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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 Tredia 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 sometime in 2009, which will retell the first season; but "more in the style of StrikerS".

Two new manga series had also been announced.

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 made available by Funimation in December of 2008, and A's followed in January 2009. The StrikerS manga had also been liscensed by Digital Manga Publishing, strangely enough, before the season it supplements had even been picked up by anyone. The StrikerS anime and most of the supplementary material have yet to receive any word of localization.

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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.
• 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 Gao Gai Gar.
• 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? This troper thinks not.
• Testarossa, as a name, sounds suspiciously like...scratch that, exactly like, one character from Full Metal Panic.
  • 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.
• 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.
• 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 said Huckebein.
• New ViVid character Einhart has the family name of Stratos. Part Vehicular Theme Naming, part Gundam 00 reference.

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

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This series provides examples of:

• Air Jousting (with rollerblades)
• All There In The Manual
• 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.)
• Anime Anatomy (Despite being completely naked during their transformations, the girls of Nanoha manage to avoid showing anything...real
• Animorphism (Yuuno, Arf, and several other secondary characters)
• Artificial Human (Many of the characters, both heroic and villainous, are lab experiments.)
• Badass Adorable (Ah, but where to begin?)
  • That's easy. Vivio.
• 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.)
• 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 The second season upgrades outfit Raging Heart with a magazine for magically charged shotgun shells! Also, Bardiche gets turned into a steampunk-magitech .357 magnum.
• 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.)
• By The Power Of Greyskull ("Set up.")
• Can Not Spit It Out
• 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.
• Cherry Blossoms (The end of StrikerS)
• Chekhov's Wave Motion Gun (The Arc-en-ciel.)
• Cloning Blues (The products of Project F.)
• 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.)
• Covert Pervert (Nanoha's brother Kyouya, in the first sound stage, uses a Jewel Seed to... leave cute swimmers in the buff)
• 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)
• 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
• Distant Finale (A's.)
• 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 Striker S, 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.
• 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.)
• Evil Sorcerer (Precia Testarossa)
• 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 women/girls of the Testarossa family).
• Fetish Fuel (9 year old Fate being whipped)
  • Wait.. What?
    • This troper couldn't agree more, it's a pity that there is no Rage Fuel trope here cause this scene would definitely quality. It's been a while since this troper wanted to brutally murder an anime character.
  • This troper would like to note that whether or not this was intended as Fetish Fuel was one of the major points of contention in the above Eight Point Eight incident.
• Frills Of Justice
• Genre Shift
• Get Out Of Jail Free Card
• Girlish Pigtails (Vita, Teana, and young Nanoha.)
  • And Fate, no? She loses the twintails for her civilian guise post timeskip, although like Nanoha's they reappear when she's geared up for battle.
• Gratuitous English (The more the devices started talking, the less cool they got.)
• Gratuitous German (The Wolkenritter's intelligent devices.)
• Growing The Beard (At least episode 7 of the first series; definitely A's.)
• Has Two Mommies (Vivio.)
• Hero Antagonist (The Wolkenritter)
• Heroic RROD (Nanoha)
• 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.
• 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.)
• Hot Springs Episode
• 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 (Two of them in StrikerS: Subaru vs. Ginga, Nanoha vs. Vivio.)
• Impossibly Cool Clothes (To quote Raising Heart: "Barrier Jacket.")
• 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 (Averted and played straight at the same time by Nanoha, taken to I Know Kung Fu extremes by Hayate.)
• 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.
• Isnt It Sad (Poor Yuuno. Featured prominently in the first OP, reduced to a five-second weasel cameo in the second, completely forgotten in the third.)
  • Chrono's Intelligent Device received a promotion to the opening titles in A's. Considering it's seen very little, and even more so considering he replaces it in the finale, Isnt It Sad?
• 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.")
• Kindhearted Cat Lover (Suzuka has an entire mansion filled with adopted kittens.)
• Les Yay (You could fill a Doorstopper with all the instances.)
• The Library Of Babel (The Infinity Library.)
• Life Energy
• Limit Break (The most powerful forms of Raising Heart and Bardiche, even referred to by name.)
• 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.
• 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.)
• Magical Girl (Of course, in the series they are called "mages" or "knights".)
• Magic From Technology (Straddles the line with Magitek so much that magic and technology are equally indistinguishable to each other.)
• 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 (StrikerS, full stop.)
  • Possibly earlier: the last third of the first series indicates the directions later instalments would take. The bubblegum pop flavour of the earliest episodes is never revisited again.
• Morality Pet
• 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.)
• Out Of The Inferno (Nanoha in her "White Devil" moment.)
• Panty Shot (Transformations only normally, once by Vita in A's. Magic Skirt is averted; these are generally long skirts, and Vita was flying directly away from the camera.)
  • The frequency of panty shots appears to decrease as the series progresses. This troper remembers multiple instances in one episode of the first season, tapering down to almost nonexistent in the third.
• People Jars (Jail Scaglietti loves these.)
• 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.)
• 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. Numerical readings are mentioned only once otherwise, when Uno reacts to Fate's Sonic Overdrive in Striker S; "Her magical point values have increased?" 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.
• 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 (Season 1 ended with AAA, and by the third there are some in SSS.)
• 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.)
• 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 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: 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 sleep together. Whether they "sleep together" in that way isn't show; after all, this isn't a hentai series.
  • 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". 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.
  • There was 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.
• Ship To Ship Combat (Nanoha x Fate shippers react violently to Nanoha x Yuuno shippers, and vice versa.)
• 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 (Fate's Bardiche looks like a kosa bojowa. It even literally has a "scythe form.")
  • This troper thinks Bardiche just looks like, um, a bardiche.
    • *Falls over laughing*
• Smoke Shield (At least once each season, if not more.)
• 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.)
• 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.)
  • This troper would argue that the atrocious grammar — especially in A's and StrikerS, where the devices start speaking full sentences — catapults this one into Gratuitous English territory.
  • 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. This troper does think Bardiche sounds just as badass in English-English as in Japanese-English... err... yeah...
• 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, (Opel) Zafira, Subaru, etc.)
  • This Troper saw a Nissan Wingroad on the streets of Osaka and couldn't help but chuckle.
• 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 Three Faces Of Eve (Shamal is The Mother, Vita is The Child, Signum is The Seductress)
  • This Troper would like to know in what universe Signum's very reserved personality would qualify her as The Seductress. Sure, with her outfit and, ahem, assets, she could be, but she does not act it.
    • Hayate + Costume Control > Signum. Also, they needed a third to complete the set.
• Time Skip (6 months between MGLN 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)
• Train Job
• Traintop Battle (StrikerS episode 5)
• Translation Convention (Messages displayed and spoken by Mid-Childa's Magitek devices are in English or German, 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.)
• 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 parleyed their greater skills into stopping much more powerful opponents cold. Chrono even beats them down.)
• Where Are They Now Epilogue (Done in both A's and StrikerS. This was possible because the A's epilogue took place six years after the events of that series, and StrikerS started another four years after that.)
• 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.)
  • Additionally, in StrikerS, Jail Scaglietti sets up a minor Gambit by impregnating all twelve of his Combat Cyborgs with his own DNA, so that even if he is captured or killed, one of the cyborgs can grow a memory-implanted clone of him to continue his work.
• 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.
• 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...)
• Young Gun (Teana at the start of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Striker S. 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 Fate created her.)
  • Inverted in the intervening years between A's and StrikerS: now that Fate's all grown-up, Arf adopts a loli form to consume as little of Fate's mana as possible.
• 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.)

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