The end times are coming, folks. With Hayate’s guardians having been either banished or absorbed, and Hayate herself transformed into some kind of human avatar for the Book of Darkness itself, we’ve officially entered the endgame of Nanoha A’s. The show hasn’t overtly revealed the identity of the masked man, but given we’re run out of time to introduce any new characters, there’s simply no one else it could be aside from the admiral. The rules of narrative congruity are pretty insistent on figures like this eventually proving themselves to be known characters; otherwise there would have been no reason to hide his identity in the first place, and the reveal of that identity would carry no dramatic weight at all.

Meanwhile, Fate and Nanoha are trapped in some kind of cramped magical kennel, while our masked man takes their forms in order to turn Hayate against them. This season has basically been about fundamentally decent people talking past each other ever since the beginning, but by deceiving Hayate specifically, A’s seems to have set up the finale to hinge on Hayate’s ability to believe in her friends, and understand that she’s being tricked. Though I’m not normally a fan of devices like this one, since they tend to feel like artificial drama, Hayate’s generosity of spirit has been the fulcrum of A’s drama since the start, so it seems right to conclude by testing that spirit once more. That said, we’re only on episode ten, so there’s clearly a few more bumps in the road before us. Let’s see how this dramatic confrontation ends!

Episode 10

“The curtain is quietly rising on this long, cold night.” For once we don’t actually get spoilers in the cold open, and are instead recentered exactly where we were before. Thank you for that, Nanoha

The Book of Darkness is somehow enveloping some of the space force’s fleet. Some more nice shots taking advantage of those striking segmented viewing screens on the bridge

“Start the barrel expansion of the Arc-en-ciel, and we’ll stop it before the Hestia’s countdown drops to zero.” The Arc-en-ciel still feels a bit too vague of a concept to me for this to carry much sense of urgency

Ah, this is a flashback. The tragedy the admiral couldn’t prevent the last time the book activated, and the death of Chrono’s father. So that scene isn’t supposed to feel urgent – it’s supposed to actually offer us some of the context on how the Arc-en-ciel works

This is the first time we’ve heard the admiral’s internal voice, but he doesn’t give anything away – instead, this scene seems more intended to make sure he’s in the back of our head when the reveal comes

One of the masked dudes drops a name, Durandal

And Chrono actually does something! He restrains the masked dudes, and undoes their transformations, revealing they’re actually the two catgirls. I suppose it makes sense that the admiral would be acting through them, as opposed to doing all this stuff directly. And the fact that there are two of them also answers that “how did they move so quickly” question from when they defeated Nanoha and Fate earlier

“It looks like she’s an expert with wide area attacks.” The transformed Book of Darkness is a good opponent for making use of this season’s consistent cityscape setting. She’s like an extremely dangerous mobile turret, and the girls must use the consistently broken lines of sight offered by the city’s skyscrapers to avoid her direct attention

The Book counters their strategy with a massive area-of-effect prison. Yeah, that’ll do it

Nanoha seems genuinely shaken by all these developments, which is rare for her. I could see her blaming herself for letting things get this far, particularly since she more or less gave in to her anger last episode

Chrono confronts Admiral Graham, leading into the dramatic return of this season’s greatest marvel: that spinning CG book of darkness

“Even if she had to be lonely, many other people wouldn’t have to grieve because of her.” It seems Graham really is trying to find a way to permanently seal the Book of Darkness, even if he’s being a cryptic jerk about it

Graham’s plan is to seal the book and its current master in another dimension, in order to prevent its usual pattern of disappearing and being reborn once its master dies. It’s the classic “suffering of one versus many” dilemma, but as Chrono points out, that will only stop the book until someone else eventually unseals it. Graham is attempting to halt something intrinsic to human nature

I like this. I don’t think the “one versus many” thing has any real thematic resonance for Nanoha specifically (its central themes are generally family and the transformative power of human connection), but I do like that Graham’s motives were reasonable and his plan relatively sensible. This season is stronger for not possessing any truly irredeemable villains

And Graham gives Chrono the Staff of Freezing, Durandal

I also like Graham now, to be honest. I always have a certain degree of inherent sympathy for these characters who choose to make ugly sacrifices for the greater good, and he did everything he could to make Hayate’s life comfortable in the meantime. I can’t blame him for his choices, particularly since they were in large part based in a sense of personal responsibility for their past failures

On the other hand, the menace presented by the Book of Darkness itself feels a little vague. The very fact that it’s so much more powerful than our team actually makes it a little harder to sense the scale of their struggle, as opposed to the clear back and forth and desperate choices of matches like Fate versus Signum

The Book starts to cast Nanoha’s Starlight Breaker

“There are noncombatants on the left at three hundred yards.” I actually burst out laughing at seeing Suzuka just standing in the middle of an intersection with a blank look on her face. Goddamnit Suzuka

Nanoha’s style of combat can be so strange at times. This encounter feels like it hearkens back to the first season’s style, where the show worked hard to impress upon us the scale and devastation of any single beam attack. In the context of this season, the fact that our heroes have moved so far beyond conventional beam attacks makes it harder to feel much danger here

Some nice cuts of animation depicting their movement, though. The flipside of Nanoha’s priorities is that when it actually succeeds, it illustrates the inherent wonder of concepts like “I can fly” and “I can summon energy” in ways that many action shows simply breeze over in their pursuit of flashier but less relatable spectacles

Some pretty wild processing effects for the book’s attack, though the effect is unfortunately diminished by the digipaint smudging. Shows from the early 2000s all tend to suffer from indistinct, low-resolution painted art, the growing pains of anime shifting from manually painted cells to digitally filled-in art. Nanoha’s distinctive, simplified character designs are a good match for this issue, but extreme detail work and dramatic color contrast tend to fare more poorly

Yuuno and Arf take off, employing that classic “if we stick around, we’ll only be dividing their attention and getting in the way.” This is certainly a reasonable concern in some situations, but its ubiquity in storytelling has more to do with the fact that if you put a character in a scene, there should generally be a reason for that character to be there. Keeping Arf and Yuuno around would naturally detract from the sequence’s emotional priorities while adding nothing; when possible, it’s almost always preferable to reduce a scene’s unnecessary variables and strive for dramatic clarity

“Try to get Hayate-chan to surrender and stop!” And right on cue, Amy reorients this conflict’s drama on the axis of “reaching Hayate emotionally.” Arf and Yuuno were relevant characters when this battle hinged on physical conflict, but now that it’s shifting to an emotional conflict, only Nanoha and Fate are important

They try to reach out to Hayate, but the book is screening her calls

Nanoha tries to reach the book itself, but still refers to it as the “Book of Darkness,” prompting it to retaliate. She needs to extend it the same charitable perspective she offered Fate

“I am a magical tome. I am nothing more than a tool.” Yeah, she’s precisely like Fate, though she’s actually chosen to embrace her artificial nature in order to lessen the pain of the suffering she causes. Nanoha was right to feel sympathy for the book a few episodes ago – it’s essentially chained to this new programming against its will

NEGOTIATIONS BREAK DOWN. FATE IS ABSORBED. WORLD IN CRISIS

And Done

Well, shit! If the last couple minutes had gone differently, this could easily have worked as the finale for the season altogether – the masked man’s identity was revealed, the Book of Darkness rained chaos on the city, and Nanoha and Fate made their impassioned speech to try and connect with the damaged artifact. That didn’t happen, though, and probably wouldn’t have made for a particularly satisfying conclusion if it did. A’s greatest dramatic strength is that it has essentially shifted the role of protagonist to Hayate, and let her strength, empathy, and despair guide the current of the drama. It wouldn’t do to have the series conclude merely with her being saved by others, and thus I’m guessing we’ll now be moving inward, as Fate’s abduction leads us to the world inside of the book. Either way, the fireworks have begun as we move towards A’s world-shaking conclusion!

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