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Jan 22, 2025
Imagine that you have to make the last arc of a long-running series, but from zero, without previous arcs, and in only 26 episodes.
This was the challenge and building block of Nanoha StrikerS, finding a way to show the tip of the iceberg of it's universe that exists inside it's creator's mind, investing heavily in having cool character designs and interesting concepts, and winning in terms of quantity what it can't in terms of quality, with it's end result being similar to reading a Wikipedia article about a huge war in terms it's huge amount of participants, their different origins, motivations and conflicts.
StrikerS first couple
...
episodes might seem difficult to watch due to slow pacing and the plot barely moving, mostly consisting of training episodes with barely any glimpses of our villains. Despite our incredibly large cast, such episodes are not about introducing them, half of the cast being introduced (Sometimes with only a name drop and two lines of dialogue, which surprisingly works) in "action episodes" (Starting around the end of episode 11), which are the strongest point of the season.
Regarding it's themes, StrikerS is built around three: Growing up, legacy and bureaucracy, which — just like the myriad of character plots — are linked to one another like Borromean rings.
Our characters grew up, and are now adults that have taken the mantles and positions of their seniors. No longer Nanoha lives on earth or sees her family and school friends, and rarely does she sees Yuuno or Chrono now. No longer is Fate in need of the reassurance from Lindy or Arf, no longer is Hayate a crybaby who can't do anything, no longer is Nanoha simply about being a mahou shoujo story, the events of the first two seasons are closed. This season is about Subaru, Teana, Erio and Caro growing up to eventually follow the steps of our previous protagonists and of Vivio learning to (Literally) stand up on her own.
Which is not to say that everything that happened before has no meaning, for here is where the theme of "legacy" comes in: Fate saves lonely children for she once was one and needed saving, she feels connected to the artificial mages for she is not only one, but also the origin of them all. Nanoha trains her pupils so they don't commit the mistakes she did in her past, and is sympathetic to the cyborgs because it was never relevant for that Fate or Hayate's knights weren't human, likewise Fate being sympathetic to them because she too once was only an artificial being unemotionally acting in search of acceptance from her creator.
Finally, bureaucracy: Our characters work for a literal bureau, and while since season one we had some concepts of protocols and due processes, in this season this reaches another degree of magnitude, with now each character responding to a different one of the at least half a dozen named agencies, groups and branches. EVERYTHING is bureaucratic, for Midchilda is born from the trauma of "mass weapons" and the misuse of magic and relics that destroyed entire worlds, so the research and development of magic is limited, each one of our characters has their powers limited and has to request permission to use them, with even Nanoha herself internalizing that logic and admonishing Teana for trying to find "dangerous shortcuts".
That isn't to say that such bureaucracy is perfect, for in a way each of our "big-players" tries to find their way around it: Hayate creates Riot Force 6 because she feels that the current system would be unable to quickly respond to major incidents, no different from Regius' rationale (And therefore the rationale of the council who ordered him) regarding cyborgs and artificial mages (Which are reminiscent of Ishinomori Shoutarou's recurrent concept of "jinzō ningen"). But while they might be similar in ideas, they aren't in methods: At the end of the day, Riot Force 6's still stood by the rules of the system, while Regius looked for shortcuts which would eventually bite him back. Finally, Scaglietti represents wanting the complete breakdown of the entire bureaucracy and the search for absolute power.
Once again, you won't find very complex character dynamics:
Erio and Garyuu's entire gimmick is being knights of someone they want to protect, Caro and Lutecia's is being summoners in search of family, Zest (+Agito) and Signum (+Reinforce) their pride as knights and Unison Devices, Teana and Vice about seeing themselves as failures, Subaru about how the circumstances of your creation should not define who you are, but rather what you choose to do with your life, etc
But it's this myriad of "small wishes" and the constant cycling between the sub-plot of each character what makes StrikerS succeed, against all odds, at being "the last arc of a long-running shounen series, but from zero, without previous arcs, and in only 26 episodes".
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jul 27, 2024
This is an Alien World, Otani Yuri simply lives in it.
"Deconstruction" is an often used buzzword that people usually use to describe anime that subverts their own genre tropes and logic in favor of a more "realistic" (Though it often ends up being some sort of romantic pessimism) system.
Alien 9, however, excels at it quite naturally.
Alien 9 is an experimental story, and the fact that some of it's elements don't have hidden meanings behind them only makes it more experimental: It is, more than anything, a story that you must "feel" in order to grasp.
We follow Otani Yuri, a fairly unpopular middle-school student with
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a single friend that ends up forced into the school's task-force of dealing with aliens.
Aliens, in this world are at the same time "a part of life", but also something "exterior": For something that is so recurrent, we never see any institutions or structures made to deal with them, yet at the same time their presence is never seen as unnatural. For someone 40 years ago, having most of humanity's knowledge at the palm of their hand would've been a world-changing event, nowadays we simply call it "having a smartphone", for most people, having to move to a safe shelter after hearing sirens might seem like a nightmare, for some, however, that's simply a weekly occurrence.
Yuri is essentially "us", the viewer, one that is weirded by the weirdness of an unnatural world where no one seems to see a problem, she's the girl that actually sees the king naked when everyone else sees him fully clothed. This constant juxtaposition leaves us, just like Yuri, with a sense of "uneasiness".
In a certain scene, while an alien tries to dear down a classroom door full of grade-school children, clearly distraught and frightened, they are assured by their teacher that there is nothing to fear. That teacher isn't hiding her fear, she deals with the entire situation with a robotic lack of sentiment: If that is the difference between a small child and an adult, then Yuri never left being a child.
Yuri's story is one of solitude, is one of being abused by the world around her, and one could even see her as being analogous to someone with a neurodivergence. We are constantly exposed to a world full of shade, of silence, full of empty places that give us a liminal feeling (And he directing really sells that compared to the manga), Yuri is like the Chosen One in the Matrix, but what good is a Chosen One if every human in the Matrix knows of their situation, accepts it, and lives side-by-side with the machines?
We might feel that there are constant implications that there is some sort of conspiracy at bay, that the world isn't normal... but alas, there is none, that world is how it is: Sadly the anime doesn't cover it, but as the manga passes the reality never changes, yet Yuri is still able to find happiness on small things and have some of the normal experiences of a teenager, she still has do deal with aliens later in her life, but now she isn't the little child that couldn't even move, frozen in fear, but rather a girl with friends that simply doesn't like her job, a true incarnation of "It doesn't get easier, you just get stronger".
Aliens are everywhere: They're your neighbor, your classmate, your boss, your friend. Yuri can't accept that reality, and thus gets constantly lambasted and yelled to "just suck it up" and that "it isn't too bad", yet Alien 9 is also rife with empathy, from when Kumi and Kasumi are forced to share Yuri's feelings of crippling fear and dread, to when, during the vacation episodes, we see Yuri's paranoia even when nothing is there, preventing her from simply living a normal life. This is galvanized by the choice of having Yuri be voiced by a 11-12 year old on her first anime voice-acting role ever (Ihata Juri), while Kumi's (Shimizu Kaori) and Kasumi's (Shitaya Noriko), despite also being at the start of their careers in anime, were 6-7 years older, in contrast with Alien characters, that were voiced by older more experienced seiyuu at the time. Pure coincidence? Maybe, but if so, then it was a welcoming one.
Not much else to say about the more technical side of it outside of compliments:
*The directing makes so certain scenes have more "gravitas" compared to their manga counterparts.
*Kuniaki Haishima's OST feels unique and memorable.
*The aforementioned nice use of shade, silence and emptiness.
*Nice use of CG that doesn't feel at odds with the rest of the animation.
*Fairly distinguishable artstyle.
*Smart use of surreal visuals (Sometimes paired with a bit of body horror) to convey it's psychological feeling.
Just bear in mind that it's an incomplete story that only covers 14 chapters of a 30 chapter manga with a seven chapter sequel, so you'll have to read the source material if you want to know how it ends.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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