Why the 1st Nanoha Movie Has Made Me A Very Happy Man (A Recommendation)

It’s no secret that I didn’t much care for Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha. </understatement> I infamously wrote a very negative review of the series, in which I neglected to mention that I’d watched two episodes at 1.5X speed, and then another two or three with a reduced window (streaming) while chatting on AIM and blasting Dragonforce over the show. By all means, I should’ve just dropped Nanoha like I would any other series that failed to engage me on such a level, but I didn’t because it was popular, had been recommended to me a number of times, was done by my favorite director (Shinbo Akiyuki), and was about gay lolis. All in all, the experience got chalked up to a mistake of my youth; but it was worth all that trouble for the diamond in the rough: Nanoha A’s.

Best. Scene.

200 (+) Anime Worth Taking With Us Into the Next Decade

100 Characters For 100 Otaku (Part Sixteen: 25-21)

The sixteenth post in “100 Characters For 100 Otaku.”

It’s down to the top 25 in the “100 Characters For 100 Otaku” series! Truly, it feels like we are in the final stretch! Incidentally, if you’ve been reading all this time, I’m sure you’ve seen the hints at the bottom of the posts of characters to come. Have you been able to guess them at all? Today, I’m going to make them especially hard, and you have to post your guesses! Now, let’s get started with numbers 25 down through 21!

Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha A's – Straightforward Structural Perfection

UPADATE Sep 4/09 this post is under revision!

If you asked me to name an anime I truly and utterly hated, my immediate response would probably be ‘Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha.’ I found the original series to be utterly horrible in every way, in spite of it being the work of my favorite director, Akiyuki Shinbo. I’d heard from a number of people that Nanoha A’s was much better and would justify the first season. To my surprise, it went above and beyond mere justification and was in fact one of the outright best anime I’ve seen in a long time. I’d go so far as to call it a masterpiece.