Anime: Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha

Notice: Consider this a review of all four seasons.

PROPER MINDSET

Nanoha is a mahou shojo that messed with the archetypical formula in an attempt to not bore the viewers with another Sailor Moon rehash. Although that partially did the trick, in the longrun it fell victim of its inability to evolve properly or make good use of its duration.

THE STAFF

Seasons 1 to 3 are animated by studio Seven Arcs which is famous for making colorful ecchi comedies. Season 4 is animated by A-1 Pictures, which is notorious for making good looking shows that feel lifeless in directing.

Season 1 is directed by the all-famous Shimbo Akiyuki, who turned Shaft, the studio he usually works for, into a colossus. His style to combine the cute with the artsy and the symbolical is very interesting. This particual work is by far amongst his tamed ones. Seasons 2 and 3 are directed by Kusakawa Keizou, who has made lots of ecchi shows. This is why there was more ecchi and less artsy overtones in them. Season 4 is directed by Itou Yuuki. This was his first major job and did a very lukewarm job with it.

The anime is based on an erotic game, and this is why it is full of lolicon fan service.

PRODUCTION VALUES: S1: 7/10, S2&S3: 6/10, S4: 4/10

Nanoha’s setting is a three-in-one, blending the modern world with the magic of the past and the technology of the future. The contemporary Japan areas are very typical and have nothing interesting about them. The magic devices and the space-time spaceships on the other hand were an interesting combination. It had a variety and style which for the time it came out, had set it apart from all others of its kind. It doesn’t look special today, because the ideas were reused a lot in following titles.

Almost all characters are drawn to look like cute little girls, with funky uniforms and magic gizmos that create all sorts of energy attacks. Their designs are quite generic and not really memorable. In fact, the thing you will most likely remember is how the camera is often going for a wormview perspective, so their panties will show, and there will be lots of scenes where the girls are naked or having leasbian tendencies. Nothing explicit today, but it was considered very bold when it first came out, and helped in the formation of a big fandom consisting mostly of horny otakus.

The battle scenes are exciting compared to the average of their kind, filling the screen with all sorts of shapes and colors and patterns to the point you will be in trouble if you are photo-epileptic. Their choreography is not that good though; to the most part they are simplistic exchanges of energy beams. There are also many obvious budget problems, resulting to stiff characters, scrolling panels, and reused footage like the transformation and attack clips.

There is also a gradual degradation in quality with each new season. The artsy overtones of the first one are gone in seasons 2 and 3 because Shimbo was not directing it anymore, while the fourth one was given a very low budget which results to look very run down and dull.

STORY SECTION: S1: 5/10, S2: 7/10, S3: 3/10, S4: 3/10

The story begins in a typical fashion; cute good-hearted girl Nanoha finds Yuuno magic critter and gets powers in order to find something or stop someone. Along the way the story gets more complicating with the addition of an organization that protects the various dimensions from cosmic threats. It sounded very interesting as it blended magic with technology. The concept was utiliezed well though, and the pacing was very messy.

The first season was at first to find scattered spheres from an advanced civilization, and up until the first half it was plain boring. Nanoha and her friends had nothing of interest to fill the slice-of-life moments and the battles were short and simplistic. It is only when her rival Fate is introduced in the story that something good starts to happen. Suddenly she is taken aboard her fuzzy mascot’s spaceship, where she meets lots of officials and villains. It became a lot more enjoyable this way, even if the twist wasn’t enough to save the overall story from still resorting to the usual magical girl tropes. It still came down to befriending the enemy rather than fighting him with wits. The villains also seem to be overpowered, so why were they even waiting all this time to storm in and had their way if the good guys had no defenses against them? The finale is sweet if you like the power of friendship (and lesbianism), but otherwise very anti-climactic action-wise.

The second season is about finding an evil book that if it fully charges up, will create lots of trouble. This season is enjoyable to the most part because it has far more interesting characters, far better action scenes, far more interesting rivals and objectives. It is otherwise still full of silly moments, with the power of friendship (and lesbianism) being again all that matters in the end. One wonders why the hell they need all these cool weapons to fight, if all it takes is to just hug the enemy and cry (and then have lesbian sex).

The third season is a bloody mess. Since nobody in this series ever dies, new characters are constantly introduced and the older ones are still present. As a result you have a huge cast that needed a lot of fleshing out or at least many episodes dedicated to each one of them. Something which didn’t happen, because most of it was wasted on a very slow paced military operation, with lots of pointless action and uninteresting villains. The idea of showing what happens when a magical girl grows up and forms its own organization was cool, but the presentation was just too dull to care about.

The fourth season lowers the standards even further, by not even having a dangerous threat going on. It is just a mostly harmless school tournament of magic. And the protagonist is not even Nanoha anymore but rather her daughter (which was apparently created with the power of lesbianism, since she is married to Fate). There is absolutely nothing to look forward to here.

CHARACTER SECTION: S1: 6/10, S2: 7/10, S3: 3/10, S4: 3/10

The cast is pretty much stock material; archetypes you encounter in all mahou shojo. The first season did a good job with what it had, focusing only on the two main girls and the mascot sidekick. The second season adds a dozen secondary characters and offers variety despite none of them being special for any reason. The third season overdid it by introduced even more characters without developing or colorizing any of them. Not only that but by now Nanoha is an adult working in a military organization, making the whole thing very bizarre. And then the fourth season moves away even further from how it began as, by being a simple school tournament about Nanoha’s daughter, while she is just background decoration. Yeah, nothing left to care about anymore.

At the same time, the fan service never left; it was there all the time showing the girls in various forms of undress. That didn’t add context to them; it took away their dignity. Watching Nanoha’s and Fate’s adult boobs bouncing like that all the time while talking to little girls in their underwear is plain creepy.

LEGACY

Lyrical Nanoha is a prime example of how a series doesn’t age well. Although it had its share of loyal fans, it was progressively getting worse in production values and character appeal. It moved away from what was making it feel good at first. Its combination of magic meets technology with loli fan service no longer feel special because they were copied in later shows. There was also a huge hiatus between the third and fourth seasons, which made most of the fans to either move to something else in the meantime. It’s no longer the super hyped series people were making it seem to be back in 2004 and is now closer to yet another example of how no amount of pretty colors and loli underwear can make a series better than what it is.

SUGGESTION LIST
Madoka Magica (it took many ideas from Lyrical Nanoha)
A Certain Magical Index (a famous example of magic meets technology)
Fate Kaleid (a recent famous loli fan service show)

Nanoha is not spectacular in part, but as a whole it shines. I can explain this by saying that the animation, sound, story, and character development as separate entities are nothing remarkable (with some deference to the opening sound track) - As a complete intertwining smorgasbord of sensual imagery, these elements form an exceptional, and enjoyable investment of time.

The animation got me hooked in the first episode with two short lived but highly innovative sequences that are never again revisited in style or similarity. Luckily for me, that was not near as important in further episodes as I became further engrossed in the series. Overall, the animation is tight and beautiful, but that first episode has burned an image, of what anime COULD be like, in my mind for ever.

The sound is well placed, the voice acting is quite pleasant but the Opening song is well beyond my expectations. Innocent Starter" has found a permanent place in my 5 star play list.

The story is your typical magical girl with a more mature touch (strange considering the youth of the characters). It does not fall in the trap of overly cute to the point of mindless "kawaiiness" that 99% of "Magical Girl" shows contain. That makes it new in my book!

The characters really shine, besides the robot like, ultra caring of Nanoha herself, she is defined like a "passive aggressive" (all things can be worked out with words before violence) but more than willing to kick some !$! if she has to, kind of character. The character "Fate" is the truly dynamic character entity of this story and her pain and suffering is eclipsed only by Nanoha's compassion. Such character development is undoubtedly rare in "Magical Girl" anime prototypes. Fate-chan is, and will forever be my favorite character.

This is an extremely valuable series, and a bargain at even the most outrageous prices of English Anime DVD's. If it is licensed, I suggest picking it up with all due haste!

I found myself looking forward to each new episode, all the way through the series' completion. I was ready with my popcorn and soda, and even brought out my most comfy chair, providing myself with the ultimate enjoyable experience.

Overall - 8.5, could not use decimals so I bumped it down to a 8, only because It's sequel is even more innovative and exceptional.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha is very much a series of two halves. Despite, or perhaps even because of, the prevailing wisdom on the subject, I found the first half to be promising, but the second ultimately failed to deliver.

Nanoha starts simply enough; there are twenty jewels of great magical power, and our protagonist's task is simply to collect them - battling her dark counterpart for the privelige, along with the evils of the jewels themselves, and of course balancing all this with the demands of life as an ordinary schoolgirl. While not terribly original, this segment is well-executed; Nanoha and in particular her schoolfriends are likeable characters and reveal a surprising amount of depth as the episodes progress. Voice work is very good (and remains so throughout the series); clear, distinctive voices all while sounding suitably youthful, and while the music will not be to everyone's taste it is well matched to the tone of the series. The animation falls well below modern standards in terms of detail, but this is to a large extent stylisticly demanded; certainly the highly deformed faces are a requirement of the genre, and some parts of the character design (e.g. the costuming) show a surprisingly high attention to detail; on the other hand, the failure to provide any real ending animation marks a particularly low point.

But leaving aside some doubtless budget-conservational drawbacks, this section forms a very enjoyable show; simple, but cute, with the character development enough to sustain interest, and the obligatory quest plot being more part of the background than anything else. I may be alone in this, but I very much liked this half of Nanoha.

And then, without wanting to give too much away, it would be fair to say that the show shifts more in the direction of science fiction; symbolically enough, this coincides with the cessation of the infamous magical girl transformation sequence. But where many applauded the greater plot this brings, I found that Nanoha loses more than it gains. Where the conceit behind the shift may appear to put the show on a more consistent footing, in fact it gives rise to more questions than answers; the associated shift in character focus is simply criminal. We have an interesting, well-developed central cast, but Nanoha spends less and less time on them, preferring to concentrate on the magical side of the cast and its newly introduced characters. Which would be fine if these had any backstory or personality, but with the plot accelerating the series doesn't have the time to give them any; what we get are cardboard cut-outs, who admittedly do follow the standard character development paths for their particular archetypes, but the series never gives them any grounds for doing so.

The plot, too, overextends itself; it reaches a dramatic peak at episode 10 which needed to occur later in the series. What we get is three episodes' worth of what tonewise feels like mopping up, despite this including the final confrontation with the supposed primary adversary; this section is, to put it bluntly, a mess (One silver lining is that the non-reliance on plot means enjoyment of the series will probably carry over well to rewatchings). Aside from the pacing mistakes we also get no true resolution of either the primary plot, nor the character-based one which has latterly formed, though this is perhaps justifiable in the presence of an immediate follow-on series.

Doing characters right in a 13-episode series is hard, but this only makes Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha's failure all the more infuriating, because this series had got it; all they had to do was stick with what they had, and this could have been a superb show, the example of magical girls done right - genre-limited, perhaps, but genre-defining. Instead the series tries to be more than what it is, and ultimately sacrifices that which made it great. This is still a good show, but that only makes it more painful to think of what could have been.

Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha is a fairly decent magical anime that manages to stand out while not doing anything to unusual. If nothing else, the sequel is worth watching it for.

Animation:
The animation quality is fairly good. The occasional use of CGI helps to create fairly impressive spell effects. The character designs are reasonably good, but the bangs tend to look weird.

Sound:
Decent music, and the voice acting is fairly good.

Story:
The first half or so of the series is essentially the standard magical girl monster of the week stuff. It gets more interesting in the second half, as the sci-fi elements start becoming important.

Character:
While none of the characters are especially deep or fascinating, all of them do have some depth. On the plus side, none of them are annoying, including the mascot characters (yes, there is more than one).

To see what the hype is all about, I decided to tackle Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, a show that seems like the usual mahou shoujo, but given it's episode length, focuses on the ulterior plot and character interactions. Does it succeed? All I can say is that several episodes certainly had me hooked, wanting to know more about their pasts and reasons for their motives.

The most notable aspect of this series is the growing relationship between Nanoha and Fate throughout the series. It's not totally predictable, but it is focused and to some extent dynamic. The process isn't cheesy (very action-packed, if you will) and each battle left a rooting feeling for them to get closer and closer to eventually defeat their common enemy. I don't consider it a breakout act, but at least it was entertainingly good.

Unfortunately, that's all the series has to offer - everything else falls beyond expectations.

I found myself skipping the episodes a lot - a sign of boringness and bad pacing. I don't believe the tension - I want to see where the story goes, not watch pans of desperate faces of tired-out mages. The first several episodes were really boring and cliche'd, including one of the "usual" episodes at #3 which was very predictable and was only there for the hell of having one. The talk was also predictable - I could skip whole conversations and know exactly what they were talking about and what they want to tell the viewers. (I average 15 minutes/25-minute episode. Yep.)

Because this is a magical girl series, the setting is utterly predictable, boring, and cliche'd. The heroine is backed by a completely normal family with go-lucky parents and siblings; her friends support her (though how they got to be friends is slightly interesting) and everyone clearly likes Nanoha for what she is: the happy go-lucky not-unusual cheerful and completely normal girl. "Disguised as a throw-away" is what someone had said, and they were right: you can throw this away from the first minute and dismiss it as another kid's show, not caring that it's only 13 episodes long and has to have something significant.

Nanoha, as loli and necessary as she is, is not Sakura Kinomoto (CCS). In fact, she's just another cookie-cutter grade schooler that made the episodes drag with every single conversation revolving around her. We are CONSTANTLY REMINDED at every pre-episode intro that she's just a third-grader caught up in this affair, which really detracts the episodes every time and makes me hate her more and more. Fortunately, her dynamic with Fate saves me from detesting the whole series altogether.

The overall plot is the usual villain-disowns-minions for her-greater-good along with the must-collect-stuff in the beginning. Boring first half, mediocre second half. It was semi-interesting, and I only took note of it if only for the NanohaXFate dynamics.

There is only one good fight scene - the rest are worth skipping. It's not as big of a beam-spam-fest as people said it is, but that one good fight scene had minimal pauses between action.

There is nothing lyrical about this series nor it's magic. If it was in the first episode, I probably skipped or forgot about it.

Also, the magic staves are annoying with all the sci-fi shtuff. Sci-fi and magic mixing is not a good combination. If I wanted magic, don't explain the source. In sci-fi, always explain the source. NEVER use sci-fi to explain magic. Oh, and "Yes, sir" = ROTFLOL.

This anime contains elementary school students using cell phones.

Onwards to MGLN A's.




About the Sound
I listened to the OP and ED once, then I skipped them every single time. The OP is your usual rocky-start intro, but I skip it along with the little pre-episode intro. The ED is absolutely horrid: the usual ending song backed by something of what a drug-abuser would envision and draw.

Most BGM is forgettable. Voice work is okay.

Animation: Modern lighting technique is used and the color pallet is pleasing to the eye. The action sequence is top-notch in terms of level of detail and camera angling. I particularly like the design of the magic circles the characters use which is done in 3D if im not wrong. The design of monsters sucks, but the bulk of action sequence is between the 2 nice looking main charactes. I dont like the full transformation sequence because it reminds me of sailor moon (takes off clothes) and fortunately its showed only twice.

Sound: The opening theme song is catchy, but im not sure if i like the ending song as much. however im probably biased because the animation of the ending theme is not pleasing to my preference for nice visual candy.
The voices go well with the characters, and i would rate it as above average.
I have no recollection of any ambience music used.

Story: The storyline starts out boring and the pace sets in when the the rival comes into picture. Dont worry, the rival appears very soon due to the fast paced story development. Explanation is not very clear about why certain things have to happen but the main idea of the plot is still very much understandble.

Characters: The costumes for the main characters are excellent. I especially liked the rival, Fate Testarosa and her costume. The hairstyles are nice, and I like the way the eyes are drawn.
You will like all the characters except for the only villian, who is disgusting in looks and personality.

Value and Enjoyment: The anime has borrowed bits and pieces from popular magic girl classics and the result is above satisfactory. I've increasingly enjoyed watching it as the pace grows and I will most probably rewatch it next time just because of the visual appeal.