天下制覇

Rick likes Nanoha, but nowhere near as much as I do, so I guess I’ll cover this one.

OP

How does it hold up otherwise? Let’s find out…

Unfortunately, the first raw out was LQ, so… my apologies for the kinda halfsized caps, I’ll replace them when I get my mitts on the HQ raw. 

    

It opens with the scenes of a ship on fire with a child Subaru trapped inside while firefighters rush about. She cries for someone to save her, and Nanoha rushes in to block a falling statue and then Divine Busters the fuck out of the ceiling to carry the two off to escape.

Fastforward and Subaru is shadowboxing in full equipment while Tiana checks her equipment. Reinforce calls them up and prepares them for their excercise while Fate and Hayate watch from a copter overhead and chatter about various things. Nanoha also does a final check over the course with Raging Heart. The exercise starts and the Big Three watch on. They go through various obstacles and shoot targets/dodge lasers, the works. Subaru uses her cartridge enabled Device too (though Tiana doesn’t… assuming her normal bullets aren’t cartridges at any rate.)

At one point the two are pinned down, and they use an invisibility spell as well as tossing Tiana’s gun to the ceiling to break free. Tiana also shows that she’s got some magical skill here too. After pushing Subaru out of the way, Tiana twists her ankle and takes out Nanoha’s observational camera off a ricochet.

Subaru gets all sad about Tiana saving her and hurting herself while Tiana goes all stoic on her. Nanoha loads her barrier jacket and goes to personally observe them. Subaru and Tiana argue about losing people and/or leaving them behind while some really cheesy adventure BGM plays until Tiana yells at Subaru and the two decide to continue on.

Tiana runs out along the path, until she’s gunned down by a turret… only to emerge from the wreckage still running. The running Tiana is shown to be an illusion as more spawn and distract the turrets. Subaru watches from above and charges her magical gauntlet before creating a path to the building where the turret is and then rushing down it and attacking it, busting the shield, but then getting shot away. A magical shot later and the turret is toast.

Subaru crosses the finish line with Tiana riding on her back and shooting down the last couple defense turrets. Subaru gets a little overzealous and turns on the nitro and almost pancakes them into the debris before Nanoha and Fate stop them short. Reinforce yells at them… and there my raw stops. Sadness.

Overall
Nanoha’s side ponytail is looking more and more like Takase Mizuki with every passing day. I’m sorry, I’m not going to be able to hold back the Card Master Peach jokes, but I’ll try.

Animation is hot stuff from start to finish. Even though they don’t really fight anything except harmless training drones. That kind of knocked back the action a little bit since there really wasn’t much drama to it, but as a pilot it was still quality. Subaru’s bow still looks silly though.

Fans of the first two seasons won’t be disappointed in the action at all. I fully expect and hope to see Carol and Fate’s boytoy in the next episode or two. This one is definitely pacing itself for the 24/26 episode haul, and I’ve got no complaints at all with how it started… other than the cheesyness of the BGM as Tiana and Subaru were arguing.