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It has been noted by TV executives that Magical Girl series usually have Multiple Demographic Appeal — not only are they popular among 4 to 9-year-old girls, but also among 19 to 30 year-old males. Shows such as Futari Wa Pretty Cure attempt to please both demographics. Nanoha is made exclusively for the second.

What makes Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha unique is the detail put into the fight scenes, much to the delight of the seinen market's nostalgia for grand space battles and fist-pumping action. It is also unique among Magical Girl series in that Nanoha loves her job, enjoys her powers, and makes responsible decisions regarding them extending into adulthood.

The first anime season, simply titled Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, starts out with a typical cookie-cutter plot. Twenty-one Artifacts of Incredible Power called Jewel Seeds have been deposited on Earth in a cross-dimensional accident. A mage named Yuuno is badly injured while attempting to retrieve them, and is discovered half-dead by Nanoha Takamachi, an ordinary 9-year-old elementary schooler. Yuuno lends his "Intelligent Device" to Nanoha, transforming her into a Magical Girl and allowing her to neutralize and collect the Jewel Seeds, which have unpredictable and destructive effects when they come in contact with humans. (Yuuno also has to take the form of a ferret to prevent the natives from being too curious about him. Nanoha doesn't realize this isn't his true form.)

The first few episodes seem like standard Magical Girl fare... until the rest of the characters show up, and the plot kicks into high gear.

Nanoha gains a rival in Fate Testarossa, a Dark Magical Girl who is also trying to collect the Jewel Seeds, on behalf of the one she calls "Mother." Despite knowing the devastation the Jewel Seeds could cause if they were used together, she refuses to discuss the matter. While technically Nanoha is still after the Jewel Seeds, she wants to find out what could possibly make someone as beautiful as Fate have such pain in her eyes. But Fate will not let Nanoha get close to her... so Nanoha decides to beat the truth out of her. For her own good.

Nanoha also gains an ally with the arrival of the Time/Space Administration Bureau, a trans-dimensional peace-keeping force born from an advanced Magitek civilization. Their mission is to secure the Jewel Seeds, due to the potential for catastrophic damage to the fabric of space-time if all 21 were brought together. Working with top TSAB mage Chrono and the staff of the dimensional warship Asura, Nanoha uncovers the dark secret behind Fate's quest, and an appropriately epic confrontation ensues.

The second season, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, is set six months after the first. It features Nanoha and Fate working together with the TSAB to investigate another Artifact of Incredible Power called the Book of Darkness, which has apparently attached itself to an orphaned girl in a wheelchair named Hayate. She just wants to have a family, and the servants of the Book are a sympathetic female Power Trio and their Non Human Sidekick, all of whom she adopts. But the Book demands the Mana of others... or it will kill Hayate. This leads to an inevitable confrontation between Team Nanoha and the Servants of the Book of Darkness.

The third season, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, takes place 10 years after the second, with the previous cast taking up leadership roles in the newly-formed "Section Six", an experimental team of elite mages operating under the TSAB. Section Six is charged with monitoring and containing Relics, another dangerous Lost Technology, which Mad Scientist Jail Scaglietti is particularly interested in obtaining. Jail is obsessed with creating Artificial Mages and Combat Cyborgs, as part of a long-running illegal project which among other things was responsible for the creation of Fate herself. Central to the plot is Vivio, an apparently abandoned child of "Project F" who Fate and Nanoha adopt. She is the lynchpin of Jail's ultimate plan, which involves a powerful weapon from the lost ages that he wants to use for his own evil purposes. When Vivio is kidnapped by Jail and his team of cyborgs, Nanoha, Fate, Hayate and Section Six must find a way to save her against impossible odds and stop Jail once and for all!

There also exist twenty-three chapters of supplementary manga detailing various slice of life moments throughout A's and StrikerS, including six chapters that bridge the ten years between them.

There is also a set of Audio Dramas called "Sound Stages" that take place at various points in the series. Of special note is StrikerS Sound Stage X, a two-disc Sound Stage set three years after StrikerS that excluded everyone introduced before StrikerS (with the exception of minor character Mariel) and revolved around a new incident that the heroes must handle. What appreared to be an ordinary Serial Killer case that Enforcer Teana was investigating turned out to be something more sinister as ancient texts that spoke of the undead Super Soldier army of Mariage led by the Dark King Ixpellia are uncovered together with the identity of a terrorist named Toredia who planned to use them. With the threat of a Zombie Apocalypse looming over the horizon, Subaru and friends must battle the Mariage, and locate both Ixpellia and the mastermind behind this latest terrorist attack before it's too late.

A movie is coming out on the 23rd of January 2010, which will retell the first season; but "more in the style of StrikerS". There will also be a game for the Playstation Portable.

Two new manga series are currently being published.

The first is a Spin Off manga that is running in Comp Ace called Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid; set four years after StrikerS it features Vivio as a Magic Warrior that turns into her teenage form when she needs to battle with the power of Sacred Heart, her... bunny plushie Device? That's right, it's a return to more traditional Magical Girl fare, complete with what looks like a rival Magical Girl in the form of Hegemon Ingvalt, a king from the era of Ancient Belka similar to Vivio.

The second is the fourth season manga called Magical Senki (War / War Chronicles) Lyrical Nanoha Force and set six years after StrikerS. Notice how it has dropped the "Magical Girl" from the title. It's running in Nyantype, Newtype's Spin Off magazine, with Episode 0 having been released with the first issue, offering a glimpse of a new relic from the war-torn era of Ancient Belka called the Forbidden Book of the Silver Cross, as well as the new main characters for the fourth season, a boy named Touma and a girl named Lily.

It was among the shows that had its English-language release delayed due to the cut-backs made by Geneon, but the first season was eventually made available by Funimation in December of 2008, with A's following in January 2009. The StrikerS manga have also been licensed, by Digital Manga Publishing (planned for September 2010); strangely enough, the StrikerS anime has not itself been licensed yet. Nor most of the supplementary material...and it's not looking hopeful.

---

Amusingly, the show is absolutely crammed with shout-outs to other anime series:

• The producer of the series, Akio Mishima, has come out on record as saying that much of the series was inspired by Nanoha's "Gundam-ish" concept art, particularly the staff and the colours of her uniform (Nanoha tribute fanbook, in Megami Magazine #91).
  • He's also apparently a fan of Super Robot Wars. Therefore... well look at who's voicing Chrono, when he's adult and young (they both voice the Official Couple of the Alpha series). And there's also this "little girl with dragon summon" that has the same VA as a certain Choukijin pilot, or Nanoha's brother, who shares a VA with a certain Masō Kishin pilot (and a Gundam Pilot), though to be fair, he's been voiced by the same guy since his debut in Triangle Heart 3 Sweet Songs Forever. Fate also gets a major shout-out in the form of her Intelligent Device's sword form - a sword with a folding hilt. That extends for MILES. The worst offender, however, has got to be the abundant similarities between Signum and Lamia Loveless (on top of the similarities in background, personality, and even attacks, they also have the same voice). Also, while this is less of a blatant one than the previous one, maybe you should give Zest Grangeitz a look. Now imagine what happens when you give Sanger Zonvolt, The Sword That Smites Evil! a brown hair... see what I mean?
    • SRW has started giving Nanoha Shout Outs back - in SRWZ, the Balgora Glory's attacks suspiciously resemble Nanoha's.
    Setsuko: "The Glory Star, FULL BURST!"
• Many of the attacks and techniques in the series are homages to mecha series, notably Mobile Suit Gundam and Gao Gai Gar. And especially Subaru, who can be considered a moe compact-sized GaoGaiGar.
  • A fact that has not escaped the fans in any way.
• The plot arc of the three series is broadly similar to that of the Gundam series Mobile Suit Gundam and Zeta Gundam, with the blond nemesis doing a Heel Face Turn and appearing as an ally in the second series, and a long Time Skip between the penultimate series and the final installment, during which the protagonists grow up (Chars Counterattack). As a matter of fact, Nanoha uses funnels during the third series, making the resemblance even more pronounced. The main difference is that Fate, unlike Char, does not undergo a later Face Heel Turn.
• Reinforce, and her tinier, cuter incarnation, Reinforce Zwei. In Victory Gundam, there's a battleship named Reinforce, which was later remodeled into the Reinforce Junior... Coincidence? Some think not.
• Testarossa, as a name, sounds suspiciously like...scratch that, exactly like, one character from Full Metal Panic.
  • More likely it is a reference to Ferrari Testarossa, considering the numerous amount of characters that have taken their names from cars (Signum, Shamal, Vita, Zafira, Teana, Subaru, Erio, Caro etc)
  • Fate being created as a replacement for her parent's dead child and then rejected by said parent may be based on Astro Boy.
• The second episode features an Expy of Ein from Cowboy Bebop being possessed by a Jewel Seed.
• Subaru's roller blades and "Wing Road" are possibly Shout Outs to Air Gear... or Combattler V, for that matter.
  • Meanwhile, her Revolver Knuckle and her sister's name are references to Gear Fighter Dendoh, while the physical appearance of the sisters (particularly hairstyle and ribbons) recalls Noriko and Kazumi, the pilots of Gunbuster (which happens to have spiked rollerblades built in).
• Teana's weapon, Cross Mirage is named after a mech from The Five Star Stories & its design appropriately has a slight Mamoru Nagano vibe to it.
• Not an anime shout-out, but the A's in Nanoha A's is a phonetic sound-alike of "Ace," and that season also features the first appearance of "Belkan Knights," who utilize a triangle array in their magic. In Ace Combat, the Belkan Air Force uses a triangle as it's emblem and is rooted in the traditions of the ancient orders of Belkan knights.
  • Hence this...
• The new Force character is named Touma. His Device is called Divider996. This is either a blatant reference to To Aru Majutsu No Index or a very, very strange coincidence.
  • Or MAYBE named after the Super Robot hero of Super Robot Wars Alpha 3 Touma Kanou. Let's cross our fingers and see whether this new Touma develops Kamen Rider-ish magics.
  • Also, in the same promotional manga, Signum referred to the Huckebein family.
• New ViVid character Einhart has the family name of Stratos. Part Vehicular Theme Naming, part Gundam 00 reference.
• This troper is surprised that nobody has pointed out that Jail Scaglietti looks like Ingram Plisken.
• Lutecia's summon, Garyu, is an insect like humanoid monster with a similar design to a Kamen Rider. To add to this, its arm can form a blade similar to the one Gils can form, has a Scarf Of Asskicking and, in a fight with Erio, kicks in a very similar way to a Rider Kick.
• Vita's hammer can take on a form that is a reference to Gao Gai Gar and one form in a very possible combination reference to Gurren Lagann (which aired during the same season as StrikerS) and Gao Gai Gar had a massive hammer with a drill on the front. Appropriately, this scene not only counted as a Crowning Moment Of Awesome for Vita, but showed Vita to be a Determinator like everyone's favorite Hot Blooded Gurren Lagann protagonists. It should be noted that the hammer is voiced by the same Japanese VA as Simon.

---

For tropes related to the Characters, check out the Nanoha Character Sheet (all new character trope examples should be submitted there, not below).

---

This series provides examples of:

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The site of a battle StrikerS.
• Action Bomb: Mariage can blow themselves up at will.
• Adaptation Displacement
• Air Jousting (with rollerblades)
• Alien Sky: A lot of moons on Mid-Childa.
• All Planets Are Earth Like
• All There In The Manual
• All Your Base Are Belong To Us: The assault on the Riot Force 6 HQ in StrikerS. If the Cradle had reached orbit it would effectively have held the whole Mid-Childa hostage...
• Alternate Calendar: Old and New Mid-Childan Calendar.
• Alternate Continuity (Nanoha and family are an Alternate Universe version of the one from the H-game and OVA series Triangle Heart 3 Sweet Songs Forever where her brother, sister, and father were ninja-like bodyguards. The first season makes numerous references to this. Her father, killed in Triangle Heart, is alive in this universe, although covered with scars from "his old job." In addition Nanoha enjoys watching her brother and sister spar, using the same fighting style from the original series. Also a case of Adaptation Displacement.)
• Amazon Brigade: Riot Force 6 in general, not counting Erio and Zafira.
• Amplifier Artifact: Unison devices work this way.
• Amulet Of Concentrated Awesome: The devices in storage mode.
• Amusement Park: Marine Garden in SSX.
• Animation Bump (The first episode is too smoothly done, if that's possible. Watch it, you'll see what I mean.)
• Anime Anatomy: Used extensively in transformation sequences in the three anime seasons; averted in Force.
  • Interestingly averted in an early episode of StrikerS with Subaru and Caro in a bath. Its subtle and very easy to miss, but you can see a pale nipple on Subaru.
• Animorphism (Yuuno, Arf, and several other secondary characters)
• Anti Magic: Gadget Drones from StrikerS. The "official" reason for creating Riot Force 6 is to train operatives to fight under Anti-Magic conditions.
• Apocalypse How: Lost Logia in sufficient amount is capable of X-2 and beyond class as the Al-Hazred disaster showed.
• Artifact Of Death: The Book of Darkness, because of the malfunction.
• Artificial Human (Many of the characters, both heroic and villainous, are lab experiments.)
• Author Appeal: Just go back up a little.
• Badass Adorable (Ah, but where to begin?)
  • That's easy. Vivio.
  • Begin at the beginning. Nanoha.
• Badass Book: Reinforce I
• Badass Family: Several.
  • The Harlaowns. Admiral Lindy, Admiral Chrono, and Fate Testarossa-Harlaown. Probably also the late Clyde Harlaown. Any of them can and will befriend you into outer space if you make them mad.
    • As Fate's adopted children, Erio and Caro probably count as members as well. And Arf's the family pet.
  • The Yagami family. Not actually blood-related, but a family nevertheless. Hayate, Signum, Vita, Shamal, Zafira, Reinforce/Reinforce Zwei, and Agito.
  • The Takamachi family (if you choose to view them as such): The White Devil herself, Fate, and Vivio.
    • And also Nanoha's siblings, Kyoya and Miyuki Takamachi. And their father. All of whom are superb swordsmen and able to defeat legions of gunmen in mere seconds. Is there any reason why Nanoha wouldn't turn out the way she did?
  • The Nakajimas. With the exception of Non Action Dad Genya, all of the members of the family are formidable mages. Quint, Ginga, Subaru, Cinque, Dieci, Nove and Wendi .
• Badass Longcoat: Chrono, Signum, Zest, Cinque and Erio. Fate's StrikerS Barrier Jacket mixes this with Badass Cape.
• Beam Spam (Played with: The third season and accompanying manga warn that dismissing battle strategy in favor of zerging enemies puts an unhealthy strain on the body. Nanoha takes this trope Up To Eleven, with Wave Motion Spam.)
• Beam O War (Oddly subverted. In any Beam O War situation, nobody ever really has to work at it. Any time it happens, one of the people attempting it will lose. Almost instantly, because True Beam O War requires standing still, and anyone engaged in Full Contact Magic loses when they do that.)
• Berserker Tears
• Better On DVD (The TV version of the "Heartless White Devil" scene in episode eight of StrikerS made a lot of people think that Nanoha had some sort of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome from the timeskip between A's and StrikerS and that her reaction to Subaru and Teana's dangerous tactics in the mock battle made it look as if she wasn't fit to be training the two. The DVD version of the situation helped clear up any misgivings; she had more of a "disappointed parent" look on her face than the more Higurashi-like look in the TV version. Various examples of QUALITY animation are fixed in the DVD releases as well.)
  • Just before her legendary attack in episode 25, she stomps on the floor (possibly to brace herself, but more likely simply because of how badass it makes her look). In the TV version, some dust is kicked up when her foot pounds onto the floor; on DVD that part of the floor is destroyed. Inexplicably, many people seem to prefer the second.
• BFG (Intelligent Devices are basically the magical equivalent. To push the analogy further, the second season introduces cartridges, which might as well be magically charged shotgun shells from their appearance, and Bardiche loads them from a revolver cylinder, while Raising Heart does so from a magazine.)
• BFS (Bardiche Zanbar.)
• Blank White Eyes
• Bleached Underpants (Also note that the animation studios Seven Arcs made nothing but porn before they made Nanoha).
• Blue With Shock
• But Now I Must Go (the original Reinforce.)
  • Also Fate, to Alicia, in the Lotus Eater Machine
• By The Power Of Greyskull ("Set up.")
• Can Not Spit It Out (The more sympathetic villains regarding their true objectives).
  • Yuuno to Nanoha.
  • Nanoha and Fate never actually spit it out either, but seem to realize it anyways.
    • During the first A's sound stage, Fate struggles with telling Nanoha that they could resolve the issue of who goes into the bath first by going in together, but gets interrupted by Amy and Miyuki's arrival and the subsequent decision to go to the public baths.
• Carnivore Confusion (Lotte can tell that Yuuno's a ferret, and being a Catgirl, asks if she can eat him. It's somewhat ambiguous what she means by that, but given that Arf tries to eat Nanoha in the first series, it's questionable whether familiars have any problem with eating humans.)
  • However, Lotte was kidding.
• Chekhovs Skill (Area Search and other spells.)
  • Area Search is particularly noteworthy, as it was created way back in the first season, and didn't get pulled back out again until the very end of StrikerS, two full seasons later. If you didn't see the first season, it's a brief moment of "wait, where did she get that" until you see the Crowning Moment Of Awesome it leads into and forget it completely. If you HAVE seen the first season, however, it makes the CMOA all the sweeter.
  • Fate pulls a noteable one as well; Recovery is used on a badly damaged Bardiche in the penultimate episode of the first series, and in the second episode of A's after Signum damages it again.
• Chekhov's Wave Motion Gun (The Arc-en-ciel.)
• Cherry Blossoms (The end of StrikerS)
• Church Militant (The Saint Church)
• Cloning Blues (The products of Project F.)
• Collapsing Lair (The Garden of Time in the original series, as a result of Precia's failed attempt to use the Jewel Seeds).
• Continuity Nod (The scars from Nanoha's father's "old job", Miyuki practicing her swordfighting technique, and other references to Triangle Heart 3 Sweet Songs Forever.)
• Conspicuous Trenchcoat (Shamal tries to use this as a disguise when Nanoha and Fate visit Hayate. It doesn't work.)
• Cool Starship: The TSAB L-class cruise patrol warship Asura (It is referred the Arthra in the supplemental manga but is consistently called the Asura in the anime throughout the three seasons).
• Covert Pervert (Nanoha's brother Kyouya, in the first sound stage. When a Jewel Seed acts on his inner desires, it starts removing swimsuits from female swimmers.)
• Cross Dressing Voices (All young males in both the Japanese and English versions.)
• Crystal Spires And Togas (To a certain extent, the TSAB. They took their society past the Information Age and attempt to use their influence benevolently to the dimensions and worlds they observe.)
• Cute Little Fangs (Arf, Lio, Agito)
• Defeat Means Friendship (To the point where, among the fandom, "befriend" has come to be synonymous with "beat the crap out of".)
  befriend (v.): to use mecha-class beam weaponry to inflict grievous bodily harm on a target in the process of proving the validity of your belief system.
  — From a post on rpg.net
• Demoted To Extra: Poor Yuuno. Featured prominently in the first OP, reduced to a five-second weasel cameo in the second, completely forgotten in the third. And he's not even mentioned in the story of ViVid.
  • The rest of Nanoha's family, particularly her older brother, had their roles significantly reduced from Triangle Heart 3, suffered a steep decline in importance in A's, and do not even appear in StrikerS.
  • Yuuno, while only having a cameo in the second OP, still plays a prominent role in A's.
    • Zafira and Shamal suffer this a bit in StrikerS.
• Distant Finale (A's has a sequence taking place four years after the main story.)
• Dramatic Wind (Of course during the fight scenes, but used to great effect during Nanoha and Fate's talk on the bridge.)
• Dungeon Bypass (Nanoha blows through half a warship from the inside to get at the Smug Snake in StrikerS, frequently cited as a Crowning Moment Of Awesome)
  • Chrono also does one in the finale of the first season, apparently because he couldn't find the door to Precia's inner sanctum.
  • Teana uses a variant of this in Sound Stage X to open an escape route for Subaru, with the help of Starlight Breaker.
• Eight Point Eight (Carl Kimlinger's review of the first series gave it a C-. Cue Flame War, especially over whether his emphasis on the lolicon aspects of the series was justified.)
• Eldritch Abomination: The Book of Darkness's defense system after it goes berserk.
• Empathic Weapons (All the intelligent devices. This leads to somewhat comical moments where they will compliment one another.)
• Everyone Is A Super (Once they get off a certain Insignificant Little Blue Planet, Mid-Childa is populated by mages, making magic use mundane.)
• Evil Counterpart (Zafira is a pretty much a male version of Arf, made especially blatant when they fight in their animal forms. The designers didn't even TRY to make him look like anything but a palette swap.
• Evil Sorcerer (Precia Testarossa)
• Extreme Doormat (Fate, in the first season)
• False Camera Effects
• Fandom Nod (Hayate addressing who would win between her and Nanoha.)
• Fanservice
• Fashionable Asymmetry (Reinforce. Both versions, but the asymmetric elements switched sides.)
  • Also teen Nanoha's single pigtail.
    • And the single unruly tuft of hair growing out of the head of almost everyone (particularly prominent on the members of the Testarossa family).
    • It seems that Vivio will be inheriting her mother's hairstyle, amongst other things, as shown in her Sankt Kaiser mode and the new Adult Mode in Vi Vid.
• Fetish Fuel
  • Various binds. Particularly Yuuno's magical chain manifesting ones.
  • The Wolkenritter were essentially immortal while connected to the Book of Darkness. If killed, it could simply reform them as good as new. Before this sounds like supreme Squick, it also makes their trying out various things that sound interesting but in practice have a chance of ending up as a Fatally, Disfiguringly, or merely Eventually Inconvenient Bad Idea much more palatable. Just as icing on the cake, they had to obey the owner of the Book, although capable of bending their orders somewhat.
• Frills Of Justice
• Genre Shift: Each installment seems to move further away from the stereotypical Magical Girl setting, and closer to Nanoha's destiny of being an RX-78-2 in a schoolgirl outfit.
• Get Out Of Jail Free Card: Fate, the Wolkenritter and some of the Numbers appear to get off rather lightly, with (several years of) community service instead of a jail sentence. However, considering how dangerous this community service is, this might not seem quite so jarring.
• Girlish Pigtails: Young Nanoha, young Fate, Vita, StrikerS Nanoha when she's in her Barrier Jacket, Teana (until the epilogue of StrikerS), and Ingvalt.
  • During StrikerS, Nanoha and Fate only wear twintails when geared up for combat.
    • It seems series writer Tsuzuki Masaki feels that pigtails no longer go well with Fate in the post-StrikerS era. Cue her new combat hairstyle as shown [1] and here here.
• Gorgeous Gorgon
• Gratuitous English: The more the devices talk, the less cool they get. In The Original Series, they only call out attack names. In A's, they occasionally speak in full sentences. By the time of StrikerS, they even have actual conversations with their masters (with painfully bad grammar).
  • Averted with Touma's device, which speaks Japanese.
• Gratuitous German (The Wolkenritter's armed devices and Erio's Strada.)
• Growing The Beard (At least episode 7 of the first series; definitely A's.)
• Hard Work Hardly Works: During the first season, Nanoha initially appears to obtain her magical abilities without any need for training. However, she is later shown to spend a lot of time practicing magic. The supplementary material for A's reveals that she actually uses Raising Heart to drain her mana constantly, allowing her to train while eating or doing schoolwork.
• Has Two Mommies (Vivio.)
• Hero Antagonist (The Wolkenritter)
  • Potentially the TSAB in Force.
• Heroic RROD: Nanoha exhausts herself from training so much that when she gets injured on a mission, she almost dies and ends up taking over a year to recover.
  • During the final battle of StrikerS, she permanently loses 8 percent of her magical power, and has to take several years' leave as a result.
• Holographic Terminal (Magical ones, but holographic nonetheless.)
• Hollywood Cyborg (The Numbers as well as Subaru and Ginga. Apparently cyborgs are test tube babies with their bones replaced by metal or something, since they still bleed, can be impregnated and are otherwise pretty much normal.
  • Although apparently they need regular "treatments" in order to grow older. Not unreasonable for biologically immortal people.
• Honor Before Reason (Averted, as Nanoha has no problems with fighting dirty or incapacitating her opponents if they ignore her initial pleas. In her defense, her weapons are generally non-fatal.)
  • Fate, on the other hand, helps free Signum from a monster's clutches rather than take the opportunity to capture her.
• Hot Springs Episode (Episode 5 of the original series)
• Humongous Mecha (No, really! Precia deploys a variety of robots that clearly fall into the category to defend her lair in the finale of the first season. Nanoha proceeds to smack them down like she was an escaped Super Prototype from a Gundam show.)
• I Have The High Ground (Fate seems to enjoy this one.)
• I Just Want To Be Normal (Aversion. The only other lead magical girl that this editor can think of who didn't want to be normal is Corrector Yui.)
• I Know You Are In There Somewhere Fight: In A's, when Nanoha faces the Book Of Darkness-possessed Hayate.
  • StrikerS has two: Subaru vs. Ginga and Nanoha vs. Vivio.
• I'm A Humanitarian: Arf threatens, and later attempts, to swallow Nanoha whole.
• Impossibly Cool Clothes (To quote Raising Heart: "Barrier Jacket.")
• Improbable Age: Not just kids becoming cops at ten...but an admiral at twenty-one? Or a certified archaeologist at nine? Or a librarian in the Infinity Library in third grade?
• Instant Armor (The Barrier Jackets are skimpier than most example, but they still appear outta nowhere, and seem to outstrip a Main Battle Tank in terms of defensive potential, so...
• Instant Expert: Nanoha in the first season. Taken to an extreme by Hayate at the end of A's.
• Instant Runes (Endemic to high-powered magic.)
• Invisible To Normals (In addition to the classic Magical Girl definition, there is a spell called "Barrier" that pushes everything half a dimension over. The city is still there, but all non-magic users are no longer present, and thus cannot witness the light show (see Phantom Zone). However, it is also averted in that those fights without barriers enclosing them leave massive collateral damage — like Nanoha's first, the cratered site of which she fled from upon hearing the sirens of incoming emergency vehicles.)
  • It's also averted in the fact that unlike other Magical Girl series, a mage in their transformed state can be found out if not using a magical disguise. This is proven toward the end of the second season when Nanoha and Fate recognize the Wolkenritter. Additionally, Suzuka and Alisa recognize both Nanoha and Fate while in their Barrier Jackets during the fight with the Book of Darkness's automatic defense program.
    • After noticing that Nanoha and Fate are about to visit Hayate in the hospital and potentially find out about her connection with the Wolkenritter, Shamal regrets not using transformation magic during their fights (a potential option for disguise). Shamal listens in on the visit while wearing a Conspicuous Trenchcoat to make sure Hayate doesn't say anything compromising, but is immediately recognized by the doctor.
• Ironic Echo Cut (Featured at the end of episode 18 of the the third season.)
• Jumped At The Call (Early in the second episode, Yuuno apologises to Nanoha for getting her involved, and tells her he just needs a few days to recover his powers, then he'll go after the Jewel Seeds on his own. Her reply (with not a moment's hesitation): "Sorry, I can't let you do that.")
  • And I suppose it's just a total coincidence that Raising Heart looks like one of HAL's eyes?
• Kindhearted Cat Lover (Suzuka has an entire mansion filled with adopted kittens.)
  • Arisa does the same with dogs.
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: The TSAB imposes heavy restrictions on the use of mass-based weapons, since they are more dangerous than Magitek ones.
  • The show is Playing With A Trope here, though. Nanoha and Fate seem to command power equivalent to at least a company of tanks, so it's doubtful you could fight mages with infantry. Only Hayate, however, is capable of the high-level destruction of an artillery barrage or heavy bomber strike, and she's apparently unique.
  • "Mass weapons" could be a case of the Nuclear Weapons Taboo at work, though.
• Les Yay: You could fill a Doorstopper documenting all the instances. I mean, it starts the second Nanoha sees Fate. No joke.
• The Library Of Babel (The Infinity Library.)
• Life Energy
• Limit Break: Raising Heart's and Bardiche's most powerful forms, which are actually referred to as such.
• Living With The Villain (Hayate's place is villain central, all though it turns out the problem is on the bookshelf, not with the people.)
• Loads And Loads Of Characters: Manageable in the first two series. Becomes quite unwieldy in StrikerS, to the point that many of the antagonists receive almost no characterization at all outside of the supplementary material.
• Lock And Load Montage ("Graf Eisen! Cartridge Load!")
  • A good sign of an approaching Crowning Moment Of Awesome is when something loads multiple cartridges, usually three or four.
  • It stands to reason, then, that Nanoha loading five shells (count 'em good) into Raising Heart before slamming in another full clip all but guarantees the subsequent reaching of a higher plane of awesome. Suffice to say, much ass was duly kicked.
• Lolicon: Predominantly in the form of suggestive merchandise material, but largely The Artifact as the series shifted into a different framework. Largely dodged a majority of squick after being picked up by yuri fandom, which seemed to make it ok.
• Lost Technology (Lost Logia.)
• Love Martyr (Fate, of course. Precia is such a two dimensional horrible character, though successfully a Complete Monster, to make Fate look better.)
• Lotus Eater Machine (Book of Darkness set up a somewhat poor one for Fate.)
• Made Of Indestructium (Technically you can destroy the Book of Darkness, but it just pops back, good as new. So the book is functionally indestructible and can only be neutralized by freezing it.)
• Magical Girl (Of course, in the series they are called "mages" or "knights".)
• Magic From Technology / Magitek: Straddles the line between the two; aside from weaponry, it isn't at all clear what is magic and what is conventional technology.
• Magic Missile
• Mama Bear (Nanoha after the time skip. Just try to kidnap Vivio.)
• Mana
• Mecha Mooks (The only kind of Mooks shown in the TV portion of the franchise.)
• Meganekko (Nanoha's older sister Miyuki)
• Mega Neko (Provided the image for that page. Tragically wtfpwn'd by Fate.)
• Memetic Mutation (See the above entry about befriending.)
• Mildly Military (The Time/Space Administrative Bureau, which also acts as both The Federation and The Magocracy.)
• Moe Couplet (Fuels nearly every standard fanship, to the point it replaces the otherwise vanilla Erio/Caro ship vaguely implied in the show.)
• Mood Whiplash (Precia whipping Fate rapidly converts most viewers from enjoying the somewhat humorous tone and subversions to "PRECIA TESTAROSSA MUST DIE". StrikerS mood whiplashes quite a bit too.)
• Morality Pet: (Hayate, for the Wolkenritter)
• More Popular Spinoff (of Triangle Heart)
• My Kung Fu Is Stronger Than Yours
• Mythology Gag (Lindy's fairy wings, Chrono's Spikes Of Villainy, and other references to the original Nanoha game.)
• Name That Tune
• Neck Lift
• Night Of The Living Mooks (StrikerS Sound Stage X.)
• Noblewomans Laugh (Precia almost sounds like Naga sometimes)
• Non Indicative Name (Voltaire was a French writer and philosopher from the 18th century. Here he's Godzilla's big brother. Go figure.)
• Not Quite Flight (Wing Road)
• Number Of The Beast (The Book of Darkness has 666 pages.)
• Older Than They Look: Vita, who hasn't aged a day between A's and StrikerS.
  • Arf's puppy form in A's and her humanoid form in StrikerS. The puppy form is for an effective disguise while living on Earth, the "loli" form is to consume as little of Fate's mana as possible.
• Ominous Floating Castle (The Garden of Time, Precia's fortress in the first season.)
• One Hundred And Eight: Genya Nakajima commands the Ground Forces' 108th Battalion.
• Out Of The Inferno: Nanoha's original "White Devil" moment in A's.
• Panty Shot: Mandatory during transformation sequences. Apart from that, only once (by Vita), in A's.
  • The frequency of transformation sequences (and thus panty shots) decreases as the series progresses.
• People Jars: Jail Scaglietti loves these. Precia also had a few.
• Person Of Mass Destruction (Nanoha is a rare series where there's a good portion of individuals who treat theirs well. The ones who don't... well, they get befriended, in some cases fatally.)
• Pink Bishoujo Ghetto (in both population and screen time.)
• Plucky Girl (Nanoha is certainly one,to put it mildly.)
• Power Gives You Wings (Nanoha, Hayate, Signum, Lindy.)
• Power Levels (Nanoha's average magical power is given to be "1.27 million" in the first season, while Fate's is 1.43 million. Numerical readings are mentioned only once otherwise, when Uno reacts to Fate's Sonic Overdrive in StrikerS; "Her magical point values have increased?" Vice mentions that even Teana has magical rankings that are twice as high as his. All other mentions are letter rankings.)
• Power Limiter (Nanoha, Fate, and Hayate have them in the third season, partly due to the office politics of having too many powerful mages in one department, but also because it disguises the amount of power Section Six has at its disposal from their enemies, giving them the element of surprise when necessary.)
  • Even when the official ones are removed, they have to fight inside an Anti Magic field so they still aren't at the top of their game.
  • A four-level limiter is applied to the forwards' devices so they can ease into the power they receive. One level typically gets taken off before each major battle).
• The Power Of Friendship (Saved Fate's life arguably. Of course, given the definition of "befriend" in use by the Nanoha fandom, The Power Of Friendship can also be employed for blowing you up.)
• Powers As Programs (Yuuno explains right at the start of the first season that this is how the Intelligent Devices work. The Combat Cyborgs from StrikerS also have special moves "programmed" into them.)
• Prophecy Twist (A vaguely worded prophecy mentions the "destruction of the ship of law that guards the stars". Everyone assumes, given the seemingly easy conclusion of an earlier part referring to a disastrous terrorist attack, that this refers to even worse things to come if they're not averted. Turns out, it's referring to the ancient warship the Big Bad manages to excavate, thus prophesying that they'll manage to stop it.)
• Psychic Link (Between Hayate and the Wolkenritter.)
• Quirky Miniboss Squad (The Numbers.)
• Rank Inflation: In season 1, the scale goes up to AAA. By the third season, Hayate is ranked SS, and Nanoha, Fate and Signum are all S-rankers.
• Rapunzel Hair (Fate. Also Nanoha in StrikerS.)
• Redemption Earns Life
• Restraining Bolt (the Power Limiters in the third season.)
• Random Power Ranking (The Mage Ranks.)
• Red Right Hand: Fate and Nanoha's doppelgangers near the end of A's have off-color outfits. Whereas Fate's black outfit had some red and Nanoha's had blue, the red and blue is reversed with the impostors.
• The Remnant (Hegemon Heidi Ingvalt)
• Rousseau Was Right (A's, mostly.)
• Saintly Church (Belkan Saint Church)
• School Uniforms Are The New Black (Nanoha's magical armor design is based on the school uniform she wore when 10 years old, so in a way, she continues wearing her school uniform in battle well into her adulthood.)
• Ship Sinking
  • Fate/Chrono takes a blow after Chrono's mother adopts Fate, but is only finally sunk when Chrono marries Amy.
  • Yuuno/Nanoha gradually sinks as he gets Demoted To Extra, and when Nanoha, Fate and Vivio are referred to as the "Takamachi family".
• Ship Tease: Will the writers ever confirm or deny once and for all Nanoha/Fate or Nanoha/Yuuno? Probably not. In a recent "fans ask questions" segment, the writers were asked if "Fate and Nanoha were in love-love" and they avoided answering. "Whether or not they are, they complement each other nicely."
  • Nanoha/Fate arguments: Immediately after the two meet, Nanoha notes that she finds Fate beautiful. In the third season they share a bed, and according to the reference material dedicate several hours before going to bed to "strategy planning and personal time." They have also adopted a child together, having her refer to both of them as "mama.". Nevertheless, they haven't so much as kissed or referred to their relationship as more than "friends." (Although Nanoha does refer to Fate as "my love" in the second season ED song, this may be Gratuitous English.) Nanoha states in the aforementioned song that she won't forget Fate once she is a woman, and in the OP for the same season, Fate vows to protect Nanoha's smile. Yuuno has been Put On A Bus in the third season, except for two cameos. In the 14th episode of StrikerS, it is shown that they share a bed.
    • They seem to continue to live together in ViVid, when Fate is not on off-world deep space mission, and with the Sound Stage released for the C76 Comiket, Nanoha, Fate and Vivio are referred to as the "Takamachi Family", and Nanoha takes care of Fate and Vivio like a housewife take care of her husband and child.
    • It's a cultural thing. Because Fate is frequently in mission far away from home, she is compared as the image of the salary man (often far away fron his family for extended period of time, while Nanoha is compared as the housewife, the counterpart (who take care of the house and children while the husband is not at home, and take care of him when he is back from work), which she do in the Sounstages and in Vivid. But the cultural reference tied up to them are the opposite of their personality, and don't take into account their personality, it's just their role in the family (Fate=Breadwinner, Nanoha=wife who take care of their child and her husband) and, well, you could also say Fate is akin to an overprotective father who can't say no to her daughter.
  • Nanoha/Yuuno arguments: In the 12th episode of the original series, when she's telling him how much she's grown to appreciate his support, she gives him this blatantly sultry look. In the manga 4 years after the second season, Yuuno has expressed romantic interest in Nanoha, but at that point, she hasn't recognized this. Hayate suggested he "keep trying." 6 years after that, reference materials have described their relationship as "close despite the years and distance", and like Fate, his hair ribbon is a gift from Nanoha. During his first cameo in the third season, the scene cuts away before we hear any of their conversation, presumably to keep it in the air. In addition, Yuuno's presence along with Arf to take pictures of Nanoha's adopted daughter's first day of school is argued by some to be taking a fatherly (and thus husbandly to Nanoha) role, wich is apparently retconned by the presentation notes coming along the first chapter of ViVid (and also in ViVid by Vivio herself, where she says she has two mothers who raised her together, and refers to Fate as "Fate-mama"). The Sound Stage released for Comiket C76 seems to have killed Yuunoha once and for all, since Nanoha, Fate and Vivio are called "the Takamachi Family", and Yuuno has been phased out entirely by this time; he does not have enough of a part in Vivio's life enough to warrant an introduction when she tells the readers the important people in her life.
  • There were some slight Ship Tease moments for Fate and Chrono in A's, but they became brother and (adopted) sister shortly thereafter, thus miring the issue. StrikerS finally killed it with Chrono getting married to Amy.
• Ship To Ship Combat: NanoFate vs. Yuunoha raged on until ViVid and the Movie audio drama more-or-less sunk the latter. Now mostly limited to "canon" shippers against any non-canon shipping of Nanoha or Fate.
• Shooting Gallery (Subaru and Teana go through one of these on the first episode of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS for their B-Rank qualifying mage exam.)
• Sinister Scythe (Bardiche's Scythe form.)
• Smoke Shield (At least once each season, if not more.)
• Snow Means Death: Reinforce in A's. Almost happens to Nanoha during the Time Skip between A's and StrikerS.
• Sound Off (The Ground Forces trainees, in a Shout Out to Full Metal Jacket.)
• Spot Of Tea (Gag in the first season, where Admiral Lindy adding milk to her green tea marks her and the TSAB as a peculiar mixture of British and Japanese cultures. Nanoha is extremely well-behaved in every other respect, but cannot stop herself from making a face at this. This may be an example of Lindy attempting to emulate Earth customs very, very badly, or else an example of how the TSAB has "borrowed" and mixed various cultures with their own.)
• Squee (The personal interactions between Nanoha and Fate have the tendency to provoke this. On the Nanoha/Yuuno side, there's that LOOK she gave him in the 12th episode of the original series, though it tends to inspire catcalls or wolfwhistles as much or more than squeals.)
• Start Of Darkness Alicia Testarossa's death was this for Precia.
• Stock Footage (Surprisingly little, but there.)
• Storming The Castle
• Surprisingly Good English (Mostly spoken by the computers, but also one of Nanoha's friends at school. They're correctly accented, and make sense in context (although the grammar leaves something to be desired). They actually have native English-speaking voice actors for the computers — Australian-born Donna Burke for Raising Heart and an unknown named Kevin J. England for Bardiche.)
  • And despite the good English, the devices got re-dubbed with everything else — including the atrocious grammar — because they would otherwise have to pay the original voice actors who they would have trouble locating.
  • Suzuka's email to Shamal is written in English. The grammar is good, although it does include honorifics and reverseed names).
• Technology Porn
• Telescoping Robot and Hyperspace Mallet in approximately equal portions, in the case of the Devices. Graf Eisen is possibly the only non-comedic Hyperspace Mallet ever.
• Theme Naming (As in Magic Knight Rayearth, characters from the magical worlds are named for cars — (Ferrari) Testarossa, Scaglietti; (Opel) Zafira, Signum, Vita; (Maserati) Shamal; (Nissan) Teana; Subaru, etc.)
• Theme Music Power Up Take A Shot, Brave Phoenix, Pray.
  • Amusingly, it's not at ALL obvious this is effectively Fate singing them.
  • While not obvious, that the aforementioned insert songs all herald Fate's definitive CMoAs for the season in which they feature is a bit of a clue.
• The Omniscient Council Of Vagueness: The High Council.
• The Original Series
• The Thing That Goes Doink (Lindy's Japanese-style receiving room has one. Said room also happens to be ON A SPACESHIP.
• The Three Faces Of Eve (Shamal is The Mother, Vita is The Child, Signum is The Seductress)
  • Hayate + Costume Control > Signum. Also, they needed a third to complete the set.
• Time Skip (6 months between MSLN and A's, 6 years between A's and first 6 chapters of StrikerS manga then another 4 to StrikerS itself, 3 between StrikerS and StrikerS Sound Stage X, 1 between Sound Stage X and ViVid, and 2 between ViVid and Force)
• Toy Ship (Erio and Caro)
• Trademark Favorite Food (Lindy enjoys hot green tea with sugar, and occasionally cream, in it - much to Nanoha's horror.)
• Train Job (StrikerS episode 5)
• Traintop Battle (Again, StrikerS episode 5)
• Translation Convention: Messages displayed and spoken by Mid-Childa's Magitek devices are usually in English or German  ^*
  ^{Exceptions being humanoid Unison Devices such as Reinforce Zwei and Agito, and Tohma's device Steed from Force}
  , but all non-device characters exclusively speak Japanese. Since no explanation is ever provided, and it's possible that Mid-Childa could have picked up any or all of these languages through dimension-hopping shenanigans, it's unclear where the Translation Convention is being applied, or whether it is being applied at all.
• Transformation Sequence (Present, but unusually for a Magical Girl series, not used as time-wasting Stock Footage. In fact, each main character gets at most two of these per season.)
• Transformation Is A Free Action (Subverted: While the aforementioned full sequences are pretty long, whenever we see a transformation happen "from the outside", it takes less than two seconds.)
• Understatement: "This may hurt a little bit." Prior to Nanoha... err... befriending a mind-controlled Vivio.
  • For anyone who didn't quite get that: The thing that was going to "hurt a little bit"? FIVE. SIMULTANEOUS. STARLIGHT BREAKERS.
    • That said, anyone with the saints armor active can shrug off lesser attacks. The Anciant Belkan royality was frightning genre savvy about their sucession.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: Agito wakes up in Lutecia's shirt at one point.
• Wake Up Go To School Save The World: The situation very early in the first arc.
• Wave Motion Gun (The Arc-En-Ciel is a good example of a traditional one. The others are at least partially Person Of Mass Destruction.)
• Weak But Skilled: Chrono and Yuuno, both of whom have parlayed their greater skills into stopping much more powerful opponents cold.
  • Chrono's first appearance has him intervening in a fight between Nanoha and Fate, each of whom has substantially more raw magical power than him.
  • Yuuno stops Vita's hammer strike in A's, without any visible effort, after she had just wrecked Nanoha's shields and barrier jacket.
• Where Are They Now Epilogue: Done in both A's and StrikerS. The A's epilogue takes place six years after the events of that series. The StrikerS epilogue takes place a few months after the events of the series.
• Worthy Opponent (Fate and Signum in A's.)
• Xanatos Gambit (The entire plot of A's is set up by Admiral Graham at least 9 years before the series started, arranging for Hayate to receive the Book of Darkness and then controlling its activation on a world nominally beyond TSAB control where it could be dealt with his way.)
• You Are Number Six (Scaglietti's numbered Combat Cyborgs; most of their names are their numbers, but in Italian).
  • And by most, we mean all of them. Wendy and Dido are just nicknames for Undici and Dodici.
  • Ginga is referred to as "Thirteen" in English(her type number after getting abducted and brainwashed), or "Type Zero-First" (She and Subaru are Type Zero cyborgs).
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair (Several of the characters from magical worlds have oddly colored hair, but that could be normal for them. What is most certainly not normal is the bright purple hair shared by Suzuka, her sister, and for some reason her maids.)
  • If you go by Toraha they are pair of vampires and pair of robots... Though Toraha abuses unnaturally colored hair on normal humans so that's not an excuse either...
• You Should Know This Already (We all know about Nanoha's new Lancer...)
  • It's also becoming difficult to talk about Vi Vid without mentioning Vivio being a clone of the Sankt Kaiser.
• Young Gun (Teana at the start of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS. It took some time and a few knocks to the head for her to grow out of her hot-headed recklessness and mature to a truly effective Gunslinger.)
• Younger Than They Look: Arf can't be any older than nine in season one when you consider that Fate created her.
• Zettai Ryouiki: First season Nanoha's "civilian" clothes are Grade A. Amusingly both her Magical Girl outfit and schoolgirl outfit are both much too long for this trope.
  • The basic forms of Fate's and Nanoha's barrier jackets' in StrikerS also have this.

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