Condensed Review: StrikerS

This review is even shorter than Caro

Remarks

+ bigger budget
- budget not always well-used
+ interesting new characters
- too many characters: action and drama thin out
+ courageously different from predecessors
- fails to capitalise on courageous difference

Supplementary Tautologies

+ maternal Nanoha is maternal
++ healthy Nanoha is healthy
+++ Gundam Nanoha is Gundam

Verdict

Strikers tries to spin too many plates for too long. Mediocre-to-poor.

Did I Like It?

Definitely. I cried at the end.

Demonbane, Nanoha and the Cosmic Horrors

Memes must sometimes be reinforced.

Let’s get this out of the way first: Demonbane is not, by any stretch of the imagination, good. It’s a visual novel franchise adaption, and it tries to squeeze a great deal of information into a mere twelve episodes: the first episode feels like it’s playing at double-speed, the OP/rapid-fire clipshow is only one minute long and events frequently occur during the credits. Despite all this cramming, lots of extra plot, helpful explanation and some whole characters are cut to create an unfortunate ‘All There In The Manual‘ situation. I didn’t understand the conclusion (which was written especially for the anime in the first place) without the aid of Wikipedia.

Sounding Foreign in My Mouth

Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha A’s features a group of magical antagonists whose combat terminology is in German, although this is by no means the only foreign language used in the series (Bardiche and Raging Heart are noted for their English, while ‘Asura’ is a Sanskrit term and so forth). Quite what the status and connotations of the German language are in Japan I’ve no idea (though I’d like to find out) so I can’t guess what the intention of the staff behind Nanoha’s German is.

Nanoha A’s, Fateful Addenda: Accept No Substitutes

The White Devil eschews aimbots in favour of guts and friendship.

After finishing Nanoha A’s a few nights ago, I suppose I should put my thinking cap on again and examine my second dose of beamspam maho shojo goodness, attempting to produce something that bolts neatly onto the end of my previous remarks like an intellectual Dendrobium Orchis or the late application of glasses to a previously un-bespectacled girl. (Since this entry wanders a little, I felt ‘addenda’ was more appropriate than ‘addendum’.) Once again, I think I’ll write about Fate and once again I’ll use the excellent eleventh episode. (Spoilers follow the break.)

Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha: Fateful Philosophy

So Berkles has been making me flashback to my days of studying Philosophy at school. And, at the same time, I’ve been watching Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha, partly because it has a good reputation, partly because it has ‘lyrical’ in its title and partly because one can’t watch mecha all of the time. (Entry contains spoilers.)

GAR (III): GAR and Gender

One man’s fanservice is another’s relevant artwork
(one of these people is a reverse trap)

[This is part of a series of entries considering GAR. The first one sets out what’s happening. The second one reinterprets the epic tradition through the lens of GAR.

I don't like this entry very much. It seemst to me to be a collection of disparate fragments of argument. However, I think it is worth posting in any case, and I promise that the next one in the series will be more focused.]