Let’s get right back to Magical Lyrical Girl Nanoha! Nanoha’s premiere was an interesting but deeply imbalanced episode, even down to things like having Kou Yoshinari delicately animate precisely one random dinner scene. In larger terms, I really liked how Akiyuki Shinbo’s many creative visual choices consistently sacrificed a sense of stable reality to further bolster each individual scene’s dramatic purpose. The actual visual tricks employed here (simplified color schemes, racking focus, ostentatious movement into depth, etc) don’t actually correlate to many of the visual embellishments SHAFT would later become known for, but the underlying philosophy of compromising on visual congruity for the sake of dramatic impact seems consistent through both. In visual terms, Shinbo asks more of our suspension of disbelief than the vast majority of shows, and the results aren’t always successful, but are pretty much always interesting. I don’t really care that this show is a little messy – I’m here to find the interesting stuff, and Nanoha certainly fits the bill.

Oh, also there’s a narrative. So far, Nanoha’s stuck pretty closely to a tried and true magical girl template, with its own notable features being its unusually thorough elaboration of Nanoha’s everyday life, as well as the heavy dash of science fiction worldbuilding. That worldbuilding seems to indicate Nanoha is something of a compromise between a standard magical girl’s show and a more general action platform, and with Nanoha having just conjured her big magical girl clobbering stick, I’m guessing it’s time for the show to follow through on that action promise. Let’s get to it!

Episode 2

“My unexpected encounter has set two things in motion: my intertwined feelings, and the beginning of this story.” Can’t really say what she means by “my intertwined feelings,” so I guess we’ll learn that soon enough

Episode title: “My magical incantation is ‘lyrical’?” Oh good, they’re actually going to explain that. I figured it might just be general magical girl title embellishment fluff

This monster she’s fighting is pretty vaguely defined. Its blobby design worked well in the forest, when it was basically just a menacing, indistinct shape, but now it looks like she’s fighting a giant dust bunny

Her staff’s electronic voice announces “PROTECTION” as she raises it and puts up a shield. This show feels like it must be catnip to the audience that likes magical girl shows well enough, but wishes they leaned into fights and abided by tactical shounen rules a bit more

It’s sort of a different variation on “how would this really work” from Madoka Magica. Madoka interrogates the possible motives of its magical girl world, whereas Nanoha is so far focusing more on tightly fleshing out its physical mechanics

Yep, and now the ferret is reciting exposition at us – magical girls here use a “programming” system to focus their magic, and this relies on energy provided by the girls themselves. If tactically grounded fights are in the future, fleshing out some rules for this world is a must

“That thing was born from the source of abominable and disgusting power.” Well, that explains exactly nothing

Once again, the effects animation sorta steals the show, with this blob’s efforts to reconstruct itself offering some nice rising tension

“Attacking and defending are two basic forms of magic that are activated by wishing with all your heart.” There’s definitely some tension between the “let’s break down the mechanics of these battles” instinct and the “magical girls are powered by dreams” one

Apparently monsters here turn into “Jewel Seeds”

“Sealing Mode: Set Up.” Some great presumably bank footage for Nanoha’s attack here. The scifi embellishments allow her staff’s transformations to offer a bit of the appeal of a giant robot show

“Receipt Number XXI.” Magical girls get receipts for their kills in this world? They’ve thought of everything

“If I’m seen here, I might get in trouble.” I like how their fight had a genuine, dramatic effect on the landscape

Nanoha gets into her full introduction. She’s taking this whole talking ferret-magical girl-blob monster situation extremely well

The ferret’s name is Yuuno Scrya

Her brother confronts her about sneaking out at night, but her sister sticks up for her. More fleshing out of their family relationships, which is apparently important – you simply wouldn’t include a scene like this if the relationship between Nanoha and her family members is going to be ultimately meaningless

Though apparently, the visual novel this series was spun off from actually focused more on her older siblings, meaning this could just as easily be an awkward nod to their importance in the source material. Hurry for multimedia universes making stories impossible to parse outside of their specific cultural moment!

An ominous pan over something shining at a shrine gate, which screams “monster of the week” to me

Another weirdly extended expository scene dedicated to underlining that Nanoha and Yuuno have become comfortable talking to each other. This show stresses some very odd moments

Yuuno doesn’t refer to her as a “magical girl,” he refers to her as a mage. Interesting

Nanoha’s friends have such background visual novel character designs. I’m sorry, girls

So the jewel seeds are magical stones that are generally employed by mages, but which can sometimes turn on their users

“On my home world, I’m an archeologist. I discovered something, but the ship carrying it suffered a disaster. Twenty-one jewel seeds were scattered across this world as a consequence of that.” This feels needlessly convoluted, but if they’re building a “Nanoha brand,” I guess it makes sense that the worldbuilding starts early. Also could easily be a consequence of the source visual novels having a lot of assumed worldbuilding that we now need to speed through to get to our own story

This scene’s pacing is so friggin’ weird. They keep intercutting segments of the teacher’s monologue, seemingly for no reason at all

Also, none of Yuuno’s explanations have covered why he’s a ferret. That seems important

Nanoha agrees to help Yuuno. I’m not really convinced by either her reasoning or the ostensibly touching nature of this moment – we just don’t know enough about Nanoha for this to feel like a telling reflection of her character, and we don’t know enough about Yuuno to care about him in any way at all

Yeah, her motivational speech ends on “being alone is sad, so I’ll help you,” which kinda sums up my issues with this turn

“If someone’s in trouble and you have the power to help them, you should. At least, that’s what my dad taught me.” Much better – this is more specific, and also a direct reflection of her relationship with her family, which is the one thread this show’s really built up so far

But again, my ultimate concern is pacing. This conversation is so long relative to what it accomplishes

Alright, our monster arrives. Now it seems like the Jewel Seeds can actually take a variety of forms, so I suppose it makes sense that the first was as basic as they come

Ahaha, this conflict is great – Nanoha can’t remember her whole long activation chant. A very reasonable problem that offers a light jab at magical girl conventions

Oh dang, she activates her staff even without a chant! I’ve read enough fantasy to know what that shit means

This fight isn’t really satisfying as a fight – it’s just this dog ramming into Nanoha’s magic barrier repeatedly. But I guess she hasn’t really learned to do anything yet, so what can you do

And number sixteen is captured

And Done

Alright, that was… pretty mediocre, to be honest. There were basically none of the neat visual flourishes that made the first episode so engaging, and in the absence of that stuff, this story is both pretty standard and not terribly well-told so far. The show continues to engage in weirdly extended idle or expositional conversations that don’t seem to really contribute to its narrative, there’s nothing to grab onto in either a character or thematic sense so far, and the actual fight scenes have been pretty underwhelming. Nanoha currently has plenty of pieces that could pull together into a satisfying narrative, but we’re not quite there yet!

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