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Old 2007-09-23, 16:23   Link #3
Keroko
Adeptus Animus
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Join Date: Jan 2007
Age: 36
Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS was… a strange experience. It left both a wanting taste and one of completion, though the wanting is greater. The series is enjoyable, in fact I found it far more enjoyable then the first season, but you have this clear feeling of ‘this could have been much better’ throughout a lot of the series episodes.

To start with its bad points (and they are numerous) the series is long. Almost double the episodes of its predecessors, and that has obviously taken a toll on the writers. It’s clear that they got slacky, figuring that since they had double the episodes, they could afford to waste some time with less important stuff. In truth, though, there is a lot missing. I’ll list them.

The Bad

Character Development: Character development is a flip of the coin. On one hand, we have the Subaru/Teana pair, which is greatly developed throughout StrikerS. On the other hand, we have the Erio/Caro pair, which is the exact opposite. A strange thing, as they later turn out to have a very dramatic (or at least that was the intend) meeting with one of the series early antagonists. The worst one in my opinion is Vivio, she is a flat character, one with endless growth potential, and yet nothing is done with it, being demoted to a mere moe-blob for NanoFate fanservice which undermined her purpose in the final battle.

Speaking of which, the antagonists are not that well developed either. Lutecia is introduced early, but turns out to be not so important later on. The same goes for Zest, who really could have benefited from more development to increase the drama of his eventual demise.

Plot: In the beginning, StrikerS is all about training and improving. These scenes were often dubbed as ‘boring’ and ‘time consuming’. To me, this is one of those hints that the producers were slacking and becoming too comfortable with the idea that they had 26 episodes to play with. Many scenes could have been re-written to still get the message across, but faster and leaving room for additional info.

And then there is the fanservice, many NanoFate fans will have my head for this, but NanoFate was one of the reasons for the lack of connection to the final fight of Nanoha. Before you throw those rotten tomatoes in your hands, let me explain. The endfight was all about Nanoha and Vivio, it was all about Nanoha's insecurity as a mother and desperately wanting Vivio to accept her. Now I ask, what part did Fate play in this? The answer is nothing, she was of fighting Jail somewhere else. Had they reduced the NanoFate fanservice, and instead of 'Nanoha and Fate hapilly taking care of Vivio' we should have seen more of Nanoha's struggles as a mother, with Fate trying to offer support, but not in such a direct matter. The endfight clearly shows that it was supposed to be about Nanoha and Vivio, not Nanoha, Fate and Vivio.

Shafting: StrikerS suffers from the shafting of many sub-characters, but none have it as bad as Hayate and Zafira. Though Zafira can be excused as having become something of a rolling gag, Hayate gets the bad end of the stick, despite being one of the three. She never receives a transformation, we never get to see her fight, she even vanishes during critical moments or spends that time doing mundane tasks. Hayate fans really get the short stick in StrikerS.

The good

Now that we've had the bad, on to the good. What did StrikerS do that was good?

The characters:
Despite the fact that the large group of new characters led to some severe, somethings to severe, shafting of the older characters, StrikerS had a sollid grid of characters. On the good guys we had the Teana/Subaru combi, which were two very good characters with a decent amount of development. On the bad guys we have many of the numbers. While you need to watch the anime a time or two to fully apreciate them, you will come to realize that many of the numbers are in fact brilliant characters on their own. Reading the manga and listening to the Sound Stages will only increase your love for them.

The fights: There are those who thought the fights in the first half were lacking, and to a degree they're right. Robotic, faceless oponents don't have the same tension as an oponent who displays emotions of her own. However, with that human opponent you wouldn't be able to achieve so easilly what StrikerS managed to do: See our heroines kicking ass and blowing lines after lines of enemies up. Let's face it, one on one duels as legendary as they may be, will always be less massive then a whole collum of enemies being blown to little bit of scraps. And in the second half, even the other half that wants duels is served as the numbers move in and we see battles, victories, and even fatalities.

The lore:
StrikerS did something that A's failed to do. A's presented us with Belka, an at that time mysterious empire. StrikerS took Belka, and continued to build on it, digging deeper and revealing that Belka was a monarchy, that they freely used Lost Logia as weaponry in war and much more. At the same time they also dug deeper into Mid Childa, a world where untill StrikerS we had only heard stories about. We know it was the home world of our Bureau friends and Yuuno, but it wasn't untill StrikerS that we actually got to see it. And it wasn't just the world, the TSAB itself was also opened, and things like the raining regimes, uniforms, workings, departments and much more was revealed. StrikerS far suprasses its predecesors when it comes to the amount of new information that was given.

Last edited by Keroko; 2008-09-12 at 17:14.
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