Lyrical Nanoha/Headscratchers


 * In the first season, when Yuuno is explaining to Nanoha where the Jewel Seeds came from - she still doesn't know he's human, right? So does she think that there's a world out there entirely populated by intelligent ferrets? Doing ferret archeology and flying around in their little ferrety spaceships?
 * Yes, she does. Also, that would make an awesome series.
 * Given that in the course of a night, Nanoha saw telepathy, monsters spawned from lost technology, and magical devices that granted armor and weapons, she probably doesn't think a talking animal is entirely beyond belief.


 * Here's one for A's: If the knights could so easily disobey Hayate's orders not to go fight anymore (and therefore prove that they have free will), then why couldn't they just do the same with their worse masters? Were they that dense? Did they really not give a f*ck? And, as mentioned in Chapter 19.5 of Vi Vid, several other masters were nice to the Wolks too, so saying that Hayate's goodness/decent treatment of them made them nicer/have free will/etc. would be a plot hole in and of itself.

"Reinforce: It's impossible. I can't gather any magic! And communication as well."
 * This troper has seen a lot of people associate Fate with Zengar Zonvolt the way Signum is associated with Lamia Loveless... but why is it that Wodan Ymir never seems to get mentioned? Take one look at Bardiche's Jet Zamber attack then look me in the monitor and tell me that that's not Blade of the Cosmos.
 * Then Zanger would be Alicia Testarossa, only she never had chance to grow big and cool? Wow...
 * Even the designs of the swords themselves, blades aside, are the same. Take a close look at Zankantou's hilt, and notice both the trident-like shape of the crossguard and the gem just over the grip. Look familiar?
 * Minus the Zankantou, I tend to think that both Sanger and Wodan are represented by Zest Grangeitz. If I remember right, his weapon does resemble a BFS a bit like Zankantou, but nowhere as accurate as Fate's. His facial structure and hair does resemble Sanger, and his background is a bit like Wodan, man thought to be dead, but comes back from the dead in a way or something. I even think his last words are kinda similar to Wodan's, entrusting Agito to Signum, likewise to entrusting Sophia to Sanger.
 * Zengar used the Thrudgelmir in his first appearance in Alpha Gaiden anyway...
 * This. Thrudgelmir is Sanger - Wodan borrowed it for the OG universe.
 * Zest actually uses a polearm similar to a glaive or a naginata, not a BFS. The rest fits well enough, though.
 * I'm surprised no one else mentioned this yet. Why do the weapons refer to their wielders with masculine titles? It bugs me.
 * Why not? Besides, if you don't know the gender of a person you're referring to then the default is to refer to them using masculine pronouns. Perhaps the Intelligent Devices are programmed with that in mind.
 * In the military in real life, when your superior introduces themselves to you, they will tell you how they want to be addressed. If they say nothing, the default is "sir".
 * Actually, at least in the US Navy, you are always allowed to address your superior by their rank (e.g. Lieutenant/"El Tee," Commander, etc.) or by "sir" (for males) or "ma'am" (for females). You never use "sir" for a female (or "ma'am" for a male).
 * There are militaries that refuse to recognize a formal distinction between officers of different sexes and simply address them all as "sir".
 * Strangely enough, regarding the gender of titles, while Hayate tends to be referred to as "Mistress" by Signum, Zafira and Reinforce in the fansubs for A's, she gets referred to as "Master" in the fansubs for Striker S and the dub of A's.
 * That just depends on who's translating it. The Wolkenritter call Hayate "aruji", which I believe is gender neutral.
 * I'm on episode 7 of StrikerS, and I'm confused as to how the Anti-Magic Fields of the Gadgets work. Apparently they don't cancel out buff spells, so Erio could cut through that big one on the train and Signum could slice through them, but they cancel out ranged attacks...except that previously, when Tea had to do an incredibly complex technique to get her projectiles in, apparently just spamming more power is enough at the hotel? I'm confused.
 * It does both actually. Elio clearly stated that it DID remove his boosts and he can't kill it with the strength of a 10 y.o. What Teana did in training and Caro on the train is an additional protection layer on top of basic spell function, which AMF removes first and gives core spell time to work. Plus in both cases there was additional boost of strength - so the spell was pumped quicker than AMF dismantled it.
 * What needs to be understood is that Anti-Magic fields in this series seems to work more like the "Drain" status effect in Final Fantasy rather than a "forced deactivation" like you'd find in Dungeons and Dragons or Rifts. Rather than cutting off the flow of magic, it eats it, like the grime off a penny dissolving in vinegar (or food in your stomach). Therefore, it can be fought by putting a protective layer around the buff that the field has to eat through first, or by simply putting out more magic than it can eat at a time.
 * Actually, the AMFs in Dungeons and Dragons can't penetrate barriers made of force, which is exactly what the forwards are using.
 * It was somewhat explained later in the third season that AMF works to suppress magic rather than preventing its use altogether. Rein remarks on this when the protagonists are inside a particularly powerful AMF which actually does cancel out all magic use.


 * Anti Magilink Fields [note they are not called Anti Magic Fields] work by breaking down the mana links used to create spells, thus that particular AMF would be one that breaks the links faster then they can be created. Anything that doesn't rely on mana linkage (e.g. Knuckle Duster) would be unaffected.


 * How are the video letters to and from Midchilda delivered by the post? Does this mean that the post office is aware of the TSAB? What is the postage for an interdimensional letter anyway?
 * I assume the same way Gil Graham is able to fund Hayate's life prior to the events of A's. I'm guessing (without proof) that after contact with Earth was first established (Gil Graham, Genya Nakajima), a few places around the world were set up for stuff like this: dummy corporations and the like. Possibly Yuuno couldn't remember where these places were until the Arthra and its ship database turned up. I admit that this veers into WMG territory.
 * Even if there was no presence before the first season, the fact that at least one artifact of doom and an identified AAA class mage had showed up there was probably enough to open up a local covert station. There were mages around for Vita to attack at the start of A's, after all.
 * The TSAB made an interdimensional phonecall to Nanoha's cell in the last episode of the first season, under their own name. I would hate to know what the roaming charges would be like making a cell call from Midchilda.
 * It's possible that they were using some form of telepathy that is able to connect with cell phones without having to deal with cell phone fees; in Episode 2 of A's, Shamal uses telepathy to call Hayate's home phone, and in Episode 9 of A's, puts up a barrier that apparently prevents cell phones from making calls (although Fate points out that she "can't use telepathy" in the dub).
 * Or there's not a covert station and they're just in contact with the world's governments. Considering how easily they got Fate into school, it seems likely... (Can you imagine the paperwork muddleup they'd have if they didn't have an 'in' with the government? Previous school records, immigration documents, legal identity...)
 * A similar question exists; how do the TSAB mages get Earth money? Lindy set up an apartment on Earth, and most likely made several purchases there, including a cell phone for Fate, and Graham financially supported Hayate for some time (it's unlikely that he could do so with his savings from his time on Earth).
 * They probably pawn mundane goods they already have to get money.


 * This troper is bothered by one thing: Why does everyone, even those not from Earth, speak Japanese and follow Japanese customs? Gil is from England, but he speaks Japanese. Fate isn't from Earth, and she speaks Japanese. Lindy has a traditional Japanese room and she speaks Japanese, though her nationality is unknown so that's pending. I just wonder why everyone in an interdimensional organization speaks Japanese and follows Japanese customs when a lot of them probably aren't even from Earth. Okay, the speaking may be excused in several parts, but I still don't know why an Englishman knows and speaks Japanese. Yes I know the show's made in Japan, but it's still weird.
 * Graham mentions that meeting the Japanese Nanoha brings back memories of Japan's landscape, so he's probably been there before, which would require knowing the language.
 * It's not that weird. The creators can only write from their own cultural and lingual perspective(s), not to mention the absurdity of assuming by extension that the alien characters would speak a recognisable language at all. You might as well take issue with the hubris displayed by The Federation in adopting English as the lingua franca; more people speak Mandarin than they do English. Why does everybody in The Forbidden Kingdom speak English? Why does everybody in 300 speak English? Is there only one language in the Avatar 'verse? Etc, etc. Consider the reverse situtation then, with dubs of the show: why would everybody who wasn't Gil be speaking English? Here's an idea: that's just how it goes.
 * If they really aren't speaking Japanese, why do the Devices speak in English/German? And are they really speaking that, or just interpreted as an alternate language? And do their masters know that language as well as they do?
 * Those are very good questions; I have absolutely no idea. I really don't think you're really meant to subject it to that degree of scrutiny.
 * I can only think that it's the Rule of Cool at play.
 * In the A's manga, it's stated that while Fate can speak Japanese, she has difficulty with Kanji due to not being a native speaker. It's thus possible that many of these people have it as a second language, with varying degrees of proficiency..
 * Just have to respond to the MST3K Mantra posted earlier and say that this section is called Just Bugs Me; it exists for the purpose of ignoring the mantra and talking about small things you find annoying. As for the inconsistencies with other series in my complaint, I'll admit it only bugged me here for some reason. Hell, it isn't the interdimensional bureau thing that bothers me, having an Englishman speak Japanese is the point when Fridge Logic kicked in for this troper.
 * Aha! I've found the relevant trope: Translation Convention. We can assume that most of the time they're speaking in whatever the lingua france of that universe is; the Japanese we hear is purely for the benefit of the audience. Except when it's not.
 * My believe: It is mostly, as the above troper said, Translation Convention. They are talking a random alien lingua franca. The Devices, however, speak other alien language (that the main characters magically understand). "German" is probably Velka language. No idea about english.
 * If Device German = Velkan, then Device Engrish = Midchildan. Seems logical enough. Obviously some kind of magical Translator Microbes at work for non-Mid characters (like Nanoha).


 * In Fate's Lotus Eater Machine dream, why was Alicia noticably shorter than Fate when she was supposed to be the older sister?
 * Because she was in suspended animation for a while. Presumably this is a world where Precia didn't go insane, accepted Fate as her own person, and found a way to revive Alicia, who didn't age while in the People Jars.
 * Plus, you know, it was a dream and all.
 * Alicia being shorter and younger makes some sense in the dream. Fate is Alicia's clone. All happy childhood memories Fate has, are in fact Alicia's memories, which Precia copy/pasted into Fate's mind. Fate knows this before the dream starts. Alicia does not have any memories in which she is wiser, taller or looks more mature than Fate, because she died before she reached Fate's apparent age. The Lotus Eater Machine merely reproduces the way Fate imagines and remembers Alicia to be.
 * Judging from their dialogue under the tree, I think the point was that it wasn't internally consistent (note that Alicia also acts younger). It didn't have to matter, but Fate chose to Pull the Thread. (I do wonder what would've been said if Fate had mentioned Nanoha.)
 * It's possible that Fate was created at the age when Alicia died (since Zest's clone looks the same as he does around 8 years since his death), and aged somewhat since then, whereas Alicia came into Fate's dream without having aged. There are also some inconsistent aspects, like Linith and Arf existing at the same time as Alicia, but part of this is what Fate would subconsciously consider ideal (not only is Precia kind, but she also gets along with Arf).


 * What happened to Fiasse? Does she even exist? For that matter, why is Shirou alive, and why were Suzuka and Farin added? Removing them wouldn't have meant anything to the plot.
 * Fiasse wasn't really relevant to the plot in Nanoha at all (her family didn't have all that much screentime anyway), and having Shirou dead just because he was in the source-material would just be unnecessary since it's not canon or anything. They just took some of the characters and made an entirely different series.
 * I'm also curious as to what Suzuka and Farin are, since their sisters were a vampire and a robot originally. We do know that there's....something special about Suzuka, since she appeared in a Barrier. (and supposedly, non-magic beings can't do that.) Guess it's a loose thread the writers didn't pursue.
 * Or the Book decided they had something to do with the Wolkenritter's temporary deaths and pulled them into the Barrier to kill them.


 * Was Quattro ever pulled out of the Saint's Cradle before it was blown up? Because I didn't see her carried out.
 * Actually, Hayate was shown carrying her out.
 * She's on the back of Tea's bike.


 * What's the deal with all those planet-like things seen in Midchilda's skies? I count at least six of them sharing the same (daytime) sky in episode 12 of StrikerS.
 * Probably just an Alien Sky designed to remind us we're not on Earth.
 * Even more weird in sevreal (if not all) shots they have the exact same cloud pattern!
 * At least two of them are moons. We see the orbits of them in one episode.
 * Several of the other not officially named planets the Wolkenritter visit in search of Linker Cores have multiple moons.


 * Did Hayate know how to use magic before the Book awakened, and how did she manage to learn how to use everything so quickly? Did Graham tell her beforehand?
 * You remember, she scanned the Book's entire memory, first to find out what really happened to her knights, then to override the automated defense program. If anything knows the specifics of using magic, it's an ancient magical tome, don't you think?
 * Hayate had no magic before the Book was completed, that's explicitly stated as why it's killing her. Unlimited Magical Power is the standard package of benefits for the Book when it is completed, but no-one has ever managed to live long enough to enjoy it.


 * Why was Arf suddenly a loli in Strikers and what was she doing with Yuuno? Does Fate getting older somehow make her get younger?
 * All there in the manga. Arf is Fate's familiar, so she consumes Fate's mana. Since Fate is strong and isn't alone anymore, she went with the form that uses up the least mana.
 * It's also a natural extension of her turning into a puppy on Earth, which she tells Zafira is better for mana use, as she tends to use her human form when not needing to disguise herself, despite her wolf form being her true form.
 * Fate, Nanoha and Hayate weren't lolis anymore, and Vivio and Caro couldn't take up the slack by themselves, so Arf heroically stepped in to help.


 * In episode 9 of StrikerS, Nanoha, Fate, and Vita used Vice's chopper to get to the point of attack. Considering that the three can fly, couldn't they just fly there themselves, and not risk Vice and waste his time flying them there?
 * Most likely it has something to do with the Ground-Forces procedures regarding flight capable mages. Remember back in episode five when Fate had to get permission to fly within the city limits. Most likely, personnel are not allowed to fly directly to the scene unless it is an immediate emergency as was the case in episode five. Since the gadget drones were simply flying around in circles over the open ocean and not actually attacking anything, it probably wasn't deemed a sufficiently pressing emergency that permission to fly directly to the scene could be obtained.
 * In Episode 11, Vita mentions that Major Nakajima gave her permission to practice while flying over the ocean. In the second sound stage, they have to get aerial clearance for Fate and Fried to fly in and take out some drones in the city, so this is presumably a common issue. It's also likely that they were using a chopper as a staging area to fly out and attack the drones.
 * It's also possible that a helicopter is just faster and/or more durable than a flying mage is. We don't really have hard numbers on their speed, after all.
 * They maybe don't want to use their magical energy flying a long time just before an important fight.


 * This might just be because the subtitles on my player overlapped during the ending, making everything hard to read, but how exactly would the Number Cyborgs produce his clone, and what happened to his clones in the end?
 * If I remember correctly, they would simply give birth to them and then the babies would age rapidly until the good doctor was back to normal, with the memories he had at the point of death. Since they didn't kill Scaglietti, my guess is that the Numbers are still walking around with them. Not sure how the inherited memories or the fact that there are 12 clones would work (would they all be born at once or would it happen one at a time?) I don't know if the supplementary material clarify the matter.
 * My guess is that should Scaglietti die, that would "trigger" the Numbers to gestate a new Scaglietti clone and inherit all his memories up to the time of death (probably like how Fate inherited Alicia's memories up until the time of Alicia's death.) Thus Scaglietti alive = no clones made. As for how, I'll just say it's triggered magic and leave it at that.
 * You probably shouldn't think about how that works with Otto
 * Your trap detector is broken.
 * More Viewer Gender Confusion than Dropped a Bridget On Him. I thought Otto was a guy too, considering the name, the fact she wears loose-fitting pants (while all the obviously-female Numbers sport form-fitting jumpsuits) and the voice. Until one of the other Numbers uses feminine pronouns when speaking about her.
 * In fact, the manga reveals that even his/her fellows Numbers do not know Otto's gender.
 * Deed, who washes Otto's body, knows but Quattro forces her to keep it a secret.


 * In the eighth episode of the first season, Nanoha says that she tells her mom all that's happened, but doesn't mention the magical stuff, or Yuuno's other form. Then, based on what she tells her mom, she's allowed to go off on her own. But, if she didn't mention the magic, then what the heck did she tell her?
 * My guess is that she's joined a secret organization and needs to hunt down objects for the safety of the world, and that there's a girl in the opposition that she wants to befriend. Believe me, the Takamachi family is used to this stuff.
 * This part really, really, really bugged the hell out of me. I had always thought a complete explanation (such as the one she actually gives at the end of A's) would have made much more sense. But again, as the troper above noted, other members of the Takamachi family have done equally strange things.
 * In Sound Stage 3, Arisa and Suzuka seem aware that Nanoha and Fate had fought, but Fate, at Nanoha's request, doesn't mention magic or information related to the TSAB on the disks that she has Nanoha show the two of them. It's likely she told her parents that much, but it's unclear how she got permission to leave, although in Episode 10, Lindy talks with Nanoha's mother and tells her several apparently untrue things about their time together.


 * What's in Caro ru Luche's belt pouches, anyway?
 * Candy.
 * She actually DOES have candy in her pockets. She gave some to Fate in one of the Sound Stages. Go figure.
 * Spell components.
 * Possibly dragon food for Fried in addition to the candy listed above.


 * In the first season, there were some hints that Nanoha's dad suffered some really bad injuries before. What exactly was that?
 * A Continuity Nod to Triangle Heart 3 Sweet Songs Forever. The "old job" they mention every so often was that of a bodyguard. In the original continuity, he got killed. In this one, he was only severely injured and decides to retire.


 * How the HELL did everyone on Midchilda miss the Saint's Cradle landing or crashing into their planet, back when it did? Midchild society predates Velkan society, considering Velka magic is an offshoot of Midchild style magic. So... what's up with that?
 * A little problem with multidimensional civil war on the ruins of Belkan Empire can do it pretty well.
 * Or maybe it's just simply forgotten. Well, TSAB and Mid Childa army, for all their glory and firepower, is implied to have rather bad management and bureaucracy. Just look at Infinite Library, all of that information didn't even catalogue properly.
 * Also, things blow up there quite frequently, despite how safe and clean magic was supposed to be. Witness huge sections of the main city being ruined and deserted after Precia Testarossa's little science project went wobbly.
 * Probably the same way the whole population of Coruscant missed Palpatine burying an entire Imperial Super Star Destroyer beneath the city.
 * So either a powerful mage erased everybody's memories, or he executed everyone who was aware of it?
 * Pretty much. I don't find it that hard to believe that the Belkans could be hardcore Knight Templar and justify those means for the greater good.
 * Or it could be that the Belkan Civil War was much further back than most people seem to assume, and that after it, the Midchildans started shunning magic and teching up in response to the "dangerous and destructive power of magic". Also, it only takes a few decades for people to lose all records of where things end up if someone doesn't actively try to keep records.


 * If Nanoha can use a booster mechanism (the Blaster System) to attain greater firepower than her strength would normally allow, why can't Hayate use the existing Power Limiter systems -- which are already in use -- to force her normally unwieldy excess of magic power into smaller, more economical, more precise attacks? Why limit herself entirely to a heavy artillery position that requires UNISON for accuracy and firecontrol?
 * Whilst she could possibly limit her magical output, Hayate's speciality is wide area attacks, she would still be taking an artillery role because that's what all her attack spells do, they'd just be less destructive over the same kind of area. (It's also harder to ramp back up to full power from a limiter that needs to be externally removed, when you turn out to need someone with the firepower of a small tactical nuclear weapon).
 * Black Impact is a punch, and Blood Dagger is like Plasma Lancer and Accel Shooter combined -- a multi-homing shot attack that doesn't do wide-area destruction. So, while nuking may be her specialty, it's not the only way that she can contribute to a fight. Or at the very least she can nuke more selectively, so that the military doesn't have to evacuate the region before sending her out.
 * But then they have no shortage of people who can do close range combat better than Hayate, who isn't trained for it, she's trained for command and long range area attack, not as a Striker or Enforcer, and are far more flexible in doing it, not having half their power set disabled. Artillery companies carry personal defence weapons, that doesn't make them infantry.
 * It's not a problem of too much power so much as that Hayate's just a really bad shot.
 * She even remarks upon this, telling the Long Arch staff that she's "a total klutz" at long-range attacks without Rein available for targeting. Considering the allegory of Hayate's magic to an actual air strike, this makes sense that someone would need to act as her "spotter."
 * Also most of multi-projectile attacks such as Accel/Axel Shooter are not homing/seeking. They are mentally guided/aimed and if we believe what Vita says in A's it seems that the attack is hard to control and need a lot of skills/training.(Nanoha did manage to control the attack anyway)Another proof is in Striker S on "Teana's misfire incident" . Hayate took the "command" path in the Bureau meaning she did more training in admin/directive/management and presumably she had less time to train her magic skills while Fate and Nanoha both take "Enforcer" and "Sky mage" paths respectively which needs a lot of combat training.


 * How in God's name does the Striker S scenario come to take place? It makes absolutely zero sense to this troper that Nanoha would EVER abandon Earth, her family, her friends, and her life there. If anything, I could see her doing what Fate did, which is basically joining the TSAB, which would effectively allow her to protect "everyone, everywhere", including her home. Instead, she basically relocates hereself and her life to Midchilda and becomes a citizen, and by all indications cuts most of her ties to Earth. This troper understands that part of the answer lies in the fact that Striker S retconned a HUGE amount of the Nanoha canon revolving around the background and setting (I.E., among other things, the TSAB going from a mostly independant organization with carte blanche to protect the space/time continuum whilst enacting something resembling Star Trek's 'Prime Directive', to, in a nutshell "MIDCHILDA'S AIR FORCE, completely under their every machanation and command with very little power), but it still makes no sense that Nanoha goes nd joins the Midchildan Armed Ground Forces.
 * She didn't lost ties to Earth. See soundstages. Manga and soundstages are important part of nanohaverse canon.
 * Also she was not in ground forces before Striker S. She was in training division - she was training airforce and navy personel + testing new equipment. Which is the best thing she could do to protect "everyone, everywhere".
 * Even Hayate wasn't always in the Ground Forces; around the time of the Distant Finale of A's, she was in the Navy (she's wearing a blue uniform during the airport fire), but apparently transferred to ground forces around the time she served under Genya in the 108th Battlion (she's wearing a brown uniform around the start of Strikers), then transferred back to the Navy after Strikers (blue uniform again). The cast seems to go where they're needed.
 * Magical dimensional transfer in the Nanoha-verse takes tens of minutes tops and requires no special vehicles or equipment. Nanoha can pop home whenever she likes.
 * The third season does some crazy confusion with what's actually the Administration Bureau and what's actually Midchilda's military. If you listen to a lot of what Gaiz says, the Administration Bureau is not the same entity as the army, and that Hayate and the rest of the cast transferred to the army from the "main branch." Gaiz's rants against how the Administration and the Navy takes all the best mages, gets all the best equipment and such is a pretty good explanation for why the Army is the way it is.
 * It's clear in Vi Vid that Nanoha is still in contact with her family on Earth.
 * The Wolkenritter discuss this in the StrikerS manga; Vita initially thinks she'll have to say goodbye to all the senior citizens she plays croquet with, but Signum says that she can still visit. In one of the Sound Stages, Hayate, the Stars and Lightning Squads and Shamal are seen bathing with Alisa and Suzuka.


 * As the above entry notes, the vast amount of retcons in Striker S played havok with what little logic and sense the Nanoha 'Verse followed. The power Limiters, for example, stand in complete logical contradiction to the idea adhered to in original and A's of the support mage, and their protective barriers such as the ones Yuuno loved to cast. The sole purpose of these was to prevent the surrounding areas and people from being destroyed. The power limiters exist for the exactl same purpose, except they cut the effectiveness of the Midchildan Army by a vast percentage. Considering the series can't even make the claim that Nanoha and company are "too powerful to be contained by the barriers", its even more glaring.
 * Limiters are not for that. They are exists to prevent "headhunting" for strongest mages and rivalries because of that.
 * They're also politically motivated, the maximum power limit on any one unit prevents it from gaining too much power and influence, and limits the damage it can do if it goes rogue. Additionally, much of Midchilda is destroyed anyway, thanks to Precia Testerossa, so there's less to blow up anyway.
 * The power limiters are one of the show's many military allegories. In the military, you have to get permission to do pretty much anything. It makes sense in that context, but when you consider the whole of the TSAB and its completely inconsistent application of said allegories...
 * Remember, Nanoha's full power Starlight Breaker was powerful enough to be classified as a barrier-breaking attack through sheer power alone... in A's. By Striker S, pretty much all of her attacks would be at that level, meaning that a limiter would be necessary to keep her from breaking whatever barrier they put up the moment one of her attacks misses.


 * Why could Jail Scaglietti magically brainwash everyone and everything around him into doing whatever he wanted and following his every order? He's never even shown DOING anything to cause control, he just has it. And even with the cyborg clones, since they seem predominately Human rather then machine, the whole "they can't fight their programming" excuse seems flawed. Especially considering the ending.
 * He created and raised them from birth. And can manipulate their creation to the point where every Number . Why wouldn't they be loyal? (If that fails to satisfy you, then he is a powerful mage...)
 * Exactly. His various character flaws aside, Scaglietti seems to genuinely care for the Numbers: he's never shown mistreating them or belittling them. They serve him because he's a father figure to them (or even literally their father for the ones who inherited his DNA). As for Lutecia, she helps him out because he holds the key to reviving her mother, and Zest just tags along to protect her; he doesn't like Scaglietti very much, and generally pursues his own objectives.
 * The first four Numbers had many of Scaglietti's genes, with Uno being an Opposite Sex Clone of Scaglietti himself. The younger ones seem to be in his debt for creating them, although some, like Cinque and Dieci, seem to have more loyalty to their sisters than to him (Cinque notes that she wants to atone for her crimes because she worries about her sisters and wants to protect them, and Dieci expresses doubts about Scaglietti's plans, but goes out to fight for her sisters' sake).


 * On the above note, why are the cyborgs, who for all intents and purposes utilizing free will, instantly forgiven and pardoned for their crimes. This goes for the other Nanoha series as well. It seems like very few criminals are actually punished in Nanoha, which seems quite strange considering the leadership and atmosphere as presented in Striker S. You can excuse some of this (for example, Precia being allowed to continue and go through with her experiments, and being allowed to 'run free' after her heinous crimes to continue them on her own) as being a part of the government conspiracy's Xanatos Gambits, but not most of the rest.
 * You're clearly not familiar with the Nanoha way of doing things. Criminals aren't punished, they're "befriended".
 * In they sentence there was stated something like "lack of proper socialization" (that "free will" you talk about and which they really lack of - they were indoctrinated from birth AND programmed) + cooperation. The ones who do not cooperate were sentenced in prison. And they are not pardoned, they are on probation for different amount of time (in case of 5th for very long time). And it was not "instantly" in any way. Like with Fate all that was at least 1/2 year judicial trial.
 * Then again, Agito was the only one of Scaglietti's forces who switched sides before the end of the battle, unlike Fate, Arf and the Wolkenritter, so it raises the question of whether they had truly changed (Dieci had some doubts about using Vivio in the "engineer's revenge", but nevertheless went out to fight Nanoha).
 * The TSAB offers you a choice: penal servitude in their military forces, in which you stand a good chance of facing down terrors from beyond the grave (Sound Stage X, the reformed Numbers) or Lovecraftian horrors (Fate and Arf in A's), or jail time. Most people we've encountered choose the military service.
 * Or in some cases, deportation to unknown worlds, most of the relic weapons who recovered had most of their memories wiped and shipped off to maiden worlds with limited interaction with the outside world as seen with Lucetia.
 * When did it say that Lutecia had her memory wiped? She still remembers Ancient Belkan, which she learned while with Scaglietti.
 * Also, it should be noted that the numbers are essentially children being coerced into crime by their father. Although they have free will, they don't know any better. In that situation, it is normal just the adult having the full punishment. Deici is the best exemple, she obviously knew there were something wrong with their actions, but couldn't argue with Quattro's "I and the Doctor are older, we know better" argument. She just trusted her father and her older sister that what they were doing were the best thing to do.


 * In episode 8 of Striker S, why the heck does Nanoha beat Tia into the ground for doing extra training, and taking practice seriously? Honestly, the whole point of practice is to be ready for the real thing; if you're not going full steam ahead in practice, you'll never succeed in combat. Honestly, I think Tia was in the right in that episode.
 * Because Tea's reaction to being chewed out for doing hotheaded stupid things of her own design that ended up with a friendly fire incident was to do even more hotheaded stupid things which had absolutely nothing to do with what Nanoha was training her to do. If she'd done something that stupid in a live combat situation with one of the Numbers, she would have been killed, not just knocked out. If you're in training, especially military training on which your life may one day depend, it's expected that you listen to the trainer, there's a chance they're telling you things for your own good.
 * Yeah, what the previous troper said. What Tea did was not admirable, it was stupid. Personally, if Tea had come to the session with a tactic with an actual chance of working, I don't think Nanoha would have hit her. But she did a completely suicidal move just for pride, despite Nanoha's warnings. Nanoha is more disappointed at her than anything, and also frustrated and scared for her, but she seems to believe that, if repeated warnings and suggestions keep going over her head, maybe showing her the consequences might work. Not the best way to deal with it, but still, understandable.
 * Dissenting opinion: Tia is a teenaged orphan with alot of insecurity. Tia's actions were ill-considered but, Nanoha, not Tia, was the commanding officer responsible for controlling the situation. Nanoha herself admits to Fate that she went overboard in episode 9.
 * An extension on the previous: the explanation as to why Nanoha was opposed to Tea's heavy training in Episode 9 was that she was hospitalized for overuse of magic and doesn't want her to go through it as well. Except if that is such a big risk why isn't present up front during their training? Most training exercises usually hit you over the head with the risks and warn about how dangerous it is to overextend before starting or when they go out of line. It seems like a really poor decision to not explain it out of personal embarrassment.
 * Upon watching episode Eight, this troper comes to the conclusion that both of them were in the wrong there. The first issue is how well-defined the "mock battle" is. Perhaps I've been exposed to too much shonen, but in many training scenarios with a vastly more skilled mentor (see Evangeline in Negima, Kakashi in the beginning of Naruto), the pupils are expected to go all-out and aim to kill. It's the mentor's job to be able to handle that. Nanoha certainly has the power to do so, but if that wasn't the scenario it wasn't made clear. Tea's first "finisher", that blade of hers, did seem to be a legitimately powerful move. It didn't work because Nanoha was that good, but isn't that the point? If they're up against an opponent of her caliber, they're screwed anyways. So faulting her for going all out when the scenario is explicitly 2 on 1 and giving up her standard position for more power doesn't strike me as bad tactics. Sure it's all or nothing, but against a powerful opponent, sometimes you've got to roll the hard 6. Tea's subsequent blasting when Nanoha clearly indicated that the training session was over was out of line, but so was Nanoha repeatedly blasting her. I mean, really.
 * I think too much shonen is probably what's done it. The point of a test as part of a training session isn't to "win", but to demonstrate that you've learned and understood the things that the trainer is trying to teach you. Nanoha was teaching Teana to optimise her ability in the skills she was already capable with, because those were the skills she needed to survive and to work effectively in the unit in real combat, and they were on combat readiness so she could have needed those skills at any time.
 * I always thought that a big part of what led up to the whole mess was that Teana didn't actually know what Nanoha's training was supposed to do, and thus had no way to judge her own progress.
 * Having watched this particular episode and being a fan of the TV version of the animation(as opposed to the "fixed" DVD versions, go figure), I always saw this scene as an enormous subversion of Nanoha's Messiah tendencies. She's gone through two seasons being more or less always right about anything she decides on, to the point that a friend of mine noted she seems to have a split personality as dictated by the plot: shy and self-effacing out of combat, and judgment and personal strength on par with a person three times her age on demand. Anyway, the scene's build up is that Tea is training to the point of absurdity to land a single blow on Nanoha, which isn't the point of her training: it's to learn the basics. However, she's missing this because she's an acknowledged prodigy that just doesn't happen to have specialized "unique skills" like all the top mages do. She sees herself as too normal to be in Riot 6, and thus is trying to push herself beyond her limits to prove that she belongs there. Nanoha, meanwhile, seeing Tea be the model student aside from one mistake at the hotel(which Vita, in classic XO fashion, beats into Tea's head for being a mistake), doesn't see the self-destructive cycle Tea's self-confidence problems are causing. Thus, you have the training incident, where Nanoha's confronted with someone that she thought was her best student ignoring every lesson she's been trying to teach, doing exactly what caused her great personal pain and suffering and nearly killed her, and dragging Subaru into the mix as well. Nanoha is human, and she's disappointed and probably hurt by the way Tea's effectively rejecting everything she's been taught, and she...goes a little overboard, which she admits to Fate later. When she sits down with Tea later to unveil Cross Mirage's blade form, she admits that she didn't see Tea's problems for what they were, leading to the misunderstanding that caused the training incident. It's a wonderful example of neither Tea nor Nanoha being completely in the right or the wrong that was appreciated, given Nanoha's near perfect personality everywhere else. Striker S seems to do this a lot, as well, with showing Nanoha also being capable of an emotional breakdown when Vivio's kidnapped. It rounds her out a bit more, making her more than just Belldandy with a flair for BFGs.
 * Still, it's a bit out of pattern with her other responses. At the start of Episode 8, she gently tells Teana where she went wrong, (albeit partly because Vita already yelled at her). After the White Devil Incident, she seems willing to listen to Teana despite the fact tha Vita and Signum feel she's spoiling her. After Teana hears about what happened to Nanoha, she tells her that she has potential if her abilities are used correctly.
 * Could someone please link to a comparison of Nanoha's expression in the TV and DVD version or at least describe the part in more detail? I've seen the scene before, and I'm not sure at what part Nanoha has a "Higurashi-like" expression (having not watched Higurashi or any of the other works), or how it's different in the TV and DVD versions.
 * First there are links to the two videos on the Better On DVD Page, but for expediancy's sake TV version and DVD Version
 * This has been bugging me for a while already. I think Nanoha is 100% in the wrong here. It's fine for a pupil to go all out during a training and also to make mistakes. I still don't see though what mistake Tea made, since she actually put up quite a fight, even though Nanoha was of course never in any kind of danger. Even then, Nanoha could simply have shown her what tactical mistakes she thought she made by showing her a video of the incident, instead of blowing her out of the sky, causing her to become unconscious. Seriously, people, unconsciousness is no light matter and could easily lead to permanent damage, so I am amazed that Nanoha didn't even get reprimanded for this. What's worse, Tea still gets treated with a fair amount of disregard after that, including getting slapped by Fate. Yes, Tea acts like a whiny bitch, but she does have a point when she complains about her unfair treatment. I wouldn't have been surprised if Tea had left the training facilities and tried to get gain more power on her own, only to come back for Nanoha later.
 * Signum's the one who punches her. Shamal notes in Episode 9 that Teana was out for so long because she hadn't been getting nearly enough sleep lately and "all the stress (she's) accumulated lately has caught up with (her)". You can also see her doubling over during her Training From Hell and occasionally having trouble getting up in the morning.
 * "Never in any kind of danger!?" What part of "One-hit kill" don't you understand? It's not that making mistakes is bad, it's just that the mistakes she made were really bad, if they're mistakes in the first place. You really don't try to jeporadize the lives of many of the people around you just for a training match. Remember, Tea's entire plan'a sucess depended on her hitting Nanoha with what was pretty much a single overpumped shot. If it hit, it would probably cause damage a lot more serious than unconsiousness. Besides, as it was shown, if she had missed or had been stopped like Nanoha had done, the results would have resulted in both of their defeats. Why did she get slapped by Fate? Because she was acting like it was barely her fault, if that at all. Essentially, she was blaming Nanoha for not letting her utilize her plan that would have resulted in serious injury. And how was that unfair treatment? If you're having a friendly practice match with your teacher in a self-defense class, do you try to make it so that in the end that they'll die? I would be pretty pissed off if my student tried to kill me. Even if it wouldn't have killed Nanoha, Tea didn't know that. From what she was thinking, I get the impression that she thought that the shot was perfectly capable of killing Nanoha.
 * I have to agree. The point wasn't that Tea was putting Nanoha into risk. She seems to be the kind of self-effacing messiah type that doesn't care for that, not to mention Tea had no chance of actually hurting her anyway. No, the point was, she was putting herself, and Subaru too, into actual danger, for something as stupid as pride. See her quote in the moment "now... I understand you're trying your best... but a mock battle isn't a true fight to the death. If you're going to pretend to listen in practice and then... do something this dangerous and desperate in the real thing... what's the point in us practicing? Is my training... really that wrong and useless...?". And then Tea goes all hysterical (because she knows Nanoha's not completely in the wrong here), and tries to keep shooting at her, which is met with Nanoha counter-blasting her. Now, Nanoha seriously went overboard with the physical blasting (that second burst in particular probably wasn't really needed for making the point)... but I've known better trained and less emotional drill sergeants who'd have downright told a recruit to pack up and go home before they killed their mates, for stuff like this. Nanoha was just totally dissapointed, and incredibly worried (because, you know, I see about four ways that maneuver could have ended with a dead Tea if she'd tried it on someone who actually wanted to hurt her. Two of them also include dead Subaru for a kicker), and, well, she's a very emotional and, let's face it, pretty aggressive girl, without much of a way with words - this is stated to be one of her flaws. So she decided to show them the consequences of what they did, much like a sergeant might knock down the two cocky recruits and give them some bruises. Her voice pretty much said "I know they're going to hate me for this, but since training didn't work... maybe if they fear me, maybe they'll pay attention".
 * Signum put it best in Episode 9. "There are battles that must not be lost even if it means being reckless or risking your life. However, that time you missed your shot, was it a situation where you had to shoot even if you risked the safety or life of your comrade? Using a move like that in training, just whose sake was that for?" It effectively implies that Teana was mainly thinking about proving herself rather than helping her teammates (not to mention that the strategy didn't seem very effective). Then again, might have been better for Nanoha to mention her experience at some point, rather than have Shari, Shamal and Signum do it for her (It seems to be a trope- I don't know if we have it yet- that people whose backstories explain a major aspect of their personality often don't reveal that part themselves).
 * Bluntly, because Tia is being a danger to herself (as Nanoha knows very well, having been laid up for nearly a year due to pushing herself too hard), and through that her teammates. Battlefields are extremely unforgiving places. One incompetent, one hotshot, can easily manage to get the whole team dead or injured. Taking one casuality increases the possiblity of taking others exponentionally in a group that will not leave their teammates behind. In the end, Nanoha is absolutely correct from a military point of view: it is more important to weed out the incompetent and the foolhardy then it is to reward the brave and true, because the former will do more to damage the cause then the latter will do to advance it. You don't want people who push themselves hard; you want people who are dependable.
 * Keep in mind that Nanoha used "training grade" magic bullets to shoot down Teana, and knocked her out. Now imagine what would've happened to her if she went to combat in that state. If "training grade" fire can knock her out, how would she fare against live fire.


 * When Graham retired to England after the events of A's, how exactly did they keep people from noticing the Lieze twins/familars had cat ears and tails? They are a pair of catgirls in maid outfits after all. That kind of concentrated Grade-A Fetish Fuel could hardly escape notice!
 * Arf can hide her ears and tail. Presumably the Lieze can do it too.
 * Graham is shown feeding a pair of ordinary-looking gray housecats. It is possible that they spend all their time in that form.
 * It's also stated that Graham "lives a secluded life", so he doesn't see many people.


 * Who won the mock battle at the end of Striker S? Somehow I can't imagine Nanoha and the others losing.
 * I agree. Nanoha is the best at what she does and what she does is befriending.
 * Yeah, I'm going with that. I mean, don't get me wrong, the new kids are talented, but none of them ever quite demonstrated the ability to make friends Nanoha has. Caro came close with the gigantic doom dragon, but I doubt even Voltaire has quite as many victims friends as the main girl herself.
 * And they weren't just fighting Nanoha; they were fighting Nanoha, Fate and the Wolkenritter, each one of whom have previously demonstrated themselves capable of demolishing extremely tough enemies in large numbers singlehandedly.
 * Actually, they weren't fighting Shamal or Zafira in that battle. And the final page of the manga shows that it wasn't an easy win for whomever won. I think that Nanoha, Fate, Signum and Vita won, myself, but they were more torn up after that battle than they would have been if it was an easy fight. Especially Vita, her hat and outer clothes were gone.
 * You're absolutely right; I've just rewatched it and I must have just forgotten about the Wolkenritter who were absent. My mistake. I haven't read that bit of the manga, yet, so fair enough if it is indeed as you say. Although to be honest, I was kinda hoping it would have been easy for Nanoha and co. It still seems strange that they would have struggled against the rookies, considering that Vita disabled an absurdly dangerous defence system while severely wounded, Fate has that god-speed mode and Nanoha...well, we know what Nanoha just pulled off. Maybe I'm just not giving the new guys enough credit.
 * Probably not. I take nothing away from Nanoha or Fate, but both of them had to use their Overdrive Modes against the Cyborgs they were facing in the finale, (well, maybe not NEEDED to, but they did) and Subaru and Tiana both managed to beat the cyborgs they were going against without using an Overdrive, just using full drive. Granted, they still needed to go full-out, but my point stands. Plus there's what Tiana pulls off in Sound Stage X to consider. Though, I wonder, was Nanoha in Excellion or Blaster mode for that fight? I know that Vita was in Overdrive mode, and it looked like Fate went to Overdrive mode.
 * Actually, Nanoha wasn't fighting directly against any of the cyborgs for most of the battle - she wiped the floor with Dieci (one of the more experienced of the younger six) without the Blaster system; most of her time was spent fighting against Vivio, whose power levels at the time were probably much higher than any of the cyborgs. Fate was fighting against Tre (the oldest of the Numbers to fight on the frontlines), Sette and Jail inside an AMF. While Teana's befriending of Nove, Wendi and Deed was pretty awesome, she wasn't contending with an AMF, and it was largely a result of superior tactics from her side - they presumably wouldn't have that advantage against the Captains. Difficult to say for Subaru vs Ginga and Erio+ Caro vs Lutecia, since IIRC we never see either Ginga or Lulu fighting against anyone else in the same sort of context. But I don't think it's entirely accurate to compare Nanoha's and Fate's fights in the finale to Teana's and Subaru's. About the Captains' in the mock battle, I seriously doubt Nanoha would use Blaster mode for something like this - I can't imagine the other characters letting her. And does Vita have an analogous overdrive mode? Overall, I think it would only make sense that the fight was so close if none of the Captains used any overdrive mode-type things. On the other hand, there were a couple of months between the end of the JS incident and the dissolution of Section 6, and presumably they continued training during that time... Random side-thought: did Caro use Voltaire (or even full-sized Friedrich)? It seems like quite a small space that they were fighting in. Although I suspect the area would end up totally trashed even without dragons, given the other characters in question... :P
 * Rewatch that scene, Nanoha before she entered to fight against Vivio, used Excellion buster, then went straight to Blaster 1 against Dieci. (Which causes yet another person to wonder if Nanoha is human or not.) And Tiana makes mention of the drones that were around the other three cyborgs as she fought, so she did have to deal with some sort of AMF, apparently. Remember, Combat Cyborg mode doesn't use magic, so they aren't hindered by any AMF. And, yes, Vita does have an Overdrive mode. Destruction Form.
 * I'm just going to say that while it's most likely that the Captains and Vice-Captains won (again, I can't see the Forwards winning that fight if the older guard was going full-out), the Forwards had to have felt that they managed to get a win out of that. Consider all the previous mock-battles that they had before that. The only one we saw that they won was against Nanoha in episode 4, and I get the feeling that she let them win, but anyway, they couldn't win in any of the other mock-battles throughout the series, and they could barely scratch their opponents (see the manga after-battle where both Signum and Schach teamed up to take on the forwards, not a scratch on those two and the Forwards were out for the count) up to that point. So the sheer fact that they could cause that much damage to the Captains and Vice-Captains has to be a personal win for those four.
 * I just found out that Lutecia was an S-Rank mage when they fought, so seeing as how Erio and Caro managed to win against her... The final all-out battle (and the results that were shown in the manga) makes a LOT more sense to me now.
 * In the fourth Sound Stage, it's revealed that Caro is in line for A-rank and the other three are soon going to be AA-rank. It's not unheard-of for weaker mages to overcome stronger ones, but given that the forwards aren't nearly as experienced, they're probably still going to lose their respective battles (Subaru vs. Nanoha, Caro vs. Fate, Erio vs. Signum, Teana vs. Vita).
 * Toward the end of Chapter 12, Schach and Signum face off against the four forwards and Ginga, apparently defeating them quite easily, so Signum could probably easily take on one or two of them by herself. Also consider that Signum got into a draw with Nanoha in their battle in the bonus chapter. While the captains are more likely to have won, the forwards have probably progressed enough in order to force the captains to get serious; notice that even the captains' barrier jackets are torn.
 * Nanoha was using blaster 1 in Vi Vid's mock battle so...who knows?


 * How did the Bureau survive to the present day, and three seasons of such intense action? I've just finished the first season (I'm behind, sue me), and my first impression of the Bureau is that it's the most egregious example of Redshirt Army I've ever seen, seeing as my Willing Suspension of Disbelief is violated on several occasions. Terrible security so bad that a couple of kids can hijack a transporter located on the bridge in broad daylight, space marines that aren't visible anywhere until they're ordered to make an arrest, which they botch horribly (Precia is a bigshot mage, yes, but the fact that Admiral Harloen(sp?) sent Red Shirts in the first place despite knowing this is a joke), and sending one ship (I don't care if it's their flagship, they should have known better) to retrieve Lost Technology that by reputation alone, would have warranted a squadron of warships at least, judging by the tech level I've seen on Arthra. Yes, it's probably so that Fate and Nanoha can kick more ass, but seriously. With protocol as full of holes as that, I'm not surprised that they allowed a couple of civilians to help out, although that latter part is justified, given Yuuno's being an Adventurer Archaeologist and Nanoha's being rated at AAA.
 * This Troper had assumed they only sent the Arthra to Earth because they assumed that retrieving the Jewel Seeds from a planet with such a small number of mages would be a trivial task and when Precia activated the Jewel Seeds they didn't exactly have time to wait for back up.
 * Precia was known as researcher, not combat specialist. So her powerful attack came somewhat of surprise.
 * Don't you think that combat on bridge about that particular question wouldn't be the best idea? Plus Yuuno could easily teleport Nanoha by his own power.
 * Yuuno and Nanoha were communicating telepathically, and Nanoha managed to move in such a way that by the time the crew suspected something, she was already ready to warp out.
 * Perhaps they're just stretched that thin. After all, there are a lot of Lost Logia out there. One ship was probably all they could spare.
 * The intervention of Precia was not predicted, nor her presence known. The Bureau sent one ship because one ship was all they would have needed to recollect the Jewel Seeds from Earth. Given what they knew of the situation, in fact, all they really needed to send was Chrono; sending the entire Athra was overkill. The major layer of security aboard the Athra, as aboard any warship, is who is allowed onboard; nobody who could be predicted to do something like that would be. Yuuno was apparently sent on this mission once before, as well, or at least had previous access and clearance with the Bureau so he could find out where the Jewel Seeds had ended up since they were aboard a Bureau ship that was lost in an apparently unrelated accident.


 * Why didn't the Bureau simply hide the Book of Darkness in the imaginary number plane where its established that magic doesn't work.
 * Because it doesn't work for mages, but perfectly work for BoD level Lost Logia? Or that such areas are unstable? Or because someone can cancel it to acquire BoD? Or because all attempts to capture it ended as enormous failure? Or other hundred of reasons?
 * It's possible that's what they intended to do with it the last time they had it. It took over the starship that was transporting it. It's clearly able to fight back against attempts to destroy or lose it.
 * Chrono mentions that the Book of Darkness would find some way to escape from the place where Graham was planning on sealing it as long as people wanted its power.


 * Why does the Book of Darkness have a protection program in the first place. Whenever it's destroyed it just regenerates elsewhere, so it doesn't even need a way to defend itself.
 * Because although it has a backup plan, the best plan is always not to get destroyed in the first place?
 * It's not a book defense program, but one for owner. Remember - knights were part of it before Reinforce separated them.
 * It's implied the reincarnation function is part of the fact the defense and self-repair programs went nuts when the book was tampered with.


 * Why did Precia rely entirely on Fate and Arf to find the Jewel Seeds? For instance, why didn't she create another familiar to find them?
 * Presumably she figured they were enough, remember, she didn't know someone else was taking them until Fate told her, and by the time she realized that they weren't, it was too late to make a new familiar.
 * She's dying, and can't withstand significant amounts of dimensional transfer magic any more. She even says so at one point, in the middle of coughing up blood. It makes sense for her to use proxies and stay safe and with Alicia.
 * The movie manga indicates that even having Linith around is shortening her life, and presumably, Linith isn't even a familiar that can fight like Arf and the Lieze Twins can.


 * Near the end of StrikerS, Nanoha is confronting Fate, who is angsting about just having been created as a weapon, not being real, her mothers Nanoha and Fate not being her real mothers... Why in the world doesn't Nanoha take that moment to explain that Fate was artificially created too, rather than resorting to generic "of course you're real" speeches?
 * I think you mean "Vivio" and not Fate. That said, I think the "Of course you're real" thing is the whole point: She doesn't see Fate as being any different for being artificially created, either, to her, their origins don't matter at all.
 * Yeah, typo. But the point is, it seems like it makes much more sense to give Vivio an example from her own experience, that Fate was artificially created too, rather than to just go on generically about it as if she was pulling it out of thin air.
 * Perhaps Nanoha thought something along the lines of "it doesn't matter" would give Vivio more comfort than something along the lines of "you aren't the only one".
 * I doubt it woudl have worked. First one didn't work, Vivio can't cotrol herself and Vivio's and Fate's origins are same only in artificial part. Fate was created as a replacement. Vivio was created to be Person of Mass Destruction. She(Vivio) propably would have instantly pointed that one out.


 * Nanoha in general seems pretty unwilling to actually kill people on screen. The generic Bureau clerks that the Wolkenritter dispose of in the beginning of A's are assumed to survive the process, since both Nanoha and Fate have their Linker Cores extracted. This gets even worse in Striker S where the characters comment several times on "magical damage" being akin to a nonlethal weapon. I was really surprised when they showed Lt. General Gaiz dying on screen in a very bloody manner (for the series, anyway). The presence of Gaiz's uncensored death seems to make the nonlethal aspect of most of Nanoha's action scenes much more hollow. Granted, StrikerS was much more bloody than the previous two seasons, with Gaiz and Vita both getting messily impaled. The TSAB's reluctance to kill people seems to make a twisted kind of sense (apparently, "befriending" is how they get all their top mages...) But at the same time, the antagonists' reluctance to kill seems oddly inconsistent and misplaced. They go out of their way to kill no one during the siege of the Army HQ and in demolishing Section Six HQ, but later when sacking Einherjar, there's an awful lot of dead people... StrikerS in general Just Bugs Me, but this is probably the biggest glaring inconsistency of them all. I still like the season, but damn, the villains are so bizarre.
 * Not to mention that of all the Numbers, Due was the only one who actually was killed outright. Considering Zest's character, this doesn't really surprise me much.
 * Scaglietti claims that he doesn't kill without reason, and even said that people fleeing the Section 6 base without fighting back would not be harmed, so it's possible that he told the Numbers to merely incapacitate the soldiers if they could (although Dieci tries to blow up the helicopter with Shamal and Vice inside, and Wendi notes that she doesn't have to take Teana in alive during the final battle).
 * Magic's never killed anyone in the whole series...it's entirely possible it can't directly kill someone at the kind of power output anyone we've seen can generate, that it doesn't interact with living things the same way it does inanimate ones. The attack on Section Six HQ had political motivations for not killing anyone, Jail's pretense of making war on the organization and not the people of it was pretty obvious. (I have no doubt people would have died in the collapsing building otherwise.) The siege falls under the "unable to generate sufficent power to kill with magic" again.
 * Other bad guys have killed. Even the Numbers killed lots of Bureau clerks when they attacked Einherjar, and Subaru's IS, Vibration Shatter, is described as being devastating against both combat cyborgs and organic life. The Wolkenritter killed plenty while filling the Book of Darkness's pages. But there hasn't been a single instance of Midchildan magic killing anyone. This bugs me as well; if magic was no good at killing people, you'd see a lot more bad guys who don't care about the Bureau's laws armed more traditionally (with guns and explosives).
 * It's explicitly stated that no one died in the current Book of Darkness case (although people presumably died in the past ones, especially Clyde Harlaown).
 * It can't be proven that the Numbers killed anyone in their attacks on the Einherjar installations, nor that the mages the Wolkenritter attacked were killed for their linker cores. I just rewatched the Einherjar attack scene a minute ago; none of the mages present are even bleeding, much less sporting serious wounds. "Knocked out and on the ground" does not automatically equate with "dead".
 * The Wolkenritter killed many of those large monsters on various uninhabited planets, which take much more punishment than a weak little human. Magic is clearly capable of killing things much more physically powerful than people. MGLN's avoidance of really killing off anyone (even the Redshirt Army clerks of the TSAB don't die conclusively) comes across as lame as when jRPG monsters just "knock out" the player characters. Considering how much the violence was amped up in Striker S I was somewhat annoyed that it seemed to be very inconsistent. Plus, Vita really should have died in the Saint's Cradle.
 * Magic can kill people the reason the reason we never see Midchildan magic kill anyone is because the targets are well protected. First, consider what happened when Vice accidentally shot his sister in the eye. Now what would of happen of she had been hit with Starlight Breaker? She would have died.
 * Also, don't forget that there is a specific type of magic that is nonlethal, which Nanoha is explicitly said to be a master at.
 * In an alternate translation, Shamal just refers to "Nanoha-chan's magic training bullets," which could indicate that she uses different magic while training people (even in the White Devil Incident) and in real combat. Then again, she strangely seems able to shoot through a ship while leaving the target not only alive and not vaporized, but able to declare that Scaglietti will prevail before passing out.
 * As for the Wolkenritter, they do state that they aren't going to kill any actual people because Hayate wouldn't want them to, and most of the monsters they kill on-screen seem to have been more 'beaten to death with a hammer' than 'killed with magic'. Presumably either 'pure' magic cannot kill and to be lethal it must be channeled into a weapon that would be lethal in any case, or the wielder can choose whether their spells are lethal or not and none of the main cast ever shoot to kill.
 * Even if we discard side-effects (and if unprotected person smashed in wall by beamspam like shown more then once that person would die from pure kinetic damage) there is description of Vivio spells in dvd booklets... and in "Sacred cluster" there is pretty clear line that every single fragment of it can be lethal. Vivio borrowed this spell from Nanoha. Magic kills. It's not hard to kill, it's hard NOT to kill.
 * It's more likely that the mages using the spells put up a "mental safety" of sorts. It lets them go full-out against targets, blasting them with everything they've got, but not killing them. Of course, that probably only works for Nanoha's type of magic. I'm pretty sure that if Fate had used the edge instead of the flat of her blade against Jail, he would've been sliced in half.
 * Not sure about the last bit. After all, when Signum kills Zest, he doesn't get properly chopped in half; it seems to be the magic damage that kills him (you'd expect to see at least some blood otherwise). And Laevatein is a proper metal sword, whereas Bardiche is an energy blade. The point about being able to inherently prevent a spell from killing someone regardless of how powerful it is seems to make the most sense. It is magic, after all...
 * Signum complains when Fate saves her from one desert monster, saying that since she destroyed the monster, she can't get its Linker Core. It's possible that the Wolkenritter can't extract Linker Cores from dead monsters, but rather beat them until they're incapacitated and then take their cores (although the problem might have been that Fate destroyed the monster's body).
 * The TSAB are more than half a police force, Nonlethal magic allows them to arrest people, vapourising them kinda puts a damper on the whole court business.
 * Nanoha Force finally has some actual bloodshed as we seen on chapter, looks like from what we see, Belkan Technology seems to be more on the "Lethal Measure" type.
 * It was this troper's impression that Barrier Jackets convert magical damage into non-lethal damage (with the Cyborgs' "plugsuits" functioning like Barrier Jackets). The only reason the Gadget Drones don't have Barrier Jackets is because the AMF system would interfere with it.


 * The entire portrayal of the TSAB, from season one to season three, really, really bugs me. As a previous troper mentioned, the whole thing is a Redshirt Army with the exception of a few powerful mages. Vita and Signum are the only ones who act remotely like real military officers (considering their personalities as Knights, this somewhat makes sense). Many of the concepts of the Time-Space Administration Bureau seem to be either contradictory, dangerous or just downright stupid. I realize I'm probably looking into it a little too deeply, since it is a Magical Girl show with the trappings of a Super Robot story... but still. It's contradictory in the extreme, especially in the third season. It does, however, offer interesting possibilities for fanfiction writers to fix the TSAB and turn them into what they should be.
 * For that matter, what is the Belkan Saint Church? What do they believe? What is their history? It's never really explained much in A's or StrikerS, beyond Hayate and Carim being addressed as Knights (and presumably that's because they use the Belkan magic system). Given that the TSAB (or at least Riot Force 6) seems to work closely with the Church, I wouldn't mind seeing that become part of any such fanfiction. You know, this idea is starting to look really good, I might just pillage it for myself...
 * Its All There in the Manual. The Belkan Empire had been fighting a long lasting civil war, the Sankt Kaiser managed to bring the war to a peaceful conclusion before the Belkans completely wiped themselves out (although not before Belka itself was destroyed). Sometime after the Sankt Kaiser died some of her followers decided that she was a divine being and started the Saint Church to worship her. Not much is known about the Saint Church itself. What we do know is that they consider having hetrochromia with one eye being red to be a mark of the Sankt Kaiser, they encourage followers to undergo a pilgrimage, and that they are the most popular religion in the world due a relatively small number of taboos. Also, there are parts of Midchilda that are governed by the Saint Church, not unlike Vatican City.
 * Why the hell couldn't Vita use her own Linker Core to power the Book of Darkness? It's established it can recover.
 * Theoretically, she could, I suppose. But bear in mind that extracting a mage's Linker Core puts them out of action for a substantial amount of time, and even Cores from powerful mages like Nanoha and Fate don't fill all that many pages. It's probably not worth the risks.
 * Even theoretically she could not. She is living programm. And we did see what happens when capture-mode used on 'ritters - they are deconstructed as whole. Actually it kinda answer question why knights do not remember book completion - previous owners just used them as insta-powerup for last pages.
 * Vita also mentions that any given Linker Core can only be absorbed once, and chooses to retreat from Nanoha in Episode 7 for that reason, not wanting to waste energy fighting her. Even if the Wolkenritter could somehow use their own Linker Cores, they wouldn't be able to completely fill the book.


 * A bit off, but... considering the possibilities, and fans' love of AU stories, why are there no post-episode-8/9 "Teana turns rogue or evil for more power and/or to prove herself" stories out there on the Internet? Or at least some where she doesn't learn about the Nanoha-almost-dies incident and either goes rogue or becomes The Starscream or at least a non-friendly version of The Rival (possibly leading to Rival Turned Evil) towards Nanoha?
 * Maybe because it would be grossly out of character for her? Teana not learning from what happened to Nanoha would require her to be abnormally stupid and/or close-minded, and Teana isn't either of those things.
 * I meant if she, out of pride or shame, ditched the group and the base and went rogue either right after the Hotel Misfire incident, or after the White Devil Incident but before Shari & co. could explain Nanoha's past, so that Teana DOESN'T learn about Nanoha's past and thus doesn't think she did anything wrong. A situation where Tia has reason to believe she's completely in the right and that Nanoha is deliberately holding her back, because she doesn't know the truth, and through some set of circumstances Nanoha & co. aren't able to track her down for some time, giving her plenty of time to diverge. Plus, notice I said "AU stories" - Alternate Universe. Fans can be quite clever, so the lack of such A Us struck me as odd. ...does anyone know of any I might've missed? Would this be better in the Discussion section or does it Bug Me enough to fit in the Just Bugs Me page?
 * Recall that one of Teana's goals is to redeem the honor of the Lanstar name; deserting from her unit -- for any reason -- isn't exactly conductive to that goal, and transferring out the normal way would raise questions about her motives for doing so and probably lead back to Nanoha's lecture. On top of that, there's the fact that the Nanoha fanfiction community simply isn't big enough to cover every possible AU; this series is good, but it doesn't exactly have the fanbase of Naruto or Harry Potter, so it will likewise not have as many fanfic authors covering AU possibilities.
 * But what if, for some reason and/or through some odd circumstance(s), her definition of "honor" becomes skewed/warped (perhaps as a result of Nanoha's blasts knocking her brain around, so to speak), to the point where for Teana, honor = power and/or a high body count, or something like that? She becomes convinced that only by transcending "the weakling Nanoha has made [her] into" and becoming, for all intents and purposes, a mid-to-close-range assault specialist (gunplay second in priority to up-close-and-personal melee/blade combat; maybe, though not mandatory for the story, a few high-percent-chance-of-fatal cybernetic/surgical implants or such stuff, or perhaps some good old-fashioned Dangerous Forbidden Technique or Deadly Upgrade, to show just how serious she is about this), can she gain the prestige and reputation she seeks. Teana also ends up making a few - or several - morally-grey, or even pitch-black, actions and decisions in her quest for more power and "honor", possibly leading to a head-long Jump Off the Slippery Slope. Serious grudge and/or hatred against Nanoha (for "betraying" her) optional, though likely/recommended. For the matter of being questioned about her reasons and thus leading to the lecture: she high-tails it outta there so quick that no one has the time to stop her and talk to her, possibly even making her way off-planet to further avoid detection. For the last bit: Hear my plea, Tropers! Would anyone be willing to write such a fic? (I'd do it myself, but while I can make the basic skeletal structure of a story, I can't flesh out a storyline to save my life.) Plus, when Nanoha finally tracks her down and finds out what she's done, her reaction will likely be... interesting. ...Are you sure this big topic fits better here in Just Bugs Me than in Discussion?
 * First, now you're handing Teana the Idiot Ball to facilitate her defection on top of completely rewriting her character, and I for one will have nothing to do with a plot like that. Second, this doesn't belong in JBM or in Discussion, it belongs on a proper fanfiction forum like AnimeSuki's Nanoha Fanfiction thread.
 * Done and done!! I'm outta here!
 * Teanas Travels runs with this idea.
 * Why the bloody blue blazes do the dimensional ships have no weapons other than the Arc-en-Ciel? It makes it impossible for them to simply disable a ship, rather than destroying it, and it also means that they don't have any weapon that doesn't have a hideously large charge time. At least the Saint's Cradle had magic laser banks. You'd think that an organization as devoted to peace as the TSAB would have some kind of less-guaranteed-lethal weapons.
 * Any source for this? As far as I can recall, the only times when this could have come up was with the Book of Darkness (when anything less than the Arc-en-Ciel wouldn't have been enough), and against the Cradle (when they were worried that the full force of the interdimensional fleet would be insufficient). I had assumed that the ships had other combat capabilities that were simply not mentioned due to the lack of Ship to Ship Combat (hah) in the series.
 * Actually if you'll have a good look at Asura in first two series you'll see point-defense cannons. And they'll disappear in Striker S when it's decommissioned. Also - bureau ships in StrikerS didn't used AeC on Cradle, but they main guns. AeC is installed only by special orders and require time for that (installing that is, orders could be bypassed after all) - and they didn't had it, also effects of cannons are not similar with AeC showings.
 * Because the TSAB is scared of weapon tech. Because in their history, anything beyond a peashooter has a bad habit of being taken over either by a Mad Scientist or AI Is a Crapshoot. Rather, the question really should be; why do they trust the Asura and its Arc-En-Ciel?
 * Probably because of things like the Cradle and the Book of Darkness running around?
 * The Arthra's Arc-en-Ciel isn't always armed. They had to take it back to the TSAB HQ to get it activated so they could use it against the Book of Darkness. It can be assumed, then, that those weapons are disabled by default unless it is determined they are necessary. Also note that the one who had the key for it and fired it was an Admiral. The TSAB just takes the use of that weapon very very seriously, which they should.
 * In the last episode of Striker S, they fire blue lasers that don't seem to be the Arc-en-ciel at the Cradle (they look different, and if it were the Arc-en-ciel, they'd only fire once, rather than in a seven-shot volley, to destroy the Cradle).


 * Why exactly is Hayate considered a criminal, when she never actually did anything wrong and was in fact instrumental in destroying the Book of Darkness? I suppose she might be held responsible for the actions of the Wolkenritter, since they're sentient programs and she their master, but in that case you wouldn't expect them to be able to hold ranks in the TSAB either. Besides, Gaiz' comment on how "once you commit a crime, it doesn't just go away" still wouldn't make sense.
 * She took partial responsibility for the actions of the Wolkenritter in order to lessen their punishment. Of course, Gaiz was probably trying to cover up his own guilty conscience, considering the skeletons in his closet...
 * Agree on both counts, except for partial part. She taken full responsibility for they actions, because otherwise we wouldn't have Wolkenritter now... because she was on trial for only last and successfully resolved Bo D incident, and they would be for all of them.
 * Translation (I think): Hayate had only two real choices for the Wolks' defense. Either they committed their crimes by their own free will or they have no free will and must obey their programming. The problem with the first option is that the Wolks would then have to answer for all the crimes they committed for their previous masters, which would presumably involve a much harsher sentence than just community service. On the other hand, taking full blame for the Wolks would involve claiming that they have no free will, and given their military ranks in StrikerS this seems exceptionally unlikely to have been the course Hayate chose. Personally, this troper thinks the Wolks have a legal status similar to that of minors; they are obviously sentient and so have certain rights granted to them but at the same time they are also the property of their creator or master, who is considered legally responsible for their actions. Presumably, familiars and unison devices get similar treatment, which isn't so bad if you think about it; if TSAB law allows minors to hold rank in the military, one assumes they probably have a lot of other rights real life kids don't get.
 * Between they actions and enlistment 'ritters got a very big change of status - they were removed from control of Book of Night sky core program. So they could pull they were under control then, and free now. Only it wouldn't work if it would be found that they acted on free will and not under orders of Hayate. Lindy must have edited or destroyed a number of records for it to pass though...
 * It's stated in the second StrikerS Sound Stage that few in the TSAB know of what the Wolkenritter are; Gaiz refers to them as her relatives, which is the story she gives to most people not familiar with magic, such as Dr. Ishida and Noel.
 * In the A's Manga, she seems to indicate that she and each of the Wolkenritter took responsibility ("I don't want anyone to blame themselves, because we're all at fault, although I still want everyone to bow deeply and apologize for the trouble we've caused!"). This would indicate that she wasn't the only one held responsible, and Regius Gaiz seems mainly upset about the idea of a criminal commanding a unit (he doesn't complain about the Wolkenritter or Fate).


 * Isn't it a little strange to outfit a cyborg with an eye patch instead of completely fixing it? I would assume that that would be advantageous since Nove, Dieci, and I think Sein showed that their eyes doubled as sensor scanners and the like. If it was possible to replace a good chunk of Subaru's arm and presumably Ginga's hand, it shouldn't be a stretch to d othe same for Cinque's eye. I understand that there's some Rule of Cool at play, but when you think about it, the Fridge Logic just pops up.
 * It's a battle scar she got from Zest. Cinque probably asked to keep it as a sign of respect for a Worthy Opponent or as a mark of pride in her own abilities.
 * Plus she goes totally ga-ga over eye-patches.
 * When she's at the Nakajima house in Vi Vid, she doesn't always wear it (Late Chapter 2 at the dinner table, mid-Chapter 8 when talking about the trip) and just has her eye shut. It's unclear why she doesn't wear it there, though.
 * It's possible that her eye was replaced. With the thermal scanners a lot of mage sensors appear to be, she could just see straight through the closed eye and patch, and open it if she really needs the extra visual acuity. Keeping the eyepatch does two things - #1, keeping a battle scar for pride or respect. And #2, it makes opponents think she has a weak point that she doesn't actually have.


 * How exactly did Cinque and Dieci, after being adopted into the Nakajima family, become elder sisters to Subaru? They were produced after Ginga and Subaru, the Type 0 cyborgs, Cinque looks considerably younger than any of the other Numbers (although it is possible Genya thought Dieci looked older than Subaru), and were adopted later than she was.
 * Designated type number =/= when cyborg was built. They actually are older then her or at least Cinque is.
 * Oddly enough, some Numbers arrange seniority by birth order, and others do it by numbering; Quattro complains about Cinque acting like the older sister due to being born shortly before her. Otto doesn't refer to Nove, who was born before her and is after her in Numbering, as an older sister but calls Sein "Sein-neesama".
 * For some reason, Sein's official age is listed as 12 in Striker S, making her younger than all the other Numbers with given ages despite Nove, who is 13 in StrikerS noting that she is supposed to be older than her in Chapter 11 of Vi Vid, and Sein referring to herself as Wendi's older sister when informing her that she's going to rescue Cinque from Subaru in Episode 17 of StrikerS. It's possible that the ages were decided based on mental maturity, since Subaru notes that Dieci and Cinque, the two oldest of the reformed Numbers, are especially "mature and adult-like" in Sound Stage M3.


 * Am I the only one who saw Touma's attack in Force and thought Dividing Driver?
 * Probably, unless DD got convertedt into a Wave Motion Gun at some point in the series (this troper is only about 15 episodes in so far).
 * In that case, Bolting Driver would be more accurate then, since it does similar things in Gao Gai Gar Final.
 * Is it just me, or does it seem odd that they made the part in which Nanoha, Suzuka, Arisa and their families go swimming, a story with a lot of potential for Fan Service (especially with the swimsuit stripping Jewel Seed monster), into a sound stage with no visuals?


 * Does it seem odd that Vivio left a few people whom she owes for her present happiness off her mailing list for her commemorative photo? 1)Yuuno; disregarding the shipping implications of not including him, Sound Stage M3 indicates that the two are somewhat close and he's been teaching her search magic. 2)Shamal and Zafira; Shamal says in Sound Stage M4 that she and Zafira regularly get emails from Vivio with pictures of her and Nanoha, Zafira is Vivio's babysitter of sorts, and Shamal is Nanoha's (and possibly Vivio's) doctor. 3)Teana; in the Striker S sound stages, Vivio states at 2:08 that as Teana is her mother's student and she owes her a lot, she wants to help her with the Mariage investigation, and she's also the only forward not shown getting a picture.
 * Yes, odd indeed. With Teana I suppose one could handwave it by saying that she's on a mission out somewhere where they don't have cellphone reception, but still. It doesn't make a lot of sense.
 * Or most easy answer - she DID sent them, but place in manga is limited.
 * It's particularly strange given that the picture in the bottom-left hand corner of the second page is of Nanoha and Vita, apparently in a flashback (they're both wearing their instructor uniforms), rather than one of the other people. They could also show multiple groups at once, like showing Hayate at home with the Wolkenritter rather than at her desk, or putting all the Saint Church characters together. Then there's also 4)Lindy and the rest of the Harlaown family; Vivio sent a photo to Nanoha's parents and sister, so it's strange that "Fate-mama's" half of the family didn't seem to get one.


 * Just what was going on in the bathtub scene between Hayate and Shamal? At first, I thought it was just leg-scrubbing being viewed from a very amusing angle, so I laughed at the innuendo and moved on. But then, a couple days later, I remembered something. Hayate had specifically described it as feeling good. Which means Shamal couldn't have just been scrubbing her legs, because Hayate, being paralyzed, wouldn't be able to feel it.
 * Supposedly paralyzed women can still feel orgasms, so...I chose to view it as Shamal falling back on what previous masters/mistresses have wanted out of the Wolkenritter, not quite realizing that Hayate's not an amoral Jerkass like the others. Alternately, Hayate's paralysis is not nerve-related, but the result of muscular degeneration or magic, so she can still feel her legs...she just can't actually use them.
 * The viewer can only see what Shamal's left arm is doing, although her right arm doesn't seem to be moving.
 * There is some evidence provided by Dr. Ishida that 1. the paralysis is only to one leg and 2. that the paralysis isn't complete. Indeed it is entirely possible that the problem is in muscle control nerves, which doesn't stop her from feeling sensation.


 * If the TSAB is supposed to be an interstellar, inter-dimensional peace-keeping force, why have we not seen a single non-human sentient being? And no, familiars, constructs, and the like don't count; I mean actual, clearly-not-human aliens. Does the TSAB only oversee the various Earths throughout time-space, or something?
 * Human Aliens played perfectly straight?
 * Gaaryu is extremely upset you forgot him.
 * Garyuu is one of Lulu's summons, and therefore presumably falls into the same category as familiars.
 * He seems to be nearly-always present, however, and I can't recall actually seeing him summoned in the way we see the Jirayo and Lutecia's dragon summoned. Also, the mere form, "summon" argues that he already existed, rather than being a magical construct like a familar.
 * He isn't always present, and while I can't remember seeing him summoned, I recall at least one instance of Lulu "un-summoning" him (whatever the correct term for that is). Granted, though, that summons don't necessarily fall into the same category as familiars. While we're on the topic, Garyuu's characterization in StrikerS Just Bugs Me -- for most of the story he appears to be as mindless as the Jiraiyo, and then in the final battle he all of a sudden shows independent thought. It would have been nice if this had been shown to us beforehand; as it is, I found it quite jarring.
 * The Belkan Empire exterminated all intelligent races that did not look like them.
 * Woah. Where does it say that?
 * I think that's just speculation on the part of the above troper.
 * It is, I admit that, but then again these people made the Book of Darkness and the Saint's Cradle. Would you put it past them?
 * The Saint's Cradle was from Al Hazard, and we don't know whether the changes that made the Book of the Night Sky into the Book of Darkness were intended to turn out the way they did.
 * Back to my original question: where are the aliens? Or is the TSAB entirely (excluding familiars/constructs/summons) composed of humans?
 * Clearly, all the typing above was just us randomly mashing our faces against the keyboard instead of actually trying to answer the question. :/
 * ...Sorry. Can I delete the repeated question, or am I supposed to, by TV Tropes law/tradition, keep it there to be mocked/ridiculed/attacked-for-unnecessaryness?
 * Don't worry about it. You can delete it if you really want (or strike it), but it's not like you're never going to live it down anyway. We're not that kind of site.
 * A good question. It is, in fact, entirely possible that there are no aliens. At all. There are, of course, plenty of planets with nonsentient "alien" life, we see them in A's, but it appears in the Nanohaverse that humans are alone in all of their universes.


 * It's been what, fourteen years since we last saw her, and Takamachi Miyuki still looks like a teenager in Vi Vid! What kind of Oil of Olay is she using?
 * The same as Momoko, Lindy and all other female characters obviously.
 * It's not just the females; Shirou looks no older than he did back in A's, (when he's presumably 40 or so, making him well into his fifties in ViVid).


 * How exactly has Shamal been able to avoid getting hit with Real Women Never Wear Dresses? She's a Yamato Nadeshiko who does much of the housework for the Yagami family, primarily uses her abilities to create barriers and heal people, and her typical outfit in A's is a green shirt with a long white skirt, but despite being one of the more traditionally "feminine" characters in Nanoha, hasn't been criticized for being that. It's not necessarily a bad thing (she's one of my favorite Nanoha characters), but Shamal seems to have most of the characteristics that people complain about under this trope, and it seems unlikely that only the presence of so many Action Girls or her accomplishments (especially taking Nanoha's Linker Core or finding and capturing Otto) would save her from this.
 * Low screentime, being the doc and a dress not being dissimilar from a lab coat? Does it matter, really? Fan Dumb did not take hold. Rejoice while you can.
 * Being a doctor, even a Combat Medic, is probably one of the worst careers a woman can take in an action anime series in the Fan Dumb's eyes, only outranking the Nanohaverse's Bridge Bunnies, the maids and civilians.
 * I imagine it helps that she doesn't really have a whole lot of screentime. The women who get hit with the worst Fan Dumb for being girly also tend to be the ones who are really prominent about it. Shamal isn't exactly a minor character, but she's definitely sort of a side character; there aren't huge segments of every episode devoted to what Shamal is doing. I imagine people aren't quite so vocal about their complaints if the thing they're complaining about is only on-screen for five minutes every third episode. Also... wouldn't complaining about Shamal be sort of like punching a kitten? She's so loveable.
 * I think it might have to do that her first appearance is very badass to say the least. That scene is much more memorable that anything she does after that, conjugate with the fact that she doesn't have much screentime means that Fan Dumb doesn't strike. Another reason might be that Nanoha isn't popular to attract Fan Dumb (here I admit that it's a foolish hope more than anything else).
 * Nanoha doesn't attract Fan Dumb? You're kidding, right?
 * When Fate is beamed aboard the Arthra with Nanoha, Yuuno and Arf, where exactly did her handcuffs and white prisoner uniform come from? Nanoha and Yuuno had been off the ship since their debriefing after the last battle, Arf had never been on the Arthra before, and no one else was seen coming or going from the ship, which raises the question of how they managed to get them on her.
 * Because that moment was NOT right after that? Do you really think that they should have dedicated half episode for that?
 * I was considering more of a brief scene (30 seconds to one minute) in which Chrono calls Nanoha's group, tells them to report back to the Arthra, informs Fate that she's under arrest and has one of the group restrain her.


 * Why is Nanoha Force considered the fourth season? Given that Nanoha Vivid takes place before it souldn't it be th fourth season, and Nanoha Force be the fifth season?
 * Because ViVid is not, in any possible way, about Nanoha, Fate, Hayate, or any previous main character. It thus is more of a side-story.
 * Some people are asking the reverse question: why Force is considered the fourth season, primarily because it's a manga series rather than an anime (It doesn't help that Nanoha has only appeared once so far, in the prologue, and even Fate and Teana haven't shown up very much yet).
 * Actually, Nanoha's returned in Force...and it's tough to tell, but her conversation with Subaru seems to contradict with ViVid. Is Force just ignoring ViVid's existence completely, because the two are running simultaneously?
 * Nanoha mentioned that she and Subaru "hadn't been involved in the same incident" since Riot Force 6. In ViVid, Nanoha works for the government; the opening narration notes that she's resting her wings, and she leaves for work wearing civilian clothing. It's unclear who exactly will be involved in the action (although Vivio, Einhart, Subaru, Teana and Nove are central at the moment), since apart from Einhart in Chapters 1-5, we haven't seen any antagonists.
 * I don't believe they want to spoil ViVid, so they have to make Force look like it's ignoring ViVid. Also, ViVid is a history about Vivio, Einhart and the numbers while Force is about the "main" cast (Nanoha, Fate, Hayate, etc)
 * Sparring battle =/= incident. And who knows? Maybe Subaru and Nanoha don't see each other after the current events in ViVid until Force happens.


 * What significance is a magical word at all? Was it even mentioned at any point during Striker S? Or A's?
 * If you're asking about Yuuno's advice at the begining of season one, it seemed to be more of a memetic trick Yuuno used because he had difficulty using Raising Heart. Then, after Nanoha gets it, she quickly learns she doesn't actually need to say anything special. If you're talking about incantations, they're spells, unless you have so much power and control that you can force the mana to do what you want, you need some kind of ritual to provide the control for you.
 * Its worth noting that for the most part, Nanoha only used her 'personal incantation' (aka, "Lyrical, Magical!") for sealing a Jewel Seed. However, throughout the series, Nanoha at least (and most of the others) use approximately the same motions/actions for using a specific attack - but not always. It's possible that any or all 'external' actions, such as incantations, motions, etc, might be optional - they just help provide the necessary concentration to cast the spell properly.
 * IIRC directly implied actually with example of Fate using weather control magic where they CAN'T be bypassed because of complexity of the spell.


 * Just what is up with the Saint Church? They worship the Belkan line of Saint Kings, that I understand. Where I get confused is the reasoning - they worship the Saint Kings for their role in ending the Saint King Unification War. The problem with this being that, as the name of the conflict indicates, the Saint King Unification War was an attempt by the surviving lineage of Saint Kings to reestablish the ancient Belkan empire, through military force. Their role in ending the centuries-long war was getting killed at the end of it. And the Saint Church was formed around the same time as the Time-Space Administration Bureau, seventy-five years before Striker S, almost immediately following the end of the Unification War.
 * As I understand it the Belkan Empire still existed (at least in name) during the Saint King Unification War, it was simply fighting a multisided civil war. The Saint King Unification War was either an attempt to beat everyone else so badly they wouldn't have the resources and/or morale to fight each other anymore or an attempt to bring peace by creating a common for everyone else to fight against. As for the time it took for the religion to form, most worship-based religions form while the object of worship is still alive.
 * User:Comartemis has a long-held theory that the Belkan Royal Family were actually just figureheads for a group of one or more warmongers or otherwise powerful military figures inside the Belkan Empire, similar to how the Emperor of Japan had no real power on his own during Japan's Sengoku era. Consider what we've seen of the Saint's Cradle, and what's mentioned in the Manual: the Kaisers live their entire lives aboard a secure space-going vessel manned and operated by a combination of military personnel and Type-IV drones. That ship's security system can take control of the Kaiser's body and force her to fight against her will. The Kaiser's throne has restraints on it, and the throne room is a good distance away from the bridge. None of this speaks of a high regard for the person who's supposed to be the highest authority figure in the Empire; it speaks of a person being used as a weapon, just as Jail used Vivio in Striker S. Following this theory, the ones doing all the fighting were the Kaiser's "underlings", her Generals, who acted and fought "in her name" until the Kaiser somehow broke lose from her confinement and brought the truth to the people of the Empire. The Saint King Unification Wars are an analogue to the Meiji Restoration, with the Kaiser's loyalists fighting to defeat the ruling Generals and restore the Kaiser to her place; however at the end of the war, something happens that results in the Kaiser passing away, but not before giving orders to disarm the military and never wage war again. After thousands of years of nonstop fighting, the Belkans are ecstatic to be able to throw down their weapons and have peace for a change, thus ushering in the age of the TSAB and enshrining the Saint King as a great peacemaker.
 * There are a few problems with that theory. First, we don't have the full specifics on the Saint's Cradle, namely which parts of it are original and which are modifications made by Jail. It's implied that Quattro was the one who took control of Vivio in the throne room (via the Relic implanted by Jail), the same way she used her Villain Override on Lutecia, so it's likely that that factor and the restraints on the throne itself were added by Jail to help him control the Sankt Kaiser. As for the throne room being so far away from the bridge, it's worth pointing out that those in command or members of royalty are unlikely to ever be in the position of actually piloting the vessel, so it's a normal practice to put them somewhere out of the way of the people who do the actual work of running the vessel. Also, since as it was pointed out that the Kaisers spend their entire lives on board the vessel, it makes sense in a certain way to have the chambers with a more ceremonial purpose (ie the throne room) positioned away from the more functional aspect of the ship to keep the more noisy and undignified process of running the ship from intruding into matters of state, meaning that in addition to its power as a weapon, the Saint's Cradle also doubles as a massive mobile palace (sort of like how actual palaces kept the servants' areas and facilities out of the way of the throne room and other more "public" areas of the building). So there are a few problems with the above theory.


 * Why is it that everyone seems to think that the Belkan civil war that ended with Sankt Kaiser Olivie happened less than 100 years before the series? Or that the shift from mass-based weapons happened then, and not some other point? I mean, the Magitek and magic system used is far too advanced for just 70 or so years of work. Is it stated somewhere in one of the soundstages or something? Or is all this based purely on the founding date of the TSAB
 * Assumption as far as this troper is aware. The Belkan Empire is considered a subject of archelogical record and not written record, so the odds are pretty good we're talking at least 250 years to eliminate any possiblity of widespread written records or oral history. That or older, pretty much anything goes.
 * I seem to recall a mention of Olivie dying 'around three hundred years ago' in Striker S.
 * The Japanese Nanoha wiki has a rough chronology of Belka's history, and states that the Unification War took place "hundreds of years" before the current story, beginning with the abandonment of the Belkan homeworld and ending with the loss of the Cradle and Olivie's death. I think sometime in StrikerS Fate mentions that the foundations for the TSAB were being put down 150 years before the current date, although the organization in its present form has only existed for about 80 years. It's possible that even the Mid-Childan government and the Saint Church are not entirely sure when it happened, due to the general scarcity of records about it.


 * Have we been given bust-size measurements/charts yet? I'm ASSUMING it's Signum/Shamal > Fate > Nanoha > Hayate, but is this right? And where do Subaru, Teana, Arisa, & Suzuka fit in? And if no-one can find any official info, perhaps someone could make an estimate based on what's seen in the show itself?
 * Teana seems slightly better endowed than Subaru, and Strikers!Arisa and Strikers!Suzuka seem to be between the two of them, so it's most likely Teana->Suzuka->Arisa->Subaru. The four of them seem to fall in between Nanoha and Hayate.
 * Also, who's bigger: Shamal or Signum? And where does Ginga fit in? And, out of curiosity, Precia Testarossa and the First Reinforce?
 * And what about the sizes for the Numbers?
 * Rumiko's Reply: I don't think about such things, and neither should you.
 * What gets me is that people are thinking about this.


 * Wasn't Nove at all concerned about the possible problems that might arise as a result of her, a former criminal, taking half of the responsibility for her fight with Einhart in ViVid? While taking mutual responsibility should lessen each individual party's responsibility, and Nove and Einhart apparently got off with a warning, it seems that the Numbers cyborgs would need to be considerably more mindful of their actions after their release than even Fate and the Wolkenritter are (although the former villains are good at staying out of trouble).
 * I believe it's a combination of a) the fight didn't do any propierty damage nor injuried anybody whatsoever aside from them and b) she didn't feel it was the right thing to do (she accepted the fight after all)


 * So the TSAB's version of Reading Your Rights / You Do Not Have to Say Anything says that if the perp surrenders and disarms they'll be allowed to defend themselves in court. So... does that mean thet if they don't surrender and get beat down befriended, they could just be tried and convicted without a defence?
 * Doubtful. The bureau as a whole has consistently been portrayed as a "good guy" organization, (certain exceptions aside); that sort of stunt would be more in-character for a Police State than for The Federation.
 * Alternatively, they may be implying that they can't guarentee the criminal's safety if they continue to resist (maybe since the TSAB seems Mildly Military, it might be a warning that right now, that person has "criminal" status, but if they continue to fight they'll be considered a "combatant", and priority will be put to stopping them, with them only being captured if the opportunity presents itself rather than making capture the priority).
 * Engaging the Bureau officer sent to arrest you is a crime in and of itself, since doing so places their life and possibly that of bystanders in jeopardy. Fighting them is an automatic conviction, just not necessarily for the crime you were originally accused of. Once you're convicted of attempting to resist arrest for the crime, that can be brought in at trial as a fairly damning indication of guilt; it's not a literal warning so much as advice. As noted above, too, if you chose to fight then the priority becomes taking you down with minimal loss of life and property damage, and then making sure you stay a non-threat. If this requires lethal measures, the Bureau probably won't pat the officer on the back, but they will understand.
 * Erio gives an Evil Poacher this warning in Sound Stage X after he fires on Caro during her attempt to arrest him for his poaching activities, specifically mentioning that he's also under arrest for assaulting an officer. Another possibility is that this is an advisory for people from other worlds who may not be aware of the TSAB's legal system, so that they don't think that it might be better to take their chances and try to escape.


 * In the beginning of the first series, Yuuno gives Nanoha an intelligent device, which is something too complex for him to have made on the spot. Can anybody give a good (or entertaining) reason as to why Yuuno was carrying a device called "Raising Heart"?
 * He's the sensitive guy to Chrono's manly-man?
 * I've always assumed that, being an archaeologist, he dug the thing up and it has some interesting history. That would fit with how it had much less attunement to him than to Nanoha - you'd think if a guy made or bought it, he'd make sure to get one that worked for him.
 * If this is the case, wouldn't Raising Heart be a Mid-Childian Lost Logia?
 * Maybe he's inherited it from his clan, or deceased parents, who knows if her mother is first-gen Wave Motion Gun launcher? and to think that Raising heart is fully offensive, he's wasting his time and used it as last ditch, and he's failed. maybe...
 * ViVid shows Lutecia making a device for Corona, so it's possible for him to make it, although one would think he would customize it for his own abilities. Perhaps the device was given to him by his tribe in the hopes that its focus on offensive magic would offset his weakness in that area.
 * There's a fic that runs with the idea:


 * It's been out in Japan for over a month. Why can't I find a detailed summary (in English) of the Nanoha Movie, so that I can know what happened differently from the original timeline?
 * Here it is. Some of the major changes include making Precia more sympathetic (apparently at Fate's insistence, according to the Nanoha Wiki), some of the battles get changed(the ones in 6 and 7 are fused together, and Episode 5 is removed). Still, much of it remains the same, such as Nanoha and Fate becoming friends in the end,.


 * Why exactly are the Section 6 members sent to Earth in StrikerS Sound Stage 1 less discreet about their affiliation with the TSAB in the presence of people who don't know aobut the TSAB than the crew of the Arthra in A's? Official artworkp seems to depict Hayate, Fate and Nanoha in uniform alongside the Forwards and Rein in casual clothing, and Subaru refers to Vita by her rank in front of a public bath clerk, and Vita claims to be an adult, despite in the StrikerS manga, suggesting that she would have to transform to look older if she revisited Earth, and apparently not doing so on this mission. By contrast, Fate starts to call Lindy "Admiral Lindy" in front of Nanoha's parents in Episode 4 of StrikerS, but corrects herself and calls her "Lindy-san" instead, and Dr. Ishida (who still isn't aware of magic or the TSAB) becomes suspicious when Hayate refers to Letty as "Admiral". Granted, Nanoha's family, Arissa and Suzuka know about the TSAB but it doesn't seem as though the rest of Earth is any more aware.
 * It isn't so bad to The Masquerade when you think of it. About Nanoha, Fate and Hayate's uniforms, they could have changed in Arisa or Suzuka's house (their houses are shown in the background); you can expect having a few clothe changes if you used their houses as arrival points (and it's definitely better than, say, and open park like in The Original Series). About Subaru referring Vita by rank, you could only assume it's something militarly-based, and not a multi-dimensional police (she could have been more careful though). Finally, Vita only wants to look older because she'll go see the grampas who she usually meet; they will certainly suspect of a girl that hasn't aged in 10 years.


 * My pal has this query: What exactly enabled Hayate to master the Tome of the Night Sky? Was it just treating the Wolkenritter as people? Given the Tome's long existence, it should be statistically improbable that there were not hardscrabble Unfettered Determinators who would do anything to survive, even if that includes forcing an ancient WMD to bow to their will.
 * If it were that simple it would probably have been done before, yes, so I'm willing to bet it had something to do with Hayate's treatment of the Wolkenritter. Specifically it probably has something to do with Rein's attitude towards her mistress. If I had to take a guess, I'd say that Reinforce possessing Hayate was something that hasn't happened before; she puts Hayate into her own Lotus Eater Machine where Hayate can sleep happily. I doubt she'd do that for an amoral jerkwad, which probably means that previous owners of the book retained control over themselves when the book was filled but then were consumed from the inside out by the Book after a certain period of time, never knowing that anything was wrong until it was too late to do anything about it. But Hayate's consciousness was sequestered inside the book, and when she woke up her fusion with Rein fed her the information she needed to assume administrator privilages and purge the viral defense program.
 * Or, alternatively, maybe Rein does dump all her masters into a Lotus Eater Machine and Hayate is just the first to have the necessary Heroic Resolve to break out of it.
 * It should be noted that in one of the sound stages Hayate asks Rein to tell her a story from the past that isn't sad, although we don't get to hear it Rein does start to tell her a story. So, it's possible that Hayate wasn't their first kind master.
 * Any link to that translation or anything? Didn't Reinforce sacrifice herself the day after that battle or did it take place when she was still in her book form?
 * It took place while she was still in book form, specificly between episodes 6 and 7 of A's. [
 * There's no reason to assume Reinforce would have wanted to help any of her previous masters, given what we know of the Book. After all, it is a magical WMD; the kind of people who picked it up aren't likely to be nice. As for forcing her, how? She's a magical weapon of mass destruction with a perfect reincarnation scheme. For that matter, we have no reason to believe that anyone also had any friendly, extremely powerful mages around to help them beat up a berserked defense program. Fixing the Book of Darkness is not as simple as being a Determinator. The fact Rein can tell a happy story from the past doesn't prove anything about the kindness of previous masters. It could well be the story of a heroic mage who killed the master of the book and saved a planet.


 * Since minors in Japan need the permission of their parents or guardians to get a cell phone, and this is explicitly mentioned in series (In the Sound Stages, Fate points this out and Chrono suggests that his mother, as her legal guardian prior to her adoption, can give her permission), how did Hayate, being an orphan, get a cell phone for Shamal? One of the DVDs points out that even though Shamal can use telepathy to call Hayate has a cell phone that Hayate gave her, but left it at home during the battle in Episode 2 of A's, and in Episode 8, Shamal receives mail from Suzuka addressed to her on her cell phone.
 * Depends on your definition of "give". For example: Hayate tells Shamal that they're going to get her a cell phone, so they go to the nearest electronics store. From the point of view of the salesperson, if a kid and an adult walk together into your store, and the kid grabs a phone and asks to buy it, he or she is likely to assume that the adult is the parent or guardian of the child. And even if they don't, nothing's stopping Hayate from just having Shamal be the one to make the purchase.


 * Fanficdom seems to like assuming that TSAB would push Nanoha and Fate to have lots of high-powered babies, thus being a threat to their presumed relationship and a pressure supporting Yuuno x Somebody. Buuut... their society has artificial insemination (trivial), cloning (Fate, Vivio, Zest, cyborgs), people tubes that aren't just artificial wombs but seem to bring someone to a desired physical age (Fate, Zest, Numbers), and genetic recombination (Numbers 1-4, being part Jail -- in Uno's case, a female Jail.) Admittedly, some of the latter may be illegal, recently perfected in secret experiments, and/or Lost Logia-dependent.
 * Aside from the artificial insemination, all of that falls under Scaglietti's Project Fate, which is bleeding-edge technology that has only just been perfected (Fate herself being one of the early trial runs). This troper doesn't know what Midchilda's laws on cloning are, but given that Scaglietti of all people was heading the project, it's probably illegal technology.


 * So the need for conventional families is rather nil. At the minimal end, eugenicists may 'need' Fate and Nanoha to get pregnant, but all they need is a turkey baster and someone's sperm. (I'm not sure Yuuno's A-level is really what you want to be breeding with a natural S+ like Nanoha.) At the other extreme, they can cook up as many clones or combinations of Fate, Nanoha, Zest, and maybe Signum (if she manifests DNA) as they wish, with no one needing to get pregnant, and the only limit being how many loving adoptive homes they can find. Pressure to raise kids, not to have them.
 * I'm still wondering why Jail didn't try to create android versions of Nanoha and Fate considering he been cloning 12 androids? It can't be that hard to collect their DNA, could it?
 * We don't know that some of the Numbers aren't exactly that. The Combat Cyborg process, though, seems to damage magical ranking; official materials rank the Combat Cyborgs based on a rough mage equivalent to their augmentations, not raw magical power, and none of the post-Striker S manga have depicted them as having any great talent for raw magic, just the Combat Cyborg augmentations.
 * The augmentations seem to reflect physical strength, rather than magical power. Otto has fairly powerful energy blasts, but her augmentations are only B-rank, and while Nove's are AAA-rank, she doesn't seem much stronger than Subaru (AA-rank by the end of StrikerS), as she gets knocked aside and injures her arm during Subaru's Unstoppable Rage, and fights roughly evenly with her in ViVid.


 * Why doesn't Alicia look like Precia. how does someone with purple hair give birth to a blond
 * Perhaps Alicia's father was blond.
 * Why not give birth to a blonde? Genetics does that sometimes.


 * Why exactly do most of the villains (except the Wolkenritter, who were trying to keep their activities a secret from Hayate, and one time when Arf is wearing a yukata while approaching Nanoha at the hot springs) seem to wear their Barrier Jackets all the time, even outside of combat, until their capture and/or Heel Face Turn? Chrono implies that Nanoha might be more comfortable if she dispelled her barrier jacket after coming on board the Arthra with her, which seems to imply that they require magical energy and/or conscious effort (after Nanoha loses for the first time against Fate, she wakes up inside Suzuka's house in her civilian clothes) to maintain, and which is why the heroes remove them once danger has passed.


 * How did Nanoha became famous on Midchilda? It's like hearing a police officer or someone in the military here get famous. We hear about it then a few months later we forget. but everyone on Midchilda consider her an Idol despite not doing anything big between A's and Striker S.
 * We don't know much about that yet, she serves the TSAB for about two or three years before her accident, and according to Vita's narration she already was "the ace loved by everyone", after her recovery she reasumes duty and attend other things but about the more detailed and important one are the case rlated to the first apparition of the gadget drones and the airport's fire incident where she and the other two aces came to save everyone even when they are offduty at the moment.
 * Hayate complains that the news report doesn't mention Nanoha and Fate, since they weren't officially there, and presumably Subaru, Ginga and the other survivors they helped are the only ones who remember.
 * Nanoha isn't just in the military. She's also essentially Superman. If the kind of power she wields doesn't capture the public imagination then the public there is braindead.
 * It's possible that her track record of service helped, as Fate has done 21 cases in the years between when she became and Enforcer and when StrikerS began, and the cases are important, but not exciting enough to make into series. Similarly, Subaru and Teana become "well-respected," among the Bureau, according to Nove, in the years between StrikerS and Vi Vid, and Subaru is the "Silver Ace" as of Sound Stage X.
 * Subaru notes in the manga that she was already famous as a nine year old due to the fact that she's an AAA ranked mage, and her most noted accomplishments ("Precia Testarossa Incident" and "Book of Darkness incident") were wide spread rumors throughout the military. Add the fact that Subaru carries a magazine clipping with Nanoha's picture all the time probably suggests that the Mid Childian media got to interview her at one point and set her as a role model for young mages who would want to enter the military.


 * Jail Scaglietti's exit strategy relies on He keeps sending these same soldiers out into battle, where they  are put at significant risk of harm in ways that could be very bad for a . I don't think he's thought this through.
 * To be fair, Scaglietti states that they have the genetioc material(or something like that) that would made them pregnant the instant he dies. That's one of the reasons of why Fate decides to HOME RUN'd him instead of the big slash(but i think she will spare hin anyways because Fate is the goodest of the good guys) and probably why his soldiers are able to fight without worrying about a developing fetus.
 * Uno and Quattro were meant to avoid direct confrontation with the enemy, and Otto (whom we will assume to be female here) was out of the way for most of the battle, with Shamal only being able to find her with Klarer Wind. Due also was hidden for most of the battle, leaving four good chances for in separate locations, even if one is also at his headquarters. One question is what happens if multiple cyborgs happen to, since Quattro was the only one at large after Scaglietti's defeat. , or would only one Number be "chosen" to  And how would  be triggered, since Scaglietti implies that it's automatic?


 * The AEC weapons do not make sense for Vita and Signum. Both of them use Devices that are recognizeably and used like non-Device weapons. Magic is not necessary and not often used for attacking an opponent by either one; Vita inflicts blunt force trauma with a hammer and Signum cuts with a blade. The anti-magic method used by the Huckebein offers no protection against a purely physical effect like a blade or hammer to the head. Furthermore, just to prove the point, Signum actually came very close to killing Cypha with Laevatein! There was nothing wrong with either of their existing weapons, and giving them AEC ones is wasteful.
 * I know how you feel, but there are important reasons for the Armed Devices to be replaced, apparently the Huckebein's anti-magic affects their durability somehow and also they have really tough bodies(that can be even tougher when they "react"), supposedly Cypha's toughness would allow her to stop cold Signum but she cuts trough her anyway severely damaging Laevateinn in the process and then attacks again detroying her own sword completely(it says something when you destroy your own weapon with the sheer force of your attacks). Supposedly neither inteligent, storage or armed devices stand a chance against a reacted Eclipse Driver, still don't explain why Subaru's Revolver Knuckle(an armed device) don't get replaced, probably because is less prone to breaking because is uses blunt force instead of cutting, but then there's Graf Eisen that also uses blunt force(far greater than Revolver Knuckle) but gets sended to rest in favor of the AEC War Hammer. I'll think the only thing Signum needs to kick Cypha's butt to the next Tuesday is a sword that don't breaks(Cypha defeated her because she's immune to her attacks, but showed to be pretty unable to stop Signum from hitting her, she on the other hand is only able to land a hit after Signum gets disarmed).
 * The above theory is bullshit because the Huckbein have no resistance to physical weapons beyond what a barrier jacket would provide; if they did, there wouldn't be much point to using mass weapons against them now, would there? There's a simpler reason for the upgrades that doesn't rely on bashing the story or using Mid Season Upgrade as justification for it; it's because we've been misunderstanding exactly how devices are constructed. I think it's a common belief that devices are completely mechanical constructs composed of magically-enhanced parts, but I have an alternative theory: the devices are composed of several moving parts and internal components like the cartridge system and the AI cores, which are contained in a chassis made of magical matter, like the stuff Vita makes her Swallow Fliers out of. This is why devices can be repaired with spells like Fate's Recovery technique; so long as the internal components are unharmed, a device's chassis can be broken and repaired over and over again if necessary because the mage can simply recreate the matter used to form the device. The downside of this is that magical matter is created out of linked mana, which makes it vulnerable to cancelation by the Huckbein's Zero Effect. Thus, the Huckbein aren't immune to physical weapons, they're immune to physical weapons made of magic.
 * That's not confirmed yet, also the AEC equipement failed to do significant lasting damage to anyone of the Huckebeins so far(this is even pointed out recently by Fortis, he ackowledges Nanoha's Fortress Mode notorious power but also states that is useless because an infected person can regenerate any harm done to him anyway), by the moment the only benefit the AEC gives to team Hayate is the possibility to actually fight back without getting all their attacks cancelled but an effective method to actually defeat one of them is still yet to see. About the "Toughness" this is pointed out quickly by Signum herself(telling to Agito that it feels like if she's just hitted something really hard), also Zero Effect cancel out any magically linked construct on contact, Laevatein damages only after Signum connects a successful, poweful hit, and when Cypha breaks it, the once mighty belkan sword breaks into various solid fragments. We see how zero effect works by seeing Cypha nullifyng Agito's multi-fireball spell, if devices we're so easily to "dispell" Laevatein will just have dissapeared instead of breaking(and also doesen't explain why Revolver Knuckle, again an Armed Device, is still used if devices are supposedly easy targets for the Hucks). My complementing theory is that maybe Devices are constructed from certain physical material and get their durability and resistance enhaced by magic, then Zero Effect dispell said enhacing and the device gets reduced to a simple staff/weapon made of common materials(again, Cypha explicity states that bladed weapons are also useless against them). By conclusion, even if the huckebein aren't totally immune to physical attacks they're still very darn tough and also have their ridiculously powerfull regenerative powers if said toughness isn't enough.


 * What does cross-mirage turn into when it isn't set up? Is it some kind of card or something?
 * Yes. Chrono's Devices (S2U and Durandal) have a similar dormant mode.
 * Doesn't seem very practical compared to most devices. Teana would need big pockets to carry that thing around.
 * Bureau uniforms seem to have at least one sufficiently large coat pocket, since Nanoha is only seen wearing Raising Heart as a pendant on a few occasions while in uniform.
 * It's around the size of her hand, and comparable in size to Bardiche in standby. It can't be worn as a pendant like devices such as Raising Heart can, but it's relatively easy to store.


 * What happened to Vivio being an unstoppable combat monster in her Sankt Kaiser form at the end of Striker S? It might be due to having a Worthy Opponent, but she has a lot of difficulty standing up to Einhart, who in turn was earlier shown to have been badly beaten up by Nove. Granted it's mostly pure close combat, but still...
 * Her being unstoppable in StrikerS had a lot to do with being plugged into the Cradle and receiving massive amounts of magical energy from it. In ViVid, she's just running off of her own magic powers, which, while impressive, are nothing compared to what she was channeling back then.
 * Explicitly confirmed in Chapter 19. Shante says that Vivio not having her Sankt Kaiser abilities is one of a few reasons why she's concerned about her competing in the tournament. Deed doesn't contest her arguments but suggests Vivio has potential.
 * Kaiser Vivio also seemed to rely more on sheer power rather than skill when fighting Nanoha, so taking that away leaves a relative amateur who watched several other magical combatants in action and, as of ViVid, has some informal training. It thus makes sense that without that power, her combat ability is significantly decreased.


 * Is it ever explained why Zafira apparently dislikes being in human form enough to not use it apart from combat or teaching kids martial arts? The only indication we get of how he feels about it is a silent shot of Shamal and Hayate showing him the clothes Hayate bought for him as he remains in wolf form, apparently trying but failing to get him to put them on. Staying in wolf form has some disadvantages for him, as he never gets to visit Hayate in the hospital during A's (and thus arrives late to Nanoha and Fate's final battle with the others, only coming in after the masked men show up), presumably not being allowed in the building.
 * It could be that wolf form is his "normal" mode. When he turn to human mode, he still has the charasteristics of wolf. So human form might be "combat form". Of course, it could just be his preference to remain in wolf form.


 * Well, ViVid Ch. 18 is out and the story is progressing very well in my opinion, there's just a little thing that just bugs me. Nove tell to the girls her expectations about them on the tournament saying that probably neither of the newbies(Vivio, Rio and Corona) can't probably past any match against an elite-class fighter and saying Einhart that while she has a bit more chances she probably won't be able to pass above the elite-preliminaries. While i can understand that Vivio and her friends are jus girls training for fun, thing about Einhart are a bit confusing leading me to asking some questions:
 * It's not supossed that Einhart became notorious precisely for search and beat grown up professionals? It's a bit jarring that she's suddenly an inexperienced girl with few possibilities to reach a high place on the tournament and...
 * As I recall, Einhart was only fighting random street brawlers, probably ones without very much or even any magic power, and she was only 'notorious' among a few in-the-know members of law enforcement in no small part due to the fact she was claiming to be a long-dead emperor from Old Belka.
 * Isn't suppossed that Einhart beat Nove?(you know, a combat cyborg and former terrorist idetified as a legitimate threat by the TSAB). So, if the tournament are full of people who can beat Einhar, and she's able to beat a combat cyborg ...well, you get the idea.
 * Nove also lost a 3-on-1 battle against Teana, and got knocked aside by Subaru during her Unstoppable Rage before Cinque ordered her to retreat. It's possible that she's one of the weaker cyborgs, or was unlucky when she lost (particularly when Einhart didn't go down immediately after her final strike).
 * Einhart is younger (age and growth influence physical strength, and possibly magical power) and less experienced than many of the contestants, some of whom have competed before. Nanoha notices that while Einhart has considerable power, her technique is somewhat unrefined. There's also the important point that she has two months to improve, which may help somewhat in closing the gap, as will her device.


 * The moment Nanoha knows that Yuuno is a human just bug me.Shouldn't she shows more reaction than "eh.. you're a boy?" I mean, he lives in her room, probably watch her changed clothes(though unintentionally) take a bath together(during ferret mode) and sleep in a same room... Sure Yuuno is not a pervert( I hope) but is Nanoha so naive?? Really, she should show more reaction than surprised( a bit angry and embarrassment in mind)...
 * She is propably too young to think it that way. Also, she was having a lot more in her mind at the moment. Considering that it was Nanoha who dragged Yuuno all that, she really doesn't have any right to complain. If you look at the serie, it's Yuuno who gets embarrased when Nanoha does something and he sleeps in his own bed.
 * One part that's fairly odd is that Chrono, within a few minutes of meeting Yuuno, tells him that he can dispel the transformation magic on himself, but Fate assumes Yuuno's a familiar and Nanoha apparently thinks that being a ferret is his natural form (see the top of the page). I wonder why Yuuno's use of transformation was obvious to Chrono but not to the other characters who first saw him in ferret form.
 * Chrono had backup from the Athra, who could have told him Yuuno was transformed.
 * Chrono's also a fair bit more knowledgeable than Fate, Arf, or Nanoha were at the time, being a fully trained Enforcer. Perhaps there are some subtle differences between familiars and Animorphism that he could pick up.


 * Another one is why Mid-Childa has Golden weeks holiday?
 * Please explain. Are you talking about when Nanoha and co. ended saving Subaru and Ginga because of the airport fire? I can only guess Nanoha, Fate and Hayate had some leave time/vacation/etc. (word?) saved and they used some then. Actually, it makes more sense if those days aren't holidays, as police forces usually don't give leave time on holidays.
 * Yes, that one. if Nanoha and co. really take the vacation on the same time with Japan, why didn't they return to Earth? It has almost no meaning if you take the vacation on that day and didn't return home.
 * Don't forget that they also were middle schoolers by that point, so if they want to go on vacation they need to coordinate the TSAB holidays with middle school holidays. Nanoha and co. just happened to choose an off-world location for vacation.


 * Why didn't Precia do something like, say, create a soulless/mindless/"blank" clone body of Alicia and transfer her soul/neural patterns/actual brain into it, effectively bringing her back? I know the real reason is so we viewers (and Nanoha) could have Fate, but in-story?
 * It might be impossible in the Nanohaverse, since no concept of a literal "soul" is mentioned at any point, and the means by which Alicia died (radiation according to the movie) might have precluded it. Alternatively, Precia might have had that plan or something similar, but needed Al Hazard's technology to carry it out.
 * Fate was a prototype of a not fully devolved technology. Scaglietti had a perfected version of the Fate project.
 * Original poster adding on with an idea from the Halo expanded universe: I don't know exactly how widespread the damage to Alicia's body was, but unless the girl's brain was damaged couldn't Precia have clone-grown organs to replace the damaged-beyond-functionality ones in Alicia's body (as well as her own damaged lungs)? Was she merely too far in the grips of insanity to think of this, or was it an impossibility with the tech she had access to?
 * Can the cloning tech create a blank slate clone? I don't think so. They made it pretty clear that Fate was her own person, Alicia's memories notwithstanding. Even if it could at a later point, when Precia used it it was still in development and hadn't had all the bugs worked out. As for the immediately preceding question, in the movie, Precia says that Alicia's body is perfectly intact, but that her soul has left it. So it isn't a physical problem, per se. We also don't know if the cloning tech was even capable of cloning specific body parts.


 * Also, whatever happened to Precia's husband, Alicia & Fate's father?
 * It's possible that he's dead, and Precia's inability to turn to anyone for support, combined with the fact that Alicia was the only family she had left compounded the tragedy. The Red Jewel Diaries of MGLN Crisis suggests that Precia to become pregnant and have Alicia.


 * Why did some of the Numbers get locked up and others rehabilitated? Sure, in one or two cases it's obvious, but other than that the divisions seemed really arbitrary.
 * Because ones in rehabilitation had chosen to do so, duh. Actually it's pretty clearly divided by age with older ones stayed loyal to Jail, and younger ones decided to try to live on their own. With exception of Cinque who decided that younger ones need watchfull eye and that she is more loyal to them than to Jail, and Sette who could get free past because she was youngest and less involved but stayed in jail because of her loyality to Tre.
 * Riiiight. That's clear, is it?
 * Sound Stages, duh!
 * As well as several conversations before their capture, particularly Teana's "You don't have to be a weapon" speech.
 * In the Sound Stages, Zest also points out that unlike Numbers 1 through 4, who inherited the Doctor's DNA, Numbers 6 and up are, in his eyes, somewhat like children and pitiable. He also mentions that Number 5, Cinque, watched over him for some time, and agrees with Lutecia's desire for her to recover from her injuries.


 * From the first movie. Where the F*** does Nanoha and Fate's final battle take place?! Where did that flooded city come from? Did the giant storm that the mass Jewel Seed activation flood Tokyo or some other costal city? Or does the Movie continuity occupy a Shared Universe with Neon Genesis Evangelion?
 * It was a simulation battlefield generated by the Arthra out in the ocean. They did this so that Nanoha and Fate would be free to fight with no restrictions (such as regard for public property). In StrikerS, Nanoha uses a similar system to set up training areas for her students.
 * Interestingly enough, in the original version, the fight happens just off the coast of Uminari with no arena in place, and none of the atttacks came close to impacting the surrounding area.


 * So the TSAB have banned "mass-based weapons". Does this cover all non-magical weaponry, or does it just banprojectile, explosive, and nuclear/thermonuclear weaponry while excluding/allowing directed-energy weapons (particle beams, lasers, blasters, plasma weapons, etc)?
 * I'll go with the guessing that the ban cover "all" mass-basewd weaponary. Otherwise it will be hard to explain why on earth the TSAB send a bunch of elite mages with faulty equipement against the Huckebein just to get their asses kicked when it will be much more easily to simply send a massive group of corps armed with non-magical machine guns and grenade launchers.


 * Why is Nanoha's attack on Teana during the "White Devil Incident" merely considered no more than a slight overreaction by the characters? It's a direct assault on Teana's person, even if the stun-setting on Nanoha's spell ensures that instead of bone breakage or internal bleeding, Teana only spends five hours lying unconscious in a hospital bed and has to be removed from combat readiness status for a while after waking up due to the strain Nanoha's spell put on her body. Nanoha's actions weren't even necessary from a discipline standpoint, either. Stripping Teana of her weapons, mission clearance, and practice authorization while reducing meal- and rec-time while increasing chores for two weeks would have made for a miserable half a month without damaging the working relationship between Nanoha and Teana. It also wouldn't have put Teana out of action in the event of an emergency.
 * First off, Teana wasn't out for so long because of Nanoha's attack, she was out for so long because she was completely exhausted from over-training. She badly needed sleep, and her body took the first opportunity it had to get it. Also, I don't think they removed from combat readiness because she was recovering, but because they didn't think they could fully trust her after the extremes she went to in the last mission (her attitude upon hearing she was grounded certainly didn't help her case). In any case, Nanoha's... "correction" served several purposes: not only did it knock Teana out when she was clearly not in a sound state of mind, it also showed Teana just how effective shooting magic was. This was a point Nanoha wanted to make to Teana, since Teana was doubting the effectiveness of her own shooting magic, and that was driving her to over-work, something which Nanoha really does not want to see happen. She wasn't necessarily trying to punish Teana per se, she was trying to show Teana that she doesn't need to overwork herself... just be more patient and the strength she wants will come. Heavy-handed? Maybe, but that's Nanoha for you.
 * Nanoha mentions that Teana's physical and magical condition are less than optimal.
 * There's also one of Teana's flaws as a character that creates a vicious cycle; whenever she makes a mistake, she gets depressed and tries to work harder to make up for it, which often leads to making another mistake (the problem started when she wanted to work hard to make up for almost shooting Subaru during the hotel mission, and her deciding to go on the offensive there was influenced by a desperate need to contribute after believing she didn't do much in Episode 5 or Striker S Sound Stage 1). This lesson appears to have stuck, because in Striker S Sound Stage X, after, something Teana feels responsible for, she takes a leave of absence and returns to reduced duties for a while.
 * It was Nanoha's duty as an instructor to control the situation and mete out discipline, but she chose an overly forceful and counterproductive way to do it. It doesn't matter how safe the shots Nanoha fired were, shooting Teana down was a declaration of hostile intent, whether Nanoha wanted to send that message or not. Mages launch attacks like that at their enemies. Blasting Teana in such a fashion qualifies as assault since it was clearly painful, it caused unconcsiousness (even though that unconsciousness was exacerbated by Teana's physical condition) and it caused low-grade medical trauma. (The show states that Teana can't help the Forwards repel the drones that show up, since Teana can't risk further strain on her body after being hit with Nanoha's shots.) Shooting Teana like that was along the bounds of a Real Life drill instructor tasering a recalcitrant student.
 * Did you not notice the knife-attack Teana used on Nanoha? You know... how it cut up Nanoha's hand, and how Tea's intended strategy was for Subaru to distract Nanoha so she wouldn't be able to defend against it? Nanoha's "declaration of hostile intent" is irrelevent, because Tea had already declared her own hostile intent. Shooting Teana like that was along the bounds of a Real Life drill instructor tasering a recalcitrant student who had just opened fire on them with live ammunition (probably with intent to "only wound" rather than kill, but hardly disproportionate or out-of-bounds).
 * Nanoha clearly wasn't acting in self-defense when she shot Teana; Nanoha had stopped Teana's strike cold already. If Nanoha had shot Teana immediately when Teana prepared to shoot her, then I would have no problem considering Nanoha's actions as a case of self-defense. However, Nanoha deliberately waited a few seconds before opening fire. Furthermore, Nanoha's words to Teana ("I guess I'll cool your head a bit") and Nanoha's words to Subaru ("stay put and watch closely") make it clear that the Nanoha's actions were intended as punishment. No amount of bad behavior justifies being shot at, even if the blast is only made with stun-ammo that puts the target in the hopsital for nearly half a day. It doesn't matter what Teana did, there are ways to punish her that don't involve scaring her and making her feel pain. Consider: how would you feel about listening to Nanoha if she punished you by shooting you, as opposed to punishing you by confining you to quarters for two weeks?
 * Firstly, Militaries don't work on the principle of "Well, you just fired on the drill sergent, but you aren't shooting now, so it's okay". She attacked Nanoha with intent to harm, showed severe mental instability, and never gave anybody a reason to believe that she wasn't going to attack again. In fact, if you'll actually watch the scene this time, you'll notice that the timeline goes something like this: A)Teana attacks Nanoha with her improvised knife. B) Nanoha Blocks. C) Teana jumps back, points her guns at Nanoha, and starts charging up a shot. D) Nanoha opens fire on Teana. Take note of item C on that list, because it's a bit important and you seem to be ignoring it.
 * Nanoha shoots Teana with intent to  punish.  If Nanoha attacked as soon as Teana had her gun up, then I'd believe that Nanoha's response was correct. Instead Nanoha waits two or three seconds, tells Teana that she's punishing her, and deliberately uses Teana's own signature move to attack her. Nanoha also tells Subaru to consider this a lesson. The problem isn't that Nanoha shot Teana. The problem is that Nanoha shot Teana in order to punish her.
 * The intent is meaningless (and also entirely speculatory on your part. How do you know what Nanoha was thinking?). Nanoha's actions of removing the threat presented by an armed, mentally unstable soldier using the means surest to completely remove any threat posed by the soldier are completely reasonable. Frankly, by this time Teana has assaulted a member of the TSAB, meaning that Nanoha would be well within her rights to treat her like a criminal.
 * Actually, the timeline went more like - A)Teana attacks Nanoha with her improvised knife. B) Nanoha Blocks. C) Teana jumps back, points her guns at Nanoha, and starts charging up a shot. D) Nanoha opens fire on Teana. E) Nanoha's first shot leaves Tia stunned and helpless F) Nanoha calmly tells Subaru to pay attention, G) Nanoha lines up again and fires at a helpless, near-unconscious Teana. That second volley pushes the scene from "possibly justifiable, if very heavy-handed, lesson" and into "completely unnecessary brutality".
 * If Nanoha is worried that Teana is a danger to everyone, why does it take her fourteen seconds to raise her hand to blast Teana? If we cut the anime a little slack and decide to allow Teana a free action for her speech, it still takes five seconds fore Nanoha to raise her hand to fire. She does it slowly, too. Nanoha brings Teana down at her leisure. Next is the fact that Nanoha deliberately uses Teana's own signature attack to do the deed. That's simply a strike at Teana's pride. Then there's the matter of what Nanoha says during the punishment. "I guess I'll cool your head a bit" and "stay still and watch this." The scene portrayed here is not one of Nanoha putting Teana down because she's acting unstable. The way Nanoha behaves throughout this incident depicts someone administering discipline.
 * Consider what would happen if Nanoha was an actual enemy. She would've easily killed both Subaru and Teana because of their plan not being well thought out and therefore easy to anticipate and the fact that one of them was not in the best shape. If anything, Nanoha was demonstrating to Subaru what would happen to Teana if she continues her training philosophy and rash behavior in the most realistic, though cold hearted, way possible. And don't forget that Nanoha is willing to do anything just to get her point across.
 * Nanoha's "demonstration" put Teana in the hospital and did short-term damage to Teana's body. Drill sergeants are tough, mean bastards for a reason; if military recruits can't stand up to the rigors of basic training, then they have no business trying to handle the stress of live combat. There's a line between hazing your trainees, and physically abusing them. I'd have to say that any action that puts someone in the hospital falls in the latter category. Besides, what's Nanoha's White Devil Moment supposed to accomplish that something less extreme can't? If Teana can't figure out that she fucked up then she has no business being in the military anyway. What's more, such extreme disciplinary measures invite fear, resentment, or both. It doesn't matter if those reactions are inappropriate for a trainee, Teana would have to be superhuman not to have some sort of negative reaction towards Nanoha for what she did. And those feelings only serve to complicate the lesson Nanoha was trying to deliver and make it less likely Teana understand why she was in the wrong. (I'm not saying Teana would be correct in aforementioned defiance, just that they're a likely byproduct of Nanoha's actions.)
 * Teana was well aware of her condition (or at least she seems to be) before the mock battle commenced but due to her desire to get stronger, deliberately ignores it. Nanoha's training shots probably doesn't hurt that much if one is in top physical condition but since Teana had been overworking herself and was lacking rest, to her the training bullets seemed and felt like lethal ones. Shamal even pointed out that she didn't suffer any serious injuries but since her body was over fatigued even the doctor assumed that she was dead the moment she got sent to the infirmary.And with regards to being "extreme", I'm guessing the objective of Teana's plan was to incapacitate Nanoha to demonstrate that she's a capable, all around mage,the problem is that she intended to physically injure Nanoha so Nanoha simply responded in kind, but was sensible and responsible enough enough not to use anything other than training grade bullets so as to not cause serious injuries. And it's not like they didn't have any negative reaction to the incident; Subaru, who's probably Nanoha's biggest fangirl, was visibly upset when her friend and partner was mercilessly shot down.After the incident, Fate mentioned that the two forwards were showing signs of resentment, leading to the confrontation during episode 9, when Teana was taken off combat readiness. Her remark to Nanoha's order was; "In short, you do not have use for people who do not follow your orders, right?" She then follows this remark with " I have done everything that I was told to do, Even concerning the things with regards to my training. Do I have to follow everything that you say, even concerning the amount of effort I put off the field?" explicitly stating that she is very much dissatisfied with the way things are turning out. After she got punched by Signum for being "A selfish brat" Subaru comes to her partner's defense, asking Signum if putting extra effort to becoming stronger in one's own way was a bad thing. They would've kept their feelings of resentment if Shari had not stepped in and explained Nanoha's history to the forwards with Signum giving them a pep talk about when to push one's self to the limit.
 * It should be noted that Subaru concedes that Teana was out of line with her outburst immediately before asking Signum the question. Her fandom of Nanoha has limits, but the same can be said of her support for Teana.
 * Subaru's admiration of Nanoha may have limits, but the same can't be said on her support for Teana (why else do you think rainbows are straighter than her?). A good example of how far she's willing to go for her partner is when Teana misfired during their operation at Hotel Augusta. She tried taking the blame for Teana's mistake by making up excuses, painting herself as the incompetent one (Vita didn't buy it). She even stated that she's prepared for any punishment and she was pretty used to getting scolded the night before the "White Devil Incident", but assures Teana that as long as they show results, then everything will be fine, so she's well aware of the possible results of their plan and is probably banking on the idea that Nanoha will be nice enough to overlook the dangerous aspects of their plan in favor of the results it may bring.


 * I get that the series has an Improbably Female Cast, I accept that. It does however bug/confuse me that in the big city tournament in Vivid that there doesn't seem to be a single boy, not even an unnamed background extra, competing. Is the tournament said to be divided by gender lines somewhere, or is Mid-Childa just some female only society?
 * I would assume that the tournaments are gender-divided, at least on the child/teenager side.


 * Is Chrono and Lindy's surname a Shout Out to anything? Google doesn't give anything that's obviously relevant.
 * Does it have to be? Perhaps the writers were simply trying to think of an exotic name that doesn't sound Japanese or of Earth origin, and only started going into Theme Naming and references when the Midchildians comprised the majority of the cast in Striker S..


 * How did you think Mid-Childa became the dominant power in the Nanoha-verse. I mean, Velkan technology seemed more advanced in so much as modern Mid-Childan technologies still fail to grasp some Velkan originated stuff (Unison Devices such as Rein and Agito are examples)
 * The Velkan homeworld was lost to an unspecified magical accident, and then the remaining Velkan peoples ripped each other apart in a massive civil war. The civilization quite literally destroyed itself. Now there's a couple hundred year gap in the history at this point, but Mid-Childa was the most powerful entity around after Velka's fall, and so gained dominance. Even the Mid-Childans don't seem to know what happened during that gap.