Relationships In The MSLN Series [SERIOUS DISCUSSION ONLY]

[krisslanza]

Originally Posted by Chaos2Frozen

When was the last time they surprised us?

...Pleasantly.

Well... What do you mean?
The only last thing 7Arcs showed us that caused any kind of... Talk... Was that last official art over if Fate was wearing a ring on that necklace.
Well and that Subaru totally loves Teana's boobs.

[Chaos2Frozen]

Originally Posted by krisslanza

Well... What do you mean?
The only last thing 7Arcs showed us that caused any kind of... Talk... Was that last official art over if Fate was wearing a ring on that necklace.
Well and that Subaru totally loves Teana's boobs.

Well, thats more or less in the realm of "just as expected".

[Wild Goose]

A big keikaku doori on part of 7arcs, eh?

[Jimmy C]

Originally Posted by aers

Eh, in an earlier StrikerS chart it had Nanoha/Fate/Hayate with both the kanji shown here and the childhood friend stuff that Yuuno has. Dunno why they left it out.

I'd say that means Nanoha/Fate/Hayate's relationship has been upgraded while Yuuno's hasn't. "Childhood friend" doesn't give any indication of their current standing with each other. "Best friends" does.

[Ottocycle]

Originally Posted by Nightengale

*Nighty ninjas*

[neutral]

To be fair, that chart is typical 7arcs 'lol ambiguity'. It focuses on specific aspects only, and really holds only that much weight in argumentative scenarios. Amy's not even in the chart and more subtle relationship lines... ignored.

[/neutral]



To be completely fair...

Yuuno's descriptions (( I think... humbug, selkrik, ark, jimmy, etc... )) mention that his relationship with Vivio is good, and together with Nanoha... looks after Vivio like parent and child. >_> (( the last sentence is a little iffy with me so... might be a little off. ))

Which basically describes Fate/Nanoha with Vivio in StrikerS... which also means Fate/Nanoha has lost exclusive rights to any advantage the Vivio Factor enhanced, and everything's back to status quo.

*Nighty ninjas out bwahahahahaha*

Heh, know what, you are almost right.
To be exact, the last sentence just says he continues to watch over the Nanoha-Vivio parent-child-ish relationship.

Yeah, epic reset indeed. Why am I not surprised?

and @Jimmy C: The "Best friends" part got omitted, only to get in the character description. :3 But I'd agree. Aren't they all childhood friends? XD

[Kha]

1 nitpick: Reset is not epic. If any, it just means another war between the 300 man Kuro no Keshi and the massive Yuri Empire can pop up anytime, as usual.

Which reminds me; it's exactly 1 year after the last of such battles...

[Nagumo]

Let it never be repeated again... EVER!

I don't usually comment on relationships because I don't care and I usually just read... but I think for the first time in this particular forum, I wanted to drive my fist in every commentators face during the entire ridiculous 'war'. >_>;

I feel glad I just stick to translating.

[Kikaifan]

I don't think most of them were taking it seriously, though a few definitely were -_-

[Wild Goose]

Originally Posted by Kikaifan

I don't think most of them were taking it seriously, though a few definitely were -_-

There's a reason they're called the Legion. And the sheer arrogance on Haru's part too, telling me that shoving N/F down everyone's throat is a noble calling, on par with unpaid firefighters in Peru. Which is bullshit, but I've never been too impressed with that part of the world anyway.

[Kikaifan]

My irritation with Haru stemmed mostly from his inability to realize that he was conflating his opinion with fact while lecturing others for doing the exact same thing. He kept acting like he was arguing on a higher level than everyone else when he wasn't.

Which is really too bad since I appreciate the work he did promoting NxF in more constructive ways, like on the megapack, a lot.

[FRS]

I just hope we will not get a repeat of those flames wars, it' wasnt a good time to be on this board.

[Preston]

'Wars' on AS? Sounds terribly like 4Chan and unlike this peaceful place. However, good fiction creates strong feelings, and therefore good conversation. Indecisive fiction creates stronger feelings, producing emotive speculation. Indecisive fiction that deals with issues most feel strongly about, one way or the other will spawn many heated arguments - especially among such volatile audiences as ours.

As for my opinions on the relationships in this series - or the one that matters to me the most, and was, indeed, why I originally acquired this series - I will try to keep mostly to observations and justifiable speculations, leaving emotions and any such instincts largely for separate discussion. That is, when and if I have the time - or confidence - to do so.

I don't wish to start an argument - but only a discussion, and appreciate I am here late in the day. I understand old arguments either must have burned until all fuel was gone, or a truce was met - and I don't want to be the one to set the whole lot off again. I dread argument, truly, but have a personality that usually gets caught up in the completion of it all - I enjoy verbal and written competition, and am extremely opinionated. I was, before I became old enough to bypass my parents and receive the medical attention (and medication) I should have, apparently, had had many years prior, clinically depressed - and I had developed certain interests that I relied on to sustain me; music, science fiction literature, horror film, and most important, anime - in particular yuri (I do refer to non-pornographic, cute, material focusing on life and romance, but refuse to use a term that in the anime homeland means something extremely distasteful, ie. shoujo-ai). Now that I no longer have the problem I once did, I don't feel the need to defend my opinions tooth and nail - but I may still may get carried away.

So I'll say it now; my perception of the relationship between Fate and Nanoha throughout all three seasons of this series (and I am, at present, only at episode six of the current final season after having watched the other two in their entirety) is the reason I watch MGLN. It is why I write fanfiction based upon it, why I read these boards and post my own opinions in the hope someone may read them, why I originally sought out the series back before StrikerS had aired (although I didn't watch any of it until recently), and why I continually hope for official continuation of the general plot - as well as conclusive official affirmation of the nature of the NxF relationship.

Blegh. Long post!

[Keroko]

It wasn't really like 4chan, the debates usually didn't result into both sides flaming one another (though a few key members did throw around insults) however the discussions on the nature of Nanoha romance spread to every single thread. Image thread, episode threads, fanfiction threads, general discussion threads, everywhere you looked it was 'NanoFate versus Yuunoha' untill the mods decided to bring the hammer down.

I myself am one of the few supporters of Vitoha, and though I'm prefectly able to accept any other pairing, NanoFate has become... stale to me. Variety is the spice of life, but the Nanoha fandom is largely focussed on NanoFate, making it easy to overdose on it.

[Preston]

Originally Posted by Keroko

...untill the mods decided to bring the hammer down.

How did they do that?

[Keroko]

Deleting posts and warning people not to start it again. It worked like a charm, too.

[Kikaifan]

We're a pretty subordinate bunch, which makes sense seeing as how the local heroes are all law enforcement XD

[Keroko]

Originally Posted by BPHaru

Of course things will be always ambiguous, because as I said I think that no one can state something as a irrevocable fact in a open scenario (even if we, the fans, proclaimed NanoFate as canon with the release of the second MegaPack ^^U), and that's fault of Ivory and 7 Arcs for an awful plot development since StrikerS, everything was fine in the first two seasons ¬¬ Well, at least we have some good characters in StrikerS

Well, its more like they want to keep things ambigious. That way they can ponder to all the crowds, the NanoFate, the Yuunoha, the NanoVita and even the crowd that doesn't like Yuri or romance at all.

Originally Posted by BPHaru

About the NanoFate fanservice, I think this is misinterpreted by some people. More than fanservice, I see it more as a plot device. Even if the plot development was terrible, the new bonds between Fate and Nanoha played a role, it wasn't just your random "pantsu shoot" to have your average teenager interested in the series, but something that one in another way helped the series to be directed to a certain conclusion.

In the first season, I fully agree. NanoFate was the central pillar to the plot, and it will be the central pillar to the movie as well. The nature of the romance is debatable, but the relationship between Nanoha and Fate, whether friendship of romantic, was central to the first season.

In the second season, this was less so. The central pillar there was more loyalty and familly, with the Wolkenritter and Hayate, and Fate being introduced to the wonders of school and a normal familly.

In the third season, NanoFate even... disturbed the plot somewhat. Wait wait! hear me out. The final battle for Nanoha was all about getting Vivio back, and it was all Nanoha-mama on and on, barely any notion of Fate was made at all. This made all Fate's mama scenes up to that point rather irrelevant, and it actually detracted from what we were supposed to see: Nanoha struggling to become a mother.

At the same time, Fate was supposed to take care of two other children, Erio and Caro, but because Fate was filling her fanservice role as Fate-mama for Vivio, we barely got to see any of that. The result was a very poor character development for Erio and Caro, and the 'final battle' for Fate lost somewhat of its impact.

Now, NanoFate could very much have worked in StrikerS, but they shouldn't have done it so obvious. They should have put Fate in the role they put her in post-StrikerS: A legal guardian, but not a mother. Someone who supported Nanoha from the sidelines, giving her guidance and advice, helping her when in trouble. That way only short scenes would have been needed, and the focuss could have returned to Nanoha/Vivio and Fate/Erio/Caro respectively.

Originally Posted by BPHaru

About the "steep back", we were discussing here with my friends a long time ago about how in a tv series you shouldn't "kill the cow" until the end of the story (sorry, I don't know the English equivalent to this expression, maybe it's the same, otherwise I think you will deduce it by context), but taking this to the Nanoha story line we have that they have an agonizing, with all the happy family/married couple thing and considering the kind of show this is, there have almost nothing more they can make to satisfy the fans, isn't like if they could show something explicit, so what they can do? If they keep doing the same over and over again no one can guarantee that it will keep working, so if you seriously consider this SS as a declaration of a "steep back", then it would be the perfect chance to "heal their cow" and have the fans happy one more time with more bonding moments, and hopefully with Satashi-like drama as she did nicely with her recent short ^^

That's another way of looking at it. However, concidering the hints of NanoVita and Yuunoha that were dropped during the final episodes, I think they still like to ponder to all the crowd, rather then only one of them.

Originally Posted by BPHaru

About this same cow thing, I think that we have 2 cows for the 2 niches that this franchise is pointing. We have a practically infinite cow for the 'beamspam' niche, almost infinite because you have unlimited elements to create more fighting scenarios and power levels, and the 'yuri' niche for the people who watches this for the romance. The niches in most cases, and in this one in particular are complementaries, meaning that there are people who only want to watch girls fighting against each other and other shonen elements, and don't care about anything more, and people who only want to see Nanoha and Fate kissing, even if they know that they can show that in this series, so it's an obligation for the producers to take care of the two niches. Through my experience in the anime communities of different cultures, in Spanish, my main lenguage, and also in English and Chinese, I have learned that Nanoha has one of the biggest yuri fandoms I have seen (we have shared some numbers in this board I think) probably only suppered by 'Shiznatsu', but even if it's big even outside of Japan, the main niche will be always the wider one, in this case and the one looking for the standard shonen elements. The good thing is that it seems like both sides tolerate each other easily, so the producer can get a good synergy in this show as they did in StrikerS. The result wasn't very good but it wasn't a pointless try, so let's see what they will do for future seasons of their franchise ^^

There is also the non-yuri niche, filled by a variety of people, that just hate to see gayness of any kind. They can be quite large, especially in a strict country like Japan, so keeping the yuri 'there, but not there' they can claim that there is no yuri so that this crowd will keep watching as well.

[BPHaru]

Originally Posted by Keroko

In the third season, NanoFate even... disturbed the plot somewhat. Wait wait! hear me out. The final battle for Nanoha was all about getting Vivio back, and it was all Nanoha-mama on and on, barely any notion of Fate was made at all. This made all Fate's mama scenes up to that point rather irrelevant, and it actually detracted from what we were supposed to see: Nanoha struggling to become a mother.

At the same time, Fate was supposed to take care of two other children, Erio and Caro, but because Fate was filling her fanservice role as Fate-mama for Vivio, we barely got to see any of that. The result was a very poor character development for Erio and Caro, and the 'final battle' for Fate lost somewhat of its impact.

Now, NanoFate could very much have worked in StrikerS, but they shouldn't have done it so obvious. They should have put Fate in the role they put her in post-StrikerS: A legal guardian, but not a mother. Someone who supported Nanoha from the sidelines, giving her guidance and advice, helping her when in trouble. That way only short scenes would have been needed, and the focuss could have returned to Nanoha/Vivio and Fate/Erio/Caro respectively.

I think you're playing down importance to Nanoha's and Fate's past. The first thing that people things when someone mentions this show probably will be Fate, we don't need any Animsuki-made polls to know that, otherwise it will be Nanoha, or simply both of them. Let's don't forget Fate's tragic past, that broken girl who was saved by Nanoha when she lost EVERYTHING, bringing her and Nanoha living happily together now is the best way to please the fans and show
that Nanoha with her caring personality can save people even in their worst moments, as she did with Vivio, and something similar happened with Hayate too. That's a very important part of the show, and even if it looked as fanservice from an objective point of view it was almost well developed, but due to the intrinsic limitation in this kind of anime they couldn't show what happened directly.
Well, at least we have fanfiction for that

Originally Posted by Keroko

There is also the non-yuri niche, filled by a variety of people, that just hate to see gayness of any kind. They can be quite large, especially in a strict country like Japan, so keeping the yuri 'there, but not there' they can claim that there is no yuri so that this crowd will keep watching as well.

I think the problem is that it's a bad idea to use such a minor and non significant community as this one or others similar as a reference.

About what you considered other niches, I think their size aren't significant to be considered so, and as you can see everyone seems to like NanoFate, specially if we don't consider the people from outside Japan, it's just to see how many hits our site reached in less than a month, being Japan the second country who went most to our site, for my surprise there are even latin countries listen there, in the spanish boards I think we get easily 100% of support, so is a but ironic that the people from the "underdeveloped cultures" seems to be more tolerant about relationships betweens persons of the same gender, or at least it means that if there were people here who disliked yuri they don't watched this series by mistake.

We have shared numbers before, but if you want a fast and immediate estimation of size of our fandom in comparative of the minorities that you mention, just consider the support of the artists who binged us 5066 files to our last NanoFate MegaPack (that also this time is partially incomplete), extrapolate the number to the whole public, and then proportionally do the same with the pictures pairing Fate or Nanoha with any male (I say male because there are artists that usual draw NanoFate pics but don't mind drawing for example Nanoha/Vita now and then, but they not pair them with males), and this way we have a good estimation coming only from Japan, that's a good way to ignore the noise from our communities and take in count the people that matters for the producers. The truth is that today almost all the series with some kind of echi-fanservice includes some yuri-fanservice too in at least one scene, this didn't happen in the past, the japanese culture is changing and the animation studios know that, they know what sells, after all the official NanoFate merchandising we can't doubt that, this is only business, sadly =/

Cuídense y sigan sonriendo

[Keroko]

Originally Posted by BPHaru

I think you're playing down importance to Nanoha's and Fate's past. The first thing that people things when someone mentions this show probably will be Fate, we don't need any Animsuki-made polls to know that, otherwise it will be Nanoha, or simply both of them. Let's don't forget Fate's tragic past, that broken girl who was saved by Nanoha when she lost EVERYTHING, bringing her and Nanoha living happily together now is the best way to please the fans and show that Nanoha with her caring personality can save people even in their worst moments, as she did with Vivio, and something similar happened with Hayate too. That's a very important part of the show, and even if it looked as fanservice from an objective point of view it was almost well developed, but due to the intrinsic limitation in this kind of anime they couldn't show what happened directly.

I'm not arguing that Fate is the most popular character in Nanoha at all, I don't know how you got there. However, your second point is severely flawed. As you said, Nanoha saved Fate from loneliness and something similar happened to Hayate. However, you seem to turn that into 'NanoFate lovelove is central to Nanoha.' But, as you said, something similar happened to Hayate. NanoFate is a nice adition to Nanoha, but it is no more then that.

The show isn't about 'Nanoha saving Fate, even in her worst moment.' That was the first season. The show is about Nanoha saving people, even in their worst moment.

Which brings us back to StrikerS. What importance did NanoFate play in the overal plot? The answer is nothing. In the end it was all about Nanoha saving Vivio, even in her worst moment. The central pillar in the Nanoha series. What part did Fate play in this? Nothing, as she was off fighting her own battle.

Ergo, with no relevance to the actual plot of the season, NanoFate was just fanservice.

Originally Posted by BPHaru

I think the problem is that it's a bad idea to use such a minor and non significant community as this one or others similar as a reference.

About what you considered other niches, I think their size aren't significant to be considered so,

Seven Arcs seems to disagree with you, as StrikerS had its share of Yuunoha and Vitoha fanservice. Not to mention the recent reminder that Fate never actually was Vivio's mother, returning to the Status Quo.

Originally Posted by BPHaru

and as you can see everyone seems to like NanoFate, specially if we don't consider the people from outside Japan, it's just to see how many hits our site reached in less than a month, being Japan the second country who went most to our site, for my surprise there are even latin countries listen there, in the spanish boards I think we get easily 100% of support, so is a but ironic that the people from the "underdeveloped cultures" seems to be more tolerant about relationships betweens persons of the same gender, or at least it means that if there were people here who disliked yuri they don't watched this series by mistake.

There are people who dislike Yuri and still watch this series. They simply view Nanoha and Fate as close friends.

Originally Posted by BPHaru

We have shared numbers before, but if you want a fast and immediate estimation of size of our fandom in comparative of the minorities that you mention, just consider the support of the artists who binged us 5066 files to our last NanoFate MegaPack (that also this time is partially incomplete), extrapolate the number to the whole public, and then proportionally do the same with the pictures pairing Fate or Nanoha with any male (I say male because there are artists that usual draw NanoFate pics but don't mind drawing for example Nanoha/Vita now and then, but they not pair them with males),

Which reminds me, how many Vitoha pics tend to apear around the boards?

[BPHaru]

Originally Posted by Keroko

I'm not arguing that Fate is the most popular character in Nanoha at all, I don't know how you got there. However, your second point is severely flawed. As you said, Nanoha saved Fate from loneliness and something similar happened to Hayate. However, you seem to turn that into 'NanoFate lovelove is central to Nanoha.' But, as you said, something similar happened to Hayate. NanoFate is a nice adition to Nanoha, but it is no more then that.

The show isn't about 'Nanoha saving Fate, even in her worst moment.' That was the first season. The show is about Nanoha saving people, even in their worst moment.

Which brings us back to StrikerS. What importance did NanoFate play in the overal plot? The answer is nothing. In the end it was all about Nanoha saving Vivio, even in her worst moment. The central pillar in the Nanoha series. What part did Fate play in this? Nothing, as she was off fighting her own battle.

Ergo, with no relevance to the actual plot of the season, NanoFate was just fanservice.

I think that's only a matter of point of views, for me the series might be about that and the great popularity of Fate is a proof of the importance of the character in the story for the other persons in the world too... I wouldn't be surprised if the series for you was about trying to demonstrate the nonexistence of NanoFate in canon ^^U

The last thing that I'll do in an anime board will be defender the awful plot of this series, so if you want to thing that all the Fate thing was filler, I'm nice with that. Anyways my main point about this issue was already exposed and is still in the air.

About the second season, Hayate's case was kind of different, since she already have very good persons to be with her, but Vivio is as Fate, and you can say that Nanoa took care of the both of them in similar ways.

Originally Posted by Keroko

Seven Arcs seems to disagree with you, as StrikerS had its share of Yuunoha and Vitoha fanservice. Not to mention the recent reminder that Fate never actually was Vivio's mother, returning to the Status Quo.

About your last statement, it's just your own and very personal opinion, we were discussing the issue and you seemed to accept my and Preston's point of view. Isn't either that we can say that your interpretation of a given open scenario is wrong, or vice versa ^^U

About the Vitoha, Fate/Signum, Yuunoha, YuunoArf, Yuuno/Chrono and Yuuno/Arf scenes (wow, this guy doesn't has 3 minutes of screen time and he is full of love), first I don't see any fanservice at all, those scenes were necessary for the development of the series, specially if we talk about Yuuno and Arf, both of them played very important roles in the first season, were there in the second season, and easily deserved more screen time that now, but they were removed from the sides of Nanoha and Fate for some non-obvious intentions of the writers. Second, we were speaking about numbers, your mention of those scenes seems out of place considering that they don't represent the proportional dimensions of the preferences of the public in any way, but you can take a look at the number we gave if you want to browse through backlog, or taking advantage that C74 is coming out soon you can check the doujins and see how interested is the people in romance about this series. There are many romantic doujinshi without any porn on them, and till the date all of them are NanoFate, and recently Subaru/Tia as well (This last point doesn't proofs anything, I know that, but if someone knows what japaneses want, they are the same japanaese. Let's don't talk about the Chinese comiket, I forgot the name but we have the same scenario).

Originally Posted by Keroko

There are people who dislike Yuri and still watch this series. They simply view Nanoha and Fate as close friends.

As I said the times are changing and now we see yuri fanservice in every show that proclaims itself as a fanservice show, you just need to watch something like Strike Witches in this season. Knowing by beforehand that they are not America, I would like to know the real numbers, if there are a significant amount of people who can't stand under any circumstances seeing two persons of he same gender with pure feelings for each other. I bet that for most japaneses seeing two women this way is simply a "neat fetish", but they wouldn't like to be involved in that kind of relationship.

Originally Posted by Keroko

Which reminds me, how many Vitoha pics tend to apear around the boards?

That's a question? I have no idea, but I have seem many of them in the blogs I frequented to get NanoFate pics for the MegaPack, if I should say a number... I would say that there would be around 50-100...? Vita is cute and pretty popular too ^^

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