The Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha franchise has been interesting when it comes the Magical Girl genre of anime. The original series was something of a conventional Magical Girl vs. Dark Magical Girl show like the Pretty Cure franchise with the difference being that the battles between Nanoha and her opposite number Fate played out a lot like a superhero fight. The later series played up this concept with the second series Nanoha As setting up a battle of superhero teams or superhero and superantihero teams with Nanoha Fate Arf taking on a team of opponents with moreorless similar abilities. The series also played down the school adventure side of the traditional magical girl story with Nanohas school friends who were very much a prominent part of the narrative for the first series being pushed to the side very early. Nanoha StrikerS dumps the civilian life side of the equation entirely with series protagonists Nanoha Takamachi Fate Testarossa working as basically statesponsored superheroes and spending all of the series well away from Earth. Previous series had introduced the Time Space Administration Bureau or TSAB the bureaucracy behind it and that the government that it answers to is based on a world called MidChilda. StrikerS spends almost the entirety of its runtime there. The premise of the series is that its set a little over 10 years after the events of Nanoha As which would put Nanoha and Fate in their earlytomid 20s. Nanoha and Fate have become part of a special unit as part of the TSAB lead by Hayate the befriended antagonist of As. The objective of the unit is to hunt down Lost Logia lost pieces of magitech which can be incredibly dangerous in the wrong hands. As part of this unit Nanoha Fate and the Wolkenritter Hayates nowlessdark Magical Girl superteam from As are also training another team of for lack of a better term Magical Superheroes. From a narrative position this setup puts the audience in an amazing position to see how the protagonists who weve followed through the last two series have matured and its certainly successful at that. In particular Fate and Nanoha have become the defacto parental figures for two kids who are now part of their unit Erio and Caro. While they were not actually adopted by Fate they were adopted by Fates stepmother Lindy with Fate helping to raise them in a maternal/older sister role. This leads to Fate Nanoha. The writing of the first two series loosely implied that the two were homosexual. StrikerS on the other hand strongly implies that the two are in relationship with as strong a subtext as you can get without actively crossing over into text like stronger than the handhold in Legend of Korra. The new protagonists Erio Caro Subaru and Teana are generally well written and have really strong chemistry. Erio and Caro and Subaru and Teana have some romantic chemistry which is read stronger for me with Subaru and Teana. The overall story of the series serves to bring back together some plot threads going back to the original series. Hayates team Riot Force 6 ends up coming into conflict with a mad magical scientist named Jail Scaglietti who has been engaging in genetic engineering to create artificial mages and cyborgs for combat. The research hes working on is similar to that that was done by Fates birth mother Precia in her attempts to raise her deceased daughter Alicia from the dead work that lead to the creation of Fate. The level of conflict here is nice and personal and gives the conflict a strong direct tie to our protagonists that makes up for the lack of any real civilian life our heroes have. That said the animation doesnt quite back up the story. This is a 2007 anime from studio Seven Arcs who animated the earlier Nanoha series along with the Triangle Heart OVA and somehow I cant quite say why but the animation here doesnt feel quite right. The Digicel animation feels a little overly flat and stilted particularly towards the end of the series. Now its been awhile since I watched the first two shows and maybe theyre just as bad but with this series it feels like it stands out more especially towards the end of the show. There are also some weird decisions with the animation that seem to make little sense. The show cuts around some early stages of some very emotionally significant fights later in the series showing the aftermath of the action instead of the action. Now when we hit the climaxes of those fights we see the full conclusion but with this particular fight the early stage was really important and it was really disappointed with the fact that we didnt get a chance to see it. There are some issues with the costume design. The designs for the TSAB staff and Riot Squad 6 are fine. However there is Jail Scagliettis team of combat cyborgs The Numbers. They wear these skintight outfits that leave as little to the imagination as the animation budget will allow without actually showing skin. Its the kind of outfit that 90s comics were mocked for putting female characters in with boob socks and precisely defined buttcheeks. The plugsuits in Evangelion didnt go nearly as far in their formfitting nature. I enjoyed the show enough to finish it but it was the characters who kept me coming back for the rest of the show and in particular the fact that Id come to appreciate these characters and their stories through the last two series. If it wasnt for the writing and the characters I probably would have dropped the show due to my issues with the animation. That said with how the show wraps up considering the fourth series Nanoha Vivid focusing on a character that Fate and Nanoha adopt in this series has not yet gotten a US release StrikerS does make for a decent conclusion to the Nanoha series.