天下制覇

What? A new VA for Bardiche!? Unthinkable!

Impressions:

Good god, this was long. *Ahem* Sorry, I have to be a little brief too. I’m on the clock now.

Well, let’s start with the bad. It’s nowhere near as visually flashy as UBW was. The plot and development was definitely much tighter, but there were a few action scenes that I feel that the TV series did much better. In particular, Nanoha and Fate’s final battle. They get all ready to fight, and then it cuts away to Amy and Chrono talking about them fighting for about three minutes. Then it’s back to the fight for about 60 seconds before Fate gets mired in about a four minute flashback to Precia. Then, and only then, the battle music kicks in, but at that point, there’s nothing left but their little bind/beam exchange and the better part of ten minutes have been spent doing… random stuff. I’m also not thrilled with the changes they made to Precia. She was good as a psycho. She’s still a psycho, but the giant flashback of her having her cat train Fate was completely unneeded. The tagline of Alicia making her promise to give her a sister at the very end was also overly hamhanded.

On to the good. Where UBW lacked in characterization and plot, this makes up for it in spades. Sure, once you remove Shinbo’s weird camera angles, the hot spring episode, Nanoha’s family, her friends, and the episode where Nanoha fights a tree, there’s only about 40 minutes of the first season left anyway, but they still did a very good job converting a whole season into one standalone movie without missing a beat. While not on the same level as UBW, the action is still quite well done, especially through the first half. Very good job on the music for the most part too, although the teary eyed scene at the end while Yukari Tamura squeaks overshadows the rest of it.

Otherwise, there’s not a whole lot to say. It’s a pretty cut and dry series to movie adaptation that removes almost all of the fat. I can’t say that I’m a fan of the additional Precia (and her cat!) parts that they added, but compared to some things the anime world has dumped on us recently, take it as nothing more than minor annoyances in an otherwise very well executed movie. The biggest change they made is RH claiming to have a stun mode. Yeah… kind of stretching my suspension of disbelief there.

However, I will note that Nanoha now has nipples during her transformation scene. Thanks, 7Arcs. That was completely necessary. Oi…