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Let's make this clear from the beginning - if you're looking for a gateway to the Fate universe - this isn't it. While Fate/Apocrypha is set in an alternate timeline which would, in theory, free it from some of the baggage from the original work, this is not even remotely the case. I've discussed the first half of the series a few months ago, but now it's time to talk about the series as a whole. There will be spoilers - so if you haven't decided to watch the show yet, read that review first.

Fate/Apocrypha diverges from the core timeline wayback at the Third Grail ... War, which is now established as having been during the Second World War. During that war, the Yggdmillennia family straight up stole the Greater Grail and proceeded to hang on to it. Since then there have been a series of smaller Grail Wars, until finally we have a Greater Grail war, between the forces of Yggdmillennia (the Black faction) and the Mage's Association (the Red faction - no relation to the game series)), to see who will control the Grail. Arbitrating this is a Ruler - a Servant sent to make sure the rules are followed - in this case Jeanne D'Arc.

However, to quote the Lord of the Rings... they were all of them deceived.

During that 3rd Holy Grail War, that war's ruler - Amakusa Shirou Tokisada (yes, Samurai Shodown fans - that Amakusa) - managed to stick around after the war with a cunning plan - get into the holy grail war, and make a wish on the Greater Grail to cause - in short, Third Impact, to stop human suffering, like what happened to his followers in the past.

So that shoe gets dropped about midway through the show, and that absolutely changes the dynamic of the series - with the remaining master of Red and the surviving masters of Black basically responding to that revelation with "Well, f*** that!" and banding together to stop it. Well, that and trying to stop Assassin of Black (who is Jack the Ripper) from running amuck.

This leads to the second half of the series being having both heavier characterization, fights with higher stakes, and more impressive animation for those fights. We get Gordes coming to view the Homunculi as human, Sieg understanding how he feels about life and humanity, and Jeanne's growing affection for Sieg.

We also get some of the most impressively animated fights of the series - Achilles and Chiron, Sieg(fried) and Karna, Jeanne (and later Achilles) and Atalantia. It's gorgeously done work - though I will admit going from comments elsewhere that some of the animation in those fights is more divisive than others.

All of that said, while the fights are impressive, and some of the character beats in the second half of the show are nicely done, it's a little inferior to Fate/Zero - mainly due to some issues with the material. If you're already deep into the Nasuverse lore, there's a lot to enjoy - but if you're new, there is other material to go with.

Blame! (pronounced like the onamonapia "Blam") is the first outing by Tsutomu Nihei, the mangaka who would go on to do Biomega and Knights of Sidonia, and it's an incredibly strong start to what has become an extremely impressive career.

The manga follows, initially, a man named Killy, who is exploring a massive industrial gothic landscape known as the "Megastructure", searching for a person who has the "Net Terminal Gene". It turns out at some point in the distant past the automated machines responsible for construction and maintenance went out of control, and the structure has begun expanding out of control. The Net Terminal Gene would allow ... a human to access the computer system that controls the MegaStructure.

Because of the nature of the setting, the story of the system doesn't focus heavily on character development, instead focusing on the journey as Killy goes through the megastructure looking for settlements, and trying to find out if any of the residents of those settlements have the Net Terminal Gene. This doesn't mean that the characters we get aren't fleshed out - it's just that there aren't very many of them. Killy is the only character who is in every volume of the manga, with a few supporting characters like Sana and Cibo coming in later volumes - and over the course of the series we get a degree of development for each character, though each is defined by the goals that drive them - Killy by his search for the Net Terminal Gene, Cibo for a better understanding of the Mega Structure, and Sana by her joint attraction for Killy and Cibo.

Probably the biggest strength here is the art. Nihei is a fantastic landscape artist, and this series features the "Industrial Gothic" design esthetic that would later get featured very prominently in Biomega. In particular, the last volume of Vertical's reprints has some spectacular two-page landscape spreads.

While it's almost impossible to track the route of Killy's journey, Nihei does a fantastic job of getting across a sense of scale and power as he makes his way through the Megastructure. This particularly comes up whenever Killy fires his signature weapon - the Graviton Beam Emitter. The gun's beam keeps going for a tremendous distance whether it hits an opponent or not, and Nihei does a great job of getting this across, with great use of wide-shots showing the additional damage of the beam.

The series does lack the sense of humor of Knights of Sidonia or even some of the quippy one-liners of Biomega. It makes for a read that I'd describe as "Angel's Egg with Explosions and more dialog." The series isn't as navel-gazy or philosophical as Angel's Egg is, but it has the dark atmospheric tone of that series.

The series was originally licensed by by Tokyopop, but recently got a re-release by Vertical which is a much more enjoyable read, with larger pages that really let the detail in Nihei's start to stand out.

(This review was originally posted on my blog at countzeroor.com)

This review originally appeared on my personal blog at CountZeroOr.Wordpress.Com

The Cat Returns is, to my knowledge, the only semi-sequel feature film that Studio Ghibli has ever put out (ignoring shorts made for museums). It’s also one of the small number of films put out by Studio Ghibli that aren’t directed by Isao Takahata or Hayao Miyazaki. The film was directed by Hiroyuki Morita, as part of an initiative at Ghibli introduced by Miyazaki as an attempt to groom new directors so the studio isn’t dependant on Takahata and Miyazaki, so when they retire, the studio could go on.

If your response to that last sentence is ... “Didn’t Ghibli shut down when Miyazaki retired?” then you know exactly what came of that initiative. I don’t know if this was due to internal politics where Miyazaki wasn’t happy with the directors who came out of this project, Miyazaki being a general curmudgeon, or what? Takahata, on the other hand, in spite of my general comments about him and his work in my article about Akira, seems to be okay with younger animators directing films at Ghibli – as the decision to shut down seems primarily driven by Miyazaki, without any feedback by Takahata.

Anyway, as far as the film itself goes – this is probably the most conventionally “anime” film that Ghibli has ever done. This isn’t a slight against the film, by any means. It’s just that most Ghibli films, especially those from Miyazaki, tend to be more pastoral in their settings while most anime (that is set in Japan) tends to be metropolitan (even historical pieces like Rurouni Kenshin). This film, is instead in modern Japan, and most likely in Tokyo.

Just to put an underline on how more conventional anime this film is, the opening of the film is our protagonist, ordinary high school girl Haru Yoshioka, waking up late, quickly getting getting ready for school, but not having enough time to leave breakfast. This leads to her racing downstairs, and seeing her mother eating breakfast of a fried egg on toast, with a similar dish waiting for her, setting up the archetypal anime shot of female protagonist running to school while trying to eat a piece of toast – before she decides to leave without the toast. While this is a subversion of that bit – the key is that Takahata or Miyazaki wouldn’t even go that far.

This goes on with most of the character designs as well – they have some of the slightly larger eyes you see in more conventional anime characters, as opposed to most of Miyazaki’s other films where the characters are less stylized (aside from Castle of Cagliostro, where aside from Fujiko Mine who is almost unrecognizable compared to her other appearances, the Lupin crew retained their conventional designs)

It reminds me a lot of Your Name., where that film lead to a lot of people lauding Makoto Shinkai for being “the next Miyazaki”, when all things considered, his film is a lot more conventionally anime in terms of style and settings.

Where the story kicks off is Haru sees a cat (carrying a parcel) while walking home with her friend. When said cat goes to cross the street and is nearly run over by a truck, Haru grabs her friend’s Lacrosse stick and runs in front of the truck, scooping up the cat, and evading either certain death or ending up in an isekai story. The cat then stands up, and thanks her for saving him, says that he’s a Really Big Deal back in the cat world, and she’ll be rewarded for this.

When the first attempt to reward her – by planting foxtales in her yard (which sets off her and her mothers pollen allergies), putting catnip in her pockets (which leads to cats following her to school and gets her in trouble), and live mice in her shoe locker (which is just freaky). While helping clean up after school, she complains about the gifts to the Assistant to the King of Cats, and complains about her relationship problems at the time. The Assistant offers to deal with that for her, and match her up with the Prince of Cats – without listening, she agrees.

However, once she realizes what she’s done, she’s directed to the “Cat Bureau” run by The Baron (who was introduced in Whisper of the Heart), who agrees to help get her out of this – and the remainder of the story ensues.

I really enjoyed this film – it’s a very well put together coming-of-age adventure romp, though it’s not without some faults. Haru has a lot less agency than most of Miyazaki’s other female protagonists – spending most of the film reacting rather than acting, and having to be rescued rather than rescuing herself. There are exceptions – she certainly makes choices on her own behalf, and she makes a few important observations that help lead to our protagonists extricating themselves from various situations.

However, when she gets into bad situations (whether situations that are perilous or negative), she generally has to be extricated by the actions of someone else (often The Baron, but not always). To the credit of writer Reiko Yoshida and the film’s director, there are legitimate textual and metatextual reasons for this. The textual reasons are that the means of escape are often related to information that Haru simply doesn’t have access to.

The metatextual reasons are related to the fact that the writer envisioned this story as being written by the protagonist of Whisper of the Heart about the character of The Baron. In other words, the story of The Cat Returns is as much about Haru as Big Trouble in Little China is about Jack Burton. While Jack and Haru are both one of the protagonists of their respective stories, they aren’t the main protagonist – they’re viewpoint characters. Their role is to give the audience perspective of the world’s they’re going into.

That said, I still would have preferred if Haru had more of an active role in the story – once she meets Yuki and she and the audience learn that Yuki works at the palace, I would have liked if Yuki had come onboard as an equal supporting character if not on par with The Baron, than on par with Muta, in terms of providing Haru assistance in her escape – like finding a way to provide her information about how to escape, so that Haru is looking for that opportunity when The Baron makes his appearance again.

Sadly, director Hiroyuki Morita has only directed one other work of anime – and it wasn’t for Ghibli. He directed the incredibly dark super robot anime Bokurano, before returning to working in Key Animation, most recently working with Polygon Pictures on Knights of Sidonia, Ajin, and the new Godzilla anime film series. He has worked with Studio Ghibli a few more times as an animator as well – working on Tales of Earthsea, and The Tale of Princess Kaguya.

On the other hand, writer Reiko Yoshida has a ton of other series and films under her belt, including Girls Und Panzer and its OVAs and films, the film version of A Silent Voice, and most recently the currently airing Violet Evergarden and Hakumei and Mikochi.

Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ is one of the Universal Century Gundam series that had yet to receive a US release. Bandai Entertainment USA had announced a US release prior to them shutting their doors several years ago, but now that RightStuf has been working to bring out various Gundam series to the US, which means that fans here can finally take a look at the show legally.

As a head’s up, there are some spoilers for the show here, but I’m going to work to keep them to a minimum. There will be some heavy spoilers for Gundam Zeta, which are somewhat essential due to how ... the show starts.

Double Zeta had something of a mixed reputation, even going back to its original ending, in part due to the tone of the series. Double Zeta aired not long after Zeta concluded, and picks up mere days after the conclusion of Gundam Zeta. So, I do need to get into the events of Gundam Zeta.

Following the One Year War (the original Gundam Series), the Earth Union started up the Titans – a paramilitary organization tasked to hunt down remnants of Zeon throughout the system. However, the Titans are granted way too much power and end up being corrupted, committing various atrocities, and labeling anyone who pushes back as Zeonic sympathizers – leading to the formation of the AEUG, the Anti-Earth Union Group, who sets out to oppose the Titans – backed by Anaheim Electronics, the company who developed the original Gundam, and with one of their military commanders being Quattro Bagina, who is secretly Char Aznable/Casval Deikun.

Ultimately, the AEUG is joined by Noah Bright, who joins after being unable to challenge the Titans from inside the system, and Kamille Bidan, a young man (about Amuro Rey’s age in the first Gundam series), who ends up in over his head after an act of juvenile rebellion pisses of the Titans and leads them to murder his parents.

The AEUG overcomes the Titans, but at great cost – many members of the AEUG are killed, and Kamille himself is left comatose by the psychic enemy of the series villain. Additionally, the Titans joined forces with the Neo Zeon – the remnants of Zeon (which they were formed to fight), lead by Zeon’s regent, Haman Karn, providing Zeon with an influx of men and material with which to become active again.

This leads to Gundam ZZ. The Agarma, the surviving ship from the events of the last series, has pulled into the space colony of Shangri-La in Side 1, to repair and resupply, and to get medical attention for Kamille. And then, coming right at the heels of the very heavy conclusion of Gundam Zeta, it turns into something of a slapstick comedy for about 6-8 episodes. The show introduces new protagonist Judau Ashita, and a group of his friends from the colony who are all junk dealers, who end up getting caught up with the Argama and her crew.

This is probably the point where people bounced from the show – hard. Most of the story arcs with these characters for a significant chunk of the series side towards the comedic. Judeau and company have something of a mercenary attitude, which they eventually grow out of, with them wanting to steal the Zeta Gundam to sell for parts. It’s later made out that this is a front, but it’s a pretty dumb front.

On top of this, two of Judau’s friends have a rather annoying ongoing plot, involving trying to betray the Argama to Neo-Zeon, then disliking how they are treated with Neo Zeon, and trying to get back. It’s rather frustrating, and with these two plot threads combined, it turns the series opening into something of a rough start.

After the first quarter to third of the series, things picks up, in terms of action and quality, with a big moment in the show’s halfway point where things start to get more serious. However, I can completely understand why this is too large of a barrier of entry for viewers, in terms of having to wait that long for that for the show to get good.

I did enjoy the show once I got past that earlier, excessively jokey section, and it helped that I knew going in that the series wasn’t going to retain that tone and style for the entirety of the show, and that it was going to get some of the same weight and gravitas of Gundam Zeta.

The character designs, animation, and robot designs for the new series, especially the design of the Gundam Double Zeta also helped, along with the fact that Judeau did not have some of the more obnoxious elements Kamille or Amuro had in their series, with Amuro in particular being the previous target of mecha fans screaming “Get in the goddamn robot!” at their TVs, well before Evangelion came out and everyone decided that they hated Shinji Ikari more.

If I was going to give a pitch for why you should push past Gundam ZZ’s awkward, jokey opening portion and to give it a chance to find its footing, is that this show really gets across the themes of Gundam that Tomino is going for much better than the earlier works, and it also makes for a much more satisfying conclusion to the original Universal Century Arc than Char’s Counterattack does.

It’s not that Char’s Counterattack isn’t good – it’s that it sacrifices characterization for spectacle, having Char posturing as a Spacenoid Supremacist Demagogue like Gihren Zabi, for what turns out to be the sole purpose of having one last showdown with Amuro for all the marbles, in spite of having seemingly buried that beef during Gundam Zeta, and it loses the thrust of the main series.

Specifically that thrust is that Newtypes, humans who have grown up entirely in space colonies and who have developed psychic abilities, are better not because they’re psychic, but because those abilities make them more in touch with their fellow humans, and in turn have as stronger sense of empathy. It’s not that they’re better at fighting (the thrust behind the Cyber-Newtype project), but because they can look past their differences with other people and thus there will be no need to fight.

This comes to a head at a midpoint of the series, when Haman Karn drops a colony on Dublin, Ireland. Tomino has been accused of cribbing the concepts of Newtypes from Star Wars and the Jedi, and it fits here because many of the Newtypes among the protagonists, particularly Judeau and Kamille, take a psychic beating from this event. It’s not just emotionally traumatic, it’s psychically traumatic as well.

Gundam Zeta is regarded as the best of Tomino’s Universal Century Gundam series, but I’d say that Gundam ZZ is more satisfying

I’m a fan of works about the making of stuff, going all the way back to reading Aliki’s How A Book Is Made and Digging Up Dinosaurs when I was a little kid. Consequently, when I learned about the anime series New Game!, it went on my watch list. I’ve finished watching that, and while the second season is currently airing I figured I might as well give my thoughts on the first season.

The anime follows Aoba Suzukaze, a girl who has just graduated from High School, and rather than going to college like her childhood friend, she has entered the workforce by becoming a ... character artist at the game developer Eagle Jump, who made her favorite game as a kid. The show from there follows her progression as she learns the ropes as a character artist on her first game, Fairies Story III.

Along the way through this process, she’s taken under the wing of the game’s character designer, Kou Yagami, and becomes close friends with her co-workers, fellow character artists Hifumi Takimoto and Yun Iijima, and character animator Hajime Shinoda. Oh, and all these characters are female, because the head of the studio Shizuku Hazuki (who is also female), prefers to hire cute girls who are also good (or are likely to be good in the future) at their jobs.

So, this anime could very easily end up slipping in is focus from being a Manga About A Thing (like how Moyashimon is a manga about fermentation and Hikaru No Go is about playing Go) and into a Cute Girls Doing Cute Things manga. Thankfully, the anime balances the two aspects of this show’s nature incredibly well – balancing Aoba learning how characters are made in a video game, and Aoba and her friends hanging out.

The creator of the manga the show is based on, Shotaro Tokuno, had previously worked in the video game industry, and his knowledge of how the industry works really shows in the writing – and the animators also show real tools in the interfaces we see in the show, from Maya to Unity.

The show has a moderate degree of fanservice – Kou has a habit of spending the night in the office and sleeping in her underpants, meaning we get some frequent shots of her underwear clad posterior. The show doesn’t linger on it in this season – though I will be talking about this some in the second season. Instead, the show has shots using the male gaze for about as long as Kou’s underwear is the center of a character’s attention, before moving to a wider shot where the fact that the character is in their underpants is played more matter-of-factly.

The cast of the show has great chemistry, both in terms of being animated well and in terms of the voice acting and writing. Of particular note is the character of Hifumi Takimoto, who is borderline non-verbal at the start of the series, to a degree that I suspect that she’s on the Autism Spectrum, and as she bonds more with her cube mates she begins to open up more, to the point that by the second season she’s chatting with them normally.

All in all, season 1 of New Game! is a solid, fun and somewhat educational anime series.

This review originally appeared on my blog.

Dallos is an anime that reminds me a lot of what got me into anime in the first place. I came into anime as a fan of science fiction and fantasy, and I came in through OVAs and films like Akira, Demon City Shinjuku, Ghost in the Shell, and Record of Lodoss War. So, when I found out that Dallos, an anime considered to be the first OVA (or one of the first alongside the Cream Lemon series), and which was directed by Mamoru Oshii (who also directed Ghost in the Shell and Angel’s Egg – which I’ve previously ... reviewed), had been licensed by Discotek Media, and later made available for streaming on Crunchyroll, I put it on my to-watch list.

As far as the premise of Dallos goes, it borrows a little bit from the concept of Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, in particular the book’s first act. The anime is set on The Moon. As with Heinlein’s novel, the moon has been built as a colony to provide needed materials (ore and other raw materials) to Earth. However, in Heinlein’s book, the moon’s colonists were political dissidents and prisoners, while in the original colonists were workers who chose to work to build the lunar colony, with the agreement that they would settle there.

The protagonist of the series, Shun Nonomura, is a third generation inhabitant of the colony or “Lunarian”. While the first two generations have a distinct sense of loyalty to Earth – the first generations having gone to the Moon to work for the betterment of Earth, and the second generation having inherited their parents sense of obligation – the third generation Lunarians don’t have the same sense of obligation. They have never seen Earth – indeed, the colony is on the dark side of the moon, and the Lunarians are forbidden to travel to the moon’s near side so they could see the Earth. The main unified belief among the three generations is a reverence to “Dallos” a mysterious giant head, built with incredibly advanced technology, that was uncovered during the development of the colony.

The lack of personal experience of Earth or ability to travel to Earth, combined with the poor treatment of the colonists by the administration, has lead to a revolutionary movement in the settlement, and this leads to the focus of the story, as Shun and his childhood friend Rachel, are caught up in the separatist movement lead by Dog McCoy, which is contending with counterinsurgency efforts by the civil administrator, Alex Leiger.

The first half of the anime borrows a lot from films like Battle of Algiers, as it follows the efforts of the revolutionaries as things escalate further and further, and Shun is brought more and more involved, before the last two episodes in the series bring things into open revolt and almost into something resembling a real-robot anime.

I can’t really review this show without getting into the ending. The ending of the series feels like the end of an act break, as opposed to an actual satisfactory conclusion. There has been a narrative arc, with rising action to a climax, and then some denouement, with characters being in different places than they were at the start of the series. However, it doesn’t really have any resolution. The moon is still under the thumb of Earth (and things are about to get worse), and in spite of Dallos itself becoming a major part of the conflict which changes things dramatically in the series final part, not only do we not know what Dallos is, no-one is taking this as an incentive to make a more concerted effort to find out what Dallos is.

It feels like this show was pitched as a 12 episode OVA, and early in production they decided to make it a 4 episode series instead, and if it did really well, it would get another 4 episodes, but it never did quite well enough to get those final parts. Unfortunately, co-writer Hisayuki Toriumi passed away in 2009, so I don’t know if we’ll really get a resolution to this story.

The Fate universe has, in the works I’ve reviewed thus far, has generally formed a cohesive narrative whole – with the exception of clear comedic side-stories that are deliberately intended to be outside continuity like Carnival Phantasm. Others have adapted alternate routes of the visual novels that are part of Type-Moon’s Nasuverse (like Fate/Stay Night mostly adapting the Fate route and Unlimited Blade Works adapting that route). Fate/Prisma Illya is a true alternate take on the Fate Universe.

If I was to draw a comparison to another work of anime or manga, I’d compare this to the Shinji Ikari Raising Project manga. Like Shinji Ikari Raising ... Project, it’s set in an alternate universe where the parents (or foster parents in the case of Shirou) of the protagonist of the original work are still alive. The protagonist(s) have to contend with a challenge which is similar to but not exactly identical to the challenge of the original work, with a mostly similar cast and a similar themes, but with less severe stakes, and a less dire tone, and shifted to a different genre

There are a few differences here from that formula – Kiritsugu and Irisviel are still alive, but are generally absent, with Kiritsugu and Iris traveling on work, with instead the two Einzbern maids – Sella and Leysritt, acting en loco parentis while Kiritsugu and Iris are absent. Also, the series shifts the protagonist status to Illyasviel (Illya), which fits with the genre shift – to a Magical Girl show.

The show follows Illya and a new character, Miyu. They are each recruited into being Magical Girls by two sentient Magical Girl Wands – Ruby and Sapphire (respectively) – both with the voices and personalities of Kohaku and Hisui of Tsukihime (respectively). Ruby and Sapphire were originally assigned to Rin Tohsaka (from Fate) and Luviagelita (Luvia) Edelfelt (who first appeared in the epilogue of UBW), who were in turn sent from the Magic Academy in London to retrieve a selection of “Class Cards” which has made an appearance in Fuyuki City. However, as we saw in the epilogue of UBW, Rin and Luvia get along like the components of a binary explosive. So, once Ruby and Sapphire have enough of Rin and Luvia’s bickering – they quit and find new masters.

Rin and Luvia end up serving as mentors for Illya and Miyu (respectively), as they fight to acquire the class cards, which means in turn defeating dark versions of the various Heroic Spirits from Fate/Stay Night (except for Assassin – that version is True Assassin, instead of Koujiro). This gives series a structure like a more serious version of Cardcaptor Sakura, with Illya and Miyu having to take on the Servant of the Episode, with two servants already captured by the start of the series – Lancer and Archer.

Illya and Miyu have an interesting character dichotomy. Illya is a more conventional magical girl – not only in costume design, but in terms of worldview. She’s a fan of magical girl anime, and when Ruby tricks her into being a Magical Girl, she rolls with it pretty quickly, and completely gets the genre conventions. However, this means that when things get too dangerous and very serious, she falls into a real depression, due to the rather scary situation she finds herself in.

By comparison, Miyu falls into the archetype of the Dark Magical Girl. Like most versions of the archetype, the costume is more risque than the main magical girl. Miyu also has a more cynical outlook on life – and also a comedically serious worldview. Finally, she has a mysterious backstory that isn’t exactly explained in this season.

The show has a few significant minuses. For starters, this show has a little too much fanservice. Because the show is a magical girl show, instead of Illya being the age she is in Fate/Stay Night (16-18 – but with her growth magically stunted as a tactical decision for the next Grail War), she’s clearly middle-school aged. Putting aside where it puts things in terms of the timeline (Shirou, Rin, and Luvia are the same age they are in Fate/Stay Night), this brings up the issue of, well, middle school characters in skimpy outfits.

Specifically the “Install” costumes that Illya and Miyu have when they Install the various class cards are the worst offender of this. It’s like the various alternate “Equips” that Erza Scarlett has in Fairy Tail, except Erza is an adult, and these characters clearly aren’t. There’s some additional fanservice elsewhere that is unnecessary and off-putting, particularly in the episode where Illya learns Miyu is working as a maid for Luvia.

Additionally, to shove some additional moe tropes into the show, Illya is a bro-con. Illya having something of a twisted romantic attraction to Shirou worked in the main timeline, as while they are semi-related, they have also been raised completely apart. Here, they’ve been raised together, so there’s no excuse. As Genshiken said about these sort of tropes: "I can vouch that they are the result of fantasies by people who don't actually have a younger sister."

The pacing of the show is also rather rushed. Most TV anime, minimum, have a 12-episode cour. This show has a 10-episode cour. The series had already been approved for a second season by the end of the first season – but a little research has shown that season (and the two following seasons) have all run 10 episodes as well. Missing those two episodes actually hurts the pace of the series considerably. I can’t speak for how well the material in the show covers the same amount of the material in the manga, but from where I sit as a viewer, the show just felt rushed. That said, having three seasons coming after makes this more forgivable, as we can get more character development and world building in later episodes of the series.

This review previously appeared on my blog: https://countzeroor.wordpress.com/2017/03/06/anime-review-nanoha-strikers/

The Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha franchise has been interesting when it comes the Magical Girl genre of anime. The original series was something of a conventional Magical Girl vs. Dark Magical Girl show, like the Pretty Cure franchise, with the difference being that the battles between Nanoha and her opposite number, Fate, played out a lot like a superhero fight.

The later series played up this concept, with the second series, Nanoha As setting up a battle of superhero teams (or superhero and super-anti-hero teams), with Nanoha, Fate, Arf, taking on a team of opponents with more-or-less similar abilities. ... The series also played down the school adventure side of the traditional magical girl story, with Nanoha’s school friends, who were very much a prominent part of the narrative for the first series, being pushed to the side very early.

Nanoha StrikerS dumps the “civilian life” side of the equation entirely, with series protagonists Nanoha Takamachi & Fate Testarossa working as, basically, state-sponsored superheroes, and spending all of the series well away from Earth. Previous series had introduced the Time Space Administration Bureau (or TSAB), the bureaucracy behind it, and that the government that it answers to is based on a world called Mid-Childa. StrikerS spends almost the entirety of it’s runtime there.

The premise of the series is that it’s set a little over 10 years after the events of Nanoha As, which would put Nanoha and Fate in their early-to-mid 20s. Nanoha and Fate have become part of a special unit as part of the TSAB, lead by Hayate, the befriended antagonist of As. The objective of the unit is to hunt down Lost Logia, lost pieces of magitech which can be incredibly dangerous in the wrong hands. As part of this unit, Nanoha, Fate, and the Wolkenritter (Hayate’s now-less-dark Magical Girl superteam from As), are also training another team of, for lack of a better term, Magical Superheroes.

From a narrative position this setup puts the audience in an amazing position to see how the protagonists who we’ve followed through the last two series have matured, and it’s certainly successful at that. In particular, Fate and Nanoha have become the de-facto parental figures for two kids who are now part of their unit, Erio and Caro. While they were not actually adopted by Fate, they were adopted by Fate’s stepmother – Lindy, with Fate helping to raise them in a maternal/older sister role.

This leads to Fate & Nanoha. The writing of the first two series loosely implied that the two were homosexual. StrikerS, on the other hand, strongly implies that the two are in relationship with as strong a subtext as you can get without actively crossing over into text – like, stronger than the handhold in Legend of Korra.

The new protagonists, Erio, Caro, Subaru, and Teana, are generally well written, and have really strong chemistry. Erio and Caro, and Subaru and Teana have some romantic chemistry, which is read stronger for me with Subaru and Teana.

The overall story of the series serves to bring back together some plot threads going back to the original series. Hayate’s team, Riot Force 6, ends up coming into conflict with a mad magical scientist named Jail Scaglietti, who has been engaging in genetic engineering to create artificial mages and cyborgs for combat. The research he’s working on is similar to that that was done by Fate’s birth mother, Precia, in her attempts to raise her deceased daughter, Alicia from the dead – work that lead to the creation of Fate. The level of conflict here is nice and personal, and gives the conflict a strong direct tie to our protagonists that makes up for the lack of any real civilian life our heroes have.

That said, the animation doesn’t quite back up the story. This is a 2007 anime from studio Seven Arcs, who animated the earlier Nanoha series, along with the Triangle Heart OVA, and somehow, I can’t quite say why, but the animation here doesn’t feel quite right. The Digicel animation feels a little overly flat and stilted, particularly towards the end of the series. Now, it’s been awhile since I watched the first two shows, and maybe they’re just as bad, but with this series it feels like it stands out more, especially towards the end of the show.

There are also some weird decisions with the animation that seem to make little sense. The show cuts around some early stages of some very emotionally significant fights later in the series, showing the aftermath of the action instead of the action. Now, when we hit the climaxes of those fights, we see the full conclusion, but with this particular fight, the early stage was really important, and it was really disappointed with the fact that we didn’t get a chance to see it.

There are some issues with the costume design. The designs for the TSAB staff, and Riot Squad 6 are fine. However, there is Jail Scaglietti’s team of combat cyborgs, The Numbers. They wear these skin-tight outfits that leave as little to the imagination as the animation budget will allow, without actually showing skin. It’s the kind of outfit that 90s comics were mocked for putting female characters in, with boob socks and precisely defined butt-cheeks. The plugsuits in Evangelion didn’t go nearly as far in their form-fitting nature.

I enjoyed the show enough to finish it, but it was the characters who kept me coming back for the rest of the show, and in particular the fact that I’d come to appreciate these characters and their stories through the last two series. If it wasn’t for the writing and the characters, I probably would have dropped the show due to my issues with the animation.

That said, with how the show wraps up, considering the fourth series, Nanoha Vivid (focusing on a character that Fate and Nanoha adopt in this series), has not yet gotten a US release, StrikerS does make for a decent conclusion to the Nanoha series.

Adaptations of visual novels to anime are something of a mixed bag. Sometimes, like with Clannad and Comic Party, the adaptation is a hit. Other times, it doesn't work quite so much. Fate/Stay Night falls into the former case, though there are times where the work stumbles in its execution, primarily on the animation front, though there are some narrative issues.

The animation for the series is done by Studio DEEN, and this is made during their dark period, after their high points back in the 80s with works like Angel's Egg, and before their modern redemption with Konosuba and Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu. This leads ... to some weird animation moments - such as clear moments where dialog scenes are taken off camera, to avoid having to animating mouth movements. Some of the action scenes also feel under-animated - including some of the shows more significant fights - like Archer's battle with Berserker. It feels like a deliberate attempt to save money on the animation budget so they can go all out in the series finale, which has an incredibly dramatic animation bump - so dramatic that it almost feels like it was animated by a completely different studio.

That said, the show's music is generally good, with a score composed by Kenji Kawai, who is known for his work on Ghost in the Shell - though the scope of the music feels, once again, limited by budget - as if he envisioned the music to be played by live musicians, only to be informed that all they could afford was a really nice synthesizer, loaded with some really good MIDI voices.

The writing is generally good. The women, particularly Saber, Rin, Taiga, and Ilya are all very interestingly and entertainingly written characters, with some great character moments. In particular, Miki Itou as Taiga livens up every scene she's in with the work, and you can almost feel her energy liven up the rest of the cast in the scenes she shares with them. That said, some of the writing around the character of Shirou stumbles. He's overly patronizing of Saber. In particular, early in the series he's unwilling to acknowledge or recognize her combat skills to a real degree - choosing to fight instead of her even when it's been demonstrated to him that she is far better with a sword than pretty much everyone. Later in the series he shows a better degree of trust, but it is still frustrating early on in the show. Later on in the series the show develops a twist that comes more or less out of nowhere, but it introduces one of the show's better antagonists, so I'll cut them some slack for that.

As far as whether you should watch the show - Ufotable has spent more time in this universe than Deen has, with prequel Fate/Zero, and the Unlimited Blade Works anime (which adapts another route through the same game). Fate/Zero sets up the rules of the Grail War, much as this does, but Fate/Zero front-loads the exposition with a massive infodump in the first, double-length episode, while this show paces the exposition better - and explains some other concepts that Fate/Zero doesn't get into (like how the magic system works).