I’m just now finishing up anime I began 3 months ago (and I haven’t watched much of the summer season at all, as this summer was chaos.) Yesterday I finally had a chance to finish up Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha EXCEEDS Gun Blaze Vengeance, streaming on Crunchyroll. And..I think it was pretty good.
I reviewed the first four episodes back in the end of July here on Okazu. Everything I mentioned is still relevant by the final episode – more so, in some cases. With several small and one, significant, exception.
Nanoha remains the exception to the no-family rule, as she has so far in the franchise. Fate and Nanoha are in a slightly different timeline here, in which they and adult Hayate work for the UN. Transformations are much more SFW and look rather cool, I thought.
As predicted, Shiina and Towa are this series’ main “opponents to friends.” In this case, both Shiina and Towa have had traumatic losses to deal with, only Towa has the added trauma of being trafficked and experimented on. We can absolutely sympathize with why she’s so set on destroying the bad guys. Shiina is bonded to her late “sister”, and overall has more capacity to accept and trust than Towa.
The Diaboli Hunters are not entirely the same as The Numbers from StrikerS or even Hayate and her Knights (who do make short, non-voiced cameos) from As, but there are some similarities. The Diaboli Hunters team come together, they tell us, because of Towa. Some of them are trafficked children, others people with trauma and loss, but together their goal is not wrong. They aren’t being used by some entity for nefarious purposes. They just don’t give a shit what they have to do to stop the illicit drug trade and save people hurt by it.
The bad guys are vaguely interesting. Shinomiya is very gloating and annoying (and of course has her own tragic backstory), but her partner Eiji is a small departure from the norm.
The climax of the show is the final fight, but the climax of the narrative is the moment when, after Towa leaves to sacrifice herself to save everyone (a choice that we know is doomed, but this is a seinen action story.) This is the moment in which the obvious choice – the choice that is NEVER chosen in anime – is made. The remaining Diaboli Hunters ask Fate and Nanoha (and by extension, Shiina) for help. I was gobsmacked, I tell you. They actually asked for help!
We know the shape of the final battle, of course, as everyone on our side reaches their limit, and the next layer of power swoops in to save the day.
And, in the end, Shiina and Towa find each other in the chaos and become the team we knew they’d be. Towa and her family of Diaboli Hunters get a short break, so we can see them as family, and then they join EXCEEDS to show us that Fate and Nanoha have once again added to their extended team.
It was all very satisfying.
Ratings:
Art – 8
Character – 8
Story – 6
Yuri – 2
Music – 5
Overall – 7
