Well, you like Nagisa and Mikoto, and so am I.

Here's Mami. Here's Sayaka. Here's full-size spliced.

I look forward to seeing what you can make out of this, lol.

but it still pity that they cannot make it transparent :c

Interesting. I thought there is limit of avatar gif to be animated

After some thought, I decided to go with your revised Sayaka head-tilt avatar. It is pretty creative! Thanks a lot for it.

That's really cool, and I thank you for sharing. Unfortunately, I'm not the only person who uses this comp. When the day comes that I am the only person using this comp, then I might get those Sayaka shimejis.

well let's hear your answer

I wanna say that, I don't want to convert you to Nanoha/Yuuno, if you don't care for the pairing. If you don't, that's fine! NanoFate is fine, too. I'm just trying to give some perspective on how actions and words relate to relationships. As you've noted that you don't have experience with that, you will find that it can change your perspective once you get into one. That you don't know about hugging so much, makes me a bit sad, as everyone needs to be hugged. Touch and being touched(in a non-sexual, non-romantic fashion), is a vital part of human development and psychological need. I'm not sure where you are from or how old you are, but I do hope you gain friends that you can hug, and will hug you.

I'm only a layman and amateur in the study of human psychology, so this will be a half-ass explanation. But it has to do with how your brain handles anticipation and reward, and a "feel-good" chemical your brain makes called endorphin. You are actually *more* excited during the anticipation stage, where you are expecting something good to happen; when you are feeling good, it is because your brain is making a natural drug called endorphins. When it finally happens, you may be happy, but afterward the endorphin levels in your brain drop and you don't feel as good. You hit the peak, and now are going downhill. The show doesn't seem as good anymore since the "main" plot point has been addressed. Everyone has different levels of this that they respond to, so it doesn't affect everyone equally. So while people will still watch, it will be inevitable that people, now lacking that high they felt before, will wander off to find another high.

Note that this doesn't just apply to romantic plots; the conclusion to any storyline functions this way. Me personally, I felt the endorphins building as we approached the point where Nanoha blasted Quattro and rescued Vivio.

The other reason, has to do with demographics and popularity. A series like One Piece is extremely popular, because it is a fairly simply storyline, and thus people of all ages can pick it up. By being something that more people will buy, it means it will continue. This is why shonen and shoujo are the most popular forms of manga and anime. You probably don't hear much about seinen or josei manga, because those are primarily aimed toward more adult audiences. They are less popular because kids don't buy them (and thus even less chance any of those get made into an anime).

How is this important in our context? It means kids don't really get how relationships work. Two people getting together in the real world, is far from "happily ever after." Many seinen and josei storylines deal with the trials and tribulations that happen, even after a relationship starts. But once a couple gets together and those particular issues begin, they'll go right over the head of a younger person, who will then wander off because they just don't get it.

The last issue, is that many manga artists are single and don't have much relationship experience, either. But they just know enough to write the run-up conflict between two characters. So if they go over that point and into an actual relationship, their lack of experience fails to convince people in the real world of the "realness" of the relationship. It's a combination of all these factors, as best as I can determine.

Hence the subtext and vagueness that Tsuzuki writes with, heh. Generally most things can be interpreted multiple ways. For instance, Hayate (speaking about Nanoha and Fate) says: "Well, their relationship is quite different from other people." And Fate adds: "Well, to tell you truth, we never had those sorts of conversations either…" Implying that Nanoha and Yuuno talk about things that Nanoha doesn't talk about Fate with. But I'm okay thinking that Nanoha and Yuuno have a strange mesh of childhood friendship, brother/sister, and teacher/student aspects, which is why Hayate and Fate have a more difficult time understanding it. It's the same reason I think of Nanoha and Fate as heterosexual life partners, from that one trope.

Not really, anymore than if two people had found Nanoha and Yuuno hugging. Hugging is fairly neutral (I hug a lot of friends, male and female, as do most people). Hell, we see an onscreen hug between Nanoha and Fate, but that was when Nanoha was breaking down due to Vivio being kidnapped. Hardly a romantic moment, but more something anyone would do to comfort someone who had just lost a loved one.

You are correct, but it's not odd for characters to recognize love from someone; Nanoha herself recognized the love between her parents in episode 1. Keep in mind, I'm not saying Nanoha has feelings back for him (indeed, she seems rather clueless in this regard), just that we have evidence of actual feelings that Yuuno has. Of course, it can be argued he might have grown out of them, but then we have StrikerS, both SSM StrikerS, and the show. In the former, Fate and Hayate tease Nanoha about Nanoha's relationship with Yuuno, and in the latter, we see Fate hand Yuuno off to Nanoha.

Oh, and there's also Amy's two scenes, one in the A's epilogue, and one in the A's manga, where she makes observations of Yuuno's feelings. So even if we were to disregard SSM1 because of age, then that rationale falls away when it happens at 15 (and 19).

I suppose this is a difference between us, then. I've read a lot of books and watched a lot of series, both anime and not, where certain relationships have been in the background. They weren't the emphasis, and not much time was spent on them, but they were no less valid. If you try to focus on and develop the relationships of every secondary and background character, your narrative will fall into a black hole.

And I think we have some agreement here; if you are worried people on AS, or me in particular, aren't accepting of NanoFate, you'd be incorrect. In fact, we do have fans of NF here, and as I've said, I don't mind the couple. I think we're talking past each other a bit, because I will agree NF is a fairly strong possibility. I just also happen to believe that NY is also a fairly strong possibility.

When we talk about Tsuzuki trolling us, this is what we mean. He is deliberately including vague subtext that can be read either way (with regards to both Fate and Yuuno), but refusing to make anything canon. There are some reasons for this; it's highly speculated that he had planned Nanoha/Yuuno (since Nanoha/Chrono was canon in Triangle Hearts), but once he saw the fanbase lap up Fate, he knew it would kill his series if he went ahead with that, so he gave the fanbase more Fate. The other reason is that, generally speaking, once you pair up main characters, your series tends to lose viewership. Even the direction he went in StrikerS with Nanoha and Fate being mamas to Vivio, caused viewership to drop (hence why it lost a chance at a fourth anime season). So writers tend to hold off the relationship until the very end, if they do it at all. The exception is explicitly romantic anime/manga, where you know the two will get together (and even then, them getting together is usually the end of it).

So yeah, I'll say there are plenty of grey areas. If you're trying to convince me NF rightly has a place in that grey area, I'd agree. I suppose me (and people like Rising Dragon tried to tell you), is that AS is different than all other Nanoha forums, in that we don't like gray areas shoved down our throats as canon. There are NF people here who understand that, though, and we get along great with them (I'm friends with several NF people, who enjoy both my NF fics and non-NF fics).

Last note: this kinda started over the transcript of Nana and Yukari's interview, which you really can't treat as 100% truth, because they turn around and play it differently in the fourth-wall-breaking Megami sound stages. Which is why I made my initial comment about them.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but your point here, based on the above, seems to be that the only reason Nanoha and Fate didn't do any "couple-love" stuff, is because it wasn't the focus of the show at the time (due to being young, etc.). Which is a partially valid point. But as I've pointed out that, even though Nanoha is about family rather than relationships, they haven't shied away from them, since we had the aforementioned Chrono/Amy (who had some teasing moments in A's) and Griffith/Lucino(who had Shari recognize their feelings). So, despite it not being the focus, they did find small moments to emphasize a connection between the characters. There are plenty of manga and sound stage stuff that fill the gaps of the anime, so there is plenty of opportunity.

One of the ways I recognize that there is some relationship potential in the show(if there is not kissing or declarations or such), is to see if other characters in the show see the feelings of others. In this way, Since Shari saw it, I believe it. You'll want to be careful, then, because both Amy and Fate have recognized that Yuuno has feelings for Nanoha(Fate has even said that she cheers Yuuno on in this regard!). Although, conversely, it seems fairly likely Nanoha is ignorant of this and doesn't seem to have feelings for anyone (she's married to her job, if anything, heh).

Let me restate to be clear: I have no problems with NanoFate, or people thinking they look like they'd make a good couple, or writing them as a couple (I even have a few fics that do this pairing). There is subtext there that can be interpreted that way. But there is no real evidence they feel anything more than friendship towards each other. And given that the show hasn't had much of a problem developing actual relationships, I see nothing that would hold them back if they decided to do that. And as noted, there is much stronger evidence for Chrono/Amy, Griffith/Lucino, and Teana/Subaru. Hell, there is even stronger evidence for Nanoha/Yuuno, but AS doesn't take that as canon, either. Despite the fact that Amy, Fate, and Hayate are all aware of Yuuno's feelings.