The moment is finally at hand, everyone. With the Tome of the Night Sky fully separated from the Book of Darkness’s defensive programs, and those defensive programs having literally been shot into space in order to be obliterated by a giant laser, Nanoha and the rest of her friends have clearly earned a full episode of blessed, tearful denouement. Unfortunately, before anyone can actually relax, it seems some lingering element of the Book’s curse must still be extracted from Hayate’s body. Though to be honest, I don’t think this is actually going to be a problem Nanoha and her friends can solve through magical exertion – I’m pretty sure this is just the lead-in to the show returning Hayate to partial paralysis.

“Paralyzed character is rewarded with magical healing” is a common style of resolution that rarely sits right with me; it feels cheap, and overly dismissive of the reality of disabilities, as if disabled people need to be “fixed.” Hayate didn’t need to be fixed – she’s already a strong person who serves as the emotional rock of her family, and though her disability is a part of her, it absolutely doesn’t define her. One of Nanoha’s most central themes is learning to coexist with your past trauma, and accepting that although the past is still a part of our identities, we can choose to embrace a happier sense of self. Fate’s recent goodbye to her sister embodied that idea of acknowledging the past while facing the future, and I’m guessing this episode will be Hayate’s turn. But either way, this has been a terrific season of Nanoha, and I’ve greatly enjoyed seeing the cast filled out by Hayate’s adorable family. Let’s see how it all turns out in Nanoha A’s final episode!

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The endgame is upon us, everyone! Though I’d had a moderate suspicion that this season would actually end through dialogue, rather than cataclysmic action spectacle, it turns out we’re actually getting the best of both worlds. A’s eleventh episode pretty much covered the dialogue end of this argument, with both Fate and Hayate directly confronting their central emotional conflicts.

On Hayate’s side, her quick journey from despair to actually comforting the Book of Darkness offered one more demonstration of her incredible personal strength and emotional character. With her progressively crippling injury and absent family, no one would have blamed Hayate for despairing at any point in this season. Instead, she’s been a persistent source of strength to those around her, actually having to assure both her guardians and the book itself that she is not someone to be pitied, and is rather someone they themselves can rely on. In a series that often focuses on epic exchanges of physical prowess, Hayate has consistently demonstrated that strength comes in many forms, with her charitable, unwavering spirit proving to be the only force that could turn her guardians into a family, and her cursed tome into a friend.

On Fate’s side, her rejection of a happily ever after with Precia and Alicia demonstrated a different kind of emotional strength. This paradise was exactly the resolution she was seeking all through Nanoha’s first season – but having embraced Nanoha as a friend and Lindy as a mother, she’s learned the incomparable strength of the bonds you choose for yourself, as opposed to the false peace of “how my family is supposed to be.” Though at first she was hesitant to move out from her mother’s shadow, Fate has proven she’s no longer dependent on anyone, and that she’s strong enough to actually reject the past in order to embrace the family she’s chosen for herself.

Though their journeys there have been quite different, each of these stories have served as resounding arguments for the variable nature of family, and the joy and power gained through sharing both your strength and your vulnerability with others. And with each of them having demonstrated their clear emotional strength, it’s time for the battle to shift to more practical terms, as our heroes attempt to stop the rampaging Book of Darkness. With Yuuno having conveniently laid out the conditions of this fight as “I don’t give a shit, just hit her with everything,” I’m guessing it’s finally time for the fireworks. LET’S GET TO IT!

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Hello folks, and welcome back for another episode of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. We’re well into the show’s final act at this point, with Fate and Nanoha already having squared off against first Hayate, and then the awakened Book of Darkness itself. We’ve also resolved the duplicity and betrayal of Chrono’s admiral friend, who managed to successfully fuck everything up just before his plan was discovered. The admiral’s meddling backed Hayate into a corner in order to summon the Book itself, and then the Book’s own trauma prevented Nanoha and Fate from negotiating it out of its apocalyptic plans.

Now, with Nanoha defeated and Fate actually absorbed by the book, success or failure will likely come down to this season’s true heroine: Hayate. Just like how Nanoha’s first season was essentially a Fate story that Nanoha also took part in, so has this season most centrally been about Hayate, and her efforts to maintain and protect her family in spite of her curse. Personality-wise, Hayate is basically a version of Nanoha stripped of all of Nanoha’s easy gifts – she starts out alone, has to work hard to create a family, and even then is plagued by physical frailty, in contrast with the magical power Nanoha is able to use to enforce her worldview. But here at the end, with Hayate already stranded somewhere inside the book, the battle will come down to the one thing they share – their unshakable personal strength, and absolute love for the people they care about. We’ve reached the thesis of the season, and I’m thrilled to see how it plays out. Let’s get to it!

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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!

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Hell yeah folks, it’s time for more Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha! The show’s second season is moving towards its third act at this point, with recent episodes having clarified the stakes of our drama in ever more pressing terms. As last episode’s Hayate-side drama revealed, Hayate’s body is being continuously stressed by the Book of Darkness, and she’s at this point got perhaps a month to live. And as its Nanoha-side drama revealed, completing the book won’t actually save her – the book has been programmed to devour its master until they’re nothing, either through consuming them in lieu of receiving new pages, or turning them into some kind of magical bomb if its pages are filled.

That second reveal will likely come as a great surprise to Hayate’s family, who’re clearly operating under the presumption that finishing the book will save their master. Vita at least seems on the verge of remembering their book’s true nature, but it seems clear that they’ve been programmed to consistently forget its current state, leading to a life defined by cyclical tragedy. Seeing Hayate and her family care for each other has been one of the greatest strengths of A’s, making the knowledge that they’re actually killing her feel like a loaded gun waiting to go off. Whether we’re about to witness that bomb drop, learn more about the masked man, or simply share time with Fate and Hayate as they recuperate, I’m ready for whatever awaits us in A’s ninth episode!

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Alright everyone, we’re diving back into Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. The show’s previous episode was a goddamn barn-burner, both illustrating Fate’s continued integration into a loving civilian life, and also pulling off some of the most technically impressive fights of the series so far. To be honest, that feels like the Nanoha A’s experience in a nutshell – a looping sequence of thinking “surely they can’t top THIS fight,” only for that fight to be dutifully topped by whatever clash happens next. And in episode seven’s case, the introduction of cartridge shells to both of our heroines’ staffs meant their attacks grew in both power and flexibility, leading to Vita almost getting nuked out of orbit.

Instead, our masked spoiler arrived, saving Vita and stabbing Fate in the back. Right now my money’s on that guy secretly being the old admiral, but I have no in-text reason for that suspicion – it’s solely a “well, they introduced this guy and haven’t done anything with him, so maybe he’s secretly evil” meta-textual assumption. Whether we receive some actual clues or focus on some other thread entirely, I’m very ready to continue this bombastic adventure. Let’s check out Nanoha A’s!

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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!

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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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