Episode 3 - The Town's In a Lot of Danger?
Exhausted after staying out late to capture another Jewel Seed, Nanoha is advised by Yuuno to spend the next day, a Sunday, relaxing. Not inclined to argue with this, she goes with Suzuka and Alisa to cheer for the local junior soccer team which is coached and owned by her father. As they watch, Nanoha explains to Yuuno how the game works.
After their team wins, they all go for a celebratory lunch at Midori-ya, Nanoha's family café. As one of the players leaves with his girlfriend, he pulls a small blue gem — a Jewel Seed — out of his pocket, admires it briefly, and puts it away again. Nanoha, sitting nearby, momentarily senses it and looks around, but finds nothing out of the ordinary. She sees that Yuuno, currently distracted by Alisa and Suzuka fawning over him, doesn't seem to have noticed anything, so she decides it was just her imagination. She's still tired, so she heads back home and lies down for a nap.
Several blocks away, the player from earlier is walking along with his girlfriend. After talking a little about the game, the boy pulls the Jewel Seed out of his pocket and gives it to her, saying it's a pretty stone he found. As soon as she takes it, it releases its power and a bright light engulfs them both.
Nanoha and Yuuno instantly sense the Jewel Seed activating and hurry outside. Nanoha transforms and heads up to a rooftop, where she is horrified to see massive trees sprouting all across the city, causing untold damage. Yuuno says that an effect this large means the Jewel Seed must have been activated by a human being. Realizing it must have been the one she sensed earlier, Nanoha asks Yuuno what to do. He says they need to find the location where the Jewel Seed was activated, but he isn't sure how to do that.
Taking matters into her own hands, Nanoha uses Raising Heart to create an area search spell, sending magical probes all over the huge growth. She soon finds the boy and girl clinging to each other high up in the branches of one of the trees, unmoving but still clutching the Jewel Seed. Yuuno tells her she can't seal it from this far away, but Nanoha insists that she can. She transforms Raising Heart into "shooting mode" and uses a long-distance blast to suppress the Jewel Seed and seal it away. Yuuno, astonished, wonders to himself just how powerful she really is.
Nanoha looks sadly out at the damaged city and says this was her fault. Yuuno tries to tell her she's not to blame, but she admits she sensed the Jewel Seed back at the café and ignored it — and this destruction is the result. Nanoha resolves to stop at nothing from now on in her hunt for the Jewel Seeds, so that something like this never happens again.
Tropes
- Character Development: This episode drives home to Nanoha that finding the Jewel Seeds isn't just a favour for Yuuno, but something that's absolutely essential to protect the world... and that being a magical girl comes with grave responsibilities that can never be put aside.
- Character Narrator: The episode starts with Nanoha briefly introducing herself via voiceover as we watch her capture another Jewel Seed. It ends with her describing how the events we just saw represent her first major mistake as a magical girl.
- Chekhov's Skill: This episode introduces the Area Search spell, which will play an critical role in the climax of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, more than two seasons and an in-universe decade later. It also marks the first use of Raising Heart's shooting mode, as well as Nanoha's signature attack, Divine Buster note .
- Covered in Scars: We get a brief glimpse of Nanoha's father in the bath, and the visible part of his torso is covered in old scars, most of which look as if they came from bladed weapons.
- Innocuously Important Episode: While not obvious on first watching, this is arguably one of the most significant episodes of the whole franchise. Besides introducing the two spells noted above, it more or less marks the point where Nanoha stops depending on Yuuno for magical instruction and starts to surpass him as a mage. Just as important, it also sets up her later tendency to push herself too hard. Nanoha's actions here will end up shaping the course of her life indelibly.
- My Greatest Failure: At the end of the episode, Nanoha reflects that this was her first major mistake since becoming a magical girl — and that the whole town paid the price for it. She resolves from now on to do nothing less than her utmost to find the Jewel Seeds: not just to help Yuuno, but to prevent disasters like this from happening again.
- My Significance Sense Is Tingling: Nanoha senses the Jewel Seed passing by in front of her, but so faintly she thinks she imagined it. This is presumably because it isn't active yet.
