Yay! (dancie-dancie-dance!) Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's just got delivered.

Just watched the OP. First comment: it's got an even more egregious lolicon image in it. (shudder) But of more concern: why is the sound mono?

The English dub soundtrack is stereo. Why is the Japanese soundtrack mono? Production mistake at 342 Media?

It's not just the OP. The program proper is in stereo in English and in mono in Japanese.

UPDATE: I jumped ahead and listened to the first few seconds of each of the five episodes on the first DVD. The first three are in mono and the other two are stereo.

Definitely a mastering mistake at 342 Media. I wonder if they'll recall it?

UPDATE: The mastering for this disk has the same kind of strange structure as before. VTS_01 has the first three episodes, which are in mono. VTS_02 has the other two episodes, which are in stereo.

Clearly a flag got set wrong when VTS_01 was created.

(Everyone else in the known universe either uses a single VTS for all the episodes or else uses a separate one for each episode.)

UPDATE: Just to make something clear: when I first posted this, I attributed the mastering to Bang Zoom Entertainment. That was my mistake; they aren't the ones who did it. I corrected my error a few minutes later. According to the credits on the DVD, it was "342 Media" who mastered it.

UPDATE: I had to go do my grocery shopping, but I'm back now. Beginning of ep 1, and we get to see that Nanoha is learning to use her magic without activating Raising Heart. I wondered about that: Yuuno does a lot of magic and doesn't use any magical item comparable to Raising Heart.

In the first series all of the action takes place within a period of less than a month, I would guess, and Nanoha is a rank beginner. So she relies on Raising Heart for everything -- reasonable, under the circumstances. But it's good to see that she doesn't have to, and that she realizes she needs to learn to do it alone.

It's also interesting that Raising Heart is helping to train her. Just how smart is that rock? (I know; it's a plot point.)

I wonder if she can fly without Raising Heart, too? Yuuno and Fate can both fly without using items, so presumably she should be able to learn it.

I was looking at Wikipedia this morning and saw some spoilers: One was that Chrono doesn't end up marrying who I thought he did. Somehow I had gotten the idea that Amy was his older sister, but it ain't so.

Which now leads me to wonder if Lindy adopted Fate? I guess I'll find out soon enough.

I also read that in this series eventually Nanoha's older brother will find out about her magic. That should be fun.

UPDATE: Nanoha's transformation deck isn't quite as ecchi as in the first series. Thank goodness for small favors. But it's still more ecchi than I like.

UPDATE: One time I saw a clip on Youtube of Nanoha fighting someone and getting beaten, only to be saved in the nick of time by Fate. I'm watching it now. And it's Vita, who scares me.

UPDATE: The subtitler blew it. Signum's sword is Levantine, not "Laevatein".

UPDATE: Raising Heart is definitely more than just a rock. This is ep 2 and she just suggested an attack.

UPDATE: End up ep 2, and it looks like this is gonna be a tough one. Lots of enemies, all strong and experienced, all well equipped.

Man, watching how that battle ended really was hard. I wonder if Nanoha lost any of her power permanently?

UPDATE: End of ep 3, a bit of a lull in the war, homecomings, old friends, a few laughs and some cake.

And now there's no doubt at all that Raising Heart and Bardiche are not just dumb machines. They've decided they need a major upgrade, and they won't take no for an answer.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 01:30 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
Post contains 476 words, total size 4 kb.