Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha

[Fourth Dimension]

Oh boy I didn't at all like Vivid Strike, but probably this shouldn't be a place to talk about it.

In fact I haven't really liked anything in the franchise since Gears of Destiny, and while StrikerS had massive pacing issues and trying to cram content of a bigger season in 24 episodes while keeping all the inconsequential fluff, I still liked it's general idea.

But everything since then seems to have been trying to stay relevant either through FANSERVICE or by EDGE-ing things. That's why while in that fanservice infested swamp called Vivid they remark that all fights take place in arena's where all damage is simulated with no real injuries because they have really young competitors, meanwhile in Strike they are in a tournament with no security where kids can cave in chest of each other (It's fiiiiine, magical medicine).

The recent movies have attempted to pretty much cram every single thing from various non Vivid spinoffs into one thing, and then mechified it all to a ridiculous degree. This including some of the worst aspects of like Force.

I wouldn't even say Vivid is a result of a stagnant franchise. Vivid pretty much ditched the rest of the cast pretty much to a degree Strike did. In Vivid the only thing that might matter are a thing or two about Vivio's background, everyone else who is not a Vivid original character is reduced to the level of cameo appearance.

Vivid's bigger problem was that the writter didn't really seem to have a general story he wanted to present. He started with some threads, but tended to resolve or just ditch them on the side of the road, and then in the end it kinda gifted the MC her "win" in the end.

In a way Force and Vivid suffered from a similar thing. It didn't have the other to stop it from going to the worst excesses of it's direction. Vivid didn't have a clear plot unlike Force, and meanwhile Force lacked some semblance of positivity and light hartedness to take the EDGE of it's shenanigans. The series was the best when these two could unite and do a single story. But separate... it's not nice.

[aceina]

force also lacked the thing that drew people to nanoha

namely the fact it stars magical girls fused with gundams

[Ikiry0]

I personally liked StrikerS. I thought it was flawed but I enjoyed it. Force on the other hand...Force I couldn't stand.

[Fourth Dimension]

Well... the biggest problem of Force is how it introduced it's incident and the antagonist. Shading them so PITCH BLACK that you'd find it hard to think anyone would not consider them straight out irredeemable villains. And THEN they started backpeddaling HARD from that.

Plus for me at least I LOATHE outright power cancelers. Things that can make you go "Oh I don't care what you can do I'm immune to it LOOOOL". Sounds like something some kid would make up to say why his toy will beat other ones.
I was fine though with AMF, because that wasn't cancellation with no concern what is happening but as any defense you could either overwhelm it or find a loophole through it.

So while Force's magicancel did force the protags to find interesting asymmetrical responses, it has also caused plenty of needless JOBBING.

[GloatingSwine]

I don't think many people liked Force given that it only lasted 30 issues. And when you see some of the utter arse that can get more issues than that in the manga industry that's pretty epic fail.

Vivid is just a massive tournament arc with basically no stakes, even the usual "when will they make friends" stakes that we're all waiting for in Nanoha.

[Deledrius]

Okay, I watched the review, but the last four or five pages of this thread read like gibberish about some other show.

[aceina]

Okay, I watched the review, but the last four or five pages of this thread read like gibberish about some other show.

yea oops srorry about that we probably shoudl have been using spoiler tags

not use to thinking of that with nanoha its a niche series it tends to be just if your talking about it the person your talking to knows all this

[GloatingSwine]

Okay, I watched the review, but the last four or five pages of this thread read like gibberish about some other show.

The franchise departs quite a long way from the beginnings in the first three episodes.

Most of it has never been officially available in English.

[Formless One]

In fact I haven't really liked anything in the franchise since Gears of Destiny, and while StrikerS had massive pacing issues and trying to cram content of a bigger season in 24 episodes while keeping all the inconsequential fluff, I still liked it's general idea.

As I've discussed* on Spacebattles** (where there are functional spoiler tags, so I won't repeat all of it here), the last two movies are basically all about taking the general idea and salvaging it by re-contextualizing the narrative with different (but similar) characters. The antagonists in particular are strikingly similar once you strip away the surface details and real life origins, and accept that these characters aren't meant to be the same as they were in the games. The games were too goofy to be taken seriously by the movie audience, so the writer took inspiration from their characterizations in the Brave Duel comics. I mean, at this point I suspect more of the fandom got into Nanoha through the movies than the tv series considering that came out in 2004. Moreover, without spoiling the first season (a necessary thing given where we are posting), the use of time travel in the games was a narrative no-go in the films and TV universes. The most recent movie has dialogue confirming that time travel is supposed to be impossible, and out of universe I believe its because it ruins the narrative theme of season 1's villain.

(I don't know why hyperlinks aren't working so here are the urls)
* https://forums.spacebattles.com/posts/59612938/
** https://forums.spacebattles.com/posts/59622937/

But everything since then seems to have been trying to stay relevant either through FANSERVICE or by EDGE-ing things. That's why while in that fanservice infested swamp called Vivid they remark that all fights take place in arena's where all damage is simulated with no real injuries because they have really young competitors, meanwhile in Strike they are in a tournament with no security where kids can cave in chest of each other (It's fiiiiine, magical medicine).

Compared to its contemporaries, Nanoha has always been "edgy". If you've watched season 1 recently (and I have), it gets dark. It gets uncomfortably dark. Again, I don't want to spoil it for those who are here for Chuck's reviews, but nothing Vivid Strike! shows is any more dark and upsetting than season 1. It just got away with showing more graphic violence because the television censors in Japan are a bit more forgiving now than in 2004, and the context is also slightly different so its actually less uncomfortable than what season 1 will show. Likewise, content in films are never as tightly regulated as broadcast television in any country, and Japan is no different, so the Nanoha films are allowed to show blood if they want to. The shows have avoided it as much as possible. And I don't think a willingness to show violence and the natural consequences of violence is inherently edgy. "Edge" seems to imply a certain nihilism about it that just doesn't apply to Nanoha.

I also don't understand this complaint about Vivid Strike! getting rid of the damage simulator from Vivid while simultaneously complaining about Vivid. A major part of why Vivid sucks is that it lacks tension, and a big part of why it lacks tension is because of the damage simulator system. Vivid Strike! got rid of it because it made the fights feel more real, and importantly more relatable to fans of boxing and MMA. Fans they wanted to attract to Vivid Strike!. Whenever Vivid says that Vivio has a glass jaw, the damage simulator seems to render that moot. It makes the whole experience feel too much like a video game. Making it possible for Rinne to break people's bones in the ring helps demonstrate that her behavior is too aggressive, because she's using unnecessary levels of force given the age category she's fighting in. But she's doing nothing to actually break the rules-- it just makes her the story's Heel, just like in WWE.

And besides, the later chapters of Vivid actually explain the change, but that explanation didn't make it to western fans because they didn't export the manga (fans have since translated it, of course). Mixed Magical Battle and Magical Martial Arts are different, but related sports. And because they are different sports, they have different rules, much like Boxing, Wrestling, and Mixed Martial Arts have very different rulesets. Nove even warns the kids ahead of time that the Magical Martial Arts ruleset dial down the safety systems because its rules are more restrictive in other areas-- they can't cast offensive spells, so they are more worried about the kids getting concussions than getting electrocuted with lightning spells. And its not like there are no safety wards in Strike!-- they make explicit use of them in sparring and at one point have to dial up the strength of the field when Fuuka loses a tooth, remember? Dialing them down just makes the story work better, and if that means ignoring Vivid I'm all for it, just like other things from Vivid.

The recent movies have attempted to pretty much cram every single thing from various non Vivid spinoffs into one thing, and then mechified it all to a ridiculous degree. This including some of the worst aspects of like Force.

Literally the only thing that comes from Force are the weapons they break out in order to fight the villains more effectively, which frankly are one of the coolest elements from Force. I've never found StrikerS argument for using pure magic compelling, and the Reflection comic has a conversation where they acknowledge the weakness of it. Tsuzuki has changed as a writer since 2007. And no, the Eltrians having magic resistance isn't taken from Force either, because the Eltrians aren't actually immune to magical effects like in Force. They can dispel them, particularly binding spells, after seeing them in action and giving their system time to analyze the effect. This is hardly a unique concept, anti-magic magic is extremely common across the fantasy genre. Play Magic: the Gathering for long enough and you become paranoid any time your opponent drops an island onto the battlefield, or Yu-Gi-Oh! any time someone plays a card face down. The Eltrians still suffer damage when hit with offensive spells and don't even have access to shield spells themselves (except the soul trio, but then again, they're mimicking Belkan and Mid-Childan magic), so its not even as effective as the anti-magic fields from StrikerS-- the show I think actually inspired this plot point in the films.

I wouldn't even say Vivid is a result of a stagnant franchise. Vivid pretty much ditched the rest of the cast pretty much to a degree Strike did. In Vivid the only thing that might matter are a thing or two about Vivio's background, everyone else who is not a Vivid original character is reduced to the level of cameo appearance.

Except the titular character. And Nove. And Nove's sisters. And then at the climax of the manga Vivio challenges her own mother to an exhibition match, which definitely qualifies as much more than a cameo appearance. Okay, I'll stop now. Vivid has a lot of problems, but a lack of crossover with previous series isn't one of them. I don't actually think all stories set in the Nanoha universe have to have Nanoha in them, they just have to be good stories. And not all stories that have had Nanoha in them have been good.

Vivid's bigger problem was that the writter didn't really seem to have a general story he wanted to present. He started with some threads, but tended to resolve or just ditch them on the side of the road, and then in the end it kinda gifted the MC her "win" in the end.

In a way Force and Vivid suffered from a similar thing. It didn't have the other to stop it from going to the worst excesses of it's direction. Vivid didn't have a clear plot unlike Force, and meanwhile Force lacked some semblance of positivity and light hartedness to take the EDGE of it's shenanigans. The series was the best when these two could unite and do a single story. But separate... it's not nice.

Now these criticisms I can agree with, although I've haven't gotten all the way through Force. Knowing that it never properly ended and the criticisms I've heard from numerous sources just saps any motive I have for finishing what exists of it. I do think, however, that the resolution of Vivio's duel with Nanoha was clever, because it subverts the very idea that Vivio could "win" a fight with her own mother. Vivio knows that under the DSA's rules she would have been declared the loser, and Nanoha subtly throwing the fight by taking advantage of the rules of this particular fight shows how close they are-- Nanoha would never let serious harm come to someone she loves, especially over something so silly. Given Nanoha's reputation for beating the ever loving crap out of her future friends, its a side of her we rarely get to see.

[Formless One]

I don't think many people liked Force given that it only lasted 30 issues. And when you see some of the utter arse that can get more issues than that in the manga industry that's pretty epic fail.

Technically it was put on hiatus so Tsuzuki could have time for other projects (chapters of Force kept being delayed anyway), then the magazine went under making the hiatus permanent. Of course, that doesn't explain why he didn't simply find it a new home, and face-saving is extremely important in Japan, so maybe it does have something to do with how the fanbase reacted to it relative to the more fluffy approach of Vivid and InnocentS.

Okay, I watched the review, but the last four or five pages of this thread read like gibberish about some other show.

There are a lot of unnoticed similarities between Nanoha and Madoka, probably due to the director being the same, and one of them is that episode 3 is a turning point in Madoka. In Nanoha, its episode 4, although episode 3 foreshadows that turning point when we see that she's already collected a bunch of Jewel Seeds offscreen. The point of that was to hint this won't be like the many collect-a-thon series that were popular at the time. Don't worry, it won't be at all like the turning point of Madoka if you've seen that, but it will forever change the kind of show Nanoha is. Hence why our discussion sounds so... strange.

yea oops srorry about that we probably shoudl have been using spoiler tags

Unfortunately, this forum doesn't have spoiler tags.