Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid



Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid is the fourth entry into the main Nanoha continuity and the first to debut as a manga and not anime. It began running in Comp Ace in 2009. It's set four years after Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Striker S and one year after Striker S Sound Stage X.

ViVid is actually more a Spin-Off than a true sequel and features Nanoha's and Fate's adopted daughter Vivio (first introduced in StrikerS) as a Magical Girl Warrior that turns into her teenage form when she needs to battle with the power of Sacred Heart - her... bunny plushie Device. That's right, it's a return to more traditional Magical Girl fare, complete with a rival Magical Girl in the form of Hegemon Ingvalt, a king from the era of Ancient Belka similar to Vivio. It also has many recurring characters from StrikerS, including the reformed Numbers cyborgs.

The series is a lot Lighter and Softer than any other incarnation of Nanoha and so far lacks a major antagonist and an over-arcing plot. It is by no means less action-packed though, as it focuses heavily on magical martial arts and feels much like a shonen series with magical girls. So far it's also the most successful in terms of sales figures.

NOTE: Only general tropes for the series are listed here. For character-specific ones, check out the character sheets.

MGLN ViVid provides examples of:
"Einhart: It must be wonderful to have two such gentle and family-devoted mothers... but they can do magical combat too? Nove: *starts collapsing in giggles behind Einhart and Vivio*"
 * Barbie Doll Anatomy: Used extensively in transformation sequences, but averted with the adults in all other cases.
 * Curb Stomp Battle: A few on- and off-screen ones during the opening of the Tournament Arc. Chapter 25 has a montage of team Nakajima curbstomping unnamed opponents.
 * Demoted to Extra: With the exceptions of Vivio, Lutecia and a few of the Numbers, all the other recurring characters have had their screen time cut, even Nanoha and Fate. This isn't a bad thing though, as Vivio and Einhart do a very good job of copying their dynamic and a new generation of magical girls are stepping in to fill the gaps.
 * Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Sankt Kaiser, until chapter 3, where her name was finally revealed to be Olivie.
 * Expy: The Sankt Kaiser looks exactly like Saber.
 * Fantastic Fighting Style: Strike Arts and Kaiser Arts. All the named rivals in the tournament arc have some uniquely named fighting style, but it's not clear whether they are officially recognised or just their own variations.
 * Fighting Series: With Magical Girls.
 * Genre Shift: On the surface it appears to be an attempt to return the series to its roots of Magical Girl cuteness, but it's so overloaded with various martial-arts related tropes, one could almost be forgiven for mistaking it for a shonen fighting series.
 * Hit Points: Used in both the mock battle and the Inter-dimensional tournament in order to prevent the fights from dragging for too long and increasing the risk of injuries. Even so fighters can be KO'd before their hit points reach zero.
 * Hot Springs Episode: Chapter 11.
 * Let's Get Dangerous: What everyone looked like to Einhart when she first gets to see Nanoha & Co. in action.


 * Lighter and Softer: Stubbornly defies the franchise's gradual slippage into Darker and Edgier territory by ditching most of the military sci-fi elements and playing up the franchise's Magical Girl roots with a dosage of Kung Fu Wizard for good measure.
 * Loads and Loads of Characters: It includes appearances from characters from every other entry in the series, even Striker S Sound Stage X and just keeps piling more new characters on top of those and that's before the Tournament Arc. If it continues like this it may even smash the record of StrikerS.
 * Just look at this picture and how big the cast is alredy.
 * Mood Whiplash: Do not read this back-to-back with the other currently running Nanoha manga, Force, or you'll be in need of a new metaphorical neck before you know it.
 * My Kung Fu Is Stronger Than Yours: Arguably the whole point of the series, with multiple practitioners of different fighting styles squaring off to see who will come out on top.
 * Panthera Awesome: The snow leopards of Shutra, which Olivie and Klaus kept as pets as shown in a flashback.
 * Power Limiter: The girls form team Nakajima all train with bracelets that act like training weights, draining their physical and magical energies to help foster their growth. By the end of their training they are wearing four of them each. Their introduction even included a quick Continuity Nod to Nanoha's Training From Hell in the A's manga, where Nanoha used a cruder version with Raising Heart's Pressure Mode.
 * Super Robot: In much the same way as the previous casts tended to be seen as expies of either Real Robots or their pilots. Those individuals that are reincarnations/decendants of ancient warrior-kings tend to come across as general expies of these.
 * Time Skip: A 4-year one between StrikerS and ViVid.
 * To Be a Master: To be declared the strongest in all dimensions (at least, within the 10-19 age group).
 * Tournament Arc: The DSAA fighting tournament.
 * World of Badass: If there was any doubt before ViVid made it obvious that kicking ass and taking names is a requirement for any girl over the age of ten. They even have an inter-dimensional tournament where the best of the best go to beat each other up with magical kung-fu for fun. With no shortage of candidates.