Nanoha - StrikerS - Episode 18 Discussion / Poll

[Nightengale]

Originally Posted by Thisguy

You guys are on adrenaline aint it, I had to spend hours reading one whole day worth of backlog

Allright, one-day-late summery...
As most of parts are already covered, I'll focus on where my moonspeakness could come in handy.

Spoiler for EP18 A Part:

- Teana takes the prologue, counting up how each of RF6 has been owned one by one, and she wonders what's going to happen to them... and to Subaru in particular.

- New OP. Hooray!

- Episode starts with newscaster's reporting about terrorism that hit GC yesterday.
TSAB still hasn't made any official announce regarding structure damage, number of injutry and detail of attack.
Newscaster also knows that TSAB received a message from likely-culprit, but PR department is still holding up on detail with excuse of it's under debate.

- Scene moves to Regius's office, where he's unsuprisingly filled with rage.
He angrily shouts at his assistant "Why in the hell that happened!", and "Any word from him!?"
Assistant answers that the his hotline has been changed, and the Lab was already empty.
Regius gets even more mad, expressses the question that after all the treatment Regius has given to him/her, why s/he chose to do that.
Then he asks where's Auris, who's currently running around dealing with the mess from yesterday's incident.
[[Alright, so... Regius was it, afterall...]]

- Hayate approaches Auris and asks weather she's got some time she could borrow for some talking.
Auris answers that she's going to have a meeting from now on, and will call to Hayate when it's done.
Btw, it's revealed that Auris is a Lieutenant Commander / Major.

- Teana helping investigation at now wrecked RF6 base, obviously absent-mindly...
Signum catches and tells her that all these who got seriously injured are deemed safe now, and asks her how's Nanoha.
According to Teana, Nanoha looked calm even after receiving report of injuries and Vivio being kidnapped, and went back to her work immediately.
Signum takes over Teana's share of job, insisting her to go visit her friends in hospital.
Teana reports in to Nanoha that Signum has taken over the task and she's going to hospital, which Nanoha replies that Fate is going there too.
Then Teana asks her if she should tell people in hospital what she just heard from Nanoha, which she answers that if that's going to cheer them up, go ahead.

- Nanoha finds the rabbit... her expression is quite self-explanatory.

- Shari's sobbing and appologizing that they couldn't defend the base while Fate was away... Alto regretfully adds that they couldn't stop them taking Vivio away too.

- In Wolken's sickroom, Vita is visiting Shamal in bed...
Apparently Zafira covered Shamal at that moment, that's why Shamal was relatively less-damaged... however, that left Zafira in rather painful state.
Talking about covering someone, Vita also mentions that if it were not for unison, Vita might've been dead by now too.
Marie is looking after Rein and she's going to wake up by tonight, but Zafira and Vice are gonna take rather long to recover up...
There goes male casts, it's the cruelty of MGLN

- Teana visits Forwards' room with some foods and oildrinks, which Subaru takes while making obviously mechanical sounds...
Tia asks Subaru how's her arm, which according to Subaru, neural cable was damaged so it's not responding well, but will be fully recovered in few days.
[[Although mechanical, Subaru's words sounded like it's able to self-repair... wow]]

- Teana appologizes Lightnings that she told Subaru to keep it secret (ala latest Comic) for time being, for obvious reason.
Lightnings leaves them alone for all their goodness, then Teana moves on to comforting Subaru...
Teana tells Subaru she should appologize to Mach-Calibur too, as she's been throughly damaged by her rampage.
Subaru speculates that from the amount of damages done to Ginga, it should be possible to resuscitate her; not to mention that Numbers were there to capture, not to kill, Type-0.
Then Teana cheers her up that RF6 got priority shift and their main focus is now Scaglietti himself rather than Relics, so there'll be chances RF6 can rescue her.

- Hayate finally takes a shot at Auris and tells her she's going to ask her about Regius's pastwork, but Auris prefaces that there're many classified information that she can't say much, which Hayate responds that just listen quietly for her speech.

- At 108th Ground Division's base, Genya is finally revealing his past to everyone.
Chrono insists to start from SKJ incident that Genya has long been responsible for, and Fate also asks about it's relation to Quint, Subaru and Ginga.
According to him, SKJ has it's root in humanoid mechanical weapons, which itself can date back to Old Era... but even after extensive researches, there weren't much achievement done so far.
Merging human with artifical implants are rather popular in medical scene too, but it was only to complement functions that a recipient is lacking, suspectable for rejection reaction and always required constant maintenance.
Things have changed some 25 years ago, when Scaglietti came into play; SKJ managed it's fame by tampering human itself, so that born-to-be-recipients are by nature familier with SKJ implants from begining.
11 years ago, Quint, a ground mage and an investigator of SKJ cases, rescued two experimental models of SKJ while her investigation... As the couple did not have luck in having child, and their appearance was coincidentally similer to Quint, the couple decided to adopt them as their daughters.
Although they had some help from Tech department in maintenance and such, they tried to raise them as a normal human as possible... and so they grew that way.
Some years afterwards, when daughters are about at age of understanding things, Quint died.
As far as Genya was told, she was KIA-ed in some secret mission and no information regarding her death was revealed so far... but he thinks that sometimes, somewhere, she saw something she was not supposed to see.
Genya thought of going to find out the truth even if that costs him his life, but restrained himself for Ginga and Subaru's sake... for he promised his wife to raise them well.
Still, he didn't stop his investigation, hoping that he would get a chance to accuse the one who's responsible some day.
That was exactly why Hayate came to ask Genya's assistance, because she expected that RF6's gonna be dealing with SKJ... "that Little Tanuki", he calls Hayate

Spoiler for EP18 B Part:

- Hayate tells Auris what she's gathered so far;
Regius was once trying to employ SKJ and Artifical Mage technologies to enhance TSAB, that if they could ignore ethic problem, it can mass-produce a stable supply of capable soldiers once when it becomes low-cost enough... although according to Auris, it's quite old story.
Hayate further speculates that Regius still had that project going on somewhere, and for that matter, Scaglietti was the ideal scientist to take the job... for aside from his illegality, he is a genius capable of marking himself on history.
Then, Regius and Scaglietti made an secret agreement that once Scaglietti's managed to mass-produce SKJs and Artifical Mages, Ground Army coincidentally finds out his hide-out, gaining control of Scaglietti's creations with it's "clean hands"...
That way, it's also easy to get rid of these who snooping around too much, or receive a fine example of his creations...
At this point, Auris cuts up the conversation and pointing out that Hayate has worked only 10 years for TSAB whereas Regius devoted his 40 years for all the goodness of TSAB, and that includes when Hayate was a criminal, sucking other's life for her own sake.
Hayate accepts Auris's blame for her dark past, but still insists that it's her current job to unveil hidden truth.
Auris retorts her that if Hayate wants to investigate the matter, bring search warrant or other official paper and leaves the scene, which Hayate responds that she will in due time.

- In Regius's office, his assistance informs Regius that High Council will be having an urgent inquiry against Regius, and also taking Einherial away from him, apparently.
Regius angrily responds that the emergency situation is still going on, and insists the inquiry to be delayed.
He then shout loud that "I will not play fool on his hand, it has always been me using him!".
Horrified, assistant gives Regius another matter that needs his immediete confirmation... then he shows Zest's photo from previous episode.
For some reason, Regius gets sudden heart-attack and collapses on desk...

- At lake-side, Zest is coughing blood for unknown reason too...
Agito tearly appologizes him for her uselessness in previous fight, and says that if Zest was at his best state and she did better, it should've been cake.
Zest denies her that he was at his best, and both did their best at that time... then he asks her another cup of medicine drink.
As Agito leaves the scene, Uno contacts Zest and asks him how his body is, although it's obviously not good.
Zest tells her to leave him alone, that it's just that he has couple of things to do before he dies, and he'll die alone so that it won't bother Scaglietti.
Uno responds that it's sad for him to say such thing, for even though they're different in being SKJ and Artifical Mage, they're fellow in a sense.
Zest then tells back that he's still different, that unlike Numbers, he's once dead person that is living a short time before going back to grave.
Giving up, Uno changes the subject; she tells him Lutecia has finished her examination and adjustment and will be back to him in short, and tells him to please take care of himself before finishing contact.

- At Scaglietti's lab, Quattro is taking care of Cinque accompanied with Nove, Wendy and Sei.
According to Nove, Cinque got serious damage in her base frame...
Quattro complements that Type-0 Second (a.k.a Subaru)'s IS, "振動破砕" (vaguely translated to Oscillation Destruction or something) is very effective at damaging SKJs internal parts, although it's also effective at anti-personnel or anti-material too; it's literally One-hit-kill against SKJ upon direct hit.
Nove blames herself for letting Cinque take many hits from such a terrible force of destruction, but Sei pats her head to comfort her.
Then topic moves onto Ginga-in-tube, they regards her that she was born in different manner than Numbers even though she's an original of them, and although she definitely incorporates Scaglietti's technology, it's not known who created her.
Nove doesn't give a shit about these things, and swears revenge against Headband for giving Cinque hell, and Orange Hair for delaying Nove so that resulted in Cinque's injury.

- Lutecia looking up at a tube labeled "XI", then Wendy, Deed and Otto comes up to her...
Wait, Wendy introduces themselves to her? Is it that they didn't know each other until now?
Wendy confirms Lutecia that the woman in tube is Lutecia's mother, but Lutecia answers that she supposedly is her mother, for she doesn't remember anything about that "mother".
According to Lutecia, Scaglietti said that once they found the appropriate Relic core for her, she'll wake up and only then Lutecia can have her own heart.
(She said "心", so you can interplet it for heart, emotion, feeling, or whatever)

- At TSAB Central, we see the glimpse of Athra that is under maintenance for her final journey...
Apparently it's Rossa that got permission of using Asura, upon Chrono and Hayate's request.

- For possibly the first time in series, Nanoha goes emo...
Okay we had 1st EP13, but in middle of series?

- Scaglietti doing the best of his Madscientist-ness... quite self explanatory
Scaglietti says that now he's giving the vessel the mark of holy emperor, and she'll be his bestest of best creation ever... Vivio, Last Boss?

Nest episode is "Cradle", there's no more info in preview than without languages, so I'll skip.

Argh, so Regius is client after all. Sigh... I was wondering who he referred to in his anger, but I thought it was the Eihenjar laboratory personnel, not Scaglietti himself. So, he intended to use, but got used instead. Typical.

So, we still don't know WHY Quint died, or is it confirmed that she died in the Sentoukijin case?

[Chaos2Frozen]

@Thisguy

Regius Regius Regius... Well now, that's one mystery solved. He had an interesting plan too, though anyone could see how many ways it could screw up.

Another mystery being the 'Relic weapons'. Zest (I was right about him being dead) had said it all... So much for the threesome eh Erio...

Now for the prophecy to take place...

P.S - Satisfy now, Adr 00?

[Burner of Anime]

Originally Posted by DmonHiro

One of the numbers hit Eri owith her twin energy swords, I think that's when he broke his awrm

Making a man sized crater at the end of ep17 will do that as well

Oddly enough, Caro was virtually unscath from the ordeal. Fred must have taken the hit again

Seriously, along with Zafira, men have it really bad in this show

[DmonHiro]

Why do you think Chrono does not fight? He KNOWS he'll be hit with some super-secret one-hit-kill beam the moment he sets foot in the battlefield

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Mirificus

How can you separate moral judgment of his methods from moral judgment of his goals?

His actions have had very real and negative consequences for people. Just ask Vivio, Vice, Ginga or Subaru. Merely intending to do good, without doing any actual good, is of no value.

I'd answer the question slightly differently. In making a moral judgment before his goal even came in, I'd contend that you are separating it far more than we are.

Agree entirely with your second paragraph. However, since we hadn't even heard of exactly what his "intent to do good" or even "intent to do evil" is, don't you think Final Judgment is a bit premature?

Originally Posted by Adr 00

ENOUGH GUYS!This debate is getting nowhere at this point of time

why cant you just assume that he is evil like when you first saw the scene when Precia whipped Fate.

ps.something doest make sense,Garyuu sliced Erio's arm,not broke it.How the heck did he break it then?And how could he fight again with that condition?

Personally, I watched Nanoha's the original as well as A's in rapid sequence, one immediately after the other. Because of that, I was inputting faster than I could really reprocess the information, and all the conclusions were prewritten. Nanoha StrikerS I watched once a week or longer. That's one difference.

We were all probably going straight with the assumption all the way until Ep17's ending which gave us a twist. The ending specifically alerted our consciousness to the possibility of a good (or at least not evil) goal in the Doctor's actions.

Given a potential good to come out of the Doctor, the deontologists in this forum concentrated on his current actions, decided ends don't justify means, and decided to continue. It gets to the point where even the "nice" things he does gets solely a negative interpretation - smokescreen and the like. The possibility that he might genuinely have even a few virtues is lost.

The consequentialists, however, now had to consider the possibility of a Scarlietti goal that's good enough to actually more or less justify (relatively) what he's currently doing, and are now forced to withhold judgment.

I think Nanoha is different because it is so much faster-paced. We see Precia hit Fate. With no attempt to raise our consciousness into any potential benefits in Precia's actions, we see pure black. Then all of a sudden her entire goal is revealed - the pros and cons are weighed instantly (and I think maybe 5 out of 10 million people would think Precia was justified). No middle ground.

[Estavali]

Originally Posted by Guppy

That's fair enough; I was just commenting on the public statements he's made and the "humanitarian" actions he's taken so far. I think it's entirely likely that all of that is just a PR smokescreen to mask his real goals, which remain unknown. Not knowing them, it's impossible to say anything much about those goals right now.

Just a thought on his little speech at the end of #17. I have always considered it as either sarcasm on TSAB, or rather, Regius' "selective righteousness" (especially in view of his possible involvement with Scaglietti), or a threat ("I chose not to hurt any lives" can also be interpreted as "I can also choose otherwise anytime... and who can stop me?". In short, "All your lives are belong to me".)

Add-on: Based on Zest's conversation with Uno, it does seems that he may be involved in the Einherjar project. Probably one of the test-subjects, I believe.

And it seems to me that whether he used his Full Drive attack or not, he doesn't seem to have much life expectancy to begin with...

[Thisguy]

Oh well, I have to note that we're still yet to get the full, concrete revealation of Regius being the Client.
Although with his reaction, evidences and Hayate's speculation all leads to that one point, it's MGLN we're talking about...

So, we still don't know WHY Quint died, or is it confirmed that she died in the Sentoukijin case?

If we're to believe Genya, he doesn't knows how she died.
Although he got an official explaination of "dead in secret mission, it's classified, you won't know anything", he, and most likely Hayate too, thinks Quint was killed because she learned something she shouldn't.

So... No, we still don't know why she died, for sure.

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by DmonHiro

Why do you think Chrono does not fight? He KNOWS he'll be hit with some super-secret one-hit-kill beam the moment he sets foot in the battlefield

Oh, come on, he didn't do that badly back in Nanoha and Nanoha A's. He might well be spared. This whole men get really shafted thing only started in StrikerS.

[Nightengale]

Right... sounds like another unnecessary subplot.

Who knows? Maybe it'll turn out that Jail has Quint's Relic Core or something obtained from her death, and that Quint was killed by TSAB or someithng for seeing Regius's skeletons in his closet? It'd make a decent excuse if Ginga's to defect to Jail's side without the brainwash possibility crap.

Of course, if it comes to that, naturally.

[DmonHiro]

We'we had 3 men do stuff in the first show. And YES, I belive Chrono is strong and should fight more, but they are most likely saving him for the final battle. Woudn't mind seeing Yuuno in action, cause he DOES look pretty cool when he's serios. ALso, his barriers should be among the strongest

[Jimmy C]

You know, I don't get how anyone can pin anything major on Hayate regarding the YnS case. She can't be held responsible for its incarnations prior to herself, her knights were gathering Linker Cores against her orders. Once she gained control of the Book, she cooperated with the TSAB forces to destroy the defense program. I'd say her hands in that case were cleaner than Fate's in the Jewel Seeds case.
Hayate suspects Regius may be Scaglietti's client, but we know something she doesn't, Zest and Lutecia work for the Client, how do they fit into the plan she outlined?
It's possible Scaglietti is presently serving several Clients with tasks that fit his own agenda. By this point in the series, he simply has to be the final mastermind. There's no space left for someone with a larger agenda above him. At least, not with any decent amount of development.

Spoiler for rant on morality:

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

since we hadn't even heard of exactly what his "intent to do good" or even "intent to do evil" is

You don't get it, do you? No villan ever "intends to do evil", except the truely insane ones like the Joker. Their intentions are always good. Sometimes, their intentions are the same as the heroes who oppose them. So what seperates heroes from villans? Villans never question their decisions, "For that Better World, the Price must be Paid" they tell themselves and everyone else. Heroes DO assess their actions, "Is this Right?", "Is the Price Worth It?", "Can I find Another Way?". The moment people lose their ability to assess the consequences of their actions, they start becoming villans.

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

Oh, come on, he didn't do that badly back in Nanoha and Nanoha A's. He might well be spared.

Back then, he was merely a lowly Enforcer. A good one to be sure, but not all that valuable a target. Now, he's an Admiral, a much more important target. Personally, I think the TSAB Navy hands out Admiral ranks too easily. They have so many that they serve as ship captains? Admirals are supposed to be fleet commanders!

[arkhangelsk]

From Aurus' version, my guess is that Hayate actually fibbed a little with Chrono's help to take the maximum possible onto herself to protect her knights. The idea that she'd be able to control her knights so please don't execute them will sound a little hollow given the way they were gathering Linker Cores without even her knowledge. It might be better for all involved if she said she gave the order. She's just being "human" rather than almost unrealistically "saintly" that way. It'd sound a lot more plausible to the judge too.

[Jimmy C]

I don't think they would outright lie. That would get them kicked out of the Bureau if the truth was ever discovered. They more likely steered the subsequent inquiry in the direction they wanted, and away from the things they didn't want. Like how they exonerated Fate after the Jewel Seed incident.

[arkhangelsk]

Well, they aren't going to lie about anything that's actually verifiable, of course. However, something like whether Hayate gave the order or the knights decided to do it all by themselves is pretty hard to verify with any certainty.

[krisslanza]

Man I have to say, watching the part with Vivio at the end is kinda hard to watch. Either the Numbers lack certain emotions, they don't care at all, or what but. Man that was awful, I know I could never stand listening to Vivio cry and scream like that...

[An Hero in Disguise]

Originally Posted by krisslanza

Man I have to say, watching the part with Vivio at the end is kinda hard to watch. Either the Numbers lack certain emotions, they don't care at all, or what but. Man that was awful, I know I could never stand listening to Vivio cry and scream like that...

I kinda thought her screaming wasn't out of place at last

[krisslanza]

It's not out of place, it's just painful to hear ya know? Makes me feel so bad for her T_T

Which is probably what it's intended to do.

[FlareKnight]

Somehow I think JimmyC has the right idea here. Put some spoiler on Morality so people can just scim over it .

Yeah Regius isn't the type to worry about how things could go wrong. He's got that kind've confidence leaving him to believe he's just that damn smart and able to handle the situation.

I'm sure Chrono will make an appearance along the way even if it's just in the final battle. One reason to hang around Carim is to keep reminding people that yes he is still around. Yuuno really should've found a character to latch onto so he wouldn't fade into obscurity.

Nice though that they have gotten clearance to just go after Scag rather than just find relics and hope he tries to steal them. Since right now I doubt he's all that concerned. Probably has the XI relic hidden away so Lutecia will be faithful until the end. Now he's got Vivio and even Ginga so he's probably prepared to move his plans forward.

Vivio crying was definitely meant to send the viewers a message and it did that. Get everyone pretty much polarized into feeling bad for the girl. While at the same time planning the various scenarios that Jail is going to die. My personal favourite is being run through with Zamber form but that's just me.

[An Hero in Disguise]

Originally Posted by FlareKnight

Vivio crying was definitely meant to send the viewers a message and it did that. Get everyone pretty much polarized into feeling bad for the girl. While at the same time planning the various scenarios that Jail is going to die. My personal favourite is being run through with Zamber form but that's just me.

Jail is awesome and must live for the sake of OC thread I hope he's not going down in some stupid way.

[Retsoor]

>> She can't be held responsible [snip], her knights were gathering Linker Cores against her orders.

Hayate was their General, and ultimately it is the General's responsibility. Neither not knowing nor not being able to stop them is an excuse. She should know, and she should lead. Otherwise, goodbye to kitchen.