About a sixth of the way into the series, and we still have not gotten much more than yet more scenes of the Newbies going through training. Judging from the next episode preview, though, we may be seeing some real action soon. But then I'm getting ahead of myself here.

In any case, Nanoha takes over the duty of training the four Newbies while Fate and Hayate go about their mysteriously official business, mostly involving lots of worried meetings with various Newly-Introduced people, such as Carim from Saint Church and suchlike. Sadly, the really side characters of the first two seasons have yet to make an appearance, and I suspect that the final episode of the previous season may have been the last we see of Arisa and Suzuka, much less Miyuki and Kyoya.

These meetings, for their part, seem to have little actual practical purpose other than to fill the viewer in on the background for the uberplot, and to do so slowly. Mind you, I still need to rely on subs and such to understand what the dialogue is all about, so if you're looking for details, you will not find it here.

Animation quality is down this week (raw quality notwithstanding), with the slightest hint of a return of the odd character designs that made the middle episodes of the first two seasons look so weird. I've made my fair share of complaints about them, and this episode isn't that bad, so I'm hoping that this is as off-design as it's going to get.

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