Archive for March, 2009

It is coming. As usual we will hear people crying “fail” and “anime is dying”. As usual, YOU and me will have our fair share of satisfaction, pleasant surprises and expectations that fell flat.

Without beating around the bush more, I’ll list what I’ll try.

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I have been trying it, thanks to the magic of bittorrent.

I have been messing around a lot, especially Sanae Kochiya A. For a very stupid reason:

Her spellcard

Yes, a motherfucking huge snake. Of course, her other mode is as fun, her spellcard B is like FROG NUKE! In other word, she let something that looks like a vortex go. Then after roughly two seconds, the thing go off like a nuclear explosion.

The game is not really forgiving, you tend to lose a lot when you lose your life, the scoring system with the ufo is rather fun to do in the middle of a heated grazing session.

More about the UFO system thanks to Phean:

Gaining life/bomb
It’s quite new and it can be a blessing or a hell. First you need to gather the coloured UFO’s and if you have a three of a kind ( 3 red/blue/green ) you’ll get a big UFO on your screen to get shot down. Depends on the colour it drops different things.
Red: this one drops a 2/5 life and release everything that he had gathered. If you let him gather up to 100% he’ll drop another 2/5 life
Blue: Everything he gathered he’ll drop and you’ll get point bonus depends how many he had gathered.
Green: Same as the red one, but with bombs

You also can have three different colour in that case the power item he gather with have double value.

At this point, depending on the character, and the challenges you set yourself, it is more profitable to go for bigger score, more life or more bomb. As example, Sanae’s shots tends to be on the weaker side, but it is offset by her bombs, especially Frog Nuke; therefore, going for bombs and lives first over scoring may not be a bad idea.

The UFO system pushes the player to be a little more audacious and daring. Especially when you are in need of those life, bomb or score bonus and seek a special combination. More than often, you’ll find yourself in trouble for grazing in a bad spot while you were pursuing the ufo that switched to the color you wanted.

On the bosses. One of them, the headtowel wearing trap/reverse trap makes me wonder what the hell ZUN has been drinking again. So now Gensokyo is welcoming folks from 1001 Nights? Oh well, after lunar aliens and vampires, nothing should surprise me anymore.

Oh yes, TITANOBOA and Frog Bomb. I liked Sanae a lot already, thanks to Happy Flame Time‘s doujins, but now I am liking her even more. And Sakuya’s absence does not appear to me as much of a big deal. Maid already have like four games for her.

She have gotten a fourth season. In manga form.

Yes, you will miss the music (not that great. The franchise needs Kajiura for that), the animation (suffered at times from QUALITY) and the voice acting.

But you can hope that Tsuzuki will bring flesh to his vision without having to worry about budget restriction. In fact, his worst enemies will be deadline and if something goes wrong with his collborators.

I am midly amused by the fact that the one in charge of the drawing in “Mahou Senki Lyrical Nanoha Force” is the same as the one who drew Shina Dark. A rather nice light fantasy manga with a bit of ecchi. We should not worry about the moé and the fanservice.

Now, it will be the first time we will see a magical girl in her mid-twenties. I just hope that the fact they dropped “Shoujo” in favor of “Senki” for Nanoha Force is not just for show and actually express the wish of the author, and a part of the fan community, to depart from the genre.

While this community have chanted that its roots lies in Gundam and Super Robots. One have brought up an alternative if not more interesting interpretation.

A careful scrutiny of the Nanohaverse reveals that it isn’t really a magical girl series. It’s a fantasy-adventure series like Slayers disguised as a Magical Girl series. The high-tech look of TSAB equipment and the title obscured that.
There’s also the fact that Nanoha, Fate and Hayate are getting too old to be called Magical Girls anymore. At 25, they’re approaching the other contender for the title of oldest magical girl, right?

You have the journey element (Nanoha Takamachi, her challenges and her growth), the happy party growing as more enemies are defeated, the signature weapons so dear to the adventurers, and the quest for artifacts of doom in the first seasons (the jewel seeds and the Book of Darkness), and you also have the older generation eventually passing the torch to the new generation (seen in some fantasy epics, or in tabletop RPG games where player characters becomes too powerful and when the players and the gamemaster want a peaceful retirement). Those elements and the overall structure are indeed closer to the fantasy genre than Gundam or the Super Robot genre.