Posted by Episode 11
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Preview
 |
Episode 12
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
「覇王の拳・創主の願い / 決着の意味」 (Haou no Ken Sou-nushi no Negai / Ketchaku no Imi)
“Hegemon’s Fist ・ Creator’s Desire / Conclusion’s Purpose”
Continuing my tradition of only double-posting for reasons other than me personally being late, episode eleven and twelve are finally here! This concludes the first cour, with a second coming eventually. Still not entirely sure when.
Corona’s Struggle
First of all, a mea culpa, as I’m wont to do as of late. Last time I guessed that Corona would win, because it would force more growth on Einhart than another victory would. Which is true, but I didn’t factor in one critical element. As Longhaul said:
A twist to “who will grow more from a win/loss” is who would grow more/continue to grow from later matches in the tournament.
Zounds! Right you are, my friend. That threw my calculus off, along with my personal preference for Corona. That said, this battle still turned out great, and only increased how much I like Corona. Whereas the others are powerful, or skilled, or have mana to spare, Corona has none of that. In a way, she’s the anti-Miura, and good for all the reasons I found Miura’s battle unfulfilling two episodes ago. She’s the exact opposite of the dumb, unimaginative fighter who barrels her way through her problems. What she has is poise, intelligence, and creativity, and those are a lot more fun to watch.
A Technique Not Suited To Peace
Corona’s Nephilim Fist is a handy little technique, and damn near a gamebreaker. Being able to program people’s abilities into it and use them yourself is ridiculously strong, and something I heartily endorse—I’m a big fan of creative theft. It remained balanced though, because of the small delay in the moves’ activation—a sort of tax for not taking the time to pound those abilities into your body yourself—keeps it from handing Corona the win. It was all cool, and it reminded me of Negima, when (early on) Negi ghetto-rigged a power up by invoking a partner contract with himself. And anything that reminds me of Negima (other than abrupt endings) is fine in my book.
Likewise, her Nephilim Fist: Full Control Mode reminded me of one of the early arcs of Bleach, of all things, when Uryuu controlled his own body with strings of reiatsu. (Don’t jump on me if I got that wrong, Bleach fans. It’s quite literally been years.) But that … that felt wrong. I agree with Einhart—that’s not the kind of ability a competitive fighter in a peaceful time should be using. I mean, it’s not that she can’t, it just feels like a life-or-death technique. That feels like the kind of ability that could leave her body broken, and while I guess Nanoha-verse magic doesn’t allow for that (usually) … well, it worries me.
And the fact that Olivie used techniques not unlike Corona was using at that point, adds an interesting facet. I always assumed it would be Vivio that would be reminding Einhart of Olivie, but Vivio hasn’t had the same life that Olivie did, and doesn’t have her memories. She hasn’t needed the technique that Corona developed. Thankfully.
And Victory Goes To: Einhart!
Despite my preference for Corona, I liked how this battle ended. Unlike Miura, Einhart did not win by just barreling through, though she certainly played the bruiser that she is. No, it was her superior skill, speed, and perception—earned through diligent practice—that won her the day. Figuring out Nephilim Fist, blocking it, and eventually exploiting the slight delay to deck Corona out were good ways to get ahead. And as for the final clash—well, Corona went head to head with someone she knew was stronger than her. It wasn’t a bad bet at that point in the battle but it didn’t pay off. It was a good battle, and Corona found why she wants to fight, rather than just tagging along with Vivio and keeping up with her friends. Good fun, would watch again.
Lutecia’s Match, & Lutecia’s Rival
You know the named character is going to win a match when they go in against an unnamed character. That one is easy. I wonder why more pure magicians like Lutecia don’t compete, though? After all, she seemed to do pretty well, and it feels like flying would be a good way to keep out of reach of those pesky melee fighters. (Pfft … pedestrians.)
It’s clear that Lutecia’s match wasn’t about Lutecia though, nor was the one that followed it. It was all about setting her up against her new (apparent) rival, Fabia Crozelg. Now, as much as I love the martial arts of ViVid, I’m a finger wiggler at heart, so I’m going to enjoy seeing these two go head-to-head. Apparently all these martial artists don’t develop any mental defenses, which doesn’t seem smart. Fortunately, I have a feeling Lutecia has those in spades. She’s a former terrorist, after all. She’s seen some shit. A few creepy arms reaching out of the mind-mud isn’t going to freak her out. Plus, she can fly. That might help.
Wrapping Up Corona versus Einhart, & Foreshadowing What’s To Come
Most of this episode was wrap up for Corona and Einhart. On Einhart’s regret about beating Corona: Well, I’m not going to go into it. My immediate reaction was, “She wouldn’t have been happy if you let her win,” which is obviously true. But then again, I’m a lot older than Einhart, and with age comes (some) wisdom, or at least enough knowledge to masquerade as wisdom in low light. Fortunately Nove pepped her up, so we won’t have to hear much more of that. Bonus points: Now she’s all gung-ho to win, right before she goes up against the kawaii former champion. Goooood luck with that, Einhart-chan.
As for Corona, she gets more points for retaining so much poise, even after suffering a defeat. Not that I’m surprised—it’s not like any of these girls would freak out and shout at their friends; it’s too rose-colored of a story for that. Corona is the least likely of them all, though.
As for the rest, it was all just build up to the next battles. The only thing I can really say is that I’m glad they’re continuing to take the time to do things like this, instead of rushing through. Also, I’m looking forward to Harry’s next match waaaay more than I am Miura’s. As adorable as she is, I just don’t look forward to seeing Miura fight. I have a feeling it’s going to annoy me. Hopefully I’m wrong.
Looking Ahead – Split-Cour, Apparently
So, Nanoha ViVid isn’t over! Apparently it’s split-cour. The fun part: I have no idea when the next part airs. The end card for episode twelve mentions an interval, but I haven’t been able to find when the second half will be running. It could be immediately, actually—syoboi is showing a thirteenth episode airing this coming Wednesday. But that could also be another special, and I did hear there were two, with the 12.5 recap episode presumably being one of them. So, uh… Yeah. Not sure when we’ll get more of this, but apparently we will!
As such, I’m not going to give final impressions so far. I’ll give a short summary, though: Started off introducing too many characters, and mainly running on nostalgia, but ViVid has really come into its own once it morphed fully into a sports tournament/martial art anime. It’s been a lot more fun, both to watch and blog, since then.
As for whether I’ll be blogging the second cour … well, I honestly have no idea. It depends on when it airs, of course—if something else supersedes it, then I won’t cover the other half. But even if it airs immediately, I’m honestly starting to feel some burnout, so I may dial things back to keep from flaming out entirely—even though I expect the best matches are still to come. And since I’m not dropping Arslan, and we all know I’m going to blog the next season of Prisma Illya… Well, we’ll see. Either way, I’ll be watching it whenever it returns. Until then!
tl;dr: @StiltsOutLoud – The Corona vs Einhart match was even better than I expected, while 12 just tidied things up for this cour #nanohavivid 11 & 12
Random thoughts:
- The flashbacks sealed Corona’s defeat. Her wanting to do something (martial arts) that her friend (Vivio) likes, even though it wasn’t as much her thing, is something I can really understand, though. I’m glad she found her own reasons.
- I feel like they kept forgetting to show Goliath when he was in the background, and I swear Corona tore of the ring more than was shown. Didn’t she kick rocks at Einhart at one point? Don’t be lazy, A-1!
- Miura wants to completely break Vivio-san? This girl says some frightening things o.O
My first novel, Wage Slave Rebellion, is available now. (More info—now available in paperback!) Sign up for my email list for a FREE sequel short story. Over at stephenwgee.com, the last four posts: How to save Twitter, The secret to enjoying a long life, Story Review: Mad Max Fury Road, and How to not get butthurt when others insult stories you love.
End Card
 |
I haven’t seen many complaints, and it’s really not that big a deal, but this felt like such a strange place to end the first cour. Probably just bias as a manga reader, but I don’t remember any significant downtime here, so I guess they must have had to split for scheduling or budget reasons.
But on the other hand I’m glad we’ll get breathing room for a couple of the upcoming fights, they could have rushed through to a more natural end point, but this is the best way to make everything satisfying. Hopefully the next half is during a season where A-1 isn’t doing like five other shows too.
And now I can’t wait to see what you’ll think of Miura’s next fight, if the expectations are that low. Hoping she might win some people over!
While I remember how the Miura vs Vivio fight turns out (SPOILER wins due to SPOILER and then SPOILER 😛 ) I don’t actually remember much about the fight. That’s not to say it wasn’t necessarily good, but I was just more of a fan of the Rio vs Harry fight and the Einhart vs Sieg fight, myself, so those stick in my mind better.
Can’t say I blame you. Rio vs Harry & Einhart vs Sieg were pretty epic fights.
Same with me, unfortunately. Miura is just not as interesting a character for me compared to the others.
It was mentioned before that she is more of a second generation Vita, but without the brash personality. She is a good girl, no question about that, but there is nothing to truly makes her stand out among the likes of team Nakajima and the older veterans.
I can neither confirm nor refute that, Stilts. It really depends on your expectations and opinion of Miura.
@MDK
It’s funny, as if my comments don’t say it enough, but Miura honestly stuck out to me much more than most of the new additions at first, nice as they all are. Ties to existing cast helped, but I’m also a total sucker for “Hard work and guts” characters like that. Just like with Teana, “normal” or less skilled characters putting in the effort to match up to the rest is always a lot of fun.
Show Spoiler ▼
All love to some of the other fights on the way though, with Rio especially one part is gonna be fun to see in motion.
I can certainly understand that, Nex.
As I stated above, Miura is a good girl, and I would love to see her succeed. I appreciate honest effort as much as anyone, and Miura definitely put in more than her fair share of work. Arguably she even works harder than Vivio, who treated it more as a hobby until she met Einhart.
Show Spoiler ▼
However, as a fighter she just not as interesting to me compared to the others. Her style of fighting is very straight-forward, tanking the attacks of her opponent and striking a finishing blow with her signature kick. Even discounting flashy magic users like Corona or Fabia, Miura has less variety to her attacks compared to other close-range fighters like Vivio and Einhart, who would mix in special techniques and projectiles. So watching her matches tends to get more repetitive.
So basically I like Miura and I support her hard work, but it is harder for me to be invested in her matches because of her style, which is less interesting than that of the other competitors.
Honestly I have no idea where they will end the second cour either.
As of this last episode, they have covered up to chapter 31 in the manga. This is a good sign for me, because I predicted a few weeks ago that they will end the whole series on chapter 62.
In the manga, this will cover the end of the tournament, further development into the history of ancient Belka, and wrap up the relationship growth between Vivio and Einhart. It feels very similar to the end of the original first season of Nanoha. Personally, I feel it would be a great place to conclude the story of Vivid.
Here is a spoiler image from the end of chapter 61, with the next chapter tidying things up.
I was hoping you’d be satisfied with this fight. Corona went into that fight and gave 310%, fighting intelligently, creatively, and with incredible determination. Corona showed incredible growth here from what we saw at the start of the series: I think almost everyone at first expected her to be easy prey once Einhart managed to get past the golem. And then, had Einhart not remembered what she did about Olivie, she would have lost the match and things would have turned out quite different.
The full-body manipulation… that was never meant to come across as a good idea. One line from the manga that they didn’t include was Einhart saying that that technique was too dangerous, and declaring that she would end the match before Corona could hurt herself any further by using it.
Fabia was originally introduced long before this, back during the preliminaries. Odd that they delayed her intro. Also that Black Curtain spell of hers… we didn’t see what it did to freak out her opponent during her intro, but we do see it later, and it is not an illusory terror spell. Not at all. I wonder if this change is something like the whole F/SN “mana transfer” mess those animes did? Because while Black Curtain is an appropriate witch-type ability, and it would indeed freak out a poor unsuspecting girl who suddenly had it happen to her, it also has the slight side-effect of stripping the victim of all their clothes and equipment.
PS: I’m pretty sure you meant to have the link labled “kawaii former champion” pointing to a picture of Sieg, rather than to Corona kicking Einhart in the face.
I think Stilts messed up the link. He probably meant to link to “ep 12 large 10” but typed “ep 11 large 10” instead.
Thanks. Already fixed it.
So was Fabia the character everyone was worried about not having been introduced earlier? If so, we’re good, right? Seems like she’s about to be more important, and introducing her way earlier, while certainly not bad, wasn’t absolutely necessary.
As far as I remember, she’s the only one who was missing. So yeah.
It honestly makes more sense to introduce her later since the introduction episode of the tournament regulars was already cluttered enough and this introduction is the only cut/delayed scene of her anyways (as far as i remember anyways).
Read UQ Holder.
The Micaiah vs Miura fight really needed a whole episode to itself, the cut scenes made it seem like Miura won via plot armor instead of dominating the fight like in the manga.
I’ve been wanting to read UQ Holder, but it’s suffering from the same problem I developed with all manga (and increasingly, a lot of anime) around the time it came out: Not enough friggin’ free time >< I need to just start knocking shows off my backlog, so I can feel more free to pick up a few manga and whatnot.
UQ Holder certainly similar yet different to Negima. At this point, it’s hard to tell exactly where it will be going and how it will compare to the original.
It would be okay to continue putting it off for a little longer, to allow more things to develop in the story before catching up. But it’s definitely worth reading when you have time.
Read a “followup” where every character I cared about is dead except one who was not very high on my list of favorites? And where I’m going to be forced to have it rubbed in my face that all these girls I knew and loved really are dead? Screw that.
That is an unfortunate stance to take.
Eva is still around, and she is one of the main characters. A few others with longer lifespans also make an appearance. Even some of those who are gone have cameo appearances.
No Rakan yet, though. I’m still waiting that ultimate broken character to show up out of nowhere.
@Raijin
I would be surprised if he didn’t at some point. I don’t think Rakan would die even if he was killed.
Of course not! Rakan is that damn guy who you can stab with swords all you like and it won’t do a thing, dammit!
@Raijin: Eva is, in fact, the girl who is “not very high on my list of favorites” that I mentioned.
You want to talk to me about girls I want to still be around? Talk to me about Asuna, Setsuna, Chisame, Nodoka, Yue, Konoka, Anya, Emily, and Collette.
These two episodes are probably the best adapted ones we have seen so far. It not only fully portrayed the characters like in the manga, but it even added some extra parts.
https://randomc.net/image/Mahou%20Shoujo%20Lyrical%20Nanoha%20ViVid/Mahou%20Shoujo%20Lyrical%20Nanoha%20ViVid%20-%2012%20-%20Large%2020.jpg
Especially this part, which showed Einhart’s doubts about winning but also her new resolve to fight for the sake of the team, was completely original. Despite that, it kept with the same tone and served to develop the characters more.
https://randomc.net/image/Mahou%20Shoujo%20Lyrical%20Nanoha%20ViVid/Mahou%20Shoujo%20Lyrical%20Nanoha%20ViVid%20-%2012%20-%20Large%2016.jpg
Fabia finally gets her introduction and Lutecia gets to show off what she can do. Many of the parts that I mentioned were skipped in the previous episodes were shown here. The timing is different from the manga, but it does not interfere with anything important, so it was great to see them animated.
Overall, I think the studio finally found the correct pace for this adaptation. I hope they keep it up in the second cour.
And per usual, I will leave this official art here, featuring our two cute rulers and the adorable champion, as well as the newly introduced witch.
Kimono Vivid
I was going to have a fairly long comment about your choice of the term “best adapted” here, given how something like 90% of episode 12 was anime-original content. However, I then remembered things that Stilts and other posters and even I have said about other series in the past, regarding the meaning of the term “adaptation,” and I decided that you’ve got a point. Even though most of the events in that episode did not occur, they are in character, and they make sense with what is to come. At least one other case was an event that was never shown in the manga, but which we know must have happened offscreen.
About the only thing I can’t excuse is their representation of Black Curtain. That spell has been shown to do something very specific for a reason, and there was no need to change that here, and more than one good reason not to.
I just want know where did you find raw version of mahou shoujo lyrical nanoha vivid chapter 61 can you please tell thanks
“I’ve seen enough ‘you-know-what’ to know where this is going…”
And no worries about being late, Stilts. Heck, I didn’t see a subbed version of episode 11 for the past two weeks, so watching both episodes 11 and 12 back to back was just what the doctor ordered. (That cliffhanger, though…as if waiting for episodes 11 and 12 weren’t enough…)
One last thing, I noticed on the credits that Kana Asumi’s name is spelled in English instead of Japanese, which was rather strange. Is there any reason for that?
Hmmm, that’s odd. No idea why her name was in romaji. Perhaps she likes how it looks that way? *shrug*
On Kana Asumi, this is entirely speculation, but I’m assuming it’s because she voices Asteion too.
I remember in earlier seasons seeing Tetsuya Kakihara’s name romanized, so maybe they just do that for Device voices, to be consistent with Donna Burke and such.
It’s already August and still no subbed .mkv version for this