That was terrifying.
Impression
Oh Nanoha… never change.
Nanoha got first dibs on befriending Einhart. Sorry, Vivio! And I think Sein voiced practically everyone’s thoughts after Nanoha scored her direct hit with Strike Stars. I didn’t even know she had a spell called Strike Stars! It’s pretty much what everyone wanted to see, and it was a wonderful delivery – even though it’s supposed to be a manga about Vivio, there is room to include a cheerful, overkill beam of destruction from the White Devil. I was initially thinking that even Excelion Buster, which used to have repercussions, was a bit much against a little girl – but hey, when has Nanoha ever been deterred by the fact that her opponent is a child? And Einhart deserved it – in the sense that she’s strong enough for Nanoha to have to resort to what she did and not hold back. It’s a compliment! Einhart stood her ground really well actually – all things considered, she was able to push back a Photon Smasher from the Ace of Aces and deal some damage to her. It also says something that she’s still in the running after taking a massive bombardment head on – and Tea was absolutely right in saying that a clean blast from Nanoha with enough power behind it would be enough to instantly knock them out of the battle.
In general, though, it feels like the new generation are much closer in power level to Nanoha and Fate than I expected – maybe it’s the limiters, or I’m just over-hyping them. And the fact that they’re not exactly trying their utmost best to surpass their limits to destroy a hostile opponent might be a factor, too. But Fate-chan having trouble against Erio? Really? If Bardiche is in default mode, then maybe. But Fate still has Sonic Form and Zanber Form, I think she’s a long way from losing a one-on-one against Erio and Strada.
It was all really exciting. The animation was a little shaky at times, but we got many intense battle scenes and I’m happy with that – I really liked what they did with Rio vs Corona in particular, that was definitely the highlight outside of Nanoha vs Einhart. And Wing Road and Air Liner quickly gave the ground mages a fighting chance against the aerial ones. From what little I remember from the manga, it very much feels like an enhanced experience to see all the explosions and magic animated instead of drawn. And I’m a fan of that sort of thing. I mean, Strike Arts is fine too, but it wouldn’t be Nanoha if it was just hand-to-hand techniques throughout. It’s something I’m thankful the upcoming tournament arc does take into account – which will have great music if this episode was anything to go by.
It’s a testament to the light-hearted nature of ViVid that all the participants had their status displayed through life points – so we’re not concerned with loss of actual life or limb, although there ended up being less focus on the life points than I had thought there would be. I seem to remember that the manga kept track regularly throughout each encounter, and yet the only reference made to them in the episode was when Cyclonic Counter dropped Vivio to 700/3000. It seems like Nanoha has been passing on her spells to students and family alike – I know Subaru was inspired to develop her own form of Divine Buster in StrikerS, but Tea must have learnt Starlight Breaker directly from Nanoha, and Vivio must have learnt her quasi-Divine Buster as well.
Tea in particular seems to have picked up the bad habit of using it to solve all her problems. Air saturated with magic power? Starlight Breaker. Enemy team clustered together? Starlight Breaker. Way to defeat Lulu the master strategist? Starlight Breaker.
A/N: Full speed ahead for Nanoha write-ups as of today! Sorry for the delays!