I just finished watching
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha the Movie 2nd A's.
Before I get into specific detail, let me just say...
Magnificent movie.
As a big screen extravaganza, it is a spectacularly superb Starlite-breaking film! I am truly impressed with how this feels like such a smooth, gorgeous, seamless, and "larger than life" film. Every person on the production staff off this film should take pride in making a movie that utilizes the animated film format to its maximum potential.
Now, that's not to say I'm without quibbles. This review would be pretty bland if I had no quibbles.
But those quibbles are very much secondary to a tremendously terrific total package that was like a breathtaking reminder of why I fell in love with
this franchise, and
this character (Nanoha Takamachi) in the first place.
Now, I make this review without having read any other movie review on this thread. I want to put my immediate reaction out there, completely uncomprimised by any opinion or specific line of critique other than my own. But later on, I'll read through this thread, to see what other people think of it.
But for now, I will list out my pros and my cons. Let's start with the pros:
The Pros
1. First and foremost, this movie is a streaking sparkling success as an an animated feature film presentation. I think that movies generally should feel like "an event". They generally should feel special, and have some standout spectacle to them. They should have audaciously engrossing plots, but also ones that are not hard to follow. Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha the Movie 2nd A's achieves this as well as any animated movie I've ever seen. And in fact, it's not far off the experience I had with The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
2. Hayate and the Wolkenritter. In the original TV anime version of this narrative, I sympathized with them, and I felt sorry for Hayate. But the movie was just so much better in this respect, I felt. Their characterization just felt more solid here. Signum in particular just felt so rich and strong here, carrying herself with this appealing bushido honor and also wearing her practical but deeply sympathizing heart on her sleeve.
My heart truly went out to Hayate and the Wolkenritter in this movie, so much so that I think I even sympathized with their position more than I did Nanoha, Fate, and Chrono's. I'm not sure what precisely accounts for this difference, as my memory of the original TV anime is somewhat hazy now. But I think one factor is that we get to meet Hayate very early on in the film, and this truly did feel like
her story from the very beginning. Whereas in the TV anime it really did start out being more about Nanoha and Fate's reunion which later transitioned to being Hayate's story.
3. The action scenes were a frantically fabulously
fantastic spectacle of fireworks and gripping combat. I do have slight quibbles here that I'll get to in the cons, but on the whole, I feel the action scenes in this movie totally
blew away the action scenes in the original TV anime (of course, it's not exactly a fair comparison
).
4. Just the right amount of focus on the Nanoha/Fate relationship. It's obvious that the two girls are best friends and love each other as friends (and possibly more at some point). However, it never felt overly dragged out or sappy to a fault to me. At the end of the day, they're both very practical and serious-minded young girls who are astoundingly mature for their age.
5. The transformation scenes. I was a bit disappointed when Nanoha's first transformation during the initial Vita ambush was made in a blink of an eye, but the later very elaborated transformations for both Nanoha and Fate pretty much made up for it. I was relieved to see that each of them (and later Hayate as well) were given excellently elaborate and magically marvelous transformation scenes. For a bit there, I was worried that Nanoha would actually get one-upped by Madoka Magica in this area, but that looks unlikely now!
6. Gil Graham was a very good morally complex character, and I don't want to take anything away from him there, but I have to admit, I only thought about him once or twice while watching the movie. Ultimately, writing him and his catgirls out of the plot was probably for the best. I'm not sure if this narrative would have been as seamless and smooth otherwise.
7. Certain specific changes were real improvements. The gift-giving scene where Nanoha and Fate end up unexpectedly meeting their Wolkenritter rivals was
much better handled here than it was in the TV anime, I think. In the TV anime it just felt awkward. Here, it had this great "
Oh shit!" feel to it that was quite powerful and fun!
The classroom scenes also felt a bit more realistic, well-refined, and elaborate here. Even the little bit where Fate gave her eraser to a female classmate was a nice touch. This movie in general had a not of "nice touches" to it. I honestly could spend hours and hours just talking about all of the little "nice touch" improvements this made over the TV anime. But that would make this review too long, so I'll probably save it for later.
8. Nanoha vs. Reinforce was one particular action scene that really stood out to me. I mean...
Wow. This felt like a total clash of the titans. It had all the intensity and
raw, palpable power on display that I see in a great Superman vs. Darkseid struggle. Just totally awesome!
9. But Fate had one equally awesome moment where she arrived
just in the nick of time to save Nanoha from that one insane attack by Reinforce.
10. The beginning, and the ending. Having Rein introduce and end the film was simply a stroke of genius. Major kudos to whoever came up with that idea. Hayate's near-death scene was also such a STRONG scene to start off with. And the final scenes of the movie were truly beautiful and heartwarming. Absolutely lovely.
Since I'm sure my effusive praise is probably boring people by now, let's get to the cons.
The Cons
1. What a tease they did with Lindy, man.
Honestly, this was probably my biggest disappointment the entire film. Just when I thought I'd get to see what Chrono's mom could do in action, we cut to her calling in the cavalry (Nanoha and Fate). I love Nanoha and Fate, but seriously, it's a real shame we didn't get a couple minutes of Lindy kicking ass.
2. There was a bit too much crying for me. I think they overdid it a bit.
3. I still have some misgivings over the initial action scene. For fighting choreography and sheer technical execution, it was pretty much flawless. But in some ways, it lacked some of the... charming finesse and
heart that the same scene in the TV anime had. I still think that Fate saving Nanoha from Vita at the last second and saying to Vita with beautiful confidence and dramatic delivery "We're friends" was a more emotionally rewarding bit to me than any moment in the initial action scene of this movie. I also missed seeing Fate vs. Vita (more on this in a bit). And I suspect that some disliked Yuuno being cut out of this scene. I admit that it would have been nice if he could have been there. Here is probably the one action scene where I'm a bit iffy on the changes that were made. I think they could have had the best of both worlds with a little bit more tweaking. But to be fair, this really is a highly subjective quibble on my part.
4. They stuck a bit too hard to Nanoha vs. Vita and Fate vs. Signum. It would have been nice to see them "trade partners" at least once, if even just for a couple minutes. This is especially since Fate never went directly against Vita in the initial action scene like she did in the TV anime.
5. The destruction of the Book of Darkness Defense Program dragged a bit for me. Given that they played this almost
exactly like how they did in the TV anime, that took just about all the suspense out of this final portion of the final action scene for me. Given that lack of suspense, and what point this was at in the movie, I have to admit that I wanted them to kind of speed through this part. But I guess for people that never saw the initial TV anime, it might have been better the way it was done here.
6. Arisa and Suzuka were slightly shafted in this film. I can understand why they were removed from the final action scene, and I don't contest that. But I felt a short scene should have been given to them to kind of make up for that. Personally, I probably would have shaved off a couple minutes of the final action scene in order to squeeze in a scene with Nanoha, Fate, Arisa, Suzuka, and Nanoha's family near/at the end of the film.
7. Nanoha's 'white devil' bit felt natural in the TV anime, but it felt
really forced and awkward here. Nanoha's sad, shame-ridden face that just pouts "I hate playing the villain..." with puppy-dog eyes and everything made this bit feel 1000 times more sad and 1000 times less badass than it did in the TV anime. While it is a popular bit, I honestly think it should have been edited out somewhat. With this in mind, maybe it's good that Zod reportedly
isn't going to be saying "Kneel before Zod" in the upcoming Man of Steel movie, lol. Classic lines can fall flat sometimes.
And that pretty much sums up the cons. There's nothing else really worth mentioning there. And truth be told, there's loads of other little 'nice touches' I could get into, but I'll save that for later.
I wavered between 9/10 and 10/10 for this film, but I eventually went with
10/10. This is a piece of animated film artwork that truly deserves it, in spite of what quibbles I had.
Welcome back to the big screen, Nanoha!
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