Watching the OP for the first episode of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS there were a few shocks. This was the first one:

Seeing the Wolkenritter in military uniforms was really strange. Seeing FFN's of every important female character in the show was even stranger. Seeing Nanoha, Hayate, and Fate all grown up took some getting used to. And then I got to the end, where they showed the cast shot:

Something's missing. Obviously I don't know who all those people are, yet, since some of them are introduced in this series. But where's Arf? She wasn't in the OP anywhere that I noticed.

She isn't listed in the ANN credits for the show, either. It's not an absolutely complete list, of course, but what it does mean is that if she's in the show, she's a minor part. Sob.

I can understand why they had to skip some characters from the first series, just because they had new ones they wanted to include and the cast is already huge. So I'll sadly do without Nanoha's family, and without Suzuka and Arisa. But Arf is Fate's familiar; how can she be deemphasized? She goes where Fate goes, and fights whoever Fate fights. That's her life, her role. How can they have left her out?

Her seiyuu is in the credits for the show, but for other characters. She's listed as doing the voices of Lutecia, Auris, and Sette, whoever they are. (Don't tell me.) Arf is one of my favorite characters from the original two series, and if she really isn't in this one, it's going to be very disappointing.

UPDATE: End of the first ep, and by damn it was really good. They're doing a nice job of varying the concept and finding depth in it. Tia and Subaru are already interesting characters to me, and I like the fact that their magical devices are so different from the ones we saw in the earlier series.

It was a pleasant surprise to see that Nanoha remembered Subaru from her rescue.

I remember seeing a web comic where someone took frame grabs from StrikerS and added word balloons. I watched it for maybe 8 strips, all of which were from ep 1, and then stopped. From that, it seemed that Nanoha had become a real hard case, but of course they were deliberately trying to subvert the story by rewriting the dialogue. Still, it was nice to see that it wasn't so, and that Nanoha is still gentle and caring -- as well as being able to kick ass when she needs to.

Looks like Raising Heart has been further upgraded. The AI seems to be even smarter than before, and the physical configuration seemed a bit changed. Perhaps that was just artistic license.

Another interesting thing is to see that the ability to fly isn't universal among mages. Perhaps it's something that Tia and Subaru will be able to learn later, or maybe it's just not going to be in their arsenal of spells.

It does seem to be possible for people to pick up new abilities. Nanoha offered to perform a healing spell on Tia, and she didn't have that ability in the other two series. So maybe Tia and Subaru will eventually gain power of flight.

Reinforce Zwei is awesome. But Midchilda has different rules about military courtesy if two privates and a sergeant major exchange salutes. At least in the US Army, you don't salute non-coms. (And you don't call them "sir".) You only salute officers.

The impression I get is that Subaru and Tiana were undergoing the qualification test to get into MidChild's equivalent of the Green Berets, and they just passed it. (Of course they passed; if they didn't we wouldn't have a story, since they're clearly the main two characters.)

Generally excellent, and if anything I believe the animation quality is even better than before. I'm certainly going to watch more of it.

UPDATE: A really interesting thing: When Subaru and Tia summon magic circles, theirs are triangular like Hayate's, not circular like Nanoha and Fate. It will be interesting to see if that has any significance.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 08:40 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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