Reviewing Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha the Movie 1st
No, Bayonetta 3 and its multiverse madness got nothing to do with this title. While it’s clear that Dan Ryckert is not as anti-anime as he was about a decade ago, invite him to watch this movie might still require some Clockwork Orange style restraining measure. With this movie’s infamy of getting 9 years old girls butt naked before they can suit up in typical transformation scenes and whatnot. Regardless I think he should at least get past the 4-minute or 10-minute mark to hear Donna Burke basically doing I-driod before Metal Gear Solid Five was ever a thing.
Having gun for operation
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha the Movie 1st is based on the tv series with almost the same title aired back in the last 3 months of 2004. A contemporary with the Wire’s third season one might call it. The show spined off from a visual novel titled Triangle Heart 3: Love Song Forever where a couple of Takamachi siblings take swords to gunfights and hold their own. Guess it’s only fair that their younger sister Nanoha becomes a novice witch with a gun.
The show had 2 sequel shows in 2005 and 2007 plus a bunch of comic book side things. Maybe the “creeps” among its audience complained loud enough about how 2007’s Strikers aged their beloved 9-year-olds into 19-year-olds too quickly, the patron behind this whole joint King Record decided to “streamline” the first 13 episodes long series into a 130 minutes long movie. Or maybe it’s because Anno’s new EVA movie already got a lot of attention back then.
Nanoha along with Precure, another thing debuted in 2004, were seen as magical girl shows laying towards this tricky thing we call “action”. Though it would seem hollow taking the thing Nanoha stole a lot from into consideration, I’m of course talking about the stone cold CLMAP classic Cardcaptor Sakura and its equally adored Madhouse animated adaption. Especially in the latter, Sakura Kinomoto would go on swashbuckling adventures on a weekly basis. The created in the 1990s one just had a more evasion and defense mentality as its heroine went through the action mainly to avoid being crushed by monsters and the havoc they caused.
So, yours truly would say that the 2 things started in 2004 laid towards action at all. The girls in those just go for offense earlier and more frequent. Precure being a Toei production and wholesome affair sharing Sunday mornings with Kaimen Raider laying towards the hand-to-hand aspect of offensive action. While Nanoha, taking the infamous After Dark time slots, had something more shocking: 9 years old girl shooting a gun.
The gun is called Raising Heart, voiced by none other than Donna Burke. Since Raising Heart is a machine intelligence, yours truly will use “they/them” pronoun. Their name is pretty ample since they do function to raise little children into child soldiers. Only the scholarly young wizard before Nanoha did not fare as well.
Save the cat and do so with a straight face
Playing the “save the cat” trope with sincerity is one thing making this first Nanoha movie more in line with many Hollywood flicks. I mean even John Wick got a “save the cat” moment when he saved a dog instead of shoot said dog’s owner in the fourth movie. Japanese media toying with such trope would get more acclaim in among English speakers if they add some salt.
Take 1999’s Gamera 3 for example. The titular giant turtle would step away from humans if they are aware. However, if a bunch of humans are between they and their sworn enemies, they would simply vaporize the humans along with the other monster. Thus, the whole movie is about a human, something close to a cat from a giant turtle’s perspective, questioned why that bigger thing only saved her while let her folks die. Then there is the Chainsaw Man chapter titled “Save the Cat”, in which Denji saved a white puss while let a bunch of his fellow men fall to their death symbolizing his still ongoing odyssey towards getting laid.
While 2010’s movie along with 2004’s tv show did not treat saving cats as bad trope, they embraced it so hard that they even let go a magical girl genre trope: the Animal Companion lawyering to force the poor girls into a crisis after another. Yuuno Scrya in ferret form fulfilled 2 roles in this story: the animal compain of the titular magical girl and the first “cat” she got to save. Maybe add the child solider candidate failed a sentient weapon’s er trail of fire if you may.
The thing is, Nanoha is not the only one who got to save the “cat”, her rival Fate first appears in this movie saving cats. In an attempt to lure new viewers into liking her instantly. And then revealing to you that her familiar Alph was a pup she picked up.
Mama crook equals bad and mama cop equals good
With saving cats coded into its DNA, one can make a strong argument that Nanoha is copaganda. Even though its action might seem similar to Gundam’s dog fights among 18 meters tall robots, that long running series’ usual “fuck the police” stand does not apply here.
For one thing, the main storyline of this movie for Fate to realize that her biological mother, a scientist turned time bandit Presea is not a good mom to her. And the a lady time cop named Lindy Harlaown is just a better guardian to her.
While those 2 are both presented as pretty anime lady, one can tell Presea is evil just because of the way she is drawn. For one thing she does not have the typically anime style saucer eyes all the other women and children in this movie have. And her story of crime plus child abuse would be lifted wholesale by Gundam’s first show with female lead Witch From Mercury. Both have cross shaped Death Star things for starter. One major difference being the abused child was voiced by someone born in 1980 in Nanoha’s 2004 and 2010 outings while the abusing mother in the 2021 to 2022 show, the titular Witch From Mercury if you may, was voiced by someone born in 1980. And the different kinds of abuse those 2 kids endured were caused by the fact that the old show had a After Dark time slot and the newer one had to air at five in the evening.
Queerness unintended
Well, I guess I cannot hold back the talk about voice actors any later. Nanoha Takamachi is voiced by Yukari Tamura. Ms. Tamura is somewhat a favorite for miHoyo, you know the company now known for not paying their English voice cast. She was in their first polygonal outing Hokai 3rd Impact. Then she played not one but two whale bait in Genshin Impact. There is not point in putting up pictures of the 3 poor 9-year-old since I think someone at miHoyo is just one of those aforementioned creeps or they would not have let the born in 1976 playing little girls in mini-skirts.
Fate Testrosa was played the born in 1980 Nana Mizuki and along with Donna Burke, you can say there is Kojima connection here. The same time this movie was being made in 2009, Mizuki and Burke contributed vocal to Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker on PSP. Burke would of course voice the I-droid in the 2 MGSV titles. Then Mizuki became the latest having a decade long collaboration with the so-called video game auteur assuming she would return to dub Lea Seydoux in Death Stranding 2.
I mentioned before that Nanoha stole a lot from Cardcaptor Sakura. By “a lot”, I actually meant nearly everything from the first half of that book. From the same type of magical McGaffin to the rival turned friend storylines. Of course, Sakura Kinomoto befriended a boy from Hong Kong with the latter’s family seeing her as a way to continue their bloodline. Nanoha befriended a girl and by the time they are both 19 they would be police officers sharing a bed.
It's funny that King Record founded shows feeling queer with things they do not do rather that the thing they intend to do. Take Ms. Mizuki’s filmography for example, she would go on to provide voice acting to Symphogear (2012 to 2019) and Crossange (2014 to 2015) both paid by King Record.
Symphogear is another magical girl show with a rainbow variety. By which I mean there are 7 high school girls and no male love interest. Except one lone wolf with parent issue, all other 6 can be seen as 3 different couples with different shit to work through. Of course, men were there, they just got other roles.
Cross Ange is wild ride combining women-in-prison bullshit with big mech that you all at least got to hear about. Ms. Mizuki played the titular Ange and Ms. Tamura played her rival-turned-admirer Hilda.
Cross Ange is something fully embracing the R-rated action flick tropes with people excepting to see a steamy sex scene or two in. One would assume after Nanoha being not aiming at those tropes, at least there is something sticky with a show starring people in their late teens. But no, someone insisted on a male love interest for this one while the 2 girls share a kiss that would go nicely with the Army of Darkness line “Give me some sugar, baby”. Kind Record can only create image of queerness when sex does not cross their minds.
Equal measure
By the end of day, yours truly would give this movie equal measure of recommendation and caveats. To people who love action movies of the fireworks factory variety, this one has fireworks but more colorful. They just need to check their masculinity preference at the door.
To people who prefer magical girl affair with some more flair for the dramatic, you lot got more stone-cold classics in that field. And to the real creeps, stick with the Strike Witches and Prisma Illya of this world. I thought I was having dark thoughts about 9-year-olds getting close to each other, then the shit Prisma Illya just grosses me out in term of 9-year-olds getting sticky. Implication is better left alone.
(To be continued in “Mimicking” Shane Black)
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