I have a feeling that this is not aimed for girls...

...considering that this came from a bishoujo game, and just trying to be a mahou shoujo anime.

Actually, it reminds me a bit of Pretty Sammy.

The animation is kind of inconsistent. At times it's amazing, while others... meh. Nothing horrible, and in fact quite decent, but still a bit odd after seeing the obvious high quality just a few seconds before.

It looks crappy to me. Definitely not on the same level as CCS. And unlike CCS, this one seems to be pandering to the Lolicon group. Ick.

Why the hell do they think I want to see a nine-year-old naked? What is the time slot its airing in in Japan?

They obviously don't. You see, this show airs in Japan, not Australia.

If they were catering to you personally, it would be airing in Australia.

I OBJECT! Nanoha doesn't even begin to compare with CardCaptor Sakura. Nanoha's like a ripoff of most of CCS's ideas, except CCS doesn't have a stupid engrish speaking staff and Sakura's star key is infinitely better than that dumb jewel seed. Kero-chan will own that ferret anyday. Besides, the monsters in Nanoha will never be as cute as Sakura's Sakura Cards.


Why the hell did you watch the show then? I'd say it's more of your own fault than theirs. If you don't want to see it, turn it off.

It airs between the 24:00 and 27:00 slots, so it's doubtful little girls would be tuning in.

You all disgust me :P Just because of the transformation sequence, you're damning the series. The plot is actually quite good when you actually learn of things on whats going on come episode 2 and the art is amazingly awesome. I wouldn't throw it away so fast.

Says the guy who thought cosprayers was good...

I too say reserve judgement. So far in eps 2 and 3, Nanoha shows more competence and creativity than any other magical girl I've seen in ages. She can multi-task, invent new attacks on the fly, and doesn't need anyone to instruct her to do so either. And I'm really curious about the nature of this techno-magic's origins in Yuno's world.

Sakura took forever to learn how to use her own original techniques, had to be led by the hand by Kero-chan, and once she got really adept, she never really did anything with her powers that was interesting, it was always about catching stray cards or passing Eriol's arbitrary challenges. It would have been nice to see what Sakura could have done with her abilities after she mastered them all, but CLAMP flaked out and cut it short just when things seemed like they could actually go somewhere... It's not like we really see Sakura take on many real adversaries or such.

I'm not saying Sakura didn't kick ass. I love CCS and it's one of my favorite shows in the genre. I'm just saying that in 3 episodes, Nanoha is already breaking some new ground and the series seems to have lots of potential. It's just a damn shame it's only 13 episodes planned. I can't wait to see the rival magical girl to be introduced in episode 4...

And yes, it's a spinoff of the non-H Triangle Hearts OVA (not the H series, which was a different story) which even so in turn evolved from some earlier H games, so I guess some fanservice was inevitably inserted for the loli crowd. But henshin animation sequences did evolve from the 1970's Nagai Go shounen anime Cutey Honey, which was a big influence on the creators of Sailor Moon (especially character designer Tadano Kazuko), and parodied by Pretty Sammy and so on, so the theme of stylized nudity (without surface details though, which would make it, well, truly pornographic) is well entrenched as part of the heritage of symbology in the heroic mahou shoujo genre. I agree they went overboard showing the undergarments, though... @_@; So much for my attempt at defense, lol.

Like dkellis said, I also noticed how the animation changed during this episode. Most of the time it was like in Triangle Heart, but when that dinner scene came where Nanoha is asking can she keep that ferret I was like "Woah! What happened to the animation?!" and then it changes back and forth between two styles.

Its been a while when I last time watch mahou shoujo -series and first episode was good, and what you people have said about coming episodes sounds intresting.
Light-hearted series that has some serious themes? I like those.

(I have to think something so that I can keep up with the series that I'm following and actually know what I'm talking about.)

Yes, I was wondering about that myself, at one point she was running, it was smooth it's like a real person running. I would guess they could make everything smooth like that but it just not enough time to get it all done. Because those thing took a long time to do it right.

Anyway the ending is really cute. Thanks to Triad I can sing along. "Make a little wish...." ^_^

I suspect that these cuts were done by a particular studio or directly handled by a key animator seperate from the rest (as happens a lot in anime, but usually less noticably--see Animation Runner Kuromi-chan for details). Perhaps one of our Japanese members has heard an explanation...? :) The contrast was really odd, but the look was quite cool.

That's not the only thing that bothers people about the show. It's fake mahou shoujo and gives off a creepy voyeuristic feeling. It doesn't pay off with the same things a mahou shoujo series does. It doesn't even look right. I think a lot of CCS fans would dislike this show.An apt comparison -- Pretty Sammy is another fake mahou shoujo series.

Pretty funny calling both MAHOU SHOUJO Pretty Sammy and MAHOU SHOUJO Lyrical Nanoha "fake" MAHOU SHOUJO series, given that they are among the few that actually use MAHOU SHOUJO as part of the title.

Pretty Sammy was a spoof, fair enough (although the TV series was told fairly straight and had an interesting storyline). Komugi is a spoof and a half, for that matter. But Nanoha isn't, in fact after seeing four episodes, I'd say it's one of the more serious treatments I've seen in a tv series of the subject. I think it would be fair to call it a "fake" shoujo series, as it is emulating a shoujo appearance while clearly derived from a male oriented series. But as far as mahou shoujo goes, it's about as real as it gets...Nanoha and Fate are true madoushi with sorcerous powers and are an evolution of the traditions of the genre, which while mostly based in shoujo anime and manga, has occassionally crossed over into shounen territory, or even both (Mahou Tsukai Tai had both a shoujo manga series and a shounen manga one...the shoujo one had the better story, the shounen one the more anime-faithful art, for one example).

Just as shounen fans should get over their prejudices over shoujo, the opposite could be said as well. Last I checked, mahou shoujo means simply "magical girl" and much of the founding entries in the genre were either shounen anime (early 1970's Cutey Honey invented the transfoming superheroine with magic powers) or created by cross-genre creators such as Mitsuteru Yokoyama (Sally the Witch, perhaps the first "true" magical girl, along with his more typical shounen works Giant Robo, Tetsujin 28, Babel 2, etc) and Osamu Tezuka (Fushigi na Merumo--the definitive girl using her power to change to an older identity, along with his many establishing works in both shoujo and shounen).

I've only seen a few episodes of CCS so I'm not sure how qualified I am to say this, but Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha don't feel similar besides the fact that CCS and MGLN both have the magical girl element and they both have to collect/find stuff. The animation styles used in MGLN can differ from scene to scene (as other people have said earlier) and the music is definitely not lacking. Considering how formulaic other mahou shoujo animes can be, I really hope that MGLN doesn't fall to the same "start -> random fluff for 15 minutes -> transform -> action for 5 minutes -> end".

I knew nothing of this anime before watching it, except that it was mahou shoujo. I was hesitant at first because I wasn't sure how good this would be, the Japanese website doesn't do the character design justice.
This is probably the best animation there's been for a mahou shoujo anime, imo. I was surprised to see actual *blood* on the human ferret-girl/guy-person in the beginning. I was like "Wow!", purdy cool. And then the opening animation was really great, disappointed by the ending animation though. :P
And I admit, I was a bit turned off by seeing way too much of a third grader than I needed to in the transformation sequence, but I did not toss it aside, oh no. The animation and characters were too wonderful to do that.
So, in other words, I can't wait to see more of it. ^___^

Also, whoever did the screen caps, it would be greatly appreciated if more were made. X3

I'm a big fan of Shamanic Princess (I think it's an oft-overlooked classic), and I too was thinking how cool it would be if the sidekick weasel and magic were from that anime. :) Didn't turn out that way. :( I was going to put it on the so-so list (for being too recycled) when the transformation scene took place... the clothes->undershirt->panties removal was a goddam strip tease on too young of a girl. :mad: Anime like this and Rizelmine are going to give anime a bad reputation... worse than the "it's all just violence and sex" reputation it had only 7 or 8 years ago. :frustrated:

-k

curious

I consider mahou shoujo anime to be a subset of shoujo anime. It's clear that this show doesn't make any effort to connect with a young female audience. Nanoha may be more "serious," less "formulaic" etc. and more attractive to people who don't necessarily like mahou shoujo, but it's also missing stuff. I don't begrudge anyone's liking the show, but it's not the same thing.

I have no interest in "getting over" my "prejudices." Shounen or seinen anime never lack an audience, and have been absorbing and reconstructing various elements of shoujo anime for a few years now (as in the present case). But shoujo anime offers something unique and I don't want to see it disappear.

I wasn't neccessarily refering to you by that statement (though it came across that way, sorry), I was thinking more of how folks on both sides of the fence often miss good stories due to prejudices as I describe, and I am just cautioning against dismissing a show out of hand because its first episode crosses some lines.

It's been more than just a few years... let alone when mangaka or their assistants who have worked on shoujo make the switch to shounen works. There was a lot of heavy influence on shounen manga back in the eighties as well...and probably earlier, but I'm less familiar with cases of it prior to then.

Anyway, what you say is fair enough, but then should we discount shoujo anime that absorb shounen genres? Sailor Moon absorbed a fair amount of Cutey Honey and sentai elements, and is one of the first "fight the baddies" magical girl series. Rayearth borrows from the shounen fantasy-RPG and Mecha genres heavily. Cutey Honey F was a mahou shoujo series based upon the classic formulative shounen original. Manga and anime constantly cross-pollinate ideas, it's all part of how the entire medium grows and evolves. It gets even more complex when we account for the fact that production staffs on a series can be people with experience mostly in one genre or the other. There certainly was a stir when it came out that Anno Hideaki, after Evangelion was over, had come on board to direct the shoujo anime KareKano...

Heck, even some series like Magical Emi and Creamy Mami had some fairly creepy voyeur moments inserted in them by the directors back then, and those WERE shoujo series. I mean, wtf...!?

Anyway it is true that there is a solid niche of shoujo anime (and manga) that is mahou shoujo and makes, oh, probably over 90% of the core of all series in the genre. But on the other hand, there are some mahou shoujo stories from shounen magazines that are entirely done in the shoujo style, are non-H, and often by female mangaka even...admittedly not many such manga get made into anime, but what would you call Magical Nyan Nyan Taruto for one example, then? The original manga was published in a shounen manga magazine and drawn by Kaishaku. But the anime is totally done within the confines of the shoujo-style mahou shoujo genre, as far as I can tell...in fact much of it seems a tribute to the shoujo manga/anime classic, Wata no Kunihoshi. I often see people mistake this series for a shoujo one as a result...

Then again, I also see people make similar shoujo identification errors about other non-mahou shoujo series, such as Kokoro Toshoukan, which comes from Dengeki Daioh, for one example among many, so perhaps that's not so much an argument as just a demonstration of how blurry the lines can become in general.

I'm just saying that if a show is about a magical girl, has "magical girl" in the title, and follows most of the conventions of the general genre (episode 4 practically could have been a CCS episode for the most part, for that matter), then there's no reason to say it isn't technically a mahou shoujo series due to a gender-orientation bias. If it is neccessary to differentiate it, then label it a "shounen mahou shoujo anime", or "not a shoujo series", but I think it's a slight bit incorrect to flat out say it's a "fake mahou shoujo series", that's all. I could see calling something like Komugi or Puni Puni Poemi that, though, as both really pretty much are self-conscious deliberate phonies, as it were. :D

Anyway, that's all just IMHO. It's a topic that interests me a lot as I like most mahou shoujo stories in general and their history in anime and manga, for either gender (hence some of my examples), and I think overall it has a positive influence in the long run on shounen stuff to adopt more of the conventions of shoujo manga and anime. :)

I already took some screenshots for ep 2 and 3, but in favor of Triad release, I'm gona post it around the same time Triad release the episodes. Also not to get too far ahead of everyone watching the fansub because right now it's already aired up to episode 4. ^^