Pete borrowed one of my top-rotation pictures, from Mai Otome Zwei, and labels it a "magical phalanx". I can understand why he says that, since the weapons the girls are carrying look like lances. But it isn't quite what he thinks. Those things are missiles, and moments after that frame they get shot at an asteroid which is on a collision course with the planet.

The reason the otome are up there is that the planet doesn't have the technology of space travel. The otome are the only ones who can reach space, so they're being used to ferry the missiles up where they can reach the asteroid before it devastates a pretty large area of the surface.

Anyway, as to his question, "...got me wondering if we ever see a crew-fired magical weapon." I can think of at least two such cases.

There's one in the last episode of Yumeria which involves pretty much the whole cast. And in the last episode of Card Captor Sakura there's one involving two major characters, or perhaps four depending on how you count, all working together. I don't really want to say more in each case because they're spoilers.

There's also a case in Nanoha A's where an entire platoon of magical marines work together to create a confinement field to trap a couple of the Knights, but that's not really an attack. (It facilitates an attack by Nanoha, Fate, and Arf, though.)

Would Pete accept "unison devices"? In Nanoha Strikers we see Rein Zwei united with Vita, and we see Agito united with Zest (and later with someone else, which is a spoiler). I suspect it wouldn't count, but I thought I'd mention them. (Rein belongs to Hayate, but I'm pretty sure we never see them united. I always thought that was a bit strange.)

UPDATE: Pete doesn't understand the reference to Card Captor Sakura, so I guess I'll include a spoiler:

Sakura working alone didn't have enough power to convert the last two cards, Light and Darkness. It's not that they were resisting, just that they were the strongest of the cards.

In order to do it, Kerberos and Yue dematerialized and became part of Sakura's staff, hugely powering it up. But even with that, Sakura still couldn't do it. Then Shaoran struggled to his feet, and made it over to Sakura. Standing behind her, he too held onto the staff. It may be that the only thing he really contributed was to make Sakura more confident, or he may have been able to add some magical power. Regardless, the four of them together were able to do it, and the last two remaining Clow Cards were converted to Sakura Cards.

And now that I think about it, that was in the second-to-last episode, not the last one.

On the other hand, Eriol is English, not Chinese.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 03:52 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
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