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| Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Season 1 Review (editing)
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Posted:
Sun Sep 26, 2010 4:38 am |
Ultima Weapon
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Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Season 1 Review (editing)
This will be my first anime review on Funender and I would like to use this to establish the fact that not even my favorite series is immune from being absolutely shredded.
The only thing that kept me going in this season is the story and by god was it the most dramatic, emotional, and heartfelt story that towers over anything I've ever seen (at the end at least). Alright, now that the nice things are out of the way, let's get down to what actually forced me to cling on to the story and finish the anime instead of simply tossing it off a cliff: aka, just about everything else.
The story starts out rather cliche. Main character is a normal person, living a normal life, one day stumbles on something "abnormal", they get special powers, and to top it off, they coincidentally have the "highest potential" of anyone "ever seen before". This entire setup for the main character, Nanoha Takamachi, made me facepalm and wonder whether the director of the series was purposely trying to make this show look like it was for 6 year olds.
Anyways, second and third episode pass on and I've just about lost all possible excitement seeing Nanoha fight the pathetic excuses for enemies in order to collect "jewel seeds". For example, her first and second enemies had art designs that make them look quite fearsome, but Nanoha (or should I say, Nanoha's Artificial Intelligence device "Raising Heart" since she does absolutely nothing by herself), is able to cast an instant shield spell that makes the monster's rampaging attacks about as fearsome as someone trying to kill you by tossing a handful of spaghetti: pathetic yet somehow manages to make a mess out of the place. As for the third monster, I didn't know whether to laugh or to go drown myself. It's a tree. A giant tree. Now, a giant haunted tree that can at least swing around its branches like Harry Potter's "whomping willow" would at least suffice, but this one is different as in it's just a normal tree that happens to be big enough to fill half the city and stealthy enough for nobody but Nanoha to ever notice. What made me choose the "laugh" option was how this actually presented a challenge to Nanoha. You see, since the tree can't attack (or even move) Nanoha has to take a moment to think up a new plan because she can't just get the tree to just ram at her invincible barrier and kill itself in the recoil. Anyways, she kills the thing by using the classic "giant laser beam" attack. Nothing wrong with this except me thinking "where up to this point does it even mention her imagining to learn this?"
OK, let's skip past these minor things and move on to episode 4 and beyond. You know, when they finally introduce Fate, Nanoha's adversary. After a few episodes of seeing Fate's amazing character background and comparing it to Nanoha's (you know, the one that doesn't exist), I felt compelled to ask the staff of the anime whether they got the "main character" role mixed up in between the two. Even the side characters such as Yuuno and the TSAB crew have their own goals and reasons for being involved in the plot. Nanoha seems she would be a perfect fit for the role of a supporting character with no real reason of doing anything besides being a nice person who just wants to help out. She seems more like the person who's just tagging along for the ride than actually running the story. What is this, Vaan and Final Fantasy 12?
My main problem with the whole "main character" thing is how Nanoha literally doesn't take a scratch all series long despite being involved in almost all the fight scenes. Take for example, the final battle with Fate. Usually, when you're warned that "Fate's finally gotten serious" and that you're arms are binded literally like Jesus on the crucifix, you expect to either lose on the "ultimate" attack that's headed right for you, or at least take a brutal beating. Maybe when your opponent's attack incantation involves calling the "heavenly gods" to "descend" it implies something massively powerful. Perhaps shooting 1064 shots of lightning infused shells over the course of just under 10 seconds at a helpless target is supposed to mean some serious damage, especially if the person shooting becomes extremely exhausted afterwards for putting so much energy into the attack. But of course, in THIS particular anime series, all that hype ever amounts to is...
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Quote of the day: "Evolution has ZERO evidence, otherwise I would have found it by now."
-MalakaiJ from youtube
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You are Stern the Destructor (星光の殲滅者): Polite, calm and logical...
...But nevertheless extremely dangerous! |
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| Starry-chan |
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Posted:
Sun Sep 26, 2010 4:39 am |
Ultima Weapon
Age: 12
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TWO F**KING HANDFULS OF SPAGHETTI!
Nanoha somehow emerges unscratched and with negligible static around her (but not on her). Well, we could easily forget about that right? The emphasis is all based on what happens at the end of the fight, right? All the stuff before can be ignored if only the concluding events of the fight were epically amazing, RIGHT? Well, since I actually do remember what happened in the middle, you can safely assume that the conclusion of the fight wasn't much better. Nanoha immediately shoots her giant laser beam at Fate (showing how all that "ultimate attack" was nothing more than random special effects). Fate then logically decides that throwing a tiny bullet of lightning directly at the giant laser beam will stop it (and just in case it doesn't, making a shield that breaks over a few regular shots a few minutes ago would also be a great idea). She does this instead of just moving a meter to the left and dodging the linear ray of destruction. Not only this, but Nanoha actually manages to pull yet another one of her "I've somehow just came up with this new skill now" and conjures up an even bigger "giant laser beam" which she is able to cast, maintain a bind (just another tactic copied from Fate which basically threw character diversity out the window by episode 6) and easily recover from shooting that beam in literally 2 seconds. Fate, being established as the "superior" just a few episodes ago, just got her ass handed to her by "the main character". The main character who seems to use that title as some sort of shield that negates any attack. I don't even want to mention how the creative staff gave the characters so many skills, but only let them use so few of them. This makes it really tempting to ask them "why didn't you have her do this?" every time there's a fight scene. This goes for all the characters in the anime. For example, if (in the manga, which is supposed to be read in between the stories) Chrono is supposedly so much more powerful than Fate at that time, why didn't he just go down and do some of the dirtywork himself (or maybe he is aware of Nanoha's "main character shield")? Why did Fate end up using such piss weak attacks in the final battle when it was established before that she had attacks which would easily break through Nanoha's "barrier spamming"?
OK you know what? Maybe I was wrong about this anime when I first saw it. Maybe It really is child's play since it does involve 9 year olds. Maybe I would have been better off ignoring everything but the story (which is again, amazing). Maybe focusing on making something great does have it's price on everything else. So with this thought I went off to watch the second season as well as the movie, which is an "alternate retelling" of the first. Afterwards, I went to gently pick up that idea, and incinerate it with a flamethrower because I was wondering why in hell I would ever give the design staff that kind of lame excuse. Season 2 had everything at great levels without really sacrificing anything else. The movie basically fixed most of the stuff wrong with season 1 (and I'd rather watch that since it was over 80% similar). This season is very unrefined and seems to have been made up as the producers went along. Shifting between a regular family in japan to something involving magic and interdimensional spaceships simply needs more time than 7 episodes.
Alright, on to something different: the graphics. Overall I find the graphics well enough that people wouldn't have to squint their eyes at either how they can't make out the general details or how they might go blind at having far too much sparkling add-ons. One thing I do have a problem with is how overly perverted the first half of the anime really is. First you have the dreaded "transformation sequence" where Nanoha's regular clothes dissapear and are replaced with her "barrier jacket" in a rather slow manner. I honestly feel scared at the fact that somewhere out there, millions of pedophiles who are drooling while observing the nudity will soon be spawned into society. Alright, maybe the "transformation sequence" is supposed to be some kind of tradition with the magical girl theme like Sailor Moon or something. OK, then please explain why the 5th episode revolves entirely around young girls and a few adult women weaing nothing but a small bath towel in a hot springs? And also in the same episode, near the end, the camera strangely appears to give the "viewers" a shot of Fate's butt. But aside from all that, the art group finally got a bit serious in the end and did a well enough job of illustrating characters' facial features as well as the magic circles (used when spellcasting), who actually look very detailed. Simply put, it's better than many other anime and it feels that the illustrators actually want the characters to look good under the spotlight.
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Quote of the day: "Evolution has ZERO evidence, otherwise I would have found it by now."
-MalakaiJ from youtube
Pure gold isn't it?
You are Stern the Destructor (星光の殲滅者): Polite, calm and logical...
...But nevertheless extremely dangerous! |
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| Starry-chan |
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Posted:
Sun Sep 26, 2010 5:42 am |
Ultima Weapon
Age: 12
Joined: 30 Oct 2006
Posts: 12,246
Liked Posts: 8
Karma: 1189
Location: Darkness...
Usergroups:
A World of Cultures
In Review
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9407727 Gil
Items
more...
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But lets get to what you, as the reader of this review, wants. Whether you should watch this anime or not (considering the harsh criticism I bombarded it with). To be perfectly honest, yes you should definitely watch it. Despite having all these problems and others I purposely left out to make this sound slightly less like a rant, the story and ending does actually make up for most of these faults. Despite other faults not made up by the amazing story, plenty of other animes have it so much worse in comparison that most people wouldn't really mind. Yes, despite that, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha is still so thrilling (only after the first 3 episodes of course) that you'll be stuck wanting to know "what happens next". You will also never get bored since the series is so concise and filler-free to the point where you won't want to take your eyes off the screen even to go find the pause button on the video for a bathroom break (you'll even facepalm with your eyes glued to the TV or computer monitor). I honestly wouldn't be surprised if this series ends up revolutionizing the entire generic "pretty princess magical girl" genre, which, up to this point, behaves like a 3 day old mayonnaise sandwich left in the open sun: absolutely foul and indigestible.
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Quote of the day: "Evolution has ZERO evidence, otherwise I would have found it by now."
-MalakaiJ from youtube
Pure gold isn't it?
You are Stern the Destructor (星光の殲滅者): Polite, calm and logical...
...But nevertheless extremely dangerous! |
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