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.

Nanoha is a pretty tough instructor, what with having the Newbies trying the old "see if you can hit me" exercise after what looked like a full morning of training. It appears to be in the standard trainer repertoire, possibly to knock cocky recruits down a few pegs, but more recent examples I've seen had the recruits at least suspect that when the sergeant (or whatever) tells them to "hit me with everything you've got", pain will ensue.

Here, the Newbies are extremely aware that Nanoha can wipe the floor with them at any time. The task here is to dodge Nanoha's Accel Shooters for five minutes, while trying to land a clean hit on her. Considering how Nanoha had a strict training regimen in controlling these energy bolts when she was nine, I'm guessing that she's had plenty of time in the decade since then to improve.

The teamwork dynamics fall into expected lines: Teana is the team tactician, with the others deferring to her for the battle plans. She also tries to have battlefield control, using her illusions to set up the real attacks. Subaru, quite predictably, relies on speed and mobility for hit-and-run attacks, but is limited by needing a surface to rollerblade on (even if this surface can technically be anywhere, with Wing Road). Caro acts as primarily buffing support (along with fireball-lobbing distraction with Friedrich), and Elio is more or less point and go.

Unfortunately, Teana (and later Subaru) discovers yet another aspect of combat that always happens, even when it's not supposed to: everything breaks down sooner or later, and it will do so when you really need it. Yes, this is probably the show's way of telling us that it might be time for the team to get some upgrades, or at least better maintenance.

In the end, Elio does manage to score a hit (more precisely a scratch) on Nanoha's Barrier Jacket. The newbies are happy, and Nanoha isn't even breathing hard. There's been a bit of debate about the meaning of Nanoha's sudden cryptic smile just before Elio rammed into her, with one camp interpreting it as her satisfaction at how her training paid off, and another camp saying that Nanoha let them win (for morale's sake, probably). I'm not sure which is correct, and I'm not sure it really matters that much in the long run.

Subaru realizes that all the action has made her rollerblades short out. Nanoha informs the team that they'll be getting new Devices a bit later, and this appears to come as a surprise. This, presumably, is when Subaru gets Mach Calibre, and Teana gets Cross Mirage.

But before that, a fanservice scene in the showers. The three girls make some small talk about (I think) how Teana and Subaru met. In the pre-StrikerS manga, this meeting was depicted in some detail, and Subaru was more or less the same as she is now, while Teana was more, well, stiff, to put it politely. Again, I have no idea why there is a shower scene here, other than perhaps some random fanservice.

Well, that, and the brief and slightly amusing scene of Elio waiting with Friedrich for the girls to finish. Evidently Caro does not let Friedrich bathe with her, although this may be less due to Friedrich's maleness and more that she'd rather not burn down the showers.

Meanwhile, Hayate meets with Carim, and the two of them discuss the AMF drones some more, once again requiring me to grab the subs before I can understand what they're worried about. I think it has something to do with some artifact or relic, and there is mention of now-Admiral Chrono somewhere in there. (I did not, however, hear anything about Lost Logias, which may or may not be significant.)

For now, I'm just operating under the assumption that they're generally worried, in a vague, undefined sense.

The Newbies get their new Devices, or at least upgraded versions of their old ones. More complicated jargon is spouted; as far as I can tell, Nanoha explains that these Devices have some sort of limiter installed into them for some reason or another. Nanoha further reveals that the Original Team (specifically Nanoha, Fate, Hayate, Signum, and Vita) had limiters installed not just in their Devices, but also in themselves, bringing their power rankings down to AA-class. (Nanoha and Fate went down two ranks, Hayate went down four. Yeah, Hayate is overpowered.) Supposedly the reason for this is that there are too many powerful mages in the unit or something, and regulations dictated the limiters. Personally, I see this as an opportunity for a Power Up when the enemies get too tough, just like in typical shounen series. (Actually, to be fair, Ah My Goddess technically had the goddesses wear a significant number of limiters while on Earth as well.)

Most of the Original Team's limiters (and presumably the Newbies') can be released by Hayate, and Hayate's own limiter can be released by Chrono. I'm not sure if Chrono has a limiter himself, or if being an Admiral exempts him from it. Whether the limiters have another method of release (say, under Great Stress or at the Last Moment or something like that) is unknown.

Fate is driving on a highway and talking to Griffiths about random stuff that boil down to All's Well and Nothing's Happening. I took this screenshot to illustrate what happens when a sudden urgent message comes up: a big red "ALERT" sign pops up right in front of her field of view, and it does this while she is driving.

I can only assume that the car is driving itself, and Fate's hands are on the steering wheel for show.

The alert itself is due to the AMF drones taking over a passenger train, in a suitably dramatic manner with all the flailing wires and such. Hayate mobilizes the squad, and they load onto Storm Raider (the unit helicopter) to be transported to the location. The Newbies are told that if things really get out of hand, Nanoha and Fate will be standing by, but for now, this is all their show. There are a few shots of the Newbie team looking apprehensive and excited, as well as what seems like a rather significant indication that Caro is quite nervous about the mission. This may or may not be important, but we'll not know for sure this time, because here the episode ends.

Next week, the train action starts. Also, we may or may not be seeing some Caro angst. I find myself looking forward to a Caro-centric episode (albeit preferably without the angst), seeing as we don't actually know much about her, compared to Subaru.

… actually, we don't know much about any of the Newbies other than Subaru, if one doesn't count the pre-StrikerS manga. But even in the manga, Caro's motivations and backstory is nonexistent.

This episode is, generally speaking, typical of the series thus far. We got our bite-sized chunk of Action in the beginning training sequence, we got our Worried Exposition with Carim, and we got the promise of More To Come with the train takeover alert. This is the stuff that plot-light shounen series are made of.

Also, we got our fair share of Reinforce Zwei. I'm not really that big of a fan of her (compared to, say, Fate), but she's definitely very cute.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 24th, 2007 at 5:03 pm and is filed under mahou shoujo lyrical nanoha strikers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.