2011-09-06, 22:18
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Link #1201 | |
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Goat Herder
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Join Date: Jun 2008
Age: 36
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2011-09-06, 22:31
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Link #1202 | |
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Beta by Accident
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Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Maine
Age: 52
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Or, in terms of "most plausible" to "least plausible" uses of the game to compare/extrapolate to canon: 1. Witness spells/powers a character already possesses being used in new ways we haven't seen yet. (Fans and fan-writers always want to try new, creative ways of using various skills in ways that are outside the realm of how we see them actually used, and here we see evidence that there are more uses...) 2. See entirely new skills/abilities that we haven't seen before. (While it might be that they possess these abilities only in the game-timeline for the purposes of game balance, it's not entirely unreasonable to suggest that they might have it in "normal" canon.) 3. Judge the power level of skills and abilities, including secondary factors like range, speed of attack movement, etc. (Virtually worthless, due to the necessary balancing of characters.)
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2011-09-06, 23:45
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Link #1203 | ||
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Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2011
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Yuuno has more than enough spells, which have more than enough applications, for him to have a robust and effective move-set. It's just that he hasn't gotten much of a chance to show it off, just as Shamal didn't get a chance to show off her wind spells (until StrikerS, apparently.) Quote:
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2011-09-07, 00:03
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Link #1205 | |
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I desire Tomorrow!
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: As far away from reality as possible
Age: 41
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2011-09-07, 00:34
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Link #1207 | |
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The Flame Crussader
Join Date: Aug 2009
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Well, i like interesting invincible heroes(which Signum seems to be until she ...you know, stopped being invincible xDU), Lordgenome and Adam Blade are also examples of utterly invincible men who are awesomely cool anyway.
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2011-09-07, 00:39
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Link #1208 |
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Goat Herder
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Join Date: Jun 2008
Age: 36
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No idea who Adam Blade is, but Lordgenome doesn't qualify as an invincible hero. Of the two instances we see him in combat (not counting the music video), he got killed in combat. Also he wasn't a hero in the first fight.
Signum was also not an invincible hero. She was fallible, took damage and wasn't curbstomping her opponent in every match (she could've, but didn't). Her being an invincible hero is just your bi-polarity about her acting up again.
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2011-09-07, 00:45
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Link #1209 | |
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The Flame Crussader
Join Date: Aug 2009
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...also Lordgenome got only defeated by mere chance, he was completely dominating the fight.
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2011-09-07, 01:01
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Link #1211 |
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The Flame Crussader
Join Date: Aug 2009
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Sorry Archon, you're right, this are the good times xD
Never going to forget how she enters the TSAB's barrier descending in a powerful pink lightning that shatered the ground behind her feet and made both parties involved to stop for a moment and look at her in awe while she raises in an imposing knight stance. I feel good *-*
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2011-09-07, 01:01
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Link #1212 | ||
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Goat Herder
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Join Date: Jun 2008
Age: 36
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2011-09-07, 07:28
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Link #1214 | |
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Banned
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Somewhere over the rainbow, in a house dropped on an ugly, old woman.
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I'm sticking to Raging Heart no matter what anyone else says. ;_; |
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2011-09-07, 09:34
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Link #1215 |
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I desire Tomorrow!
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: As far away from reality as possible
Age: 41
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QUOTE=Rising Dragon;3757667]No idea who Adam Blade is, but Lordgenome doesn't qualify as an invincible hero. Of the two instances we see him in combat (not counting the music video), he got killed in combat. Also he wasn't a hero in the first fight.QUOTE]
 Adam Blade -> Needless
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2017-01-01, 18:06
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Link #1216 |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2016
Location: Adriatic Coast, Montenegro, Balkans
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Yeah Necromancy I know, but better put this here than pollute some other thread.
Anway, I got my hands on BD (supposedly) definition version of the As and I have started watching it again. One thing that is crimping me are the old subtitles that came with the episodes. Among other things they call Belkans Velkans but call Rising Heart properly (so they are probably not the original subs). One thing that annoys me more is the fact that they don't translate the text labels, such as episode names or names of places when they are introduced. Now I can figure out Japanese dating system, which is not hard considering it all (well apart form the first scene) happens in december, but I don't like that I have to guess where particular scene is happening. So what I want to ask is are there any better fansubs? I'm not entirely sure if it's a thing I can even ask, but I should point out that I don't want links or pointers to pirated episodes since I already have them, I would just want subtitles, which shouldn't be illegal. Allthough I do understand it's kind of late to be asking for them. As for the experience so far, I have watched the first two episodes, and I kind of have to say the action is considerably slower than what we got used to in StrikerS and especially in the movies. For example I seemed to remember Nanoha vs Vita initial fight to be longer than it was, which boiled down to couple of exchanges of attacks before Nanoha got separation to blast Vita with the Divine Buster and enrage her. Also things that later got overwritten by the lore of StrikerS are kkind of interesting. Like the crew of Artha/Asura being confused by Belkan barriers as if they never saw them when the capital world it later turned out to host an entire Belkan community. I guess it can be justified by saying it's strange because it's not so much Belkan but Book of Darkness's barrier, buch older than current Belkan style. Nanoha saying that Yunno could stay again with them as a pet. Oh Yunno, you poor deluded fool. You will unfortunately always be the pet. Also since this is relevant to the first two episodes here goes something that was rolling around my head that concerns As's start: Cartridges and antagonists One of the things that As did really well that I must congratulate them on, is how they handled the introduction of new antagonists. Now when you introduce new antagonists you often want them to further escalate the situation and show how powerful/dangerous they are. And wat better way to do that than to outright beat the protagonists. The trouble with this approach is that this inevitably leads to expanding the power level of the fighters since now you need to justify the protagonists eventually beating them. Which as sequels mount can lead to ridiculous levels where we are told that the fighters fighting are able to destroy galaxies but yet they are simply fist fighting on the surface of one world like they always did since the first season. As bucked that trend by introducing new antagonists and made them a threat able to beat the protagonists by a) focusing on a different fighting style that protagonists might not be familiar with (melee vs bombardment more common to Midchildan style (let's ignore the lore of StrikerS for now)); b) showing that they are quite capable of going toe to toe with the protagonists and even being able to surpass them in skill and most importantly c) the edge they in the end used to beat the protagonists was not some sort of writer mandated asspull that tries to justify instantly stronger power levels but they introduced an actual device (cartridge system) that allowed the antagonists to fight on another level AND they introduced the drawbacks of the device that explained why they can't do that all the time (cartridges being a limited resource that can only power like one attack). Frankly it's brilliant IMO. This also makes the idea that protagonists might be able to match the antagonists in like couple of days much easier to swallow since the only lead was technological, and that can be solved much more easily and be visibly shown not told that it's active. AND also really importantly it let the writers play even more with the idea that mage/device complex is like a fleshly robot, because they could use scenes of them loading cartridges with that nice k-chunk sound. Have I told you how brilliant it is? It's bloody brilliant. Now there are some problems with this. For one if mages with the cartridge equipped devices have such an advantage over devices with no such system equipped, why is no one using them? Well the explanation is not perfect given the advantages, but it was enough for me for them to point out that it’s an ancient system that modern engineering never got a real hang for, and given the problem it was never widely adopted. Also considering RH is probably a pretty standard intelligent device available to civilians and Bardische was probably made with what was available in the Garden of Time it’s quite normal for them not to have come with the system. It’s a thin explanation but it did work for me. |
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2017-01-02, 09:40
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Link #1217 |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2016
Location: Adriatic Coast, Montenegro, Balkans
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I managed to initially miss TWO and not only ONE episode?!?
Up untill now I ws convinced that while I was initially watching the As, I only managed to miss the episode where they show the Twins and their "relationship" with Chrono. Considering how much I dislike that particular aspect, it was for the best. But now it seems I either did not watch Episode 4 or completely forgot about it. And it's the episode where they run the cartridge system for the first time. |
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2017-01-02, 10:55
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Link #1218 |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2016
Location: Adriatic Coast, Montenegro, Balkans
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Chrono’s relationship with the Twins
No, just no 7 arts. What you are implying is not okay. It is not okay to imply that one of his teachers had a “physical” relationship with younger Chrono back when he was barely a teen. No. Just No. In fact it’s a good thing I accidentally skipped and did NOT watch this episode back when I was first watching Nanoha. Hayate and the change in the Ritters !!warning personal headcannon!! This is not exactly directly connected to the events in the Season, nor is there any strong evidence of it, but this is my headcannon about the reawakening of humanity in Wolkenritter. In the show they imply that it happened because Hayate was thawing them off by treating them as human beings for the first time in centuries. I on the other hand would like to note that that might not be exactly what happened. Sure Hayate was still instrumental, but what might have happened is that the Book of Darkness’s Wolkenritter system simply readjusted itself to a form that would be more in line with the wishes of its current master. It makes sense when you think about it. Their ultimate objective always is to make their master, happy, and if their master wants them to behave like her family, they will become her family to fulfill her wish. But this is headcannon and probably has no bearing to the what actually happened. The futurism of the greater TSAB setting Seeing again the first time we see the TSAB central office, reminded me how much As pushed the idea that the setting is Sci-Fi powered by magic. Basically magitech. And that is a fun setting, especially since once you determine that it’s all powered by magic, it’s a lot easier to explain any piece of tech. You don’t have to violate the laws of physic and thermodynamics like a cheap ho…, ehhheehem. You simply state that ITS MAGIC! Add some rules and mostly stick to them, and they did that, and you can easily convince me that it’s a reasonable rule first setting that will not make my head ache every time they start talking stupid about how something works. I would have loved to have seen more of it, on the technical side. How they do space and planetary operations and such. We did get some of it in StrikerS, which tried to show the day to day stuff on the capitol of administered systems and it mated the Sci-Fi Magitech to the military SF, a combination I have never again seen anywhere and loved. But despite those attempts at worldbuilding of StrikerS, because of which I’ll allways defend it, it also started the trend of downplaying the futurism aspect of the setting. Cragan was not a large capital with like mile high skyscrapers and flying cars and shit you might expect of such Sfi-Fi setting where FTL (or dimensional travel?) is possible. While I have some ideas on how to justify it, more on that if I ever do a StrikerS retrospective, it’s still feels a bit of a downgrade. And the series never recovered.* Oh well, I’m stuck with ViVid, so I better bear with it. And I really shouldn’t complain about it here. It’s still a shame though. Although if all those colored lights on the main TSAB station are windows, it seems they are having some sort of station wide DISCO/RAVE day/night that time.  * The last thing published Vivid: Strike even featured SUVs with visible GMC logo for some god damned reason. And in general apart from floating holographic screens you would be hard pressed to figure out on your own that this is a space expansion age society. And not to mention the shying away from mecha/techno aspects of magic and devices that has been happening ever since Vivid. Fuck that. |
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2017-01-03, 17:35
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Link #1219 |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2016
Location: Adriatic Coast, Montenegro, Balkans
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Now that I have finished the rest of the season, here is the remaining parts of my musings and thoughts during and after re watching. Although considering that the forum is probably going to go into a long hibernation, no one is likely to read this. Oh well, comments would be nice, but I also need somewhere to express this just so I can remove this from my head.
More on the antagonists (The Twins) While the introduction of the Wolkenritter was done pretty masterfully, the same cannot be said of the “Twins”. Well I’m not being entirely fair. In retrospect the fact that it successfully fooled me, like it did the protagonists, into thinking this was ONE character doing all of the stuff, and the comment by Amy that porting so quickly between location was amazing/impossible, did work. It gave us impression of a new all-powerful behind the scenes foe and introduced a way to explain all this power, it’s not one guy but two. One nice detail I just noticed. When they are reviewing the actions of the mysterious new enemy they note how he can both do expert long and short range things, and they ask Lotte if this is something even she as an instructor could do. She answers that such long range attacks are quite impossible even for her. Basically she doesn’t lie, but she doesn’t say what the protagonist think she is saying. It’s Aria that confronted Nanoha and did the long range stuff. Lotte probably sneaked up on Fate. She cannot do the long ranged stuff, but she CAN do she melee part of the new enemy’s arsenal. On the other hand, even knowing the trick, now while rewatching, that all-powerfulness did not sit well with me. I mean in the first fight one of them like completely shrugs off one of Nanoha’s fully powered busters, while the other somehow sneaks up on Testarossa to melee range. And that is the definition of BS attack. I guess some of it could be explained if the Twins were something like Yunno, focusing solely on bindings and shields. That would explain the ability to shrug off Nanoha’s attack and use OP bindings. And Fate could have been a victim of focusing only on her opponent and not minding her surroundings. Still, despite knowing all of that they left a bad taste in my mouth since I don’t like such pointlessly overpowered opponents that appear perfect and unstoppable. It did not help them at all that they also largely acted as spoilsports who would swoop down each time protagonists might have won and spoiled their victory by being writer mandated Deus ex Machina out of nowhere. That coupled with the implication of their previous interaction with Chrono (ehhh really 7 arts, you went there?!?), and their actions in the finale, made me sad that they got off so lightly in the end. I really did not like those two. On the other hand, their entire subplot was not bad and added depth and gravity to the problem. The fact that noble individuals would stoop to such plots to resolve the problem of Book of Darkness showcased how desperate TSAB was becoming. Their actions also justify the final fight between the protagonists and the Reinforce. But more on that in the next section: The final act of the Twins In the end the twins help the Book absorb the Wolkenritter, which causes Hayate flip out from the sense of loss and sadness, which they then direct at the Nanoha and Fate explaining why would Reinforce want them dead. But the reason for all of this escaped me for a long time. I mean I get that they wanted to freeze Hayate together with the out of control security system. But why pointlessly cause anguish to a young girl who as soon as the book got all her pages was pretty much doomed I could not figure out. Why bring her to the roof anyway. But now I think I have an idea why. The problem they had was that for those handling the case, the master of the Book of Darkness was no longer this evil doing things for their own amusement and power, but a friend and not to mention the fact that they were starting to feel pretty empathic towards the Wolkenritter. For one the Wolkenritter had to go if they hoped to have any chance to freeze their master so absorbing them into the Book to fill additional pages killed two birds with one stone. But that alone would not have helped them with the next step of their plan. How to get Chrono and maybe even Nanoha and Fate too on the plan that the only course of action left remaining was to condemn an innocent girl to eternity encased in ice. They hoped that if the master of the book thought Nanoha and Fate were her enemies, and reinforce attacked them, they could spin the situation in such a way that Chrono would have to go with their plan or risk The Book of Darkness killing his new sister. They hoped that that plus his desire to avenge his father would be more than enough to offset his dislike of the method used and get him on board with the plan. On top of it all, now that I think about it, they probably helped stoke his ruthless streak, he had back in first season, during his training. Plus, without their plan the only remaining option would have been to blast Uminari with the Arc en Ciel and wait a decade for the Book to reform again. One thing that is still missing/I don’t get still, is what was their plan back when they first started plotting this? Sure they planned to do it all using Durandal, BUT as we have seen during the end fight, Durandal is not a silver bullet against the defensive program and it took an unbelievable collection of powerful mages going all out and unloading on the program to strip it of defenses and unearth its core. I doubt freezing any other form prior to that would have been enough to freeze it enough for the purposes of their plan. They do note that their window of opportunity was supposed to be around full activation of the defense program, but again it’s hard to see Durandal being that effective. Or maybe they were just planning on freezing The Book of Darkness (Reinforce), which would freeze Hayate too? Would the fact that it’s “master” is frozen and therefore the mana is no longer there put the system on hold too? But would Reinforce be even around, since the way she was talking during the battle, she was moments from being taken over by the defense system and that would have made her it’s pawn. It was Hayate assuming admin privileges and basically hacking the system that allowed them separate agency. So any thoughts? Did the fandom ever get to an agreement what was Graham’s tactical plan about dealing with the Book during its activated phase? Magical Program Agent Shamal Shamal’s attempt at blending in and being inconspicuous will always make me smirk at how terrible she is at it. It will also always remind me of this webcomic.  The final visitation That scene in the hospital where the protagonists finally learn about Hayate’s nature will forever be one of the best scenes in the series for me. The tension can be cut with a fucking chainsaw. The Resolution Couple of points about the final fight in the end. After Nanoha hits Book of Darkness with her ACS point blank shot, we see the Mage Prison collapsing. Wasn’t that the “barrier” that was also keeping all damage to the “half a dimension away”? If so, seeing how the pillars of flame are still visible in the background of Arisa and Suzuka’s scene just before the fight with the defense program, aren’t those pillars of flame also now visible to the normal? Is it another case (like the tree in the first season) where the normal are curiously uninterested in mass destruction happening in the middle of their city? Or is this like normal for Tokyo . Ahh, at the end of Episode 12 Amy mentions that she has dropped barriers around parts of the city that were not damaged, have been repaired. So it seems there were multiple barriers present, and Mage Prison was not a “barrier” but simply a spell restricting the gang from fleeing. Okay, Okay. Second point is another case of me thinking something was a fact and then seeing that I was wrong. I was convinced that it was Nanoha’s ACS charge and point blank attack that snapped Hayate out of her semi dream, and allowed her to start messing about with the controls of the Book from the inside. This is not correct. It’s Hayate herself who was able to wake herself because she felt something was not right/was wrong. Where Nanoha helped was to help her seize full control. The scene is delightful with Yunno going into serious mode delivering his instructions as if they are going to be something complicated, when in fact they boiled down to telling her to splash the Book with everything she has with full power. And the look on Nanoha’s face of utter delight that the instruction is something that she was going to do anyway, because seriously when has she NOT gone for full power full throttle solution. It’s also nice that it’s the trio that figures out the plan on how to deal with the out of control defense program. Another small potential snafu. During Episode 13 quite a bit happens, enough to fill multiple days, yet the later part of the episode implies that all of that happened between the fight which happened on Christmas eve and Christmas day when Nanoha came out to her parents and friends. But those are just nitpicks. The Story Now that I have seen this season again I can appreciate how much they managed to cram into this. I mean there are so many different character subplots there. There is like continuation of the Fate’s new situation, and potential resolution of some of her issues. Further cementing that Fate was not really “befriended” via divine buster as we like to say. That opened up the solution space for her future for her, but it was her actions and actions of loads of other people around her that dragged her out of mud. Then we have Chrono’s background and hints what drives him as an Enforcer (some of which we got back in first season during his encounter with Prescia), and it all nicely ties back to the incident at hand. There is as I said the entire subplot of Graham’s desperate ruthless solution. There is of course the whole Hayate’s home situation and time devoted to fleshing out the Wolkenritter. Hell they even managed to involve the normal part of Nanoha’s life into healing Fate’s wounds. So they were able to cram quite a lot into 13 episodes, AND add several extended fight scenes. Judging by their performance ever since, this level of success must have been partially accidental. They accidentally struck the optimum amount of characters/new characters enabling them to fill time meaningfully with proper order of events to get the proper emotional response from the audience. It would have been all too easy to mess this up simply by rearranging scenes too or making small changes. If they held off on showing us the situation in the Yigami house or did not say to us that Linker Core draining did not destroy the Core, we could have easily soured on the Wolkenritter and that initial distaste would have been difficult to remove. They could have devoted more episodes to pointless school stuff and wasted too much time there, but they managed to restrain themselves and the school section simply served as a breather after the hammer blow (pun intended) of the intro. The feel of combat One thing that struck me during the first battle in the season is how, now that I have watched the third season and the movies, “slow” and simple looking combat was compared to what I remembered. For one I remembered Nanoha v Vita fight being longer, but it’s actually like couple of blow exchanges before Nanoha pushes Vita over the edge. But come the episode 7 and we are back to the good stuff, with things like there not being a minimum safe distance when your opponent is Nanoha. Except this introduced the cockblocking pair. Now that I have watched the entire season, I see that I was right. The fights are a bit less then energetic than I like to remember. For me the combat will always be magical dogfights, but that was probably not possible given the limitations of their techniques at the time. Still it was fun during those times when the characters were allowed to go all out. Also now that I think about it, I think this season was a LOT more talky than fighty. Compared to Season one where Nanoha and Fate fought in pretty much every episode, this one focused more on characters and the story, and that was not to its detriment. |
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