Garage bulletin board

as the local szs critic who is very salty about the way the series panned out, I am genuinely curious as to why you think it's objectively better than nanoha which imo does everything szs does but with better execution and cohesion (going off the first two seasons anyway, I still haven't gotten around to strikers and reflection/detonation yet)

 

Hmm, I guess it's just a matter of Symphogear having slick presentation and better pacing and generally just lacking those rough edges that make Nanoha so lovably scrappy but that also, like, reveal how much of a product of its time and market it really is. The production, worldbuilding, aesthetic and structure are just a lot more professional, a lot more on-par with what I'd expect from a similarly-budgeted Actual Proper Shonen. Like, it genuinely has some excellent fight coreography and cinematography going for it, the show is real pretty to look at while constantly feeling energetic and not as pose-y as the action in Nanoha does.

It's one of the things that I really enjoyed about ViviD, and makes me wish we had either a Force anime or maybe a whole new season focused on STF6, I think the modern action sensibilities used in Movie 1, 2 and Reflection/Detonation felt more... distracting than anything, since the lack of bombast allowed time for character exploration and the generally more pose-y and slow action BPM allowed characters to, like... react to stuff, heightening the impact. IDK modern Nanoha feels more weightless than the original b/c the style has not developed since StrikerS to really sell the "oh shit" moments better than in StrikerS.

SZS, for all that I find the character writing a bit bland and more character-enforcing than character-developing, at least fucking nails the sense of "oh shit" when shit is actually getting real. Never underestimate the power of having your heroes and villains take a moment to just stare in awe before the asskicking ensues. Symphogear manages to be fast-paced and flashy but it's not frustratingly slow the way older Nanoha action can be, or mind-numbing in its density as newer Nanoha action often is.

It's just... a lot more competent as a production. That's why it's the "better", more readily enjoyable show, but it's not as emotionally affecting or as memorable, IMO, as Nanoha is in its finest moments, and I also just like it less on a personal level. Symphogear is more of a proper shonen show, whereas Nanoha never quite gets there, and has to be loved for it misfit gap moe. Basically my qualification of SZS as the "objectively" better show is just "I know there's more high-quality stuff here in larger quantities, it just doesn't speak to me in the specific personal ways that the thing I like better does".

 

oh yeah, I get that. I guess it's just that when you say "objectively better", my first reaction is confusion because I personally associate "objective quality" in a work with things like quality of character/narrative/theme writing and message - that sort of "core" communication stuff - over more malleable and subjective stuff like quality of art/music/animation and emotional connection. and, like, I have a whole goddamn skeleton to pick with szs re: the former, but at the end of the day it's the latter that keeps me coming back to the series in spite of my million gripes, whereas it's been the opposite for nanoha so far ime

 

Yeah, that's fair, I don't believe in objective goodness or badness, so I only ever use that in the context of, like... production competence. Whether something is or isn't "done well" is fairly easy for me to judge b/c I did go to school for this stuff and the history and stylistic evolution of anime kinda folds in with that.

 

Also yeah, like... I will probably go back to Symphogear just like I will go back to Tiger & Bunny just for the entertainment, but it doesn't get me where I live the way Nanoha and something like Gurren Lagann or Kill La Kill do. Almost all the things I like have significant problems, problems that make me shy away from recommending them to people as readily as the stuff I found fundamentally consumable but that didn't leave much of an impression outside of that. Maybe calling the more approachable show the "better" show is damnation with faint praise but it's true! The shit I love, I love for reasons that have to do with the parts that speak to me, and I don't really care to justify them beyond that! I have good enough taste to tell when a show is good, but my taste has nothing to do with what I like :P

 

sounds like the opposite of myself - I have a more analytic mindset, so I tend to approach media on the side of and judge primarily on narrative and message over things like animation. I'm a terrible artist, but I like to think I'm a somewhat competent writer lol, and I love dissecting stuff to figure out how things work (or how they don't). so things like production values aren't typically high-priority to me (and I also can't really get into the more symbolic art-y stuff), which I suppose is also helped by the fact some of my favorite works just don't have that great production values - whether intentionally or not - but they make up for that in quality of narrative and/or emotional effectiveness. (and because this was about symphogear - s1 perfectly fits under that description, which is incidentally another reason for my conflicted relationship with this stupid series.) which isn't to say I never like stuff that isn't those things, but I usually need a coherent if not cohesive narrative to attach to, and if there isn't one, my interest tends to drop significantly

not saying your perspective is lesser or anything; just trying to explain my personal lens and all that. my knowledge base is more than a bit limited, so it's interesting to learn about the ways other people approach media

 

Bleh. Out of all the things that annoy me, the fact that I only discovered oroblancos this year, and so far the only ones I can buy from shops are from Israel shouldn't be as high up the list as it is.

Pomelos are a potential substitute, but oroblancos are more crisp and less of a pain in the ass to peel.

 

I already complained about this in The Complaining Thread but like... 1200 fics, and only 3 among them that didn't feel like false advertising!

Like at this point I'm not even particularly picky, and I'm sure the characterisation in some of the longer fics that had the pattern of "every single character is tagged" (i.e. it's a fic trying to emulate the TV show ensemble style) that I skipped over would get a hearty "eh. 'sfine" from me at this point but.... man. It's not even the lack of content, it's that so much of the content that does exist is just Really Not Very Good, combined with how even the good, genuinely well-written stuff either has characterisation that is offputting (if eminently understandable, I'm well-versed in the bad takes about Bulk by now) or clearly just has, like... has him as a feature to tick off a list. Or both!

And mind, I went through those 65 pages over the course of about four days. I wasn't rushing myself, I was giving myself time to pick stuff to read later and I also got better at recognising blatant false adversiting as I went along, so by the end I knew not to bother. I don't think my frustration here is "I did this for so long I got annoyed at myself and the whole fandom", it's just a deep sense of ":(" over how one of my favourite characters has zero substantive fandom presence.

 

a whole 24 hours later I'm still, like... not even mad, just disappointed

 

The other thing that really bothered me aside the false positives was that a lot of the fics that I found well-written, I just lost all interest in the moment I got to the part where Bulkhead showed up? A lot of even sincerely talented writers kinda just make him an un-person, like... I can't count the amount of times all Bulk did in a fic was just, like, waffle about or flee from Ratchet's wrath or maybe, in some rare instances, express some negative opinions towards Decepticons.

I don't really mind the stuff where he's just flat-out underwritten, b/c that lets me project whatever personality I want onto him, I don't mind other characters making judgements about him that I think are bullshit for the same reason, and I don't really even mind it when people clearly just... write him more like Animated b/c that's like whatever. But when people just clearly have no interest in Bulkhead, yet feel compelled to include him, and feel bored writing him the entire time, that's when I'm like "ah :("

 

I'm finding myself relating to Nanoha way more than the way more I related to her the last time I watched Strikers.

Last time I had time with myself to dedicate to this show, I was freshly back in school and I wanted very hard to be useful to other people, as a leader, as a teacher, etc etc. which made Nanoha outright aspirational, b/c there she was, being a good leader and a teacher and moral support and friend and, and and....

Now I'm graduating next week, with chronic pain and my life slowly recovering and oof the Strikers backstory just gets me. I no longer see an aspirational, Effortlessly Perfect Ideal for me to work towards -- I see, frankly, an adult mess like the rest of us who's still making the best of a bad situation, screwing up along the way and getting by by not letting it get to her.

I mean she's still kinda Effortlessly Perfect compared to me, but I mean... I don't always need characters to be deeply flawed and complicated, sometimes I enjoy stories where characters are just. Nice. Trying their best. Giving it their all, as it were. It speaks to the part of me that believes that people fundamentally want to be good.

 

Also Vivio's fucking cute and I'm dying.

I don't even like Vivid that much but I guess I gotta watch it now!!! Heck!!!

 

Ohhhh I get it. Vivio adores Nanoha, I adore Nanoha.

Subaru also adores Nanoha, and I also adore Subaru.

We have so much in common....

 

Vivio is the absolute cutest. And in terms of Strikers I always kind of appreciated that Nanoha is the parent to be like "No let her get up on her own" while Fate is very "D:" about the kid tripping. There's small little details stemming in part from their differences in upbringing that I feel stand out in Strikers.

 

Everyone's personalities are definitely the most distinct in Strikers and the first season of Vivid, and it's why that's my favorite stretch of time in the original timeline. You can see Nanoha's and Fate's work ethics rubbing off on Vivio a lot and I will never get over how funny Fate going 'you taught our daughter what?' in the first episode of Vivid is. Like, Fate, darling, who is raising this girl again? XD

Like man I just love these characters a lot. This show is so fucking soft, conflict more often than not is resolved before it becomes necessary to argue about it.

 

she is just a concerned mother

 

*strained inhale*

What if I wrote Disability Issuefic with Nanoha?

What if I just fucking wrote about how tiring being in pain all the time is?

(It's a stretch of worldbuilding but everyone close to her is very protective of her post-heckening and that's kinda wish-fulfillment, yeah?)

 

Please fucking do. Because like the fact that Nanoha canonically is disabled means a lot to me. I don't even think it'd be that much of a stretch, really? That sort of deal can have lingering effects and like you said everyone is very protective of her after it.

 

OH fuck I just realized!

Nanoha gets Hecked after A's, and is in long-term recovery.

Hayate has recovered from magic-induced paralysis and was in a wheelchair most of her childhood.

Fate has a Magic Developmental Disability due to the memory imprinting and Project F children having really weird cognitive and physical development.

They're all disabled, babeyyyyyy

 

Magic Developmental Disability also applies to Subaru, Ginga, Erio and the Numbers. Section 6 is peak Disabled worker's solidarity.