underwear. Nothing explicit but one really wonders if this show is for little girls with this amount of fan catering.
- The contemporary Japan areas are very typical and have nothing of interest to look at. The magic devices and the space-time spaceships on the other hand were an interesting combination.
- The problem is that there are too many obvious budget problems and that shows easily with too many use of stiff characters, scrolling panels and reused scenes. And yes, they do a lot of reusing in the transformation and attack parts. Also, the action scenes are to the most part simplistic exchange of energy beams that end up being tiresome after awhile.
- One thing that will not disappoint is the huge amount of lights and energy beams. They are filling the screen with all sorts of shapes and colors and patterns to the point you can faint if you are photo-epileptic. Very eye-catching and helps you to fight the otherwise boring battles.

SOUND SECTION: 8/10
Damn, I rarely find something to write about the sound part. Ok, I had absolutely no problem with it. The voices were not annoying (not too high-pitched to irritate me), the sound effects had an equal variety with the visual ones and the music themes were likable. But not memorable or great for any reason so I cut down some from the score.

STORY SECTION: S1: 5/10, S2: 7/10, S3: 3/10, M: 5/10 (Overall: 5/10)
The story begins in a typical fashion; cute good-hearted girl Nanoha finds Yuuno magic critter and gets powers in order to find something or stop someone. Along the way the story gets more complicating with the addition of an organization that protects the various dimensions from cosmic threats. It sounded very interesting as it blended magic with technology. But the pacing GAH, a complete mess. A major problem with the franchise that made most to give up on it.

- The first season was at first to find scattered spheres from an advanced civilization, and up until the first half it was plain boring. Nanoha and her friends had nothing of interest to fill the slice-of-life moments and the battles were short and simplistic. It is only when her rival Fate is introduced in the story that something good starts to happen. Suddenly she is taken aboard her fuzzy mascot’s spaceship, meats lots of officials and villains with their own spaceship are close by. It was a lot more enjoyable this way but towards the end you could easily see that even this twist didn’t save the story from its genericness. It was mostly about befriending the enemy rather than fighting with wits and the villains pretty much just stormed in and had their way like security didn’t matter. The finale is sweet if you like the power of friendship but otherwise very anti-climactic action-wise.
- The second season is now about finding an evil book that if it charges up fully will create lots of trouble. This season is enjoyable most of the time because it has far more interesting characters, far better action scenes, and in generally far more interesting rivals and objectives. It is otherwise again full of silly moments and again the power of friendship is all that matters in the end. One wonders why the hell do they have all these cool weapon or why they fight in general. Just hug the enemy and cry. But anyways, the second season is to the most part with good pacing.
- The third season is a bloody mess. Since nobody in this series ever dies, new characters are constantly introduced and the older ones are still present. As a result you have a huge cast that needed a lot of fleshing out or at least episodes dedicated to each one individually. Unfortunately most of the plot was nothing but a very slowly developed military operation with lots of pointless action and uninteresting villains. Plus while the duration is now twice as before, instead of using that extra time to flesh out the characters or provide emersion to the story, they just slowed down the pacing and left most of them as stunts and background decoration. IT WAS HORRIBLE!
- The movie is basically a retelling of the first season. You know, better visuals, more action, less plot, and now loli boobs come with nipples. Just for those who saw the series and want to see the same thing all over again with more superficial entertainment and less context.

In all, the main story had something good going but hardly took advantage of its potential and ended up being a half-baked cake.

CHARACTER SECTION: S1: 6/10, S2: 7/10, S3: 2/10, M: 5/10 (Overall: 5/10)
In all honesty, the cast of the franchise is pretty much stock material. They are all archetypes you will encounter in all mahou shojo in general. So all that mattered was to simply have them colorized throughout every season.

- The first season did a good job with what it had. The problem is, it only had two important girls and one secondary male mascot sidekick for twelve episodes. Although they were quite colorful, they were still archetypes and very few to excuse the duration. Otherwise, not bad for a trio.
- The second season adds almost a dozen more to the main and secondary cast and this is where things become interesting. Although nobody is still special for any reason, there is a lot of variety in personalities and their interactions feel more colorful and less bipolar in good guys – bad guys. Rather good in overall.
- The third season blew it to pieces. It introduced even more characters and pretty much didn’t bother to develop or colorize anyone enough. Not only that but now all the main girls are adults working in a military organization. Where did the magical feeling of those little girls go to? They turned from pure hearted children to military personnel; the magic is gone.

The cast was never special in any way but at least the first two seasons had some innocence in them. The third just makes everybody to feel like a footsoldier in some military academy doing his duty. Very distasteful development. Not only that, but the fan service element never left; it was there all the time showing the girls in various forms of undress. That didn’t add context to them; it took away their dignity. And seriously, watching Nanoha’s and Fate’s adult boobs bouncing like that all the time just felt like they became bitches. And wait a second; isn’t this a mahou shojo show? What the hell does a military organization doing here? And where are the romances? Not a single trace of a girl liking a boy… or another girl. Oh sure; lots of yuri innuendos for the doujins but nothing on screen. What is there to spice things about them? Their bonds of friendship? Not enough.

ENJOYMENT SECTION: S1: 6/10, S2: 7/10, S3: 2/10, M: 5/10 (Overall: 5/10)
Well, the characters is all the appeal of the show so my ratings for enjoyment are the same as for them.

VALUE SECTION: 2/10
Although it has its share of loyal fans, it is not a franchise that can keep you interested for long. In fact, I get to believe half of those who like it is because of the fan service and not because of the generic slow story or the stock characters. I see no reason for anyone to spend money on it or even a reason to rewatch it. And let’s be honest, all its interesting plot points were taken directly into their next project, Mahou Shojo Madoka Magica. Just compare the first and last episodes of season one with each other and you will see what I mean. The very little it has is already used elsewhere in a more eye-captivating way and the rest is just Sailor Moon all over again. Practically no value left in this show.

VERDICT: S1: 6/10, S2: 6.5/10, S3: 4/10, M: 5.5/10 (Overall: 5/10)

I think your review is way off base. I'll give it a total of 8 out of 10. It's pretty obvious to me that you don't like the series for your percieved weaknesses of the story, characters and art style. The story did have a lot of cliches and the characters had some flaws but I think the way the whole was put together more than outweighed the flaws of the individual parts. I would rewatch the whole series without hesitation.

[Sansker]

Oh well, I want to say what I think about this show so let’s do it.

My general impression of the series is… bad. It was actually a surprise because I did consider this could be the best of the three seasons. After the first two I was ready for more and when I hear this one will have twice the amount of episodes I was really looking forward to it. And then I see it and that illusion and hope die in a very horrible manner. Now, you might believe there is nothing much to say that hasn’t been consider yet but I still want to leave my opinion.

This was never a strong point on previous Nanoha series. The stories were the same in both the first season and A’s actually: plot device thing is bad and some people want it to stop it others to use it and they fight for it but in the end they become friends. Is actually done really straight in A’s and a little more interesting in the first season but it was never new. StrikerS does things different and shows why this franchise should never step away from the previous formula.

The plot in StrikerS is hard to tell because at this day I don’t really get it. So let’s see… a mad scientist is preparing a doomsday device to be release because the people who he works for control of the police/army/governmental organization that might try to stop him but allow him to go free so he can make things for them that he never delivers. So our heroines are to save the day because they hear this from a prophecy that predicts an attack on the main base of the organization but the guy who runs the show and also works for the same bad people as the scientist doesn’t believe this even when he lives in a world of magic so the heroines make up a special team to hunt down some crystals that have nothing to do with the doomsday device but that the bad guy that they don’t know anything about also wants but in reality they are making this to prepare for the attack on the main base and they don’t tell this to anyone because they feel the need to keep things secrets. So they get an elite group of the best people around and 4 rookies to fight the attack that happens in any case, but the bad guy kills his employers and tries to take over the world and in the end he fails and our heroines fight between them and they go to live their carriers.

Now if that sound like a bunch of ideas put together in a rush is only because that is the sensation I have from this story. StrikerS is a mess that doesn’t know where it begging and where it ends. Is not help by the change of tone all among the series but in general the story moves around with no sense of focus or any idea what is the main plot and what is the sub-plots. Is just terrible in execution and delivers a overall chaotic mess of ideas and characters. The first third of the series is boring and has nothing to do what it comes later on the series where the plot does kick off.

In the end what always bugs me here is how strange the story is executed. First seems to be a straight fight for the Relics, then it has something to do with Vivio, then we introduce cyborgs, robots, war, giant space ships and political dilemma that was not mention until that point and go to a rather long and yet rush resolution where nothing seems to be connected as some characters fights end here and there without making an impact on the rest of the fights. It goes down with the cero antagonism created between the main villain and the main characters and how unsympathetic and downright silly the bad guy is.

So really what destroys StrikerS is that they take too much time to present characters, introduce several plot ideas at once and execute them all combine to end things fast. Instead of each idea adding to the rest all of them fight for our attention, dragging us away in each turn to their fast resolutions so we can go back to see the others that have nothing to do with the ones we just saw. So really, bad execution of an overambitious plot.

But bad stories can be safe by good characters. Sadly StrikerS lacks them. Is not that the characters aren’t nice is that they also suffer from problems. First the necessity of take away the protagonism from Nanoha and the others always bug me. This was made for fans of the previous series and Nanoha’s name is on the title so: how is less Nanoha and new protagonist help the previous fans? And even not taking that in to consideration they still execute things wrong. The Forwards as good or bad you might think they are serve no purpose on the story at all.

Everything happening plot related in StrikerS is beyond the Forwards habilities to understand, interact, care or just do something about. Who finds things about Jail? Fate, who trains other units to fight under AMF conditions? Nanoha, who directs the unit and takes care of political things? Hayate. The Forwards on the other hands are just there to serve as soldiers because our main characters happen to be weaken by plot devices that makes them less effective. But really nothing that the Forwards do could not be accomplish in less time and with better results by anyone from the old cast.

The bad guys are ven worst. The main villain lacks a reasonable motivation and just act like a crazy person but he always talks about his grand dream of… technology? Jail never has any reason to do what he does. He already is keep safe and founded by a bunch of brains that lack any intelligence and he is command to investigate and create things, yet he wish to kill them and take control so he can do experiments and create things. He also lacks any connection to the main cast and he is only connected to Fate who happens to know about him already so his introduction is a little dramatic as you can get.

And moving on things always fall apart. Like Caro’s fear of her powers when we never see her do something wrong with them; Subaru and Ginga being cyborgs when that add nothing to the characters or the story, Teana’s emo trip that was done by using Nanoha’s past to make her feel better about thinking she isn’t that special even when we never see her being in any way inferior to the rest; Ginga being introduce, forget and then bring back to be kidnapped before we can grow to like her; Erio’s lack of anything resembling an arc; Nanoha and Fate’s ambiguous relationship; Hayate being use to do nothing; old character reduce to minor roles in favor of new characters; etc.

With a cast that really needs work, how can we get invested later on in the fights? The Numbers are generic and really forgettable. The only thing they made right was to name it like real numbers so is easier to remember. The designs were creative at least to make them look different but nothing really stands about them and they are pointless all things consider. They were there so the Forwards have someone to fight and when a character purpose is to serve for another character’s reason to exist is really not what I call good. And that is how I can resume most of the plot devices and things on this series: are there to make it look like everyone has a purpose.

The Limiters were there to give the Forward a purpose, space ships to the rescue to give Chrono a cameo, ancient things to give Yuuno his, Fate’s mother role to Vivio to give Lindy and Arf a cameo, training to fill for the number of episodes, giant AMF field to give Subaru something to do after Ginga is beat, Ginga herself to give Subaru something to do until she can rescue Nanoha, Zest to give Signum something to do while the rest were busy, Lutecia… I think you get the point.

Now that doesn’t mean those are bad plot devices but when you come down to it the only reason for most of them to exist is that we need to give so many characters some room in the story. Nanoha was busy with Vivio, Fate with Jail so… what is the rest going to do? Let’s add some minor villains, a ton of robots and let’s have them fight that while the plot is resolve.

In the end it all comes down to a sense of disconnection with this series. I don’t like the characters as much as I did in the past because we lost focus so easy and the story is too chaotic or boring to keep a good track so really I am just surfing between things without getting any attach to something and that, to me, is StrikerS worst crime.

Overall, 3 out of 10

[zrdb]

Sorry-I'll have to disagree with your thesis on Nanoha StrikerS-it's not super good but it's far from the abomination that you make it out to be. I thought that the characters and storyline were a logical progression from the first 2 series.

[Sansker]

Well, to be fair StrikerS is not the worst anime I have seem so far and I kind of see why other may like it. But I am really going to remark is not good. Characters and stories don’t add to each other and just fight for the spotlight, little sense of focus and weird plot and tone. This doesn’t look like a magical girl anime at all so is kind of odd saying is a good continuation of the previous two works when we just discard almost everything that happen there. The main focus is in new characters, we are no longer on Earth, the old characters are older and have some changes we didn’t get to see and there is just so much going on.

Besides the characters that are really trying to advance here are the Forward who didn’t appear in the previous seasons, so how their stories help to develop the previous ones? Just for that I didn’t like StrikerS the rest really comes out when the new story didn’t connect with me as the previous seasons. Which despite being average at best did make me care.

[Kaijo]

I agree. I mean, the whole Nanoha/Fate/Vivio thing was totally stupid. Vivio led to Vivid, and we know how horrible that turned out to be. Best if they had left it at A's, with Nanoha and Yuuno getting together and having a child the normal way!

[Sansker]

Was more like Nanoha/Vivio really and in the end nothing really come out from it. Nanoha was not the main character so her little arc of becoming a mother is not even look at and Fate was not really in to raising Vivio when she already had two brats to take care of.

Besides Yuuno and Nanoha didn't end it together and if they did have a child by the end of A's they were just 9 or 15.

[Kaijo]

Yeah, screw the only on-screen character development Nanoha ever got!

And with the epilogue, they were very definitely hinting Yuuno and Nanoha. Without StrikerS, that would be the assumption we'd have to go on.^^

[Sansker]

Hey if they don't care to do it right I am not going to just praise their excuse for character development they use. Besides, a little hint in an epilogue is not what I call a love story, even less if we are talking about the main character.

[Archon_Wing]

Originally Posted by Kaijo

I agree. I mean, the whole Nanoha/Fate/Vivio thing was totally stupid. Vivio led to Vivid, and we know how horrible that turned out to be. Best if they had left it at A's, with Nanoha and Yuuno getting together and having a child the normal way!

Actually, Nanoha x Job or Nanoha x Raising Heart seemed to the best choice.

[Sansker]

Now I have a mental picture of Nanoha and Raising Heart that will never go away... doesn't help I just play Mass Effect 3 and I can hear Raising Heart using EID's voice

[Gx Hero]

Strikers wasn't too bad. Too much going on nanoha trying to decide wither or not to adopt Vivio. Subaru Tea dynamic, Caro Erio Fate family dynamic. Too many charectrs. I suspect that they could have done without erio and Caro and used some of the older charecters to help the Nanoha's charecter development, such as Chrono, Lindy, Momok, Yunno.


As for vivid. TO short for its own good, a lot of areas that could be added in order to improve such as einhearts personal life, Vivio coming to terms with who she is and the whole anceint Belkan King Thing. If nothing else it setled the plot down instead of plunging on the way strikers did.


In all honesty Stikers should have had a few filler episodes for the fowards to interact with the sub characters. Plus Maybe they should have introduced vivio earlier to make more out of that.

I pray Force is the last season other wise it will get absurd.

[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by Archon_Wing

Actually, Nanoha x Job or Nanoha x Raising Heart seemed to the best choice.

Raising Heart Rate would be her nickname in that relationship.