 Mahou shoujo is good for the soul, in my humble opinion - so I was looking forward to my first viewing of Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha. My soul was sadly disappointed...
1 - Is This What You Call a 'Mysterious Encounter'?
Enter Nanoha Takamachi, typical grade-school girl living a perfectly
normal life. But not for long. Her teacher has been getting the class
to thing about what jobs they want to do when they grow up - Nanoha
hasn't a clue, but the decision may not be hers to make. Passing
through a forest on the way to cram school, she finds herself drawn to
a wounded ferret - not your normal ferret, either. He's from another
world, on Earth to fight evil creatures, and he needs Nanoha's help...
2 - My Magical Incantation is 'Lyrical'?
Using the power of the crystal she's been given, Nanoha has transformed
for the first time - be she has absolutely no idea how to use the
powers she's gained. Time for her to learn, and quickly. After the
battle is over, Nanoha takes the ferret (real name Yuuno Scrya) home.
The break gives Yuuno a chance to explain what's going on - there were
21 creatures for him to find, with another 19 still on the loose. It's
not long before Nanoha's back in action...
Nanoha's a spinoff from the Triangle Hearts series of games and OVA's - you'll see a few other TH characters around the place. The show doesn't depend on knowing anything about Triangle Hearts, though.
As much as I'm a fan of almost all things mahou shoujo, this just
didn't do anything for me - perish the thought, but I may be getting a
bit jaded by mahou shoujo. The problem here was this was so 'by the numbers' that I just couldn't get into it - other recent mahou shoujo, like Pretty Cure, have tried to do something to engage the audience by poking fun at themselves or whatever, but Nanoha plays it straight down the line.
If there's anywhere where they've tried to do something different,
it's with the animation style, which in places seems to really up the
framerate & tries to go for a more realistic look. Problem with
this is that it's not consistently done throughout the show - there are
noticeble changes between the 'normal' style and the 'new' style, and
they're really jarring at that. Add on the the 'new' style doesn't even
look that good (to me, anyway), and the effect is even worse.
So overall this is a 'pass', on grounds of possibly putting too much
effort into the technical side of things and not enough into actually
making the how enjoyable. Shame. |
