Relationships In The MSLN Series [SERIOUS DISCUSSION ONLY]

[Preston]

Don't rise to this; it's needless. Arguing about this will get nowhere and achieve nothing; those left now will concede no ground. People like what they will. Best to keep it within like minded groups.

[Comartemis]

Continuing from the StrikerS Opinion Poll thread:

Originally Posted by BPHaru

Maybe I'll be a bit extreme, but in my honest opinion referring to Keroko and his persistent disapproval of Nanofate in the series, I think the NanoFate plot of StrikerS (not fanservice, because it plays a mayor role since season 1 in the series for most people) was the only thing well done that made this series worth watching.

You are being extreme, Haru: first of all you're declaring Keroko to be a NanoFate hater, which he obviously isn't, and second you're assuming that everyone watches MGLN just for NanoFate, which they don't. Like it or not, the only part of the series which revolves around NanoFate is season 1, the rest of the time it's background material. And while I'm all for more NanoFate material, either fanservice or otherwise, I do not want to see it at the expense of the plot, and Keroko's right when he says that the StrikerS NanoFate fanservice interferes with the Nanoha/Vivio dynamic.

[Comartemis]

Is a good fic, I hope that the author keeps writing this... but at least I can read what is done of chapter 3 in the meanwhile (since it isn't in ff.net), so thanks Comartemis.

You can thank me by being a bit less militant on NanoFate, Haru.

Please do not misunderstand: I love NanoFate more than any other pairing--be they canonical, implied, or fan-made--in this series (as a matter of fact, it's one of my favorites in any series, along with Setsuna/Konoka, Naruto/Hinata, and Negi/Harem). But looking back on your previous posts just in these past few pages makes me draw uncomfortable parallels between you and a group that's been plaguing the Ranma 1/2 fandom for a while, namely the infamous Knights of the True Fiancee.

The Knights, for those who are lucky enough to have never encountered them, are a fanatical group of Akane Tendo fans who insist she is the only "true" match for Ranma and go out of their way to harass anyone who declares a preference for other pairings, flaming people in reviews and the forums on FF.net and so on and so forth. Now I doubt you've ever done anything of the like, but the near-religious devotion to NanoFate that you and the rest of the Legion possess (never mind the Shipping Wars) is disturbingly similar to the mindset of the Knights; NanoFate is the most true pairing, or it is supported by canon and is therefore sacred, or it's just "better" than other pairings.

[Evil Rick]

Moved from the StrrikerS overall rate thread

Originally Posted by BPHaru

Spoiler:

Pero no es como si el anime no guiará a la pareja de NanoFate tampoco, después de todo eso es lo que vende aunque aún no lo hayan confirmado de manera absoluta.
Dado el escenario de StrikerS emparejar a Nanoha y Fate con otros personajes puede resultar complicado después de visto lo visto, pero los fans son libres de hacer lo que quieran y modificar el universo a su antojo si así lo desean para incluir hombres en la relación o lo que quieran ^^

Take care and keep smiling

Spoiler for :

Eso mismo dije, asi como hay fanáticos de NanoFate y fanáticos de Yunnoha y de muchos otros pares, 7arcs fue inteligente al dejar eso a eleccion del espectador, croe yo

----------------------

What I was tring to say in the StrikerS overall rate thread, is that in noone of the 3 seasons, sthe romantic relation Nanoha x Fate is confirmed, neither the relation Yunno x Nanoha or any other, people are free to pic up the relationship that is more like it for it, NanoFate, Yunnoha, etc..

[BPHaru]

@Comartemis
The Knights of the True Fiancee? Nice name, and I kind of like Akane x Ranma too, so maybe I can join them...? xD

Originally Posted by Evil Rick

What I was tring to say in the StrikerS overall rate thread, is that in noone of the 3 seasons, sthe romantic relation Nanoha x Fate is confirmed, neither the relation Yunno x Nanoha or any other, people are free to pic up the relationship that is more like it for it, NanoFate, Yunnoha, etc..

There isn't a definitive proof of NanoFate relationship in canon material, but there isn't something that absolutely denies it either, so you can make it work both ways, make other pairing, or whatever you want. The fandom is free, and that's in my opinion the best thing about this series, the fan made material. Even if there isn't a definitive proof of their relation yet, our Nanoha x Fate MegaPack is reaching easily 7000 files (that's more than the images of Nanoha, Fate, and both of them together compiled in danbooru =O).
The fans are great ^^

Cuídense y sigan sonriendo

[Comartemis]

Originally Posted by BPHaru

@Comartemis
The Knights of the True Fiancee? Nice name, and I kind of like Akane x Ranma too, so maybe I can join them...? xD

*Comartemis headdesks repeatedly*

It is perhaps the only way you could become more infamous in the local Shipping communities than you already are.

[BPHaru]

Originally Posted by Comartemis

*Comartemis headdesks repeatedly*

It is perhaps the only way you could become more infamous in the local Shipping communities than you already are.

So, where do I sign up?

[Keroko]

Originally Posted by BPHaru

Taking the amount of fans who draws as a sample of a fanbase seems pretty representative to me, since the capability of drawing doesn't depend of critical factors in this mater, like age or favorite anime genre.
Nanoha and Fate are in the series from the first season, so you need to start counting there, since the people liked them from that point. Otherwise it would be like saying "It's not fair! Wii sells more than PS3 because its cheaper!" or "XBox 360 only sells more than PS3 because it came out a year before!". Excuses, those are competitive advantages and that's how our market works.

The capability of drawing very much depends on one critical factor: The capability of drawing. Your method excludes everyone who can't draw from voting. Secondly, fanart is a subjective method of counting, as there are many fanartists who draw specific art to get commented on positively, and will draw the most popular characters in order to get the most comments, regardless of their own preferences (I know of at least two fanartists who won't draw Yuunoha because they're afraid of getting flamed for it, even though they like the pairing). Third, your console comparison is flawed, as it still does not change the fact that counting fanart is a flawed method of comparing todays popularity.

Originally Posted by BPHaru

I insist, you have enough screen time to do both.

You missed my edit:

I'll admit that doing both is possible with a bit of tweaking in the allocation of screentime, but that still wouldn't solve the issue of the Nanoha/Vivio plot being run into the ground, not to mention it still doesn't solve the other problems such as Hayate's screentime and proper introduction of the numbers and explanations of Jail's goal.

Originally Posted by BPHaru

I will keep thinking that NanoFate plot helped with the Nanoha/Vivio plot, or in the worst case if it was "that bad" for you, you can get something better just by sending Fate to rescue Vivio as well instead of capture a not developed villain, and having a happy family reunion there and another poor fight.

Considering StrikerS blatantly proves that NanoFate interfered with the Nanoha/Vivio plot, I'm curious as to how you're still holding on to that claim.

Sending Fate with Nanoha would accomplish nothing apart from further downgrading both the Nanoha/Vivio plot, as Nanoha's involvement becomes even smaller, and completely erasing what little remained of the Fate/Erio/Caro plot.

Originally Posted by BPHaru

I think this that's mostly a rumor than anything else, in my opinion it's an open scenario as always, yours interpretation of the track doesn't need to be that pessimist, that's only the worst case scenario, but you can interpret the track in other ways, even positive ones . This was discussed at music thread IIRC, so you can check the backlog there if you want. If you ask me, nothing has changed at all ^^

Two characters, one of which is the girls mother and the other her closest friend, noticing a change in their behavior to between the two and blatantly saying they feel more like sisters?

Please tell me what part of the 'they feel more like sisters' is subject to interpretation. You never gave a clear answer to that.

[BPHaru]

Originally Posted by Keroko

The capability of drawing very much depends on one critical factor: The capability of drawing. Your method excludes everyone who can't draw from voting. Secondly, fanart is a subjective method of counting, as there are many fanartists who draw specific art to get commented on positively, and will draw the most popular characters in order to get the most comments, regardless of their own preferences.

Keroko, I don't know if you know the basis of statistics, but it would be good to know them if you are disposed to keep going with this. Taking a sample fanmade works is a way to know what fans want, it doesn't matters if it's what that fan in particular wants, or what other want, because the sample is big enough to ignore particular cases and take a mean.
Also, the console comparison seems pretty appropriate for me, you will not make a game about the life of a game programmer, because even if you love that, the other people won't like it. That's a fact, since what sell most are the popular franchises and innovative/AAA games. It's not the same market, but business are business.

Originally Posted by Keroko

You missed my edit:

I'll admit that doing both is possible with a bit of tweaking in the allocation of screentime, but that still wouldn't solve the issue of the Nanoha/Vivio plot being run into the ground, not to mention it still doesn't solve the other problems such as Hayate's screentime and proper introduction of the numbers and explanations of Jail's goal.

LOL
You want to remove NanoFate and still keep the numbers, and even give them more screen time? Really, that's one of the first thing that should be cut down. You don't need that many enemies, they would work just fine as filler enemies for the final battles if they don't have any development, they were supposed o be an introduction for the fight with the real final enemy, they didn't need to be more than that but the SSX still keeps them...
Just go and watch the final episode of TSR, THAT is the way to make a final fight, if you're going to easily defeat random bad guys before the boss, don't waste precious screen time of something completely irrelevant. Of course there is no wa we can compare the plot of a series of KyoAni with... "this", but 7 Arcs can do better than this, as they did in the first 2 series. Maybe they changed staff or something?

Originally Posted by Keroko

Considering StrikerS blatantly proves that NanoFate interfered with the Nanoha/Vivio plot, I'm curious as to how you're still holding on to that claim.

Sending Fate with Nanoha would accomplish nothing apart from further downgrading both the Nanoha/Vivio plot, as Nanoha's involvement becomes even smaller, and completely erasing what little remained of the Fate/Erio/Caro plot.

Sending Fate as well would has been a nice improvement to the Nanoha/Vivio part to Nanoha/Fate/Vivio ^^
The fans loved the happy family dynamics, but I must recognize that something like that would has been inappropriate for the last fight, since this isn't that kind of series so you don't need to give to much importance to characters relationship, but prioritize action.
Also you don't need to delete Erio/Caro/Numbers or whatever, there is enough screen time for... etc.

Originally Posted by Keroko

Two characters, one of which is the girls mother and the other her closest friend, noticing a change in their behavior to between the two and blatantly saying they feel more like sisters?

Please tell me what part of the 'they feel more like sisters' is subject to interpretation. You never gave a clear answer to that.

We already discussed that in this forum, you can check some backlog in this thread to respond your question with the many ways to interpret that open scenario.
This was also discussed with the people of the Spanish Nanoha communities. The people there is very nice, open minded, and sharp too, they have noticed things from this series that I haven't seen mentioned in any other places of the Internet, so the discussions there are very productive, and the board is lately more active than this one. If a Spanish-speaker is reading this, I give you an invitation to the forums ^^

Cuídense y sigan sonriendo

[Keroko]

Originally Posted by BPHaru

Keroko, I don't know if you know the basis of statistics, but it would be good to know them if you are disposed to keep going with this. Taking a sample fanmade works is a way to know what fans want, it doesn't matters if it's what that fan in particular wants, or what other want, because the sample is big enough to ignore particular cases and take a mean.
Also, the console comparison seems pretty appropriate for me, you will not make a game about the life of a game programmer, because even if you love that, the other people won't like it. That's a fact, since what sell most are the popular franchises and innovative/AAA games. It's not the same market, but business are business.

I know the basis for statistics, and I also know that measuring the total amount of fanart for a source even though the differing elements have as much as four years between them to see how they are doing now will not yield accurate measurements, especially if that means excommunicating large amounts of people (I.E. people who can't draw).

Originally Posted by BPHaru

LOL
You want to remove NanoFate and still keep the numbers, and even give them more screen time? Really, that's one of the first thing that should be cut down. You don't need that many enemies, they would work just fine as filler enemies for the final battles if they don't have any development, they were supposed o be an introduction for the fight with the real final enemy, they didn't need to be more than that but the SSX still keeps them...

No, the last thing you want to do is reduce the numbers screentime even more. One of the primary complaints about StrikerS was that we didn't feel involved with the villains, you even agreed to this yourself. Increasing their screentime and giving more information on their backgrounds would draw us in on their story and their motivations, making the battles involving them emotionally more connecting.

Originally Posted by BPHaru

Sending Fate as well would has been a nice improvement to the Nanoha/Vivio part to Nanoha/Fate/Vivio ^^

No it wouldn't, it would only serve to shrink down Nanoha's involvement even more, derailing the plot even further.

Originally Posted by BPHaru

We already discussed that in this forum, you can check some backlog in this thread to respond your question with the many ways to interpret that open scenario.

All your answers basically walked in circles coming back to 'well I choose to see this in it' you never really told me why. If you have the answer as you claim to have, just say it.

[BPHaru]

Originally Posted by Keroko

I know the basis for statistics, and I also know that measuring the total amount of fanart for a source even though the differing elements have as much as four years between them to see how they are doing now will not yield accurate measurements, especially if that means excommunicating large amounts of people (I.E. people who can't draw).

Taking the amount of fans who draws as a sample of a fanbase seems pretty representative to me, since the capability of drawing doesn't depend of critical factors in this mater, like age or favorite anime genre.
Also the size of the sample is pretty good I think. Without realizing any hard calculus I bet the error is no more of 5~7%. Just out of curiosity a made the same estimation using data from american people instead of Japanese, and for my surprise I got basically the same results. You can go and check deviantart or the polls in this forum if you want a fast idea of popularity.

Originally Posted by Keroko

No, the last thing you want to do is reduce the numbers screentime even more. One of the primary complaints about StrikerS was that we didn't feel involved with the villains, you even agreed to this yourself. Increasing their screentime and giving more information on their backgrounds would draw us in on their story and their motivations, making the battles involving them emotionally more connecting.

That only applies to to main villains, as I said take TSR (I hope you have watched this series, otherwise I recommend it to you) or another good action show as a reference, you don't need unnecessary character development for the bag guys that are in big groups in the series only to introduce the real bad guy, unless if you plan to make something else with the characters, but in StrikerS the anime it wasn't the case, and there were too much villains.

Originally Posted by Keroko

No it wouldn't, it would only serve to shrink down Nanoha's involvement even more, derailing the plot even further.

That's not necessarily the only outcome, we have enough scree.. etc. Also you would involve Fate more, and get a better general result having the three together there, but probably that would cost some of the precious action, so as I said is a bad idea to do something like that for this show, because this is not Kannazuki no Miko.

Originally Posted by Keroko

All your answers basically walked in circles coming back to 'well I choose to see this in it' you never really told me why. If you have the answer as you claim to have, just say it.

"Why"? Why what? I told you how you can interpret the scene in many ways, and that is there, but not for my surprise your "neutrality" towards NanoFate keeps imposing the worst you can get for them.

Cuídate y sigue sonriendo

[Avatar_notADV]

Meh.

There's plenty of room for whichever interpretation you want to go with. Nanoha and Fate could be humping like bunnies every night (though, given their workaholism, probably not). They could have had an innocent fling years before. Maybe nothing actually happened 'cause Fate's too shy and Nanoha's a little dense, or vice versa. Maybe one of them had a thing for Hayate, who knows? There could have, at some point, even been dates with actual guys; the only thing we know is that neither Yuuno nor Chrono were those guys (since the one is way too shy, and the other is happily married...)

Frankly, adding Vivio to the mix does change the dynamic a little.

On top of that, is it tremendously important? It's not like the presence of physical intimacy would bring Fate and Nanoha any -closer-. It's pretty obvious that they're very important to each other, don't keep secrets from the other, yadda yadda; they might as well be in a relationship, since they have the rest of the package already, including co-habiting and sharing a bed. If you look at Hayate, it's clear that while all three of them are close friends, Nanoha and Fate are closer to each other than they are to Hayate (which would be sad if Hayate didn't have her own lil' family, not to mention the lonely burden of command...)

There's also Fate's ersatz family to account for. Whatever you think about Vivio, it's clear that Caro and Elio don't consider Nanoha a "mommy" figure, nor do they even know her that well.

The real impetus behind Fate/Nanoha is a generic "boy, I'd like to see them happy" and the total lack of suitable male alternatives in the show. Yuuno could fill the role, but it would require a change in his character (for the better, probably...) But then who does Fate get? Vice? Acous? Griffith? Meh, I just can't see it.

[Nightengale]

Originally Posted by BPHaru

That's not necessarily the only outcome, we have enough scree.. etc. Also you would involve Fate more, and get a better general result having the three together there, but probably that would cost some of the precious action, so as I said is a bad idea to do something like that for this show, because this is not Kannazuki no Miko.

And what we got was a horrible outcome from the perspective of story-telling and build-up.

And realistically, no 'precious action' would've been sacrificed if they really wanted to do it that way. Jail + Vivio vs Fate + Nanoha would've in fact paced the whole thing better rather than disjoint it into 'we fight our own battles.' But the thematicand actual story approach for their individual meanings would've been lost because NanoFateVivio was obviously never in the equation in the context of a whole story. It was just a small element that got overblown into more than half the series when NanoVivio was supposed to be the central relationship figure.

Originally Posted by BPHaru

"Why"? Why what? I told you how you can interpret the scene in many ways, and that is there, but not for my surprise your "neutrality" towards NanoFate keeps imposing the worst you can get for them.

But you choose to interpret it your way anyway.

Neutrality means having no bias reflected from popularity/fanarts/statistics and trying to be as objective as possible. And objectively, most of us agrees that NanoFate is a possibility, but the story hints to it not actually happening in the current canon timeline, what's with their emotional context constantly reflecting Nanoha's density, friendship in terms, as well as Fate being a Yuunoha shipper.

[BPHaru]

Originally Posted by Nightengale

But you choose to interpret it your way anyway.

As everyone. But I'm not imposing my own interpretation on something ambiguous, or at least not any more.

Originally Posted by Nightengale

And objectively, most of us agrees that NanoFate is a possibility, but the story hints to it not actually happening in the current canon timeline

I think that the relationship is pretty obvious, I see plenty of hints pointing to it, is just a thing to read some backlog. If you ask me 7 Arcs don't have shame selling the yuri component in this show ^^

Originally Posted by Nightengale

as well as Fate being a Yuunoha shipper.

That's just your own interpretation (and probably Keroko's too, since it's the worst possible for NanoFate), in my opinion such scene had Hayate in the middle as always, and for some reason they seem to don't be honest about their relationship in front of her, so the the best you can say is that Hayate is suspecting something because Nanoha doesn't seems to has someone, even if for the fans is pretty obvious xD (someone mentioned that kind of relationship wasn't allowed in the military in our planet, maybe that can be a good excuse).

The last time Nanoha and Fate talked about Yuuno without Hayate in the middle they said they didn't need a third mom xD and the next time Yuuno said to Nanoha that she already had Fate, etc. Everything was already discussed here and you can interpret everything the way you want, so you can check some backlog but the only conclusion you will get is that there is no conclusion, and that's no my opinion, but a fact.

=O

Cuídate y sigue sonriendo

[RadiantBeam]

M'kay, I don't enjoy debating, but I'm just going to stick my head in here for a moment and make a comment of my own about this whole NanoFate thing.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love NanoFate as much as the next person (I also like Yuunoha, but I digress), and I won't deny that it's a major part of the show; even in A's and StrikerS it's in the background, though not as prominently in StrikerS as it was in A's.

However, I'm going to backtrack now. The original concept of Nanoha was born from Lyrical Toybox, a three minute short from the original Triangle Heart game series for those who don't know. Oh, and guess what?

Chrono was the equivalent of Fate in Lyrical Toybox. He was fighting to find his mother's memories and thus served as Nanoha's antagonist/romantic interest. Now, I realize he never serves this role in Nanoha; Fate fills that gap quite nicely. But I must point out:

Lyrical Toybox had its faults, yes, but Fate wasn't a part of the original concept. Obviously, someone thought it worked out fine without her until she was added in, and by that time she strikes me as more of a replacement for Chrono.

Bottom line, to me: yes, NanoFate is a major part of the show. But if you look back, it wasn't always there; heck, it's influence decreases rapidly into what we see in StrikerS. It's quite possible that the show could have been just as much a hit as it was without the NanoFate bonus, if you look back on Lyrical Toybox.

So.. I guess what I'm trying to say is, don't make NanoFate into more than what it is. It's important to the show, yes. In the first season, it was the plot. But the show could have just as easily survived without it.

Of course, in that version Lindy was a pixie, but I digress.

[Keroko]

A lot of people watch Nanoha for the magical girls blasting the crap out of eachother. If they even like it (we've had several people on these forums who were interested, but didn't want to watch it if it was a yuri show), the Yuri-fanservice is just a bonus. It's a core reason to watch for some, but not all people.

Originally Posted by BPHaru

Taking the amount of fans who draws as a sample of a fanbase seems pretty representative to me, since the capability of drawing doesn't depend of critical factors in this mater, like age or favorite anime genre.
Also the size of the sample is pretty good I think. Without realizing any hard calculus I bet the error is no more of 5~7%. Just out of curiosity a made the same estimation using data from american people instead of Japanese, and for my surprise I got basically the same results. You can go and check deviantart or the polls in this forum if you want a fast idea of popularity.

As I said before, the counting of fanart is flawed in several ways. For starters, you're exclusing everyone who can't draw, or doesn't draw Nanoha art. Second, you will also be counting commissions, which do not necessarily reflect the artists own preferences. Third, with a four year head start, the previous cast is bound to have a larger base in drawings, making its count for current popularity inaccurate, it would be like counting votes several times. Fourth, one side being more popular then the other does not mean people don't care about the other characters (which was your initial claim). They just like other characters better. My current top 3 is Nanoha, Vivio, Teana/Cinque (those two tend to balance in third place) but that does not mean I don't care about Erio and Caro. I do, very much so.

Originally Posted by BPHaru

That only applies to to main villains, as I said take TSR (I hope you have watched this series, otherwise I recommend it to you) or another good action show as a reference, you don't need unnecessary character development for the bag guys that are in big groups in the series only to introduce the real bad guy, unless if you plan to make something else with the characters, but in StrikerS the anime it wasn't the case, and there were too much villains.

The numbers where the main villains, alongside Jail, Zest and Lutecia. Sub villains were Regius, the Gadgets and the brains. There weren't 'too many' villains, they just weren't properly fleshed out. You keep bringing up Second Raid, allow me to bring up Towards the Terra, a show of 24 episodes with a cast of over 30, which shows that having a latge cast is perfectly doable and can still bring about an epic story. 'too large a cast' is not an excuse, the bad writing and management of screentime is what is at fault here.

Originally Posted by BPHaru

That's not necessarily the only outcome, we have enough scree.. etc. Also you would involve Fate more, and get a better general result having the three together there, but probably that would cost some of the precious action, so as I said is a bad idea to do something like that for this show, because this is not Kannazuki no Miko.

The story was supposed to focus on Nanoha and Vivio's relationship, as the final battle shows. Adding Fate to the mix would downgrade Nanoha's involvment, as you have an additional character with an additional opinion on the matter. What do you make Fate say? How will you make her say it? I've tried writing a scenario with the final battle involving an OC of mine added to the mix, and no matter what I tried, it kept ruining the Nanoha/Vivio dynamic, as the battle was about Nanoha saving her daughter, the story very much shows that it was supposed to have been about Nanoha and Vivio. How would you insert Fate, and yet keep the Nanoha/Vivio dynamic?

And again, you abandon the Fate/Erio/Caro plot.

Originally Posted by BPHaru

"Why"? Why what? I told you how you can interpret the scene in many ways, and that is there, but not for my surprise your "neutrality" towards NanoFate keeps imposing the worst you can get for them.

Ah, sorry, my mistake. I used to wrong term. The term I should have used was 'how?' You never really explained how you can interpret 'Fate is more like an older sister now' as 'nothing has changed' That's a fine example of contradictio in terminis there, something very much did change, this much can't be denied, that's a fact. The characters are even talking about that change.

How much has changed though, that's still debatable. We know that Fate and Vivio's relationship has changed, its blatantly stated that it has by no less then two characters deeply involved with them, but no mention is made of Nanoha and Fate's relationship, so that is still relatively on the same level, (level depending on personal interpretation).

As for my neutrality, my neutrality means approaching every development objectively, and objectively something did change. Fate is actively taking a distance in raising Vivio, and now has a more sisterly relationship with her. That much is blatantly stated, and hardly subject to interpretation.

What I am not doing, but what you are making of it, is using it to bomb NanoFate. I am merely saying that Fate-mama is no longer a reality. There is no reason for that to affect NanoFate badly, unless you had fantasies of Nanoha and Fate raising Vivio together, but Fate going starship-hopping rather then staying with Nanoha torped that anyway (coincidentally, Vita did stay on Mid and even became Nanoha's co-worker to keep an eye on her. Go suggestive NanoVita!), and there are plenty of ways to make it affect NanoFate positively rather then denying it. This is one of the rare times we've had members of the cast actually say something about relationships rather then picturing it on the screen and leaving it open to suggestion. I'm not about to squander that.

[BPHaru]

Originally Posted by Keroko

A lot of people watch Nanoha for the magical girls blasting the crap out of eachother. If they even like it (we've had several people on these forums who were interested, but didn't want to watch it if it was a yuri show), the Yuri-fanservice is just a bonus. It's a core reason to watch for some, but not all people.

Of course there are people who don't care about yuri, but still there is a lot of people watching this series only because they wanted to try a good yuri series, and even if I think that this series in general goes lower than the average in terms of quality, I think that it may be around the the mean in therms quality considering only yuri anime. But anyway this being a good o bad series doesn't matters too much, but should already know that the yuri fandom from this series is one of the biggest, if not the biggest of all the Japanese series, so many people only watch it because there are a lot of fans who like it too, and produce nice fanmade material.

Originally Posted by Keroko

As I said before, the counting of fanart is flawed in several ways. For starters, you're exclusing everyone who can't draw, or doesn't draw Nanoha art. Second, you will also be counting commissions, which do not necessarily reflect the artists own preferences. Third, with a four year head start, the previous cast is bound to have a larger base in drawings, making its count for current popularity inaccurate, it would be like counting votes several times. Fourth, one side being more popular then the other does not mean people don't care about the other characters (which was your initial claim). They just like other characters better. My current top 3 is Nanoha, Vivio, Teana/Cinque (those two tend to balance in third place) but that does not mean I don't care about Erio and Caro. I do, very much so.

First: I explained you TWO times that there are no critical factors which depends of the capability of drawing, so there are no flawless there.
Second: I already explained that, in the mean it tends to the popularity level of the whole fan base, that's what we're measuring, not the preferences of each artist.
Third: This is hard to explain, and also debatable, so I'll skip this point, but you may have many approach to this problem depending on what you want to measure.
Fourth: Yeah, you're right, that was my mistake. Popularity level is directly proportional to how much importance the people give to the characters, but there are other factors too, for example an episodic antagonist character with a controversial role may get the attention of the people and they would want what happens with him even if they like other characters way more. So not being popular != people don't care about them, my mistake.

Originally Posted by Keroko

The numbers where the main villains, alongside Jail, Zest and Lutecia. Sub villains were Regius, the Gadgets and the brains. There weren't 'too many' villains, they just weren't properly fleshed out. You keep bringing up Second Raid, allow me to bring up Towards the Terra, a show of 24 episodes with a cast of over 30, which shows that having a latge cast is perfectly doable and can still bring about an epic story. 'too large a cast' is not an excuse, the bad writing and management of screentime is what is at fault here.

I think that "where" in italics was supposed to be a "were"... Am I right?
For me the numbers were just characters of the filler type villain, we didn't know too much about them, and in general terms their function was very secondary and easily replaceable, so they didn't reach my limit to consider them important to the what was supposed to be the plot of this season.
I haven't watched Towards the Terra, but 30 characters is still easy to manage in that number of episodes considering that your average high quality series should has around 20 characters if you consider 26 episodes animes like Clannad… but StrikerS trying to use 50 even beat Negima xD

Originally Posted by Keroko

The story was supposed to focus on Nanoha and Vivio's relationship, as the final battle shows. Adding Fate to the mix would downgrade Nanoha's involvment, as you have an additional character with an additional opinion on the matter. What do you make Fate say? How will you make her say it? I've tried writing a scenario with the final battle involving an OC of mine added to the mix, and no matter what I tried, it kept ruining the Nanoha/Vivio dynamic, as the battle was about Nanoha saving her daughter, the story very much shows that it was supposed to have been about Nanoha and Vivio. How would you insert Fate, and yet keep the Nanoha/Vivio dynamic?

And again, you abandon the Fate/Erio/Caro plot.

I said that you could put Fate in there too, but that’s not the only thing that you should do to make it work, of course just putting her in their battle wouldn’t work well, you need more development, and it wouldn’t be a Nanoha/Vivio scene anymore, so it wouldn’t a downgrade to the scene but changed for something different, it would be a general improvement if you do it right but I insist that it’s not a good idea because this show isn’t about this and if you want to change something then it should be something to upgrade the action of the series, since it’s the main problem of the show.
Also you don’t need to shaft Fate/Erio/Caro, there is enough screentime... etc.

Originally Posted by Keroko

Ah, sorry, my mistake. I used to wrong term. The term I should have used was 'how?' You never really explained how you can interpret 'Fate is more like an older sister now' as 'nothing has changed' That's a fine example of contradictio in terminis there, something very much did change, this much can't be denied, that's a fact. The characters are even talking about that change.

Because you don’t need to interpret it literally, not even Vivio said that, and Hayate was there. When the happy family were to be together again and Vivio is with them and she got the same conclusion as you, then go back here and tell me, but I guarantee you that I’ll know before you ^^
Also I don't think they would make a drastic change in a Sound Stage, since not so many people accesses to them compared to the amount of people who watched the show, that's why they are usually filler-like material. I bet our MegaPacks got more downloads than the amount of unit sold in average by a sound stage, someone have numbers?
If you want to see how to interpret that scene in not the worst way, check some backlog here, or go to coyuhi if you can read Spanish.

Originally Posted by Keroko

There is no reason for that to affect NanoFate badly, unless you had fantasies of Nanoha and Fate raising Vivio together

And that’s the most beautiful thing about them in my opinion, it isn’t not the OMG LOVE BUNNIES ETC or anything else, but the family concept. It’s normal for families to be separated due to work, especially if the 2 of them work, but I don’t doubt that when they will be together with Vivio when they can, so let’s see what they do for season 4 ^^

BTW, I noticed a concurrent mistake in your grammar: you are using “then” instead of “than”; like in “rather than”.

Cuídense y sigan sonriendo

[Nightengale]

Originally Posted by BPHaru

I haven't watched Towards the Terra, but 30 characters is still easy to manage in that number of episodes considering that your average high quality series should has around 20 characters if you consider 26 episodes animes like Clannad… but StrikerS trying to use 50 even beat Negima xD

30 well-developed characters from scratch in 24 episodes. I'll add another 10 to that number more if you consider those who are not well developed, on par with characters like Griffith and Lucino. Besides, it's not about just characters. Terra build and developed the universe and dystopian setting of 3 individual 'worlds' while developing these characters. On the other hand, Mid-childa felt like a bare-bone 'setting' with a tower, blocks of abandoned districts, etc.

StrikerS barely developed 10 characters properly in 26 episodes, even after factoring in S1 and A's. The scale is just incomparable.

tl;dr StrikerS is a fine example of horrible storyboarding, no 2-ways about it.

[Keroko]

Originally Posted by BPHaru

First: I explained you TWO times that there are no critical factors which depends of the capability of drawing, so there are no flawless there.

And I explained to you two times that the ability to draw itself is a critical factor that excludes votes.

Originally Posted by BPHaru

Second: I already explained that, in the mean it tends to the popularity level of the whole fan base, that's what we're measuring, not the preferences of each artist.

So, say I was an artist, and someone asks me to draw a piece of art of... say... Vampire Knight, a show I watched a couple of episodes of, but don't really like. I draw a nice piece for that person because I like him, does that mean I suddenly like Vampire Knight?

Originally Posted by BPHaru

Third: This is hard to explain, and also debatable, so I'll skip this point, but you may have many approach to this problem depending on what you want to measure.

Yes, and popularity isn't one of them. A slightly more accurate measurement would be to take all artwork drawn since the release of StrikerS, and compare that. For an even higher level of accuracy, you'd probably have to count all artwork drawn since Erio and Caro's introduction. Anything drawn before that is irrelevant, because it doesn't take Erio and Caro in as a factor.

Originally Posted by BPHaru

I think that "where" in italics was supposed to be a "were"... Am I right?

Yeah, it was typo on my part. Mozilla spellcheck makes you lazy.

Originally Posted by BPHaru

For me the numbers were just characters of the filler type villain, we didn't know too much about them, and in general terms their function was very secondary and easily replaceable, so they didn't reach my limit to consider them important to the what was supposed to be the plot of this season.

Well, from an editorial point of view, you can clearly see they were supposed to be much more integrated then they were, due to the lack of background. They were similar to many of the cast, ranging from Subaru all the way up to the Wolkenritter and even Fate (Tre's 'but in a way, he's your and that boy's father' scene? They sooo had to have done something more with that)

Originally Posted by BPHaru

I haven't watched Towards the Terra, but 30 characters is still easy to manage in that number of episodes considering that your average high quality series should has around 20 characters if you consider 26 episodes animes like Clannad… but StrikerS trying to use 50 even beat Negima xD

Your calculations are a tad off.

Old characters returning in StrikerS: 10

New characters introduced: 27

Side characters that appeared with little relevance to the story: 6

Total characters: 43.

Total characters relevant to the plot: 37

Now, those irrelevant characters don't really need development. They add little to the plot, so them just 'being there' is fine. The old characters already had plenty of development, and already are shaped characters, so you don't have to expend too much screentime developing them from the go. That leaves 27 fresh characters that need to be developed.

Of course, we also need to factor plot development, in StrikerS this was of particular importance for Nanoha, Hayate and Fate, so we'll shift them to the 'new batch' group for purpose of development. That leaves us with a cast of 30 that are in need of development, and that's even counting those who only need minimal development to serve their function.

30. I may have missed a character here or there, but that's the pretty much the same amount as Towards the Terra.

Originally Posted by BPHaru

I said that you could put Fate in there too, but that’s not the only thing that you should do to make it work, of course just putting her in their battle wouldn’t work well, you need more development, and it wouldn’t be a Nanoha/Vivio scene anymore, so it wouldn’t a downgrade to the scene but changed for something different, it would be a general improvement if you do it right but I insist that it’s not a good idea because this show isn’t about this and if you want to change something then it should be something to upgrade the action of the series, since it’s the main problem of the show.
Also you don’t need to shaft Fate/Erio/Caro, there is enough screentime... etc.

But the Fate/Erio/Caro was Fate's plotline, if you drop that from her final battle (which you would, because your scenario is a Fate/Nanoha/Vivio one, giving no room for Fate/Erio/Caro as either would mess up the other if stuffed together) you would be abandoning their plotline before it is finished, that's bad writing.

And turning it into a Fate/Nanoha/Vivio scene would still not solve the issue of Nanoha's insecurities never being displayed prior to the battle. Unless you want to erase that too, though that would make one wonder where on earth that plot is going.

Originally Posted by BPHaru

Because you don’t need to interpret it literally, not even Vivio said that, and Hayate was there. When the happy family were to be together again and Vivio is with them and she got the same conclusion as you, then go back here and tell me, but I guarantee you that I’ll know before you ^^

Again: Nanoha said that their relationship was changing. Unless you're suggesting that Nanoha's relationship with Fate is so shallow that she can't even recognize a change between Fate and her own daughter, I'm having a hard time figuring out why I should not take this literally.

And while on the subject, 'older sister relationship' aside, Nanoha also said that Fate was consciously keeping her distance from Vivio. That is in no way subject to interpretation. It's a literal description of a consious action.

Originally Posted by BPHaru

Also I don't think they would make a drastic change in a Sound Stage, since not so many people accesses to them compared to the amount of people who watched the show, that's why they are usually filler-like material. I bet our MegaPacks got more downloads than the amount of unit sold in average by a sound stage, someone have numbers?

Not so many non-Japanese fans have access to the Sound Stages, no, but Japanese fans do. And as StrikerS shows by the heavy amount of subjects they used from the A's Sound Stages, such changes are very much canon.

Originally Posted by BPHaru

If you want to see how to interpret that scene in not the worst way, check some backlog here, or go to coyuhi if you can read Spanish.

Unfortunately, I'm Dutch, and not knowledgeable in Spanish at all.

Originally Posted by BPHaru

BTW, I noticed a concurrent mistake in your grammar: you are using “then” instead of “than”; like in “rather than”.

I do? *checks usage of than* Huh, and here I was thinking that than was a misspelling of then. Thanks for correcting. I doubt I'll ever get used to it considering how deeply its ingrained into my system (not to mention its usage seems to vary too), but thanks for the help.

[Comartemis]

And I explained to you two times that the ability to draw itself is a critical factor that excludes votes.

Just to make this perfectly clear since Haru seems to be having trouble wrapping his head around it:

I cannot draw, and lots of other people can't either. So because we cannot draw or choose not to draw Nanoha fanart, our opinions as to who is the best character suddenly do not count for anything? Bullshit. Now go back to the drawing board and find another way of measuring character popularity, preferably one that depends solely on a person possessing an opinion.