This has been percolating for a while as I made an attempt at sorting out the strikes against StrikerS. I do give a higher weighting to story and dialogue than execution in other departments, to the extent that it took side by side image comparisons between the DVD release and the broadcast version before noticing the quality difference. So I’m not going to harp on the visuals in StrikerS, because I seem to have a higher tolerance (i.e. lack of awareness) in that area.
For me, an abrupt change in direction dragged down the ending and the series overall. What dissuaded many people from watching in the beginning was its apparent shift to a somewhat slice of life story with “real” fighting substituted for “fake” fighting. Expectations were eviscerated, “This is not Nanoha!” people cried as they jumped ship. Meanwhile I have a strong tendency to finish whatever I start. As far as watching a bunch of magical white collar workers live out their lives, everything seemed consistent and non-random. While not many things were gotten right in StrikerS, even fewer were gotten wrong. Trundling along is pedestrian, but we all need to get out and take a walk once in a while.
StrikerS has a lot of growing up, in a sense. The past cast have been given comfortable desk jobs, everyone has to work in a team, there’s office politics to be played, and there’s housekeeping talk. Boarding the pwn train requires a ticket issued by higher-ups. Proponents of sanity have much to cheer about.
But you know what the problem is? All of that goes out the window at the end. When the series emphasized organization and teamwork, it’s bewildering to see so many battles degenerate into either one versus one, or one versus many situations. Rather than a group effort, individual heroes won the day yet again. It also turns out that the leaders of the collective caused all the problems in the first place.
And once the fighting is over, the team is disbanded. Moral of the story: Groups are bad, individual skill wins games.
It may not have been intended as such, but I see all of this as an unspoken admission that the lone mage still rules the Nanoha-verse. I know, getting a team to gel is not easy because this world would be a much better place otherwise. But the concept of a team was completely abandoned in favour of a return of sorts to the tried and true Nanoha formula.
For a future project, a Fate prequel is a great idea. Long live the individual, after all. For fans of family, there’s always Clannad.
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Allow me to play White Devil’s Advocate.
What exactly is defined as “team” and “group” here? Understandably, you have frustration over the teasing that StrikerS inflicted, i.e. a lack of gangbangs in favour of White Devil Ownage at the end of it all.
Could it be that your understanding of “team” and “group” is limited to “fighting together” as a definition? The “tried and true Nanoha formula”, in my opinion, was about beating your enemies till they became your friends, which is something duly demonstrated throughout the series right up till the end with the rehabilitation of almost all the antagonists.
On the other hand, there’s also the setup of how the enemies worked that’s to blame. The Numbers vastly outnumbered (pun unintended) Section 6 when it came to the top-tier mages, to say nothing of how they were spread out themselves. Splitting up in order to do battle with them made good war sense; if the bad guys had grouped together for one massive battle royale it wouldn’t have been as effective as they would have been separated.
There’s also Hayate’s AOE speciality which would have ensured severe defeate to the Numbers if they had grouped up. Teana and Subaru were split up, ironically, due to the Numbers choosing to work as a group instead. Eriol and Caro worked together till the very end. It wouldn’t make sense for Nanoha, Fate, or Hayate to go about in a group either, no thanks to their abilities being required in different places.
You get the idea. Perhaps all that training in groups had you expecting battles oriented around the same combinations and whatnot, but ultimately it was more efficient for them to go mano a mano in order to save everything at once. That’s how I see it basically.
Teana’s engagement just highlights the abandonment of co-ordination to the point of casting it in a negative light. Erio and Caro did enter combat as a team, but they ended up going toe to toe against Garyuu and Lutecia, respectively.
I acknowledge that teams don’t work. How things played out is how things played out, and it was generally decently played for the precise reason that teams don’t work. And yet, Seven Arcs tried so hard to contrive a story in the face of that fact, and gave up. It’s awkward sending mixed signals like that.
I like the idea of “team” as “emotional support” better, tbqh. Coordinated group battle is a thing of Dragonball Z that should be best left there. The last real “team battle” in A’s bordered on RPG-style parody.
The whole point of teams in StrikerS would be to differ from the lone wolf approach of the first two Nanoha seasons. While Fate and Nanoha essentially have only themselves for comfort in the first two cours, StrikerS presents something akin to “family” that helps ease the whole loneliness bit. Add to that how practically everyone with the exception of, say, Nanoha and Chrono come from a broken/half family of sorts and you have the reason for “team = family”, I guess.
That most of the cast has some baggage isn’t lost on me, and in that context the entire ending can be cast as a graduation/rite of passage.
I’m just giving more weight to what I perceive to be a failure of vision. The new additions were slotted in and set up to be useful too deep into the series’ run.