Alright folks, let’s dive back into Nanoha A’s! This season has been establishing Hayate and her “family” as clear echoes of Nanoha’s crew all season, and never was that more apparent than last episode, where the show essentially assigned all of the beats normally reserved for the protagonist (opening monologue, closing statement, mid-battle reflections) to Hayate’s party. Though the episode ended on the reveal that all of Hayate’s companions are magical creatures summoned by the Book of Darkness, the rest of the episode was largely dedicated to emphasizing how little that mattered – they are as loving of a family as Nanoha’s, mutually supporting and utterly willing to sacrifice for each other.

That episode also featured a whole bunch of sweet fights, further solidifying Nanoha’s chops as an all-purpose action platform. While the show’s first season had some exciting clashes, cool animation flourishes, and a generally unique aesthetic, its fights were generally just emotional clashes of laser bursts – what sense of weight and consequence that existed was mostly contained in the dramatic casting and leadup to each major blow. With the Velka knights in the mix, Nanoha is now striving for more tactically diverse battles, with their own internal dramatic arcs. The show’s results on that front have been a little mixed – these fights still seem to be driven more by dramatic necessity than tactical back-and-forth, and devices like each team splitting into pairs for battle feel a little hackneyed. But weightiness of the physical exchanges aside, they’re still exciting as heck, and a great visual spectacle in their own right. Whether we’ve got further investigation of Hayate’s perspective or simply a bunch of sweet laser fights ahead of us, I’m ready to get back into it. Let’s see what’s what in the next episode of Nanoha A’s!

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