Get ready folks. It’s time to continue our journey into Nanoha, and see what those dastardly Velka Knights are up to now! A’s prior episode was a very important one, as it centered on the long-awaited reveal of Hayate’s true family history. As the family’s many idle interactions have made obvious, regardless of what evils the Velka Knights performed in the past, at this point they are entirely dedicated to preserving Hayate’s idyllic family life. To that end, they’re even willing to disobey their master’s own wishes, and work to complete the book of darkness in order to keep her alive.

The reveal of the Velka Knights’ history went basically as expected, and did great work in further illustrating the moral contrast between these foes and the first season. While Hayate feels ever more like a direct parallel for Nanoha, her knights have been defined as essentially the opposite of Fate.

Condemning Testarossa, and drawing Fate from her side, was a pretty morally straightforward proposition – Fate was being abused and mislead by her mother, and Testarossa’s own goals were catastrophic in both nature and intent. In contrast, the Velka Knights are actually working to help their master in spite of her own wishes, are fully aware of the stakes and consequences of their actions, and are working in service of a goal that, while dangerous, is still fundamentally sympathetic. While Testarossa was responsible for basically all the pain Fate both inflicted and endured, Hayate has been nothing but good to her knights, and they’ve done nothing but become more human and sympathetic in turn. They’re frankly getting far more sympathetic framing this season than our actual protagonists, who are very nice people, but also technically Space Cops.

With their history finally revealed, A’s is prepped and ready for another confrontation between our main teams. Whether this episode focuses on that or Yuuno exploring a friggin’ library, I’m ready for whatever may come. Let’s dive into another episode of Nanoha A’s!

Episode 7

Now it seems Nanoha and Fate are sharing the introduction. It’s Nanoha’s classic “I wish our hearts could reach each other” speech, but tempered with an understanding that sometimes words aren’t enough, and you must have the strength to defend your beliefs

Beautiful shots of our leads facing off on distant planets. Of course, given how these cold opens normally go, this is probably where the episode will end. Why does Nanoha do this to me?

Lindy’s earth apartment is lit up by festival lanterns, carrying on the oddly Japanophile tradition of her ship quarters. She’s talking to some newly introduced superior officer

Fate and Nanoha settling into school apparently means just progressively smiling at each other more and more

“With a Broken Past and Present.” So is this whole episode going to be Fate adjusting to civilian life? I could see that making sense structurally, as a way of directly contrasting her against the season’s “villains”

Fate’s friends helping her choose a cellphone to buy. A very believably mundane and generally charming moment. It also reflects something somewhat unique to Japanese culture – Japan really, really loved flip phones, and continued to use them well into the era of smartphones

As we go to the electronics store, we’re greeted with a shot of Fate in the far distance, with the store counter looming high on our right and the lines of perspective converging on Fate herself. The overall effect makes Fate seem tiny and vulnerable, which is intentional – the shot ends on Lindy walking past that counter to lean down and hand Fate her new phone. The sequence heavily emphasizes Fate’s new role as a daughter to Lindy, her protector

This is truly some classically Nanoha material here. This whole minute-long sequence was entirely designed to convey the felt experience of Fate integrating into her school life and new family, with no real narrative consequences whatsoever. I’ve seen people ding Nanoha for this tendency in their critiques (“so much wasted time!”), but I feel sequences like this are in large part the point of this show, and where it draws a great deal of its emotional strength. This is the sort of “portraying the lived experience of a moment” stuff I tend to love in Kyoto Animation dramas, and applying it to a show that’s otherwise so focused on battling feels like a novel and very welcome idea

That said, I’m guessing Fate having a cellphone will become dramatically relevant soon. That’s a classic Chekhov’s Gun situation – you don’t wave some flashy new object in the audience’s face and then never return to it

They’re really putting out all the stops for the introduction of the Infinite Library. Isolated shots of the library’s beautiful curving arches contrast against hyper closeups of our guides, naturally invoking a sense of disorientation within this mammoth zero gravity space

This sequence is also pretty darn horny, courtesy of the catgirl guides’ sultry posing. There’s just something about libraries, I guess

Tiny Arf just lounging in the scenery of these domestic scenes is so good. I’m not sure this season has featured a better innovation than Tiny Arf

Amy offhandedly mentions some super dangerous weapon, the arc-en-ciel

The direction is very strong this episode – lots of shots based on novel ideas like portraying the fall of the object Amy’s holding against her shadow, or creating depth and drawing the eye further into the composition, like this shot with Fate behind Amy

Interesting. Apparently this episode featured Yoshinari Saito as storyboarder, director, and animation director all at once, which would explain the general holism of this episode’s visuals

Fate heads into battle! Some lovely cuts as she dispatches Signum’s magical beast opponent

Another great composition, with Lindy’s hair creating a visual frame for the admiral

The two idly drop the fact that Lindy had a husband, he’s dead now, and his death was likely due to the admiral’s decision-making. Pretty efficient work here

More exposition regarding the Arc-en-ciel, which this episode charmingly attempts to make less boring by panning over a bunch of shiny space ships

Lovely, fluid spins as Signum and Fate begin their battle. There’s an excellent sense of weight to their movements; you can really feel each of them shuddering with the impact of holding back the other. Fight-heavy episodes really benefit from a unity of purpose between storyboarder and animation director (and sometimes directors will simply let major animators storyboard their own action cuts, or at least make edits to the cuts they’re assigned). Perfect unity between the on-screen action and the frame itself is a wonderful thing

I love how we follow the arc of Signum’s sword as it flies towards Fate in snake form

The animation is good enough that the tactical variables of this fight are clear even without any overt dialogue. That early “I can’t outrun you” from Signum was basically the only clue we needed – it’s now visually obvious that Signum is attempting to bind Fate and counter her speed, while Fate is trying to disorient her opponent with energy attacks and then use her lightning speed to land a surprise attack

Haha, the cartridge releases really do add some wonderful visual flair to their fights

While Fate is mostly just having a totally awesome fight, Arf is actually learning something of her enemy’s motivation. Go Arf!

Nanoha asks if she can help Vita, and Vita sees a shade of Hayate’s kindness in her face. But her preconceptions about the Administration Bureau quickly overcome the ability to trust she’s learned from her master

Vita uses an attack that’s essentially just a flashbang to get the heck out of there

“She shouldn’t be able to hit me from this distance.” Oh Vita. Vita, Vita, Vita. Poor, ignorant Vita

“Buster Mode! Drive Ignition!” After a season spent getting beaten up and recuperating, seeing Nanoha use what has become her signature attack is an inherent thrill. Nanoha has gone on long enough to have something like a lore to it, and “Nanoha uses her beam attack and it is awesome” is one of the central scriptures of that lore

“No way. She’s going to fire from that distance!?” I kinda love how anime make things exciting purely through the excitement of the characters involved. We had no reason to find the range of Nanoha’s attack inherently intimidating or exciting until Vita started freaking out about it

Oh my god, this cut for the blast itself. Wonderfully fluid camera movements as Nanoha is dwarfed by the force of her own insane attack

The shot is blocked by that mysterious man!

“A bind? How could it form instantly from that distance!?” I appreciate this season’s efforts to flesh out the tactical mechanics of combat in this world. Long-range attacks apparently have some pretty serious limitations

I really like the scale of these establishing shots throughout the fight scenes. These warriors contrasted against an overwhelming blue sky full of planets makes for some truly epic-feeling confrontations

And mask dude fucks up Fate’s fight too, giving her magical essence to Signum. Goddamnit!

And Done

Whew, that was a goddamn tropical storm of an episode! Once again, Nanoha dazzled with fight scenes surpassing anything from the first season, demonstrating not just fluid animation, but an incredible unity of storyboarding and character movement. The fights were thrilling and bombastic in the best possible way, using minimalist touchstones like relative range and speed to craft a clear narrative of battle for both Fate and Nanoha. Additionally, we also got time for some welcome slice of life sequences between our leads, and even filled in some of the exposition that will undoubtedly be informing the final battle. This episode was both dramatically efficient and aesthetically stunning, while further honing Nanoha’s unique identity as both an action platform and a genre meld. Great fuckin’ work!

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