Closer to 50% bigger. But that’s all from raw we used. The sub files themselves add negligible amount of size.
We’re not sure ourselves but the Leopard-Raws video this time wasn’t the same size as the rest.
What we can say is that we’ll be doing our own re-encoding for the bluray rips.
I’m a bit new to soft subs so a question. Whenever I used subs before they came as a separate (srt?) file. These subs on the other hand while not directly imprinted on the video are included with the file. Will there be in future only subs files that we could use with other video files (accepting potential dsync)?
Also is it me or the “pain emulation” or whatever they used in Vivid is not in effect in Strike? They seem to be going all out on each other with next to no protection in place. They never mention HP. I did not like the HP mechanic in Vivid but it showed there were rules and regulations preventing things.
The mkv format is basically just a container of video, audio, and subtitle files, with some extras for things like fonts.
The subtitle file can be extracted by use of a “demuxing” tool.
That is no secret.
After the series concludes and we prepare for the archival release, we’ll discuss internally of we also want to release the raw subtitle files separately.
For right now, I don’t think we’ll be changing things but it’s something I can bring up with the team.
I’m with you. I Really did not like the HP System (though I did approve of the Crash Emulator – that’s different); but it did not detract from the story. It actually made sense when I thought about it – martial arts contests use a number of rules to decide when someone is ‘dead’ without killing them – the DSAA Life Point system took those rules to it’s logical extreme with magical precision. Not that that made it particularly palatable, but the biggest complaint I actually had about the system was the way everyone’s life points were increased every round. Removing it entirely – for a tournament aimed at even younger competitors, no less – and replacing it with actual bloodshed makes about as much sense as curing earache by hacking the offending ear off. At the very least, they should be limited to attacks that deal magical damage.
Which leads me to ask – where has all the magic gone? It’s like the entire cast has forgotten how to cast spells – there was more magic in the opening credits than the first four or five episodes combined. I get that they want to go darker, but there are ways to make pretty lights dark – as the Nanoha series have proven time and again.
All of which leads to me having Gundam flashbacks, and not in a good way – I loved the first Gundam series. Definitely not the sequel – I had to force myself to put the first down every now and then, but force myself to watch the second at all. I just didn’t care about any of the characters at all. They could have had the entire cast drop dead and finish with “AND THAT WAS THE END OF ALL LIFE IN THE GALAXY EVER. THE END” printed on the screen and I would respond with the same apathy as I did to the supposed hero’s various victories. I did not feel engaged, at all, except for the fact that I had enjoyed the previous series and the lack of engagement I felt annoyed the hell out of me.
It seems that Vivid Strike may be following in the footsteps of Lyrical Record Force. Whilst I will continue to seed the first 6 episodes, I am seriously debating whether to download the seventh.
The magic is gone as consequence of the fact that the tournament is specifically limited to strike arts. That means no attacks that are not performed by your own body hitting your opponent I guess. So no fancy beams, shots or anything like that interesting. Probably no blades either, which means I was surprised Miura was even allowed to use her silly Shin/boot blades. They are still using magic to boost their bodies and strikes past that what a normal human can do, but that is mostly unnoticeable visually.
Yes it seems that the show has been going away from the magical combat of the first three season steadily like it’s ashamed of the combat of the past?!? DAMN IT I want my air dog fighting mages ducking and weaving through hailstorm of flashy attacks back, trailing contrails.
We are in agreement when it came to HP and the Crash Emulator. Crash Emulator is not something you should use but something that MUST be used considering a lot of participants are boosting their bodies with magic and not attacking with magic, meaning they are using almost entirely physical attacks which if they penetrate the barriers and shields will inflict physical damage and not simply knock you out. My beef with the HP system was that it gave everybody the same HP regardless of their stamina. It was made a bit better by the system recognising that same attacks against two different targets with different defense should deal different amounts of damage. But it still felt sometimes arbitrary.
I too am being more and more convinced that Strike is being directed by Force guys or using their mindset. The artstyle certanly had me fooled because it was the too cutesy artstyle from ViVid, but the plot is becoming more and more Force like. For example most annoying part of the current episode was not Miura getting defeated or the manner of her defeat and such. It was the stupid way Jill explained how Rinne got so harder and powerfull all of the sudden. “She trained defence and that somehow magically made her even more strong at offence”, and I guess all other participants simply did not train at all. Now sure increasing toughness an strength at the same time is realistic, BUT this is not a realistic show. It’s cornerstone should allways be that there are trade offs. Rinne suddenly becoming a wall of HP would have been fine but giving her also ridiculous amount of strength smells of the stupid power creep that ruins shows. I hate it when the antagonist is better simply because he or she is flat out write fiat stronger and untouchable. It smells of that stupid infected family from Force.
I liked in the previous shows that for example Fate was better than Nanoha at the start simply because she had actual training and Nanoha was a novice. I liked in StrikerS that combat wise the opponents were petty evenly matched with Nanoha even edging over Vita but the conflict was not over could the “good guys” trounce the bad but over could they avoid the bad ending. I hold probably the minority opinion that power limiters in StrikerS was a GOOD IDEA to combat power creep and allow for the introduction of new novice characters without the old cast completely outshining them. But I did not like the Numbers because of how their powers were convenient at ignoring protagonist strengths. Hell they even made sense plot/setting vise. I liked it in the Vivid that the newcomers weren’t getting trounced by elites because elites were writer fiat better but because they were novices going against elites who had much more time under their belt fighting. Well Sig was an exception, but an exception that made sense since she had like hundreds of years of combat experience. This on the other hand reeks writer mandated power creep like in Force with the Eclipse virus.
I’ll continue watching it because it’s the only Nanoha thing I have and because I’m intrigued if they know the problems they introduced and are planing to fix them, by let’s say explaining that Rinne’s new strenght is fragile because she forced herself too much or something. That would tie in to her constantly saying that this will be her last cahnce to fight them which while expected from a young girl to whoom things year away might as well be centuries away, is still pointlessly fatalistic if there is not actual hidden reason.
Yeah, I kind of needed a place to unload myself. That said, it is late, and I am tired, so apologies in advance if I start rambling nonsense.
First, yes, I get that this is a Strike Arts focused tournament. That is no excuse, given that Einhart and Fuuka are explicitly not using strike arts and (more to the point) strike arts has been shown to be capable of magical damage before – those punches and kicks, though enhanced, are not (at least, they were not in Vivid) meant to be damaging in and of themselves (the fact that a mid-rank barrier jacket is about as effective as the armour on a main battle tank helps with this) the physical strike is meant as a carrier for the magical strike, which does the damage. Magical damage. Maybe it is just me, but I rather got the impression that this was more efficient, from a magical standpoint, conserving the magical energy you would need to use to project the attack by using physical projection instead. Similarly, if I stabbed you with a syringe of poison, the physical damage should be negligible compared to the poison. It still doesn’t change the fact that bleeding young teen contestants should not considered par for the course. If you routinely hospitalise your opponents in any martial tournament I know of, you will be censured.
These guys should also be able to come up with something better than bio-luminescent fists interspersed with transformation sequences that looked about as out of place as tutu on a funeral hearse. Even if we accept that the tournament is dedicated full contact combat only (whose ‘clever’ idea was it to cut the aerial joust, anyway?), the magic in Vivid (and Nanoha in general) was never actually limited to battle. Where are the holo-computers? Why does everyone need a smartphone as well as a device? What about an enchanted checkup for the poor souls having the blood quite literally pounded from their flesh? Surely they could have arranged something, even if it was just Corona conjuring (and animating!) a training dummy to test the destructive power behind Fuuka’s new punch. One of my few gripes with Vivid is the way they hide the shields and barriers. We get told that various characters use shields (on top of their barrier jackets) but the only one I recall seeing in the entire series was used by Nanoha to block Subaru”s punch in that training exercise.
Crash Emulator. A good addendum to magical-only damage, reflecting the incapacitation an otherwise merely fatigued should be experiencing if the battle were slightly less friendly. It also ties into the DSAA’s obligations to prevent actual serious injury or death to the contestants, by accelerating the rate at which they are actually incapacitated compared to the damage they really take. Switching off the emulator and a good night’s rest then takes care of most of the recovery. Life Points are a more contentious issue, but they did not use the same life points for everyone in the group battle, where they calcualte everyone’s individual Life Point total according to the DSAA rules (or so we are told). We are also told that the life points are being used because the battle is using the DSAA’s rules, not the other way around. If you are going to establish a rule like that, don’t throw it away in the next installment (or at least give us a decent explanation, for heaven’s sake). As distasteful as it was, I could see there being a good reason for it, and keeping opponent’s life the same in 2 person duels would have helped balance the tables a little. Also, I am reminded of a comment on Victoria’s resilience. Part of it was attributed to her impressive defence, but part of it was attributed to her “incredible magical power absorbed the blow” or some such. So it seems that damage which pierces the opponent’s defence still has to contend with that opponent’s magical stamina (physical stamina is likely to be all but irrelevant anyway) before being counted against Life Points. At least, that is how I read it. All in all, the system did feel a little arbitary, even a little black mark against Vivid, but it remains an extremely minor complaint notable for, perhaps, two things. One: how few other down points Vivid had; Two: perfect worlds/setting/stories are not interesting. The LP system of Vivid was an interesting flaw in the decor more than a crippling failure of the setting. Whist they could probably have done better, they could definitely have done much worse.
I agree that the power limiters in Strikers seemed like a good idea to me – all of them. It made perfect sense from an in-setting standpoint (an important consideration for me) like Vivio suffering crippling damage to her linker core after Nanoha’s impromptu field surgery at the end of Strikers. Of course we all know that the real reason is that the characters are being nerfed so they can not just blow away everything in sight single-handed, thus allowing an actual story rather than just ‘Nanoha Shoots. Nanoha Wins. Again… Repeat ad infinitum’, but it also makes sense from a dramatic standpoint, from the view of the plot and the setting and added a significant edge of dramatic tension. For most of the story, we know that the heroes have access to a reserve that they aren’t using… But they could. Do they need to? Will they pull out the reserve to late? Will the Forward’s next level be enough for the next big battle, or will Vita need to rescue them again? It gives us an interesting story with insanely overpowered characters, and that is a rarity worth treasuring. The Forwards do end up much more powerful, but they earn that power the hard way, and it is clearly foreshadowed. Some of the surprises Mr. big bad had up his sleeve seemed to come out of nowhere, but everything plot critical made sense in light of the plot and setting established up to that point. It actually occurred to me watching Strikers that training with limiters could be a useful practice for experienced mages. Lo and behold, Vivid did that (in the manga, at least), or at least something very similar – it made so much sense you could actually see it coming. That is interesting. Rinne’s talented defence making her shatter bones in a bezerk rage is not. Jill’s “only talent matters, training cannot overcome it so let’s train our defence really hard because that’s why you lost” mentality likewise.
I suppose I like stories and settings to both be consistent and to make sense. That does not mean there can not be mystery – the motives of the Wolkenritter were debatable for most of A’s, but there was an implicit structure to the mystery and, at least for me, an implicit trust that there was a consistent sense behind things, not just a badly hacked together gaggle of random scenes. It was a trust that paid off – they did make sense in hindsight. Strike is more of a random collection of contradictions that seem at odds with the established setting, and I am losing faith in the creator’s ability to justify any of it. I’m not asking for happy bunny time – grim dark suits me just fine. Again, A’s was hardly the happiest tale on the market – but it was not bitter for the sake of bitterness.
I also liked that Nanoha was originally shown as absurdly powerful, but hopelessly inexperienced and so bested by any moderately skilled opponent that came along – at first. Loosing forced her to train (most of it is hinted rather than shown in the anime series, but there are official details in some of the supplementary materials. Speaking of, if anyone knows an English subbed version of the sound stages, I would be very interested). She has a talent for barriers and blasting things, but struggles to learn other spells (though once she internalises them, she does so thoroughly), leaning heavily on Raising Heart to supplement her initially meagre skill. She does get good – the hard way. I think that her position of “Ace of Aces” likely stems partly from the fact that she spent much of her early mage life in combat against others who were just as ridiculously overpowered as her (Fate, Wolkeritter, Book of Darkness) – she had to triumph on skill despite her power. My biggest gripe with Vivid was Miura – a girl shown to display all the skill, subtlety and raw power of a ton of falling bricks, repeatedly getting thrashed to within an inch of her life (usually as a direct result of her doing something stupid) and then winning through on the basis of sheer dumb luck. Writer fiat, it seems – they could definitely have justified it better.
I did not mind the Combat Cyborgs or their powers though – It seemed to me that they were mages with a different name, except that mages were hampered by AMF and the Combat Cyborg were not. Come the final sequence, that little edge was not nearly enough. I did not really see them have anything that allowed them to ignore protagonist strength, though. They were just good ‘mages’; with a largely cosmetic difference in magic system.
Vivid Strike does have one key advantage over Force, though, I will admit. It has a much better initial premise – it could have been taken so far. It just seems a shame that they seem intent on ruining it’s potential in such a thoroughly comprehensive manner. Force never seemed to accumulate enough potential to waste.
Again, apologies for the unseemly lengthy ramble. I hope it was not too incoherent.
The tradeoff is probably that Rinne is highly vulnerable to losing by getting downed three times in a row. In other words, had Mirua choose not to switch strategy and drop her own defense for an offensive blitz trying to score that K.O, and instead focused on downing Rinne, Miura would have won. Miura’s poor tactical judgement, though, is on par with the time in Force when Hayate got stabbed by the Huckbiens while trying to cast one of her AOE spells… without mages to cover her. It’s conveniently timed author induced stupidity for the sake of moving the plot further along.
I won’t be surprised that Episode 7 involves Vivio breaking out Sacred Defender and paying a price for over-using Sacred Defender.
Magical vs Physical damage. If it was only magical damage we would not get cases even in Vivid where the competitors get cuts and their bones broken. So clearly there is a physical component. And that was present even back in As. Remember Signum remarking how Fate’s speedster form was dangerous because any attack from Signum that connects would end her? But then again Fate basically completely dropped her barrier to be able to go FAST. Better example would be first Vita vs Nanoha where Nanoha was not only drained of staminadue to magical attacks but was visibly physically hurt and Yuno had to place her under a healing dome. Yes barriers/barrier jacket of even middling mages should be able to basically shrug off RPGs, but I think what happens is that the writers often forget that little tidbit. They want for their characters to be ridiculously sturdy so that as the result of attacks they can be punched through walls with no ill effect, AND they want hammers, swords and punches to work. On the other hand we do have the proof that magic users do get buffed by their magic and are able to perform enormous feats of physical strength. Like Miura lifting weights that are probably couple times her mass or Nanoha carrying a ton of battle equipment with no problem in Force. Ehhh. In the end I think that ViVid and Strike are working more on rule of cool than trying to fit themselves in the established mechanics. Which annoys me greatly.
If supposedly the Crash Emulator is on, which is unbelievable to me since in Vivid one of the reasons Sig was terror was that fact that is she cut loose she could at times overwhelm the CE. I find it hard to believe Rinne is in the same league as Sig, but I wouldn’t put it past the creators to pull such shit. Still if there is a player that regularly breaks through CE or if CE is off they had to have added a system that would detect potential carrier ending strikes and block them. And it’s not like they don’t have the tech for it.
Oh Vivid basically nerfing the world shown in StrikerS which was basically sci-fi futureland based on magitech into basically today’s world based on magitech is another one of those things that I did not like about Vivid. Hell the whole rigmarole with Rinne’s grandfather would probably have been averted since I doubt a high tech society like in StrikerS that made GOD DAMNED CYBORGS possible would have problems treating a failing pump.
As for the fights, again I agree, at least in Vivid the fights were suitably flashy and there were sufficient amount of different styles present to keep us entertained. As for why the airjousting was dropped. I guess they did not intend it. The original plan was for the Force to be the main continuation featuring the combat as we knew it, which it did even if the protagonist had to change gear) while Vivid was supposed to be a more down to the ground muted affair. Which was probably the reason for the changes to the background city. They wanted to make it a bit more homely and familiar. Unfortunatelly the Force bombed (I was kind of fine with it and my greatest issue with it were the stupidly writer fiat OP antagonists, I could write more but for now I’ll leave it at this) and they got the idea that the market wants is more fanservicey ViVid stuff. Which might as well be the truth in Japan, knowing their preference for moe bullshit.
As for the shields and barriers (barriers are semisphere or sphere things protecting in all directions, while shields are discs that are used to deflect attacks from one dirrection) in the original we saw shields really often. Every time one of the characters got attacked and knew attack was coming you could bet she would put up a shield. Barriers on the other hand are a rarer occurrence. One time I remember they were used was when Fate and Nanoha had to protect their friends from Eins’s Starlight Breaker. Those bubbles looked like barriers. Also the defense Subaru had to break to get to her sister in the finale resembled a barrier I think. I guess barriers are being generated by the artifact around the wearer by default. The clothes are only there for show, which would make sense considering for example what Fate wears.
But in Vivid and certainly in Strike I don’t remember anyone using shields to defend. I guess one advantage of giving over the defense to your artifact is the fact that you don’t have to put up your hand to stop an attack. Another dissadvantage of shields might be that they might prevent you from counterattacking your opponent. So the current meta is that it’s better to physically offer some par of your body to the attack and trust on your artifact to protect you while you immediately counterstrike.
LP. Actually I checked the Victoria vs Chantez fight. If the combatants were awarded different LP counts based on their strengths and weaknesses you would expect Victoria to have many more LPs than Chantez. And yet they both started with 15 000 LP. The system on the other hand does have some kind of system to figure out how damaging an attack would be overall that takes into account defense and “toughness”. This again was present in both Chantez’s fight and more importantly in Einhart vs Sig fight where E could not DENT Sig’s LP pool even using attacks that would have one hit KOd other opponents. Now that I think about it giving everyone the same amount of LP and than scaling the damage makes sense, since otherwise you would be giving away info to the opponents on how tough you are.
StrikerS and the limiters: Other show would have handled the crew being powerfull by introducing EVEN MORE OP opponents. Since they had defeated an opponent that could end worlds an opponent that could end MULTIPLE worlds. And that is how power creep gets out of control. The fights stay the same but we are informed that this OP bad guy is EVEN MORE OP than the previous OP bad guy. But this way they got to play with the formula. Which is a thing I like about the Nanohaverse that every season had a different thing or even genre going on. The trouble is we have been stuck with only ViVid’s and it’s martial arts tournament genre for too long.
Yeah the sense that the writers were trying to think how the society that runs on magic would look, while trying to introduce a kitchen sink of ideas (really magical girl robots, really). Like in the original. There are other worlds. Humans live on these worlds and on many of them they know magic. Magic can be dangerous and can leave dangerous artifacts behind. Some of them got scattered on Earth because travel between these worlds is a common thing. Of course there would be a group dedicated to stopping incidents with magical artifacts and that they would come to Earth if shit got real. Plus a chance to throw in a god damned Magical Starship.
Pretty much my thoughts on Rinne. Her background is interesting, but they are making her fighting style too perfect and with little or no drawbacks for me to be able to believe anyone could take her down if Rinne knows their weaknesses. And certanly not a newcomer Fuka.
Plus everything that comes out of Jill’s mouth stinks of Social Darwinism.
We are in agreement on story and setting. It’s basically what Sanderson’s laws are about: http://coppermind.net/wiki/Sanderson%27s_Laws_of_Magic . Also every fiction story asks it’s reader to suspend their dissbelief to a greater or smaller degree. This suspension is helped in many ways: by offering a good gripping story or art or by assuring the reader that these incossistences are only needed to set up the story and the rest of it is sane. But as the inconsistency mounts more and more these can finally break the suspension which can terminally break you out of the story being enjoyed. You are no longer enjoying the story to be entertained. You are nitpicking it’s flaws and not having fun because the magic is gone.
Nanoha and training hard: On of the things that were done better in the movie 1st than in the original season was that movie showed how she trained. Basically she ran combat simulations with Raising Hearth in her mind prectically ANY chance nobody was dirrectly addressing her. Which helps feed the joke that Rising Hearth is obssessed with firepower and was raising her te be perfect wearer for him. Plus her other teacher was Yuno, and he is terible with a lot of things but can erect god tier shields and barriers. That probably helped boost her defence even more which was allready fine due to her Takamachi stubborness. Another good expirience trumps raw skill can be found in one of the mangas where Fate or Nanoha is flashbacking to the time they first joined TSAB and one of their instructors who was of a lower pure strength level basically wiped the floor with them and showed them that they still are inexpirienced.
Well there should be nothing wrong with Miura’s training. She was trained by the Wolkenritter initially after all. She does have a reckless streak, which she actually shares with Nanoha, unfortunatelly for her she does not have Nanoha’s tactical sense that makes sure her recklesness is waranted. Hell one could say the result of this episode was comming for her for a long time and I have heard some say that she would have likely won here had she stuck with her inital strategy which was working and did not let Rinne intimidate her into using her flashy moves that left her open.
Sound stages: I doubit there is a dub since… Hmmm I think I remember watching a video on Youtube where someone did that for a part of that soundstage dealing with Ix and how she started in the story. I think there might be transcripts of them lying around. Also there is a transcript of the commentary tracks for the both movies where Nanoha, Fate Vivio and the crew comment on the movie. That was interesting to try to follow the commentary while watching the movie (it involved a LOT of pausing).
I allways took the Numbers (separate from Subaru and Ginga who are also cyborgs but can do spells) to be a magitech attempt by Scallieri to match particular skills of his targets. They suffered from a bit of a crippling overspecialization since their system often gave them only one skill but they were VERY good at it. My main issue with them is not that what they did was unrealistic, they and Scallieri achieved almost complete tactical and strategic surprise over TSAB. Okay I lie, the ability to swim through solid matter is bullshit. My problems are both subjective: that subjectively the plot was putting characters I like into unwinnable situations where the combined abilities of Numbers allowed them to nullify their strengths; and objective: there were simply bloody too many of them and they were simply not interesting, easy to differentiate or likable.
I would disagree about the premise of the Force. Not about the plot suddenly introducing this magical artifact that infects and turns people into magic invulnerable psychos is kind of stupid. The premise I was talking about was pitting the crew against a new threat to the security of the citizens under protection of the TSAB. One that was darker than those encounters before that did not deal only magical damage and did not limit it’s operations to EXTENSIVE abandoned blocks of the city. It was supposed to be the opposite of Vivid which started as loads of fan service and the stakes that were almost nonexistent when compared to previous seasons.
It’s not incoherent, although if we do continue we might need to split the answers into posts to make things easier to reply.
Vivid Translations 
I think she going to require surgery after that fight
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Isn’t the file a bit on the large side? It’s like twice as big as the previous one.
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It’s only about 15 MB larger than the raw. The episode was just apparently big, filesize-wise this week.
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Closer to 50% bigger. But that’s all from raw we used. The sub files themselves add negligible amount of size.
We’re not sure ourselves but the Leopard-Raws video this time wasn’t the same size as the rest.
What we can say is that we’ll be doing our own re-encoding for the bluray rips.
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Miura…! NOOOOOO…!
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Thank you very much
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I’m a bit new to soft subs so a question. Whenever I used subs before they came as a separate (srt?) file. These subs on the other hand while not directly imprinted on the video are included with the file. Will there be in future only subs files that we could use with other video files (accepting potential dsync)?
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Heh, Heh. Remember back when, when some used to joke about how Vivid was becoming a Miura show? This pretty much “resolves” the issue.
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Also is it me or the “pain emulation” or whatever they used in Vivid is not in effect in Strike? They seem to be going all out on each other with next to no protection in place. They never mention HP. I did not like the HP mechanic in Vivid but it showed there were rules and regulations preventing things.
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The mkv format is basically just a container of video, audio, and subtitle files, with some extras for things like fonts.
The subtitle file can be extracted by use of a “demuxing” tool.
That is no secret.
After the series concludes and we prepare for the archival release, we’ll discuss internally of we also want to release the raw subtitle files separately.
For right now, I don’t think we’ll be changing things but it’s something I can bring up with the team.
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Oh if the subs can be extracted than it’s fine. I’ll figure it on my own.
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I’m with you. I Really did not like the HP System (though I did approve of the Crash Emulator – that’s different); but it did not detract from the story. It actually made sense when I thought about it – martial arts contests use a number of rules to decide when someone is ‘dead’ without killing them – the DSAA Life Point system took those rules to it’s logical extreme with magical precision. Not that that made it particularly palatable, but the biggest complaint I actually had about the system was the way everyone’s life points were increased every round. Removing it entirely – for a tournament aimed at even younger competitors, no less – and replacing it with actual bloodshed makes about as much sense as curing earache by hacking the offending ear off. At the very least, they should be limited to attacks that deal magical damage.
Which leads me to ask – where has all the magic gone? It’s like the entire cast has forgotten how to cast spells – there was more magic in the opening credits than the first four or five episodes combined. I get that they want to go darker, but there are ways to make pretty lights dark – as the Nanoha series have proven time and again.
All of which leads to me having Gundam flashbacks, and not in a good way – I loved the first Gundam series. Definitely not the sequel – I had to force myself to put the first down every now and then, but force myself to watch the second at all. I just didn’t care about any of the characters at all. They could have had the entire cast drop dead and finish with “AND THAT WAS THE END OF ALL LIFE IN THE GALAXY EVER. THE END” printed on the screen and I would respond with the same apathy as I did to the supposed hero’s various victories. I did not feel engaged, at all, except for the fact that I had enjoyed the previous series and the lack of engagement I felt annoyed the hell out of me.
It seems that Vivid Strike may be following in the footsteps of Lyrical Record Force. Whilst I will continue to seed the first 6 episodes, I am seriously debating whether to download the seventh.
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The magic is gone as consequence of the fact that the tournament is specifically limited to strike arts. That means no attacks that are not performed by your own body hitting your opponent I guess. So no fancy beams, shots or anything like that interesting. Probably no blades either, which means I was surprised Miura was even allowed to use her silly Shin/boot blades. They are still using magic to boost their bodies and strikes past that what a normal human can do, but that is mostly unnoticeable visually.
Yes it seems that the show has been going away from the magical combat of the first three season steadily like it’s ashamed of the combat of the past?!? DAMN IT I want my air dog fighting mages ducking and weaving through hailstorm of flashy attacks back, trailing contrails.
We are in agreement when it came to HP and the Crash Emulator. Crash Emulator is not something you should use but something that MUST be used considering a lot of participants are boosting their bodies with magic and not attacking with magic, meaning they are using almost entirely physical attacks which if they penetrate the barriers and shields will inflict physical damage and not simply knock you out. My beef with the HP system was that it gave everybody the same HP regardless of their stamina. It was made a bit better by the system recognising that same attacks against two different targets with different defense should deal different amounts of damage. But it still felt sometimes arbitrary.
I too am being more and more convinced that Strike is being directed by Force guys or using their mindset. The artstyle certanly had me fooled because it was the too cutesy artstyle from ViVid, but the plot is becoming more and more Force like. For example most annoying part of the current episode was not Miura getting defeated or the manner of her defeat and such. It was the stupid way Jill explained how Rinne got so harder and powerfull all of the sudden. “She trained defence and that somehow magically made her even more strong at offence”, and I guess all other participants simply did not train at all. Now sure increasing toughness an strength at the same time is realistic, BUT this is not a realistic show. It’s cornerstone should allways be that there are trade offs. Rinne suddenly becoming a wall of HP would have been fine but giving her also ridiculous amount of strength smells of the stupid power creep that ruins shows. I hate it when the antagonist is better simply because he or she is flat out write fiat stronger and untouchable. It smells of that stupid infected family from Force.
I liked in the previous shows that for example Fate was better than Nanoha at the start simply because she had actual training and Nanoha was a novice. I liked in StrikerS that combat wise the opponents were petty evenly matched with Nanoha even edging over Vita but the conflict was not over could the “good guys” trounce the bad but over could they avoid the bad ending. I hold probably the minority opinion that power limiters in StrikerS was a GOOD IDEA to combat power creep and allow for the introduction of new novice characters without the old cast completely outshining them. But I did not like the Numbers because of how their powers were convenient at ignoring protagonist strengths. Hell they even made sense plot/setting vise. I liked it in the Vivid that the newcomers weren’t getting trounced by elites because elites were writer fiat better but because they were novices going against elites who had much more time under their belt fighting. Well Sig was an exception, but an exception that made sense since she had like hundreds of years of combat experience. This on the other hand reeks writer mandated power creep like in Force with the Eclipse virus.
I’ll continue watching it because it’s the only Nanoha thing I have and because I’m intrigued if they know the problems they introduced and are planing to fix them, by let’s say explaining that Rinne’s new strenght is fragile because she forced herself too much or something. That would tie in to her constantly saying that this will be her last cahnce to fight them which while expected from a young girl to whoom things year away might as well be centuries away, is still pointlessly fatalistic if there is not actual hidden reason.
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Not sure what I could possibly add to this but you guys have a very interesting discussion going.
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I needed somewhere to unload some things that were bothering me for a while but I did not have anywhere to do it sooo…..
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Yeah, I kind of needed a place to unload myself. That said, it is late, and I am tired, so apologies in advance if I start rambling nonsense.
First, yes, I get that this is a Strike Arts focused tournament. That is no excuse, given that Einhart and Fuuka are explicitly not using strike arts and (more to the point) strike arts has been shown to be capable of magical damage before – those punches and kicks, though enhanced, are not (at least, they were not in Vivid) meant to be damaging in and of themselves (the fact that a mid-rank barrier jacket is about as effective as the armour on a main battle tank helps with this) the physical strike is meant as a carrier for the magical strike, which does the damage. Magical damage. Maybe it is just me, but I rather got the impression that this was more efficient, from a magical standpoint, conserving the magical energy you would need to use to project the attack by using physical projection instead. Similarly, if I stabbed you with a syringe of poison, the physical damage should be negligible compared to the poison. It still doesn’t change the fact that bleeding young teen contestants should not considered par for the course. If you routinely hospitalise your opponents in any martial tournament I know of, you will be censured.
These guys should also be able to come up with something better than bio-luminescent fists interspersed with transformation sequences that looked about as out of place as tutu on a funeral hearse. Even if we accept that the tournament is dedicated full contact combat only (whose ‘clever’ idea was it to cut the aerial joust, anyway?), the magic in Vivid (and Nanoha in general) was never actually limited to battle. Where are the holo-computers? Why does everyone need a smartphone as well as a device? What about an enchanted checkup for the poor souls having the blood quite literally pounded from their flesh? Surely they could have arranged something, even if it was just Corona conjuring (and animating!) a training dummy to test the destructive power behind Fuuka’s new punch. One of my few gripes with Vivid is the way they hide the shields and barriers. We get told that various characters use shields (on top of their barrier jackets) but the only one I recall seeing in the entire series was used by Nanoha to block Subaru”s punch in that training exercise.
Crash Emulator. A good addendum to magical-only damage, reflecting the incapacitation an otherwise merely fatigued should be experiencing if the battle were slightly less friendly. It also ties into the DSAA’s obligations to prevent actual serious injury or death to the contestants, by accelerating the rate at which they are actually incapacitated compared to the damage they really take. Switching off the emulator and a good night’s rest then takes care of most of the recovery. Life Points are a more contentious issue, but they did not use the same life points for everyone in the group battle, where they calcualte everyone’s individual Life Point total according to the DSAA rules (or so we are told). We are also told that the life points are being used because the battle is using the DSAA’s rules, not the other way around. If you are going to establish a rule like that, don’t throw it away in the next installment (or at least give us a decent explanation, for heaven’s sake). As distasteful as it was, I could see there being a good reason for it, and keeping opponent’s life the same in 2 person duels would have helped balance the tables a little. Also, I am reminded of a comment on Victoria’s resilience. Part of it was attributed to her impressive defence, but part of it was attributed to her “incredible magical power absorbed the blow” or some such. So it seems that damage which pierces the opponent’s defence still has to contend with that opponent’s magical stamina (physical stamina is likely to be all but irrelevant anyway) before being counted against Life Points. At least, that is how I read it. All in all, the system did feel a little arbitary, even a little black mark against Vivid, but it remains an extremely minor complaint notable for, perhaps, two things. One: how few other down points Vivid had; Two: perfect worlds/setting/stories are not interesting. The LP system of Vivid was an interesting flaw in the decor more than a crippling failure of the setting. Whist they could probably have done better, they could definitely have done much worse.
I agree that the power limiters in Strikers seemed like a good idea to me – all of them. It made perfect sense from an in-setting standpoint (an important consideration for me) like Vivio suffering crippling damage to her linker core after Nanoha’s impromptu field surgery at the end of Strikers. Of course we all know that the real reason is that the characters are being nerfed so they can not just blow away everything in sight single-handed, thus allowing an actual story rather than just ‘Nanoha Shoots. Nanoha Wins. Again… Repeat ad infinitum’, but it also makes sense from a dramatic standpoint, from the view of the plot and the setting and added a significant edge of dramatic tension. For most of the story, we know that the heroes have access to a reserve that they aren’t using… But they could. Do they need to? Will they pull out the reserve to late? Will the Forward’s next level be enough for the next big battle, or will Vita need to rescue them again? It gives us an interesting story with insanely overpowered characters, and that is a rarity worth treasuring. The Forwards do end up much more powerful, but they earn that power the hard way, and it is clearly foreshadowed. Some of the surprises Mr. big bad had up his sleeve seemed to come out of nowhere, but everything plot critical made sense in light of the plot and setting established up to that point. It actually occurred to me watching Strikers that training with limiters could be a useful practice for experienced mages. Lo and behold, Vivid did that (in the manga, at least), or at least something very similar – it made so much sense you could actually see it coming. That is interesting. Rinne’s talented defence making her shatter bones in a bezerk rage is not. Jill’s “only talent matters, training cannot overcome it so let’s train our defence really hard because that’s why you lost” mentality likewise.
I suppose I like stories and settings to both be consistent and to make sense. That does not mean there can not be mystery – the motives of the Wolkenritter were debatable for most of A’s, but there was an implicit structure to the mystery and, at least for me, an implicit trust that there was a consistent sense behind things, not just a badly hacked together gaggle of random scenes. It was a trust that paid off – they did make sense in hindsight. Strike is more of a random collection of contradictions that seem at odds with the established setting, and I am losing faith in the creator’s ability to justify any of it. I’m not asking for happy bunny time – grim dark suits me just fine. Again, A’s was hardly the happiest tale on the market – but it was not bitter for the sake of bitterness.
I also liked that Nanoha was originally shown as absurdly powerful, but hopelessly inexperienced and so bested by any moderately skilled opponent that came along – at first. Loosing forced her to train (most of it is hinted rather than shown in the anime series, but there are official details in some of the supplementary materials. Speaking of, if anyone knows an English subbed version of the sound stages, I would be very interested). She has a talent for barriers and blasting things, but struggles to learn other spells (though once she internalises them, she does so thoroughly), leaning heavily on Raising Heart to supplement her initially meagre skill. She does get good – the hard way. I think that her position of “Ace of Aces” likely stems partly from the fact that she spent much of her early mage life in combat against others who were just as ridiculously overpowered as her (Fate, Wolkeritter, Book of Darkness) – she had to triumph on skill despite her power. My biggest gripe with Vivid was Miura – a girl shown to display all the skill, subtlety and raw power of a ton of falling bricks, repeatedly getting thrashed to within an inch of her life (usually as a direct result of her doing something stupid) and then winning through on the basis of sheer dumb luck. Writer fiat, it seems – they could definitely have justified it better.
I did not mind the Combat Cyborgs or their powers though – It seemed to me that they were mages with a different name, except that mages were hampered by AMF and the Combat Cyborg were not. Come the final sequence, that little edge was not nearly enough. I did not really see them have anything that allowed them to ignore protagonist strength, though. They were just good ‘mages’; with a largely cosmetic difference in magic system.
Vivid Strike does have one key advantage over Force, though, I will admit. It has a much better initial premise – it could have been taken so far. It just seems a shame that they seem intent on ruining it’s potential in such a thoroughly comprehensive manner. Force never seemed to accumulate enough potential to waste.
Again, apologies for the unseemly lengthy ramble. I hope it was not too incoherent.
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The tradeoff is probably that Rinne is highly vulnerable to losing by getting downed three times in a row. In other words, had Mirua choose not to switch strategy and drop her own defense for an offensive blitz trying to score that K.O, and instead focused on downing Rinne, Miura would have won. Miura’s poor tactical judgement, though, is on par with the time in Force when Hayate got stabbed by the Huckbiens while trying to cast one of her AOE spells… without mages to cover her. It’s conveniently timed author induced stupidity for the sake of moving the plot further along.
I won’t be surprised that Episode 7 involves Vivio breaking out Sacred Defender and paying a price for over-using Sacred Defender.
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Oh we are mostly in agreement.
Magical vs Physical damage. If it was only magical damage we would not get cases even in Vivid where the competitors get cuts and their bones broken. So clearly there is a physical component. And that was present even back in As. Remember Signum remarking how Fate’s speedster form was dangerous because any attack from Signum that connects would end her? But then again Fate basically completely dropped her barrier to be able to go FAST. Better example would be first Vita vs Nanoha where Nanoha was not only drained of staminadue to magical attacks but was visibly physically hurt and Yuno had to place her under a healing dome. Yes barriers/barrier jacket of even middling mages should be able to basically shrug off RPGs, but I think what happens is that the writers often forget that little tidbit. They want for their characters to be ridiculously sturdy so that as the result of attacks they can be punched through walls with no ill effect, AND they want hammers, swords and punches to work. On the other hand we do have the proof that magic users do get buffed by their magic and are able to perform enormous feats of physical strength. Like Miura lifting weights that are probably couple times her mass or Nanoha carrying a ton of battle equipment with no problem in Force. Ehhh. In the end I think that ViVid and Strike are working more on rule of cool than trying to fit themselves in the established mechanics. Which annoys me greatly.
If supposedly the Crash Emulator is on, which is unbelievable to me since in Vivid one of the reasons Sig was terror was that fact that is she cut loose she could at times overwhelm the CE. I find it hard to believe Rinne is in the same league as Sig, but I wouldn’t put it past the creators to pull such shit. Still if there is a player that regularly breaks through CE or if CE is off they had to have added a system that would detect potential carrier ending strikes and block them. And it’s not like they don’t have the tech for it.
Oh Vivid basically nerfing the world shown in StrikerS which was basically sci-fi futureland based on magitech into basically today’s world based on magitech is another one of those things that I did not like about Vivid. Hell the whole rigmarole with Rinne’s grandfather would probably have been averted since I doubt a high tech society like in StrikerS that made GOD DAMNED CYBORGS possible would have problems treating a failing pump.
As for the fights, again I agree, at least in Vivid the fights were suitably flashy and there were sufficient amount of different styles present to keep us entertained. As for why the airjousting was dropped. I guess they did not intend it. The original plan was for the Force to be the main continuation featuring the combat as we knew it, which it did even if the protagonist had to change gear) while Vivid was supposed to be a more down to the ground muted affair. Which was probably the reason for the changes to the background city. They wanted to make it a bit more homely and familiar. Unfortunatelly the Force bombed (I was kind of fine with it and my greatest issue with it were the stupidly writer fiat OP antagonists, I could write more but for now I’ll leave it at this) and they got the idea that the market wants is more fanservicey ViVid stuff. Which might as well be the truth in Japan, knowing their preference for moe bullshit.
As for the shields and barriers (barriers are semisphere or sphere things protecting in all directions, while shields are discs that are used to deflect attacks from one dirrection) in the original we saw shields really often. Every time one of the characters got attacked and knew attack was coming you could bet she would put up a shield. Barriers on the other hand are a rarer occurrence. One time I remember they were used was when Fate and Nanoha had to protect their friends from Eins’s Starlight Breaker. Those bubbles looked like barriers. Also the defense Subaru had to break to get to her sister in the finale resembled a barrier I think. I guess barriers are being generated by the artifact around the wearer by default. The clothes are only there for show, which would make sense considering for example what Fate wears.
But in Vivid and certainly in Strike I don’t remember anyone using shields to defend. I guess one advantage of giving over the defense to your artifact is the fact that you don’t have to put up your hand to stop an attack. Another dissadvantage of shields might be that they might prevent you from counterattacking your opponent. So the current meta is that it’s better to physically offer some par of your body to the attack and trust on your artifact to protect you while you immediately counterstrike.
LP. Actually I checked the Victoria vs Chantez fight. If the combatants were awarded different LP counts based on their strengths and weaknesses you would expect Victoria to have many more LPs than Chantez. And yet they both started with 15 000 LP. The system on the other hand does have some kind of system to figure out how damaging an attack would be overall that takes into account defense and “toughness”. This again was present in both Chantez’s fight and more importantly in Einhart vs Sig fight where E could not DENT Sig’s LP pool even using attacks that would have one hit KOd other opponents. Now that I think about it giving everyone the same amount of LP and than scaling the damage makes sense, since otherwise you would be giving away info to the opponents on how tough you are.
StrikerS and the limiters: Other show would have handled the crew being powerfull by introducing EVEN MORE OP opponents. Since they had defeated an opponent that could end worlds an opponent that could end MULTIPLE worlds. And that is how power creep gets out of control. The fights stay the same but we are informed that this OP bad guy is EVEN MORE OP than the previous OP bad guy. But this way they got to play with the formula. Which is a thing I like about the Nanohaverse that every season had a different thing or even genre going on. The trouble is we have been stuck with only ViVid’s and it’s martial arts tournament genre for too long.
Yeah the sense that the writers were trying to think how the society that runs on magic would look, while trying to introduce a kitchen sink of ideas (really magical girl robots, really). Like in the original. There are other worlds. Humans live on these worlds and on many of them they know magic. Magic can be dangerous and can leave dangerous artifacts behind. Some of them got scattered on Earth because travel between these worlds is a common thing. Of course there would be a group dedicated to stopping incidents with magical artifacts and that they would come to Earth if shit got real. Plus a chance to throw in a god damned Magical Starship.
Pretty much my thoughts on Rinne. Her background is interesting, but they are making her fighting style too perfect and with little or no drawbacks for me to be able to believe anyone could take her down if Rinne knows their weaknesses. And certanly not a newcomer Fuka.
Plus everything that comes out of Jill’s mouth stinks of Social Darwinism.
We are in agreement on story and setting. It’s basically what Sanderson’s laws are about: http://coppermind.net/wiki/Sanderson%27s_Laws_of_Magic . Also every fiction story asks it’s reader to suspend their dissbelief to a greater or smaller degree. This suspension is helped in many ways: by offering a good gripping story or art or by assuring the reader that these incossistences are only needed to set up the story and the rest of it is sane. But as the inconsistency mounts more and more these can finally break the suspension which can terminally break you out of the story being enjoyed. You are no longer enjoying the story to be entertained. You are nitpicking it’s flaws and not having fun because the magic is gone.
Nanoha and training hard: On of the things that were done better in the movie 1st than in the original season was that movie showed how she trained. Basically she ran combat simulations with Raising Hearth in her mind prectically ANY chance nobody was dirrectly addressing her. Which helps feed the joke that Rising Hearth is obssessed with firepower and was raising her te be perfect wearer for him. Plus her other teacher was Yuno, and he is terible with a lot of things but can erect god tier shields and barriers. That probably helped boost her defence even more which was allready fine due to her Takamachi stubborness. Another good expirience trumps raw skill can be found in one of the mangas where Fate or Nanoha is flashbacking to the time they first joined TSAB and one of their instructors who was of a lower pure strength level basically wiped the floor with them and showed them that they still are inexpirienced.
Well there should be nothing wrong with Miura’s training. She was trained by the Wolkenritter initially after all. She does have a reckless streak, which she actually shares with Nanoha, unfortunatelly for her she does not have Nanoha’s tactical sense that makes sure her recklesness is waranted. Hell one could say the result of this episode was comming for her for a long time and I have heard some say that she would have likely won here had she stuck with her inital strategy which was working and did not let Rinne intimidate her into using her flashy moves that left her open.
Sound stages: I doubit there is a dub since… Hmmm I think I remember watching a video on Youtube where someone did that for a part of that soundstage dealing with Ix and how she started in the story. I think there might be transcripts of them lying around. Also there is a transcript of the commentary tracks for the both movies where Nanoha, Fate Vivio and the crew comment on the movie. That was interesting to try to follow the commentary while watching the movie (it involved a LOT of pausing).
I allways took the Numbers (separate from Subaru and Ginga who are also cyborgs but can do spells) to be a magitech attempt by Scallieri to match particular skills of his targets. They suffered from a bit of a crippling overspecialization since their system often gave them only one skill but they were VERY good at it. My main issue with them is not that what they did was unrealistic, they and Scallieri achieved almost complete tactical and strategic surprise over TSAB. Okay I lie, the ability to swim through solid matter is bullshit. My problems are both subjective: that subjectively the plot was putting characters I like into unwinnable situations where the combined abilities of Numbers allowed them to nullify their strengths; and objective: there were simply bloody too many of them and they were simply not interesting, easy to differentiate or likable.
I would disagree about the premise of the Force. Not about the plot suddenly introducing this magical artifact that infects and turns people into magic invulnerable psychos is kind of stupid. The premise I was talking about was pitting the crew against a new threat to the security of the citizens under protection of the TSAB. One that was darker than those encounters before that did not deal only magical damage and did not limit it’s operations to EXTENSIVE abandoned blocks of the city. It was supposed to be the opposite of Vivid which started as loads of fan service and the stakes that were almost nonexistent when compared to previous seasons.
It’s not incoherent, although if we do continue we might need to split the answers into posts to make things easier to reply.
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Well I accidentally posted the reply as another thread/post. It’s below here.
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Which makes sense considering I’m starting to get convinced that Strike is basically being done by the group that did Force.
On the other hand I don’t really get how the Rinne can be downed if her defense is so OP.
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