Worth mentioning that this review does have spoilers but only because I dont think I can properly talk about this show without them. Nanoha StrikerS is such an infuriating mess of a show. Ive debated whether I should write this. Ive drafted it several times in my head and then decided against it because I wasnt sure if it could accurately convey what I wanted to get across. Ive finally decided after a few months of back and forth that I need to just do it so I can get this damn show out of my system. There are a lot of things I want to say about StrikerS but I need you to understand before anything else this show is frustrating. Ive not been able to stop thinking about StrikerS in the time since I watched it with a friend. Its a show that Im constantly in two minds about. An unfocused mess of a season that is trying hard to balance far too many spinning plates and fails at keeping a lot of them up. Its as long as the first two seasons of Nanoha put together but somehow feels like it needs even more episodes than it has. At the same time it also needs to be scaled back significantly because theres a lot of extraneous elements that are far too underdeveloped. Where do I start? The cast bloat seems like as good a place as any. The show is ostensibly about Subaru and Tia the two new leads who are taking over now that Nanoha and Fate have slipped into mentor roles. It quickly moves into more of an ensemble piece as their squad grows to include Erio and Caro and then the cast just... keeps getting bigger. It doesnt stop. By the time the show finishes there have been no less than 20 different named antagonists returning characters from season 1 and As the secret villainous organisation that is operating in a similar vein to SEELE in Evangelion. Theres prototype Dr Ver from Symphogear. Theres bureaucracy. Theres Vivio. Theres Lutecia I guess? Its ridiculous. I couldnt tell you who the protagonist is because everyone has their moments and they almost all have some degree of importance even if those important moments fall well short of what the series is capable of. Then theres the new setting. Its worth mentioning that I dont really care for the scifi elements of Nanoha that much. They served as interesting window dressing in season 1. A nice way to add some texture to this world beyond Nanoha collecting magical macguffins. In As they went from that to intrusive getting in the way of the things that really mattered in that season Hayates relationship with the Wolkenritter and here theyre just boring. StrikerS doesnt take place on Earth it takes place in Midchilda a somewhat generic fantasy setting with dull worldbuilding that cements that Nanoha was better off with this very fimly in the background. At the very least it could pretend it was more interesting that way. Ultimately I think the only reason why Midchilda exists in the way that it does is to try and justify why it is that Nanoha Fate and Hayate spend almost the entirety of the show nerfed below what theyre capable of. The conflict of the story hinges on the premise that they cant use their full power due to bureaucratic restrictions because otherwise the show would be over in half the time. Likely for the better. Its also why there are so many antagonists as they cant be everywhere at once. Its silly but I was willing to accept it provided the rest of the show was good enough to make up for that. This is a good way to lead into the next issue which is that the Time and Space Administration Bureau hereon referred to as the TSAB are a bad organisation but StrikerS is unwilling to commit on the why. Theres a moment about halfway through the season when Hayate feels like she has to try and prove herself to the TSAB and show that shes more than someone they deemed a criminal. This is nonsense because Hayate never actually did anything wrong and was made into a scapegoat for the TSAB by forces she wasnt even aware existed at the time. That she feels that shes under any obligation to prove herself doesnt hold up under scrutiny and its to the point that later on they rewrote what happened in As to try and justify it. You could make the argument that the TSAB is twisting the truth to suit their own purposes but that isnt whats happening here. You have characters like Gaiz who are presented as hyper conservative warhawks who serve as little more than obnoxious roadblocks. This is the crux of the issue: the series is vaguely aware that the TSAB are a bad organisation but is unwilling to condemn them. Characters like Gaiz are meant to be the exception not the rule and the majority of the authority figures are meant to be more reasonable than he is. But if youve watched through till StrikerS at this point then youll know that this isnt the case. They had absolutely no qualms with labeling Fate as a criminal in the first season and even less qualms with scapegoating Hayate in As. If you really did want to try and give them the benefit of the doubt you could argue that Fate being marked as a criminal is because shes working on the behalf of a much larger criminal element who is after dangerous magical artifacts. Its a stretch but at the very least I can see the logic. The same cannot be said for Hayate who again was made into a scapegoat by forces she wasnt aware existed by someone who was intending for her to die anyway. She spent most of As completely in the dark about what was really going on There was definitely a rewrite between As and Strikers to try and justify this but its one that only ends up hurting the show rather than helping it. It also again avoids the issue that the TSAB are a corrupt institution that are absolutely fine with labeling kids as criminals if it suits their purposes even ones that didnt do anything wrong. Theres another story beat later on in the show that has also stuck with me involving Fate and Dr Scaglietti. StrikerS has a very cheap tacky twist about how Fate was actually one of the clones that Dr Scaglietti made in an attempt to tie things back to season 1. Its a redundant reveal that doesnt actually do anything for her character and Dr Scagliettis villainous speech about the whole thing is embarrassing. Its the classic villain speech about about it is how theyre not so different and how all the bonds shes created with people are weak and how theyre all tools she can use. Had this happened just after the end of season 1 I could probably buy into it. Fate was in a uniquely vulnerable position then having just started to form friendships with people after having escaped a very abusive mother/daughter relationship. One thing I think is interesting about season 1 of Nanoha is that Nanoha and Fate dont really properly break the ice until after the conflict is resolved and its clear the latter isnt completely comfortable about things yet. As takes place about half a year after so I could absolutely see it working there. At this point in the story? Definitely not. Fate has spent the past decade doing everything she can to make a happy family for herself. Shes surrounded by people who love and care about her deeply and for its many faults StrikerS never fails to show that this is the case. Nanoha and Hayate both love Fate and Eriol and Caro adore her so the notion that what Dr Scaglietti is saying here can get under her skin is completely amateurish. Im not sure why Fate was the one who Tsuzuki decided this needed to happen to as there are already so many new characters in StrikerS that any of the new cast probably would have been a better fit. Lutecia comes to mind actually. Her story arc is a very dull retread of similar story beats in season 1. Id even go so far as to say that shes a Diet Fate almost. Her story could have easily been reworked so that she was somehow related to the clones instead which I think would have been more interesting than what she does get here. How much more interesting I couldnt actually say but the bar was already very low with her so the only way it could really go was up. God what else... I think talking about episode 17 would be good. I think Its emblematic of both the best and worst elements of StrikerS condensed into one episode. It has what is easily the emotional beat that lands the hardest involving Subaru actually being a robot. Its very heavily foreshadowed to the point that Im even sure its explicitly stated prior to this but it really really works. Its a rather visceral moment helped by Chiwa Saitou screaming her head off. I was invested. Its the sort of character writing that made me like the first two seasons on full display here. It also managed to make me invested in a minor character Vice the pilot. Im not exaggerating when I say that a character whose name I forgot about three times had a better subplot than most of the main characters of the show. Hes a traumatised pilot who freezes up when he tries to pull the trigger thanks to a rescue operation gone wrong. Made even worse by the person he shot by mistake being his little sister who was a child at the time. Its a welldirected scene that managed to be incredibly effective at making me care about a guy whose name I kept forgetting. Did it come out of nowhere? Yes and it probably would have also been better served on a character who the show spends more time with but the key thing here is that it worked. Those are the good parts of that episode the bad parts being that firstly this is the episode in which Fate being one of Dr Scagliettis clones is revealed and secondly Erios trauma having absolutely nothing to do with the conflict at hand. This is treated with the same emotional weight as everything else but its another fumble on the shows part. Erio is supposed to have some kind of trauma from having been kidnapped as a child which is why hes intent on stopping the antagonists from kidnapping Vivio. Obviously he also just wants to prevent this from happening in general. But the trigger for his trauma isnt really something that makes a whole lot of sense in the moment other than the understandable notion of wanting to prevent this from happening. This in conjunction with Caro losing it and summoning her ultrapowerful dragon summon just make the second half of this episode a complete mess that only undercuts all the good stuff that had happened in the first half. For the record I think that Caros dragon summon is something that could have worked better if she was allowed her own big moment as its something that was previously established but its lost in how much gets smashed together here. If Ive not made it clear here I do think that StrikerS has some good stuff in it. Any moment involving Vita is almost always guaranteed to be great as she manages to be effortlessly cool in just about every scene shes in. Shes one of the only returning characters from As who isnt actually done dirty by the show sorry Zafira and Shamal and definitely gets one of the best moments in the climax of the season. The actual ending of the show is good too. Agito and Zest also deserve special mention for managing to for me at least be the emotional core of a show that was sorely lacking in that for a long time. Actually let me elaborate on that. There are a lot of things in StrikerS that had the potential to be the emotional core of it. Nanoha and As were shows that had central pillars that the entirety of the season was built around. In Nanohas case it was the relationship between Nanoha and Fate. In the case of As its Hayates relationship with the Wolkenritter. Whatever else can be said about them I do think its very easy to get invested in those elements. Theyre what carry the shows and in As case especially because the majority of the action is just not at all interesting to look at. StrikerS has so many things that could have been the emotional core of the show. Theres Subarus relationship with Tia. Theres Tia trying to do what she can to overcome her inferiority complex when shes surrounded by people who are all just that much stronger than her. Theres Nanoha trying to become an adoptive parent to Vivio as an aside Nanoha is a bad parent. Shes got a very bad mentality towards how to raise kids that is borderline abusive and shouldnt be doing this. Erio and Caro had something at one point but that gets tossed aside. Lutecias story is boring for the reasons I mentioned above but that also had the potential. I dont want to add Fates story to the list but I could begrudgingly put it there if it wasnt just tripe. No in the end the thing I latched on to the most was Agito and Zest. Two minor antagonists who are ride or die for each other. In a show that is full to bursting they manage to be refreshingly uncomplicated in their motivations. Theyre similar to Vita actually. Theyre not complicated because they dont need to be. They only ever want whats best for each other and the resolution to their story is one of the most satisfying moments in the show because it feels totally earned. Its another example of Nanohas writing at its best. When everyones motivations are clear and theres nothing to add unneeded interruptions to them the writing of Nanoha really lands. If it sounds like I dont like this show its because I dont but only because its such a frustrating watch. I liked the first two seasons of Nanoha quite a bit far more than I was expecting for a series that wasnt really on my radar and I really really wanted to like this more than I did. If it sounds as though Im underselling the good parts of the show that might be the case but that isnt the intention because its more that the parts that fall short really fall short in a way that tends to overshadow them. There is good stuff in StrikerS but its a show that needed far more editorial oversight than it got. Tsuzuki feels like the kind of writer who works best when hes under limitations so that the show isnt bursting at the seams. I dont know if right now theres more that I want to say about StrikerS. There might be a point when I eventually come back edit this with more thoughts and decide that thats my lot. I dont know if I want that to be the case because Id like to be able to move on entirely from this show. It didnt kill my interest in Nanoha completely that was Vivid but it did leave me completely bewildered. Anyway that was StrikerS and hopefully Im done now.