Nanoha ZA MOVII -FAASTO- Opinions

Posted on | January 28, 2010 | 5 Comments |

You may or may not know this (depending on how many Nanoha news groups you read), but the 1st Nanoha movie has just come out in Japan (the premiere was last Saturday I think). So I was naturally very excited (being an enormous Nanoha fan) and even more excited that it was going to be based on the first season (which is naturally the best, with Nanoha/Fate goodness and no pointless added characters or Kansai-ben, tsundere pink haired knights or pseudo-German-named hammer-mauls). Here’s what I thought…

The movie is about 2 hours long (I lost track) and the Japanese is rather easy to follow (except when the TSAB shows up and starts spouting about rifts in the space-time continuum, of course…). It basically covers the storyline of the first season of Nanoha from episodes 1-13 with additional backstory of Precia and Fate outlining how Precia went mad and why she hates Fate so much…

The storyline is compressed but not losing the main points – Yuuno shows up, loses mightily to a crap levelled Jewel-seed fuelled beastie and gets discovered by Nanoha and friends. That night she’s already transformed into a magical girl (complete with reworked transformation sequence – thankfully without that rather fetching pink-hue that it previously had) and by the end of it she’s already using Divine Shooter and Yuuno’s eyes are already popping out of his head. The fast development of Nanoha’s fighting skills is explained in part by giving Raising Heart a bit more dialogue – supposedly training Nanoha a little in the magical arts while she’s having class and such. The very next battle, Fate shows up and the whole Jewel seeds storyline kicks off.

The storyline as a whole doesn’t change that much. The characters are the same, but somehow Fate seems more kind and a bit more wistful, there is a bit more electricity between Nanoha and Fate, especially in the closing scene and, most importantly, the entire battle sequences have been reworked. The final battle especially between Nanoha and Fate was almost completely unrecognisable – When Fate pummels Nanoha with Phalanx Shift she doesn’t even pause for the spell activation phrases and Nanoha looks a lot more the worse for wear afterwards. The Starlight Breaker magic is even explained (Fate exclaims that it’s “absorbtion magic” – i.e. that it absorbs used magic from the battlefield) and the animation sequence for it is amazingly well done.

The one qualm I have with it is that reading the comics (you can get them over at MangaUpdates), they pose a lot of unanswered issues. The first is why Nanoha is so lonely at home on her own and really wants a close friend that she finds in Fate. This is alluded to in the movie, but never addressed – we know that Nanoha’s family is a jetsetting team of crimefighters (see Triangle Heart), so she must get left on her own a lot, but she has friends (Arisa and Suzuka get precious little screentime in the movie, poor girls) so it’s hard to see why she would be so lonely. Maybe the following comics will explain… The second issue was that Precia in the comics was undoubtedly rather obsessed and mad as in the anime, but by a couple of chapters Linnith (the cat familiar she creates to take care of Fate) seems close to breaking through to her and Precia is showing at least a little trace of humanity. I was waiting for that trace to show in the movie, but it never did – which is a shame, because I think that it would have made Precia more than your traditional insane 2-dimentional villain…

In conclusion, the movie was a really good watch, if not for the lack of new material the fighting sequences and polished animation really shine and there is a good dose of Nanoha/Fate magic to be had for those looking out for it. It just remains for me to pose the question – why do animation sompanies bring out “remake” movies rather than movies that fill in gaps in the plot. I’m sure the storyline that is most yearned for amongst Nanoha fans is “what the hell happened between A’s and StrikerS” – namely Nanoha growing up, telling Arisa and Suzuka, her and Fate becoming an item, her accident and all the events surrounding it, why Fate ended up in the Special corps, so on and so forth. However, if this first movie is anything to go by, then “Nanoha ZA MOVII – SEKONDO-” will probably be a reworking of the A’s storyline! Is it just left up to the OVAs to fill in the gaps?!

Oh, there’s a Haruhi movie coming out soon too I hear – perhaps I can test this theory…is it just going to be a marathon of the first season in the right order, I wonder…

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Category: Editorials, First look, Nanoha

Comments

5 Responses to “Nanoha ZA MOVII -FAASTO- Opinions”

heavens lolipop
January 28th, 2010 @ 6:45 am

sorry Nanoha is still on my list of animes to watch..tohoho. so i can’t offer up much there.

but the haruhi movie isn’t a rework, it’s much yearned for original/missing content. whichever way you want to look at it, chronologically or otherwise.
Suzumiya Yuki
January 28th, 2010 @ 10:45 am

Yeehaw!

I’ve looking for a review about this movie since it’s opening day.

Thanks for writing your thoughts on it.

And now here is another major event to add to the calendar. I have already started saving for the DVD and if it comes in Bluray, time to join the blue people.

About the movie, actually I am kind of glad that they left the reason of Nanoha and Fate’s friendship unexplained.

I can only think of one and were they to give a diferent one, well, that would be a bummer!

The way I see it is that as everyone has that special person, at least in the fictional world, Nanoha was incomplete until she met the girl with the sad but beautiful red eyes.

She found her other half.

If the producers try to explain it things are gonna get ugly.

All in all, I just hope that they don’t take years to release the others.

Can’t wait for the ten year gap to be filled. After all, high school is where experimenting mostly takes place in Japan.

Nanoha x Fate Forever!!!

On another note, what’s this I hear about Asuka eating Rei in You Can (Not) Advance?!
shijima
January 30th, 2010 @ 4:00 pm

Lucky! I would have liked to see the movie so I can catch up on the series in one shot. :D
Glad to hear the animation was great.
Are you going to see the Unlimited Blade Works movie also?
Pliky
January 31st, 2010 @ 10:02 am

Seems like you didn’t know, but supposedly the Haruhi movie is the Disappearance arc.
Yuribou
February 1st, 2010 @ 1:10 am

Thanks for the information on the Haruhi movie – I guess I’d better start looking for discount tickets to see it then! (Cinema is ridiculously expensive in Japan) I never really got into Fate/Stay Night so I’m think the UBW movie would fly straight over my head tho…-_-

Suzumiyayuki: I like to think that too, but my point was that they hinted at more in Nanoha’s background (that made her start looking for that person earlier than you probably would as a kid) but didn’t explain it. It’ll probably be explained in the mangas though… As for coming to Japan, if you do scrape the money together in the next year or so, come visit!