Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A’s directed by Keizô Kusakawa. Written by Masaki Tsuzuki. Starring Yukari Tamura, Nana Mizuki, and Kana Ueda. Seven Arcs, Japan (2005). 13 episodes of 25 minutes (approx. ). Not rated.
Available on Amazon Prime.
I am continuing to work my way through Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha now that it once again enjoys a U.S. license. Although this is a well-known and much-venerated series, I have to admit this is my first time through it. It had not had a legal release in North America for some time, as I understand it, and I also admit I had avoided it in large part because of the somewhat exaggeratedly negative review by Carl Kimlinger, as I mentioned in my review of the first series.
Although imperfect, this second series in the Nanoha franchise, which like many Japanese shows runs under an inexplicable title, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A’s, is very strong. As I discussed before, the first series is weak partly because it’s hampered by poor animation but largely because it doesn’t quite know what it wants to be, so—like a classic magical girl—it tries on various identities to see how they fit. It tries being a magical-girl show in the vein of Cardcaptor Sakura, but that doesn’t work. Then it tries being an homage to Triangle Heart 3, but that doesn’t work. Then it tries being lolicon, and that really doesn’t work. Finally, it tries being a mecha series with little girls standing in for the giant robots—and that becomes the signature characteristic of the franchise.
The Plot
When Nanoha A’s begins, it already knows its job is to be a mecha-like action show, so it starts us out with two episodes composed largely of destructive battles above a city skyline. It’s six months after the previous series, and Nanoha Takamachi has returned to an idyllic life of family and grade school while her rival-turned-friend Fate Testarossa, after having almost blown up the multiverse, gets parole for extenuating circumstances and good behavior.
Things don’t stay peaceful for long, naturally, because a new gang of magic users, the Belkan Knights, has begun attacking mages in order to steal magic power from their “linker cores” (don’t ask; just roll with it) and use it to power-up a doomsday device called the Book of Darkness. Nanoha, Fate, and the crew of the Arthra must stop the knights before they complete the book.
The knights are a motley crew of likable but largely forgettable anti-villains. The most notable among them is Vita, a tsundere goth loli armed with a magical war hammer. Over the course of the battles that follow, she becomes Nanoha’s main rival.
Early on, the knights manage to be sympathetic characters in that they are fiercely dedicated to a Pollyanna-esque tot named Hayate, a wheelchair-bound Ill Girl who is suffering some unspecified form of Soap Opera Disease. Hayate is particularly close to Vita, though their relationship gets no serious development—a fact probably due in part to the continued presence of writer Masaki Tsuzuki, who appears to be quite flummoxed about how to write young girls.
Commentary
Hayate is in danger of making the show maudlin, as her primary role is to elicit sympathy for the villains—who, after all, are only trying to destroy the world because they’re determined to save the Littlest Cancer Patient. However, Nanoha A’s manages to pull off these shopworn tropes with surprising grace, perhaps because, following on the heels of its immediate predecessor, it affects an attitude of self-unawareness: Nanoha draws on a lot of otaku culture but never nods or winks in our direction and thus avoids breaking its spell. It wisely keeps Hayate from taking up too much screen time, and the villains’ dedication to her is well-handled enough that it comes across as sincere.
Nanoha A’s still suffers some of its predecessor’s flaws. For starters, Masaki Tsuzuki still can’t write child characters to save his life, but it matters less this time around because the show stays action-focused; its calmer moments largely involve the villains’ relationship with Hayate, which, as already noted, it handles well. We will of course notice that Nanoha and Fate still don’t talk anything like real nine-year-olds, but since they spend most of the series hurling friendship blasts at the baddies, we’re less likely to care.
The animation shows marked improvement in this series, though a viewer will easily notice some shortcuts. During some of the quieter scenes, particularly in the middle of the series, the characters barely move and sometimes are so still that they look like cardboard cutouts. This is undoubtedly because most of the time and money went toward animating the fight scenes—which, by and large, look pretty darn good.
As with the previous series, there’s a focus on dungeon punk. The Belkan Knights have “cartridges,” which they can load dramatically into their weapon-like devices, and the spent shells of which they can afterwards dramatically eject, as from a bolt-action rifle. After initially losing to the knights, Fate and Nanoha both upgrade their devices, Bardiche and Raising Heart, to take similar cartridges. This begs the question as to why all mages don’t incorporate such technology—so the show handwaves it with some comment about instability, which never becomes plot-relevant. Basically, the cartridges are an excuse for dramatic displays of techno-magic, similar to the steam vents from the first series.
The Finale
The climax is a letdown. The previous series built up to Nanoha delivering a major beatdown to Fate, and since Nanoha has an ongoing conflict with Vita in this series, we might expect this show to build up to a one-on-one fight between the two with a beautifully animated pummeling. Alas, it never happens: The climax instead deals with a lot of magical phlebotinum surrounding the nature of the Book of Darkness. Granted, it makes sense (more or less) given the plot, but it isn’t a satisfying way to conclude an action show. The final fights don’t have the impressive energy of the ones in the first few episodes and don’t give us the character battles we hope for.
Conclusion
Nanoha A’s refrains from its predecessor’s heavy-handed attempts to elicit emotion through elaborate flashbacks and precocious meditations on friendship. As a result, it is, ironically, more effective with its emotional punches. It’s certainly formulaic, and it is by no means deep. It is groundbreaking only in the sense that Nanoha introduced certain tropes into the magical-girl genre (tropes borrowed from other genres). Nonetheless, this series is on the whole competently made and enjoyable to watch. Its only drawback is that it is very much a sequel: It is heavily dependent on the series that came before, which is considerably less entertaining. Nonetheless, to anyone who can stand to sit through the original Nanoha or who can stand to watch a show without understanding all the details, I recommend Lyrical Nanoha A’s.
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