Nanoha Manga Discussion

[Koveras Alvane]

Originally Posted by Kaijo

In short, mages are not like Jedi, army soldiers, etc.

I agree. And btw, you've just answered Nightengale why the same thing as in Clone Wars is not possible in Nanoha. ^^

Originally Posted by Tiresias

It would be nice if they could sometimes show their telepathic communication Ghost in the Shell style though. It's just a small touch, but seeing the leader actually issuing some orders in the field would be neat

That is implied to have happened during the previous team battle session in ViVid, btw, when Hayate coordinated her team's actions and mowed the opposition down. Still, it would be nice to see at least that much in the actual series...

[Nanya01]

Originally Posted by Goldsmith

What's cover gonna do? Is any amount of cover really going to help against any of these spells? Besides, they would dodge the spells if they could.

I honestly think that they don't dodge at all, even if they could, just to show off "hey, here's how tough I am, you can't beat that."

Seriously, back in A's, Signum just tanked one of Fate's attacks instead of dodging it or countering it, just to show off how out-matched Fate was.

Back in S1, Fate blocked a Divine Buster, even though it left her badly weakened in the process "If she can take one of my attacks, I can take this." was what she said.

*Shakes head* Seriously, is it so wrong to ask for someone to DODGE?!

Back when Vivio and Nanoha fought, Nanoha over-powered Vivio's attacks, Vivio wasn't there, having shifted and DODGED Nanoha's attack to end up behind her. What happened next? Nanoha ended up on the ground.

I mean, it just SCREAMS against everything I know when it comes to fighting. "Dodge what you can, block what you can't, that way you don't waste energy taking hits you shouldn't be."

EDIT: I'm no professional fighter. I've not been in any bar brawls or street fights. But I've taken amateur wrestling back when I was in school. My whole ability to wrestle came as "let them make a move, dodge the attack, then get them to the ground". Really sucked when I went against someone who did the same as me.

[Goldsmith]

They don't dodge it because they can't. Fate said "A direct hit! But...I can endure it. After all, that girl withstood my attack!" That implies that she couldn't have dodged it.

[Nanya01]

Originally Posted by Goldsmith

They don't dodge it because they can't. Fate said "A direct hit! But...I can endure it. After all, that girl withstood my attack!" That implies that she couldn't have dodged it.

Can't dodge? I've seen them dodge attacks all throughout the series. Just not very frequently. Oh, and when Fate said that, Nanoha was in BINDS! Nanoha at least has an EXCUSE as to why she didn't dodge.

Don't forget, the first thing that Fate was teaching Erio and Caro was to "Find cover from attacks, and if that fails, dodge".

But, we don't see it very often and most of the time, people just prefer to block/tank blows.

And you saw how that finally caught up to them in both ViVid and Force.

[Kaijo]

When you watch a show like Nanoha, you have to be really careful about trying to understand the timeframes that things happen in. A lot of things are extended or shown certain ways just to boost the emotional effect.

Take, for instance, the time in A's when Nanoha blasts Vita with Divine Buster Extension. According to the clock, 6 seconds pass between Nanoha firing and it striking Vita, which should be plenty of time to dodge. Instead, we are treated to a deer-in-the-headlights look from Vita. Seems pretty stupid, eh?

The six second shot of the beam was purely for effect. It's sorta like the matrix-effect, or bullet time, when things are slowed down in order to enhance the "coolness" of the effect. In real time, I just assume that Nanoha's Divine Buster moves fast enough that you cannot dodge it in time.

And of course, at other times, binding your opponent before firing is also a useful tactic in the Nanohaverse. Also, mages have been shown to be able to guide their shots, so dodging might not be as useful, and instead shielding against the attack to destroy it would be a tough call on a situation-by-situation basis. "Do I dodge this and have it hit my backside, assuming I can outrun it? Or do I just put up a shield to block it and get it out of the way?"

Edit: Nanoha/Fate fight that people bring up is a great example. Fate had just seen that Nanoha was controling her shots and having them home in on her. The second wave of Divine Shooter orbs she outright attacked and destroyed instead of dodging, because she realized dodging was pointless. So when Nanoha fired her buster, Fate could very well have been thinking that dodging was pointless, because Nanoha would simply twist it to catch up to her. She made a judgment call that shielding against it was the better option.

[tyronoa]

I didn't quite read the last few posts but I seem to remember pretty clearly Nanoha used bind on Fate in the MGLN and Vivio in StrikerS before she unleashed her SLB. That probably explains why you don't see them dodging it.

[Tiresias]

Originally Posted by Goldsmith

They don't dodge it because they can't. Fate said "A direct hit! But...I can endure it. After all, that girl withstood my attack!" That implies that she couldn't have dodged it.

I forgot how it went in the original series, but in the movie, Fate couldn't dodge because Nanoha put a binding spell on her. It would be ridiculous for fragile speedster Fate, of all people, to absorb damage instead of avoiding it when she can

As for the whole dodging thing: except for the Signum example, I always try to think that they actually do occasionally dodge in open air combat, it's just that the animators didn't have the budget to show it Macross-style

[Sheba]

I honestly think that they don't dodge at all, even if they could, just to show off "hey, here's how tough I am, you can't beat that."

Seriously, back in A's, Signum just tanked one of Fate's attacks instead of dodging it or countering it, just to show off how out-matched Fate was.

Back in S1, Fate blocked a Divine Buster, even though it left her badly weakened in the process "If she can take one of my attacks, I can take this." was what she said.

*Shakes head* Seriously, is it so wrong to ask for someone to DODGE?!

Back when Vivio and Nanoha fought, Nanoha over-powered Vivio's attacks, Vivio wasn't there, having shifted and DODGED Nanoha's attack to end up behind her. What happened next? Nanoha ended up on the ground.

I mean, it just SCREAMS against everything I know when it comes to fighting. "Dodge what you can, block what you can't, that way you don't waste energy taking hits you shouldn't be."

For a franchise that boasted about breaking lots of tropes, it sure is content with rolling in his own collection of tropes that are arguably no better than what we accused Sailor Moon, Naruto, Bleach and Dragon Ball of.

EDIT: Also, you may think that everyone would try to find counters and counter-measures to each other! But nooooooooooooooooo.

[Nanya01]

@Kaijo, yeah, I can see that. Stuff does fly faster than we can see, but these people are supposedly able to see it.

And we've seen in BOTH ViVid AND Force how blocking isn't helping anymore.

Einhart was beating up EVERYONE until Nanoha (apparently, I can't tell from the previews) blasted her for massive damage. Nove, other mages, Vivio all fell to Einhart, and they were ALL practicing Strike Arts (magical martial arts). You'd think that there would be counters or dodging skills in there.

In Force, well, Signum's the end result. Granted, Cypha was moving pretty dammed fast if she's one panel one place and in another panel slicing Signum up like a turkey.

[Kaijo]

Let's analyze the Nanoha/Fate fight.

Fate's Photon Lancers are straight shots, and when Nanoha unveils her Divine Shooter, she assumes the same... so she tries to dodge them only to realize they are following her and gaining on her, forcing her to ultimately block them.

This buys Nanoha time to set up another wave, and Fate has a split second to react. She knows dodging is no good, so she busts out the scythe and destroys four of them while diving straight in to attack and put pressure on Nanoha. Her one mistake was dodging the fifth shot, which attacked her backside and allowed Nanoha to make another attack that happened so fast Fate couldn't even get a shield up in time to block.

So what has Fate learned? Nanoha can guide her shots which are faster than Fate can move. So when Nanoha fires her Divine Buster, Fate is probably thinking "My scythe can't destroy that, and if I dodge, she'll probably just guide it wherever I go anyway, so my only option is just to block it like she blocked mine."

We have the luxury of sitting back and analyzing combat frame by frame, but when you're in the midst of combat, you don't have all the time in the world. All you can do is pick an option (block? Dodge? Attempt to counter?) and hope it was the right one, and your opponent wasn't setting you up. As Fate learned, if you dodge you can end up losing sight of your opponent which allows them an opening to set up another attack.

Also, it's tough to show combat happening at the speed which would negate dodging anyway. If they did, it would be too fast for us to really follow sometimes, and make it less interesting. The Matrix got around it with Bullet-Time.

DBZ, which frequently has fighters moving so fast that you can't even see them that it's really hard to tell when someone can dodge something or not. I mean, I see people dodging punches and kicks, so why doesn't everyone dodge punches and kicks?

Answer: Because it only seems like they have time to dodge from our viewpoint, when in reality, things are happening faster than that. And sometimes, someone just makes a bad call; it happens. No one is perfect.

Edit: To Nanya:

Blocking is beneficial because you can keep your attention on your opponent. I can keep the pressure up on you if I just block your attack and keep attacking, rather than dodge at an angle and be forced to come in again. In combat, it's important to keep pressure up and not give your opponent time to think and plan, and if you can do that and keep them on the defensive, then you control the flow of the fight.

[Arkeus]

Ok, a few things:

In MGLN Nanoha/Fate fight, Fae thought she had won and then Nanoha used a bind herself on Fate no? maybe i am misremembering things...

Nanoha characters not dodging is completely untrue btw, and *not dodging* SLB is even more of a fallacy, as Nanoha pretty much never uses SLB against a target that can move.

A few details on the show that come to minds about other fights :

In StrikerS, Hayata used her diabolic emission to lure Quattro/Sein out, and then Nanoha and Fight used two attack to create a radius K.O effect which would have worked *unless a third party hadn't used a very high-end high-speed move to take them away* (so, basically, they do use Dodging).

In the Climax of the series, Nanoha uses W.A.S even though she though she was going to fight Quattro head on, and then when fighting Vivio she was forced to pretend to be losing *and* in using binds, as Vivio was pretty much immune to anything and Quattro was watching.

When Nanoha did attack, she used a Divine buster to create an wide area explosion where Quattro was and then used stronger Binds to have time to use SLB on Vivio.

The Nove/Ein fight is actually pretty well done i found, as Ein wants to show she is THE STRONGEST and Nove just wants to catch her, so it makes sens Nove doesn't care about losing as long as she can put a tracer on Ein do enough damage for her to not run far.

Oh, and people were crying about Nove Worfing then, same as Signum now.

Basically, i don't agree about Characters not being told to dodge or not dodging in Nanoha, as that's pretty much what they always try to do.

Hell, tea was scolded in part (beyond her attacking an officer after the exercise was) becaus she wanted to show how GAR she was in close combat when she clearly is much better suited for mid-range.

Another good example is the Signum_Nanoha fight, where Nanoha trieds to stop Signum's momentum with Feints and Binds and Signum uses her very high-speed casting to surprise Nanoha and go to hth.

[RadiantBeam]

Originally Posted by Nya~n

can't say i didn't see it coming. to be exact, i already expected it to go down that rank, filthy, grimey old alley. I guess in that sense, it does deliver and does not disappoint?

I suppose I was too optimistic, in that sense. Vivid started out strongly, so I had hopes for it, but those hopes have pretty much died by this point. On the plus side, I never expected all that much from the movie manga, so the disappointment on that end has been slight.

[Rising Dragon]

For the Nanoha/Fate battle: after Nanoha tanked through Fate's final attack, Nanoha shot her with a Divine Buster, which was blocked with a Round Shield. During this time frame, when Fate cast her shield spell, she could've dodged instead--with how slow the spell was getting up and the second delay before it hit, there was plenty of time, especially with how fast Fate is in battle. After the attack ended, Fate was exhausted from holding off the spell, so she has a bit of an excuse there, and then she got binded, and befriended.

Hope that clarifies some things.

[Kaijo]

Originally Posted by Rising Dragon

For the Nanoha/Fate battle: after Nanoha tanked through Fate's final attack, Nanoha shot her with a Divine Buster, which was blocked with a Round Shield. During this time frame, when Fate cast her shield spell, she could've dodged instead--with how slow the spell was getting up and the second delay before it hit, there was plenty of time, especially with how fast Fate is in battle.

I kinda addressed this, but she had just seen how Nanoha's attacks tended to have homing capabilities, and were faster than she was. We know that the Divine Buster doesn't, but Fate might be so sure about it. Thus, she made a quick decision to straight up block it instead.

You might able to continually dodge homing missiles, but there's always a chance that sooner or later, you'll slip up. And in the meantime, your opponent gets to prepare other surprises.

So yeah, Fate made an "oopsie" choice, but I no longer think it was as stupid as I did before.

[Arkeus]

Fate also had issues accepting a girl having known magic for maybe 2 weeks could be better than her, and tried to show how GAR she was.

Silly choice ;-) While it's not talked aenough, there have been lots of characters penalized in Nanoha for trying to force themselves to fight in certain ways they aren't so good at.

[Demi.]

Rather than 'better' I think more devastating magic better explains what happened.

Phalanx is supposed to be stronger than Divine Buster, but they did a poor job at showing it..And STB is just massive in comparison to either one.
And really it's a "true" trump card. No one would expect your opponents strongest move increases in strength with each magic attack thrown. Phalanx was a bad choice in that regard, though I doubt Fate expected Nanoha to leave a direct hit from her ultimate attack unscathed...

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Kaijo

I kinda addressed this, but she had just seen how Nanoha's attacks tended to have homing capabilities, and were faster than she was. We know that the Divine Buster doesn't, but Fate might be so sure about it. Thus, she made a quick decision to straight up block it instead.

You might able to continually dodge homing missiles, but there's always a chance that sooner or later, you'll slip up. And in the meantime, your opponent gets to prepare other surprises.

So yeah, Fate made an "oopsie" choice, but I no longer think it was as stupid as I did before.

Actually, it is a very crummy decision. It tries to avoid a low probability (while guided shooting rounds are fairly common, guided bombardment magic is non-existent or close to it, so one does not lead to the other) at the cost of a very adverse certainty (that defense is not her strength, and defending will cost her greatly, though she apparently did underestimate how much it would have taken).

[Demi.]

Rather than try to deduce why Fate didn't dodge, why not ask yourself -- "Why does no one dodge STB or Divine Buster?"

The reason? Probably because they're Nanoha's signature moves and when they come, it signals her opponents defeat.
Even the most skilled tactician will fall for it, because it means they're against Nanoha - And being the title character, she doesn't lose when it counts. And I don't recall Nanoha using any finisher besides one or the other.

[Tk3997]

Originally Posted by Goldsmith

What's cover gonna do? Is any amount of cover really going to help against any of these spells? Besides, they would dodge the spells if they could.

Yes, because 99% of the spells are visually aimed if you can't see where the guy is you can't exactly hit him can you? As noted even the big fuck off beams are MAYBE a few feet wide which means without an exact fix shooting them blindly is unlikely to result in hits if the target has good concealment. Allot of cover is actually not useful against bullets either (and assault rifle can easily slice in onside of most wood frame houses and out the other), but the fact it conceals you and prevents accurate targeting is what matters.

That said cover could be useful for actual defense as well particularly for flying mages in the same way it’s used by say helicopters. Even SLB has never been seen to say blast through large hills and such so a flying mage could easily position behind or on the crest of such obstacles and snipe from them. This ignores melee fighters who if you positioned in fairly thick terrain would in order to attack have to navigate through the obstacles significantly slowing there approach and giving you more time to shot them.

Then we get into the fact that the big fuck off spells like SLB that can really defeat heavy cover are supposed to be hard to use and take along time to charge up. Against the weaker normal shooting spells even minimal cover seems quite effective as the spells seem to lack much penetrating power or the maneuverability to fly around it.

Originally Posted by FRS

IMO this is the problem for franchise atm but who knows what will come.

I am not that sure that viewers want combat that make sense, most of the time they want pretty explosion and big fight, the rest is going to be called as "not enough GAR/Epic" and whatnot.

Originally Posted by LoweGear

Smart, tactical combat and big, flashy presentations aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. One can have smart combat tactics while still being presented in an exciting way. The key is presentation.

This.

Originally Posted by Kaijo

You have to remember that mages function a bit different from your soldiers. You don't need hand signals when you have telepathy, for instance. And just like the army, you have your standards and your specialists. Not everyone can be a specialist, and some people are just more powerful than others. That dictates different tactics needed. Some people have gifts that are worth improving upon.

In short, mages are not like Jedi, army soldiers, etc.

Cept you know that Jedi vary as well Luke Skywalker is obviously a fuck ton stronger then your run of the mill Jedi and it’s mentioned and shown repeatedly that certain Jedi have talents for certain applications of the Force, but of course they all still know how to use a Lightsaber and they’re all dangerous.

There’s a difference between improving your talents and descending into crippling overspecialization. When the SS ranked mage with a decade of service isn’t sure she can take a ten year old trainee in close combat… there’s some fucking problems with your training paradigm. Either the TSAB is doing way too little to enforce some minimum level of competence in its combat units or it’s actively encouraging this kind of crippling specialization. Either one is stupid.

Having some specialist skills is all well and good, but only if you have a grasp of the fundamentals as well, and being locked into one position unable to adapt and without flexibility is a recipe for disaster. If you look at really winning fighting forces throughout history you’ll tend to notice that one thing they often had in common was they were flexible and very adaptive to changing conditions.

So I'm gonna toss in this gif again, that at least one person thinks is a BS pic that should be burned in hell.^^ (but that only makes me want to use it more!)

http://www.ascendancy.net/arashi/Stu...ls_catgirl.gif

Too bad I don't like cat girls anyway.

*Merrily uses a bulldozer to shove the heaping pile of corpse into a shallow mass grave*

I'd purpose a new meme though "Every time someone posts that stupid cat girl gif god kills a writer that acutally cares and produces works that are internally consistent and well researched."

Originally Posted by Nanya01

I honestly think that they don't dodge at all, even if they could, just to show off "hey, here's how tough I am, you can't beat that."

Seriously, back in A's, Signum just tanked one of Fate's attacks instead of dodging it or countering it, just to show off how out-matched Fate was.

Back in S1, Fate blocked a Divine Buster, even though it left her badly weakened in the process "If she can take one of my attacks, I can take this." was what she said.

*Shakes head* Seriously, is it so wrong to ask for someone to DODGE?!

Back when Vivio and Nanoha fought, Nanoha over-powered Vivio's attacks, Vivio wasn't there, having shifted and DODGED Nanoha's attack to end up behind her. What happened next? Nanoha ended up on the ground.

I mean, it just SCREAMS against everything I know when it comes to fighting. "Dodge what you can, block what you can't, that way you don't waste energy taking hits you shouldn't be."

EDIT: I'm no professional fighter. I've not been in any bar brawls or street fights. But I've taken amateur wrestling back when I was in school. My whole ability to wrestle came as "let them make a move, dodge the attack, then get them to the ground". Really sucked when I went against someone who did the same as me.

Exactly there's way to much nosnene of people standing around in the open or just getting plastered without any real attempt to evade, even if it failed at least seeing them TRY would be nice.

Originally Posted by Nightengale

I point to Star Wars : The Clone Wars TV animated series for a show that knew how to balance cheesy Jedi action and a well-presented sense of military tactics and teamwork.

This episode in particular stood out for me, since it had both Grevious being badass and ARC Troopers being portrayed well, with squad positioning, flanking manuevers and my favourite, hand signals.

Star War is a good example in general as while it often has frankly silly tactics at times, the speeder bike Calvary charge with lances comes to mind, in many cases it at least makes an effort. More importantly even if the tactics are sometimes silly the fights look cool and are interesting tactically.

On that note the latest trailer for The Old Republic sort of has the same vibe. (And despite my reservation is kind of making me excited about the game...)

Spoiler for Stupid sexy CGI trailers.:

Originally Posted by Kaijo

When you watch a show like Nanoha, you have to be really careful about trying to understand the timeframes that things happen in. A lot of things are extended or shown certain ways just to boost the emotional effect.

Bull talking just time stamps the event I'm sorry, but I'm not going to buy that there's some kind of bullet time like time compression affecting everything except the characters voices and facial expressions.

Take, for instance, the time in A's when Nanoha blasts Vita with Divine Buster Extension. According to the clock, 6 seconds pass between Nanoha firing and it striking Vita, which should be plenty of time to dodge.
Instead, we are treated to a deer-in-the-headlights look from Vita. Seems pretty stupid, eh?

Yeah it IS stupid which is kind of what we were all saying. Also how do you explain that Vita moved like 100 meters away and then thought she was "out of range"? If these beams really were wicked fast such a shot would be trivial, but if on the other hand they're normally really slow then such confidence is more understandable.

The six second shot of the beam was purely for effect.

Based on what? Well besides wishful thinking and circular logic. "Nanoha beams are acutally really fast, we don't ever see them moving fast, but they do, why? Well becasue Nanoha beams are fast obviously."

It's sorta like the matrix-effect, or bullet time,

Oh please you arguing for something without the slightest shred of evidence beyond your own wish to try and wave away the stupid combat scenes.

when things are slowed down in order to enhance the "coolness" of the effect.

Where is the evidence of this?!

In real time, I just assume that Nanoha's Divine Buster moves fast enough that you cannot dodge it in time.

Based on what?! We see her firing it while speaking are we to assume that this nonsensical bullet time ONLY effects projectiles leaving the characters free to talk at a normal pace, grimace as they fire, etc? You can't have bloody bullet time if there's no visual indication of WHAT SO EVER.

And of course, at other times, binding your opponent before firing is also a useful tactic in the Nanohaverse.

This I have no issue with it's just good tactics, but acutally on that note binds seem to be something that's been largely forgotten as well in the interests of MOAAARR POWWWWWAAAA!!!!

Also, mages have been shown to be able to guide their shots, so dodging might not be as useful, and instead shielding against the attack to destroy it would be a tough call on a situation-by-situation basis. "Do I dodge this and have it hit my backside, assuming I can outrun it? Or do I just put up a shield to block it and get it out of the way?"

Which is why you just dodge inside or behind something, or you try to dodge and if it looks like it won't work THEN you tank it. We know devices can auto cast simple defensive spells so setting it to "If it's clear my dodge will fail engage auto-guard" should be trivial. There's also the "ECM" option which I discussed at length in OCT sometime ago which would work by simply fooling whatever is used to guide the shots.

The only system that might not be jammable would be a command line of sight type system, but that would also be really hard to use on a man sizes target as agile as a mage and could be defeated by simply breaking line of sight or deploying some sort of smoke screen.

So when Nanoha fired her buster, Fate could very well have been thinking that dodging was pointless, because Nanoha would simply twist it to catch up to her. She made a judgment call that shielding against it was the better option.

The firing sequence isn't even remotely the same between the two spells.

[Kaijo]

Originally Posted by Tk3997

Exactly there's way to much nosnene of people standing around in the open or just getting plastered without any real attempt to evade, even if it failed at least seeing them TRY would be nice.

Simple logic. If a character has been able to dodge things before, and doesn't now, there are three explanations:

#1. Character chose not to; maybe they decided to block it or counter it somehow.
#2. Character is an idiot. Of course, if you choose to believe this, then you make the choice to participate in a fandom where the characters are idiots.
#3. In *their* perception, the attack happened faster than they could dodge, like me shooting you with a gun and time slows down a bit. There is also the "Rule of Cool" effect in play.

Those are your choices. If you believe #2, you probably don't want to come into these threads, because odds are you'll just end up complaining and trying to tell everyone that they are wrong, and that the characters they like are stupid all over the place. That won't end well.

And if #1 doesn't happen, then we are left with #3 as the only logical conclusion.

Which is why you just dodge inside or behind something, or you try to dodge and if it looks like it won't work THEN you tank it. We know devices can auto cast simple defensive spells so setting it to "If it's clear my dodge will fail engage auto-guard" should be trivial. There's also the "ECM" option which I discussed at length in OCT sometime ago which would work by simply fooling whatever is used to guide the shots.

The only system that might not be jammable would be a command line of sight type system, but that would also be really hard to use on a man sizes target as agile as a mage and could be defeated by simply breaking line of sight or deploying some sort of smoke screen.

Of course, that's how Mary Sues start, since we the fans know so much better and we can come into the show and do things soooo much better than anyone else.

The firing sequence isn't even remotely the same between the two spells.

Correct, but Fate doesn't know that Nanoha wouldn't be able to mentally control them just the same. Fate doesn't know everything about magic; she's talented and fairly powerful, but not all-knowing.