Let the befriending begin!
Impression
The very first plan Vivio comes up with in getting Einhart to share her feelings is to beat them out of her. She then goes on to say that, after they become friends (the implication being that the process of beating someone up is befriending in itself) they can visit the church gardens together! Oh Vivio, you’re Nanoha’s daughter at heart. Some things never change, even if we’ve moved onto a new generation of lolis. I think Vivio will have to work a bit harder to properly ‘befriend’ Einhart though, and is certainly quite a ways off from settling the score – at the moment, she’s sitting at zero wins and two losses. It was a surprisingly calm first meeting though – actually, civil is probably the word I’m looking for. It was in a populated food court, and they even greeted each other politely and shook hands before arranging a spar. If only Nanoha and Fate had met this peacefully! The parallels are everywhere – Vivio steps into Nanoha’s shoes as a hard-working and cheerful girl, while Einhart is reserved and shy, with a bit of an unsettling past not unlike Fate herself.
They both have their Ancient Belkan relations in common, although we’ve seen many times that it’s currently different for Einhart than it is for Vivio. The latter has pretty much put it behind her – she’s accepted it, and it’s a part of who she is but she’s generally living life as a normal girl. But it’s still bothering Einhart a lot, and having inherited memories is the root cause of it all. To her, it’s like they’re her own experiences – she herself recalls regrets over being too weak, even though she knows the feeling belongs to Claus and not her. And in the end, she’s still a little girl who shouldn’t really have to deal with all this – I’m glad that Nove, Subaru and Teana seem to have decided to look after her, and to keep her company if nothing else.
I suppose she does have Vivio! I love how she turned all adorable once the match was over and Vivio had been knocked unconscious. I’m not sure what Vivio’s policies are towards friends (I suspect they aren’t as spartan as Nanoha’s) but I’m still looking forward to an official ‘befriending’ match some time in the future. For now, I guess they’re getting closer. It wasn’t quite the romantic encounter that one of the Numbers was talking about, but their relationship has improved! Einhart now sees Vivio as Vivio, and introduces herself as Einhart Stratos – instead of seeing Vivio as the Sankt Kaiser and treating herself as the Hegemon Ingvalt. I don’t feel quite right shipping them together, for some reason – and it even has historical basis with Olivie and Claus. It must sound odd coming from an ardent supporter of NanoFate. I’ll wait and see for now.
Here’s a bonus shot of Nanoha being a wonderful mother. Not enough Fate
It never really felt right shipping Nanoha and Fate back when they were 9-years-old either, and for what I suspect are much the same reasons: these kids, and their relationships with each other, are genuinely innocent. They aren’t romantically interested in each other because the idea hasn’t even crossed their minds. Also, I worry that poor Einhart may never be able to be romantically interested in anyone, because she is constantly remembering losing the person she loves. She is, in a way, perpetually suffering from a broken heart that isn’t her own. That sort of thing can’t be good for anyone’s mental health, let alone a child’s.
Noww then, on a completely different subject: one minor annoyance I’ve been developing for this adaptation is that they keep cutting out any references and flashbacks and such to the events in the Saint’s Cradle. What happened there shaped Vivio’s life in a major way: she thought back on it several times in these early chapters, and it was the reason why Fate panicked so much at seeing her transform into her adult form. It bugs me that they seem to be compressing it out, because I feel it’s very important to remember how much of an effect it’s had on things.
Yes, that makes a lot of sense. To them, maybe it wouldn’t be surprising if friendship was the upper limit on their relationship scale. As for Einhart, I remember the doctor
(not-Shamal)saying that as she goes through life and accumulates more memories, her inherited ones will start to fade – or at least no longer be so prominent. It must have been terribly hard growing up, if they were the bulk of her memories when she was little.Perhaps they’re approaching this adaptation with the assumption that the viewer remembers the events of StrikerS. It’s either that or they plan to focus on contemporary issues (i.e. the tournament) and thus anything relating to Ancient Belka is less relevant for their intended purposes. The first of those would be really hard to justify, given that it’s been 8 years or so. I didn’t really mind though – for me, a minor annoyance would be the drop in animation quality during several scenes (most prominently during both instances of Vivio vs Einhart). It wasn’t really a problem during Nove vs Einhart, so maybe they’re just being selective.