Double feature Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Reflection and Detonation
2017’s Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Reflection and its 2018 sequel Detonation were never 2 separate movies to me. Personally, I did not see those things through until Detonation’s Japanese home media release in June, 2019. Apparently, editors over at IMDB also mixed those two up, including but not limited to putting Detonation’s “1h 51m” run time on the page of Reflection, which only lasts 106 minutes.
“Only” is a funny word to type in the last paragraph. Reflection’s being a “Part one of two” is a practice that not one but two Hollywood movies partook in the summer of 2023. Namely the 140 minutes long Spider-man Across the Spider-verse and 164 minutes long Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One.
Spider-verse’ style-over-substance approach does damage to its pacing, problems including but not limited to jerking the audience around for dozens of minutes before some obvious twists. And fuck all those time cops for telling Gwen and Miles to stick to the script. As for MI7, the heist comedy could have wrapped things up with 40 more minutes instead of another feature length move. At least the 2017 animated flick is leaner and meaner compared to those 2.
To many with keen ears, they don’t have to sit until Reflection’s 101-minute mark seeing the Aliens cut to black just as Ripley appears in power loader ready to fight the xenomorph queen style cliffhanger. They might suspect things at the 18-minute when a ballad sung by Yukari Tamura playing over a visit to a not fully operational theme park.
The music arrangement of those movies usually goes like this: Nanoha’s voice Ms. Tamura would sing a “ending theme” playing over an “all is well” epilogue while Fate’s voice Nana Mizuki would sing a “theme song” playing over the end credit. “All is well” epilogue would not appear until the next movie so Tamura’s musical contribution needs to be moved to an earlier part of the movie.
At the combined run time of 210 minutes (Not counting the 5 minutes long end credits of Reflection and the 2 minutes long recap at the beginning of Detonation), this is very much a 24 feature movie. The date “July 22nd” is showed throughout the first half of Reflection with a time by its side.
Even though the clock is dropped as action heats up, it still feels like the whole thing takes place during the 24 hours between July 22nd and 23rd from the titular character’s perspective. Weapon repair takes hours not days being in the lines. Sun literally rises as Nanoha takes out her final enemy in Detonation. While 24’s action cinema lunch got eaten by lousy comic book adaption nowadays, some anime did run with this concept of someone’s longest day.
“Scientific” gunners from another planet
Upon its announcement, Reflection was marketed as an all-new story with no connection to any of the Nanoha tv shows. Ironically though, the script seemed to evolve into something closer to a tv show script with all that extended back story about new characters. Not to mention how 24 the whole thing feels to yours truly. If some montage extended to 20 minutes long episodes and hijinks thrown in, this could have been a 12 episodes long series. Either way, this all-new story starts on the planet Eltria basically facing an Interstellar dilemma: terraforming or go to space.
The Florians are a family of 4 living on the planet surface for a seemingly lost cause of regenerating their homeworld. Kyrie (“Ki-ri-e” not “Ka-i-ri-e”), the youngest of the Florians, along with her shady machine intelligence friend named Iris set out to visit Earth and recover an energy source for Eltra’s recovery. Unknown to her, Iris is planning an invasion while her elder sister Amite Florian is in hot pursuit. In front of them the trio of 11-years-olds, Nanoha, Fate and their future commanding officer Hayate, plus the magical time cops backing them. It’s going to be a long day during the height of summer in Tokyo.
The 3 above do not use magic, instead they use a nanomachine technology called Formula. Nanomachines that can make mechas out of scraps and give them a suite of video game player character perks. Such as regenerating health through food instead of medicine, bullet-time like Accelerator and rocket jump.
What Arthur C Clarke said about tech and magic, heh? While I think Kojima might steal A’s ending of only purge bad code out of a corrupted system for the weird and bitter-sweet ending of Guns of Patriots, Reflection and Detonation’s tipping into nano tech is more on the ripping off Turn A Gundam side: how weaponized nano tech would just create wasteland after wasteland.
Copycats, focus on the “cat”
Iris’ invasion does not truly begin until she has the copycats of the Nanoha trio commanding a three-front assault. Those copycats, or the titular reflections if you may, are the new addition of those movie since the Florian sisters were in one of those PSP games. They are also nice double-casting for voice actors Kana Ueda, Yukari Tamura and Nana Mizuki.
Introducing Dearche, king over this pride of 3, as she being chased by her counterpart Hayate Yagami during combat. She led the air force of one mecha. If Hayate is Mass Effect Paragon then Dearche is Renegade. I think someone is on the joke that Hayate would outrank both Nanoha and Fate when they work at magical time cops’ homeworld, so Hayate’s copycat bosses over the other 2.
Introducing Stern as she locked into hand-to-hand combat with her counterpart, Nanoha. She led the invading army of one mecha. Nanoha being the loud and thinking out of the box while Stern is the stoic do it by the book, which led the former beating the latter by charging through an explosion.
Introducing Levi as she waits for her counterpart Fate to arm up. She led the invading navy of one mecha. Fate is the quiet and considering one while Levi is a bull in a china shop with a mouth. Clearly better weapon and a opener field is what the former require to defeat the latter.
Those 3 are copycats, literal in the cat part as flashbacks in Detonation shows them being three wild cats taking shelter in the terraforming program. The Japanese joke of someone is so busy that they would take help from cats might be intended here.
Those flashbacks also show Iris in her happier days caring for the cats. So, yes, the trope of “save the cat” strikes again to foreshadow a face turn. Given the most surreal yours truly saw in Japan. I do think their storytellers actually tend to embrace the whole “save the cat” charade.
It was my twenty-fourth birthday and I was a tourist in Ginza. I saw a crowd surrounding something taking pictures and it turned out be 3 cats laid on a rug. It must be a tourist trap since someone moved their 3 pets somewhere for more exposure. Guess this much affection for them little felines can be folded into stories about someone cannot be that bad if they care about the cats.
They got guns, we got guns, yet she still needs her bigger knife.
Introducing the guns “they” got:
Then the guns “we” got:
And finally, a mixture of “ours” and “theirs”.
This is how Rasing Heart is enhanced, a mixture of magic and Formula nanomachine. The gunshots sound just like Gundam’s beam rifle in Detonation. I would half-jokingly call this kit “Aliens’ Ellen Ripley in a power loader ready to throw down with the xenomorph queen”. Just look like her first target.
But not everyone is happy to see guns, they prefer knives. Such as the blonde stoic in black Fate Testarosa Halaown. Now adopted as Lindy’s daughter, she still could not call her new mother “mom” until said mother gave her a refined light-saber. Well, one of the secretly best shot of Reflection is she fencing with Kyrie presented in profile.
I found the screenshot surprisingly Arthurian when I took it from Reflection. They are surrounded by water, Lindy has water-like green hair bit Lady of the Lack looking and Fate got her favorite sword. It could be said that Fate closed out her emotional arc there so she can be the constantly worrying love interest to the titular character in Detonation. A very cute moment before the epilogue of forcing the deranged back to a hospital bed while piling an apple menacingly.
From daughter cultivator to daughter collector
With all the heels (Sometimes wrestling terms are just not enough for discussion about anime with mostly female cast) drawn with typical anime saucer eyes having face turns, Reflection and Detonation do have a mustache twirling male villain that is unredeemable. His name is Phil, Phil Maxwell.
Director Maxwell made Iris as a weapon under the disguise of terraforming use and saw Yuri’s magic as another obsession. He is voiced by Koichi Yamatera in Japanese. Those who watch Cowboy Bebop along with JeffJeff’s Bizarre Adventure in sub would know him as Spike Spigel. Mr. Yamatera is in another thing English speakers love: he is the Japanese voice of Joel Miller in the Last of Us. By “the Japanese voice” I mean he dubbed over both Troy Baker in the game and Pedro Pascal on HBO. I do consider it quite feat given how much more man-explaining Joel had to do about the wasteland to Ellie in the show.
If Joel is a daughter cultivator then Phil is closer to a daughter collector, something many naysayers of LOU (yours truly included actually) see Joel as. His final showdown with Nanoha is intercut with his fascination for someone wields both magic and Formula. Of course, he asked her if she wants to be his daughter and of course she just attack him without commenting on the whole itchy affair too much.
What’s the rating again?
Then of course Phil is not Joel. Phil’s suite of player character perks is not something Naughty Dog would even added to a LOU. And Phil’s purge of his research are all gruesome civilian gunned down while Joel seem like an one man army fighting an actually army in both the game and the show.
This is a screenshot of Detonation during Maxwell’s purge of his terraforming research center. The blood on the wall alone would guarantee an instant R from MPAA, yet the Japanese movie rating board known as Eirin gave Detonation a PG-12 rating. No trick, just MPAA’s PG-13 but one year under. I had the blu-ray for 4 years now and just discovered by looking at the bottom of the package. Aside from this, the movie contains the usual punch to face that makes moving target into stationery target and the fabled stabbed through the torso that almost got 2012’s Avengers a R from MPAA.
Japanese movie rating can be that. PG-12 cast quite a wide net catching lots of potential Rs. Two examples come to my mind. The based on visual novel “erotic thrillers” Fate/Stay Night Heaven’s Feel trilogy has “yes, they sure are fucking” sex scenes not to mention blood and violence. Thunderbolt Fantasy is a written by Japanese Wuxia puppet show with limbs and blood flying in its action scene. Yet both got PG-12 rating in Japan. Maybe it’s because none of above got so-called “naughty language”.
Graduation
On my thirtieth birthday, while I was playing Tokyo Mirage Session on the Switch and tried not to cough my lung out, a concert called Lyrical Live took place in Japan to celebrate the then 15 years of Magical Lyrical Nanoha franchise. In its encore, the whole cast joined in a choir to sing Tamura’s epilogue song for Detonation. In some ways, this is the final words on Nanoha as the time of writing.
After the pandemic and some sea change in the industry, things like the Nanoha movies might become a rarity. Record company like Kings got into the anime game partially for home media release revenue after all. Detonation left things in a closure enough note as Eltria being regenerated and the trio on Earth graduating elemental school. That’s just a happy enough note to leave things.
However, a mixture of Lethal Weapon 2 and 4 could be the vibe this ending intended. Nanoha was knocking on heaven’s door while seeing her younger self telling her about friends. Unlike Jack Bauer who going into almost everything with minimal support, Nanoha usually got friends following her into the fires. Now her adventuring days before she moved to time cop world is over, normal and better days is in shop for her while Bauer remain in the limbo of fiction.
(The End)
Log in to comment