Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha

That trailer is looking good!

Happy to see that Arisa and Suzuka aren't being put on a bus this time around too!

That PV all but confirms the movie being based on the G.o.D storyline. The only thing missing are the actual appearance of the materials.

Carim is the head of the Saint Church knights, so yeah there is a military arm in the Saint Church, although I think it is composed of battle capable nuns like Schach and Chantez. What is implied, is that they're undermanned.

I guess I didn't phrase the question very clearly — what I'm wondering is if there's any distinction between "the Saint Church in general" and "the Saint Church's combat-ready division", or if there's just "the Saint Church, which happens to include a lot of combat-ready sisters". Presumably the people running the Saint Church affiliated schools and orphanages and the like aren't combat mages, but they also don't seem to be Saint Church sisters — they may simply be teachers and caretakers that the Saint Church employs, rather than members of the Saint Church proper.

I also wonder what "undermanned" means in that context. It's not like the Saint Church has territory they need to defend or anything like that. Though I could see it being standard procedure to have a certain number of combat-capable sisters at each Church establishment simply as a matter of policy, or something like that. It's not a bad idea to have some ass-kickers on hand when you live in a setting where random schoolgirls are capable of punching people through walls.

As for the movie, hasn't it been said that it's not a movie version of the PSP games, but an original story that features the same characters? Though I suppose that could mean that it's just the "canon" version of the PSP games, instead of taking place in an alternate continuity. But "it's an original story" would seem to imply a more significant difference than that.

edited 29th Dec '16 6:35:50 AM by NativeJovian

Currently re-watching the first series, and I have to ask: Does Temporal Force Field, which Yuuno used in the first and fourth episodes to prevent exposure of magic use from the public, also prevent satellites from seeing things from space?

edited 29th Dec '16 6:42:46 AM by HallowHawk

I would assume so. It seems to shift everything like half a dimension out of sync with the world around it, so it effectively creates a mini-pocket dimension for the mages to fight in that mirrors the local terrain but that non-mages can neither see nor access. It also creates a barrier that keeps anyone (mages included) from entering or leaving, but non-mages appear to simply go to the non-shifted location, while mages can break through the barrier with some effort.

I don't recall if damage done to terrain inside a shifted area translates to the normal world or not, though.

edited 29th Dec '16 6:53:36 AM by NativeJovian

Damage inside the shifted terrain explicitly does NOT transfer to the real world.

All the collateral damage in season 1 is caused by stuff that happens either when Yuuno isn't around or before he gets a chance to set up a Barrier.

That's also why the entire city wasn't in ruins at the end of A's. One of the very first things that Reinforce did was put up a Barrier.

But there's something I noticed: Did Yuuno activate Temporal Force Field in episode 3? I mean, if what happened in the first episode got covered up as an accident, then what will the explanation be in regards to all those trees rising across Uminari?

edited 29th Dec '16 7:33:47 AM by HallowHawk

He definitely didn't set up a barrier for that one — otherwise the two kids with the jewel seed wouldn't have been caught up in the tree thing in the first place. How the public reacts to the various magical shenanigans going on during the original series is rather pointedly left unmentioned (and I assume that's a large part of the reason why A's is more careful about having all its fights either inside barriers or not on Earth). It's a bit unsatisfying, but ultimately it doesn't really matter how they explained it — the upshot is that people on Earth remain ignorant of magic despite magical things going on in their midst, so the details aren't really important to the plot (though they'd be interesting to see).

I have been wondering the same thing for a while now, and my headcanon states it's just "Saint Church with combat-capable mages." The "undermanned" thing, I suppose, is about the lack of combat-capable mages, since my headcanon tells me that most modern-belkan practitioners choose to join the TSAB and actually get some action rather than be a Church militant. Although Erio, despite a knighted practitioner of modern Belkan magic, is a member of the TSAB wildlife corps or something.

Interesting. Amitie and Kyrie has what appears to be a mother in the trailer, where they only had Professor Grant in the games. I wonder if this means that their origins have been tweaked.

Having re-watched episode 8 in both Japanese and English. Anyone notice that the latter went with the "Arthra" romanization of "アースラ" wherein they used "Raging Heart" and "Time Space-Administration?"

If you're talking about the first season, yeah. The subtitles was really inconsistent. Arf was called Arf, Alf, and Alph at varying points and while it was officially Raising Heart, Raging Heart did slip in there a time or too.

I still like Raging Heart more than Raising Heart, personally. It's a lot more evocative.

As far as official translations, though, I'll be curious to see what they do with the subs on Amazon Prime Video. Not in terms of the name of Nanoha's device (Raising Heart is pretty firmly established at this point, they're not going to try to change it now), but official spellings of character names and stuff like "Time-Space Administration Bureau" vs "Dimensional Administration Bureau" will be interesting to see.

edited 2nd Jan '17 5:37:46 PM by NativeJovian

Amazon Prime subs are also similarly problematic. Kinda seems like Amazon mightn't have been the one to translate the episodes.

All of the series have already been released on Amazon Prime in English. Its just hard to watch because its only available in England, so nobody really cares what translations they used.

They probably went with the exact same translations as the English subs that were included on the Japanese blurays of the films, which would mean "Dimension Administration Bureau", "Alph", and "Arthra".

edited 2nd Jan '17 8:31:10 PM by justinkal

Well, yeah, I'm one of the people who can't watch them because I'm not in the UK. I didn't know that the blurays had official English subs, though, so that's useful to know.

That said, I doubt the fandom is going to change from their preferred translations at this point. They nearly rioted at the idea that the Vivid/Vivid Strike character might be "Einhard" rather than "Einhart", for example (even though they're pronounced the same and the former is an actual German name).

Actually they are not pronounced the same. The name is written as アインハルト, which is romanized as "A-i-n-ha-ru-to," thus "Einhart" is the closest to an English translation of the name. To make it sound like "Einhard" the "ハ"(ha) syllable should be followed by a (—) to indicate a long stress on the "a" sound and the "ト"(to) syllable should have a " (called a tenten to indicate syllable change) so it'll become "ト" "(do),

Hence, "Einhard" should look like アインハ—ト" (A-i-n-haa-do) when written in katakana,

Well, the "Einhard" spelling came from G.o.D, and that game had stuff like "Presea" for Precia, "Rynith" for Linith and "Alph" for Arf.. Although in this case, I'm probably just being nitpicky because "Einhard" just looks wrong to me, even though it's an actual German name and is pronounced."Einhart" according to the Wiki.

edited 3rd Jan '17 1:39:57 PM by Hoki

Yeah, this is what Native Jordan meant. Einhard is an actual German name with appropriate meaning that's pronounced as Einhart so translating the katakana as Einhard is likely more correct, with all official sources using Einhard when transcribing it in English.

It just so happens that it took a while before an official spelling was provided, and by then, the fans and fan translators for Vivid had become quite stubborn in keeping the Einhart name that they're used to.

edited 3rd Jan '17 3:13:56 PM by Servbot

Yep, what said.

Just running down the episode summaries, Amazon looks to be going with Alf (although Alph slipped in after EP 10, will need to check the actual subs), Arthra and Raising. Went with Time-Space Administrative Bureau as well.

Going through A's, they apparently went with Rieze and Re-enforce for whatever reason.

So, the Nanoha stuff that Amazon US has been sitting on is now available! ...behind a second, separate-from-Prime paywall service called "Anime Strike", which costs $5/month. Really, Amazon? Because your existing subscription video service wasn't enough? You had to make a second one, just for us?

Well, it's better than no legit release at all, I guess. And you get a seven-day free trial, so I'll probably use that and binge watch a bunch of Nanoha in the next week, then decide if I want to pay for the rest of it later.

That's really lame.

Did they at least have the sense to make it so that you can subscribe to the anime streaming service without having a regular old Prime subscription?

And why is it that only the US has to pay a separate fee for that stuff?

Decided to check out the first season (Amazon Canada Prime).

6.84GB/h...for *this* quality?◊

Lemme guess, it's the old TV broadcast. Not even DVD.

Sidenote: It's rated "All Kids". Somebody failed a content check.

edited 12th Jan '17 5:47:43 PM by arahman56

While there are decline spells to penetrate defense spells, would the latter be able to shrug off all types of mass-based weaponry?

Digibro raves about Vivid Strike for half an hour: "I can't help it I just really enjoy watching adorable little girls beat the shit out of each-other".