Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha ViVid 04-05

One of the times when Chris is actually with Vivio!

Time for some magical punching! Let’s see how these two episodes of Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha ViVid went!

Four-day Weekend!

I think Chris is just a camera hog. Plus are Rio and Corona looking up Lutecia’s skirt?

You know how it works: you finish up your tests, and then have a four-day weekend. What? It doesn’t work that way for you? Well, me neither. But for the girls in the show it does. And it’s a nice reward for some good grades. And of course we can’t just have Vivio, Rio, and Corona go along and leave out Einhart, so Nove invites her at the last minute (she couldn’t have mentioned it a little earlier?). Four hours is about the limit of what I’d think is doable for travel for that length of time, but it works out pretty well, especially since they leave right after school (in their 1993 Toyota Previa, which cracks me the heck up).

Shablooie!

And what do you do on a nature / training trip? Learn how to beat things up better! I kid, I kid. But that’s actually what they’re doing. Not just the kids, but the adults too. But it’s a nice training camp in that it’s not all go-go-go, but rather putting a lot of training effort into having fun. At least they managed to have a real swimsuit for Einhart and not pull out the ‘school swimsuit’ trope for her. They do work in a few ways that Vivio and the others outdo Einhart, such as being able to swim faster and deal with energy usage in the water. It’s nice that Einhart isn’t just better than the other girls at everything, especially when she hasn’t been exposed to it much. Who knows if she’ll actually start to come out of her self a little bit, but at least Vivio and the others are going to keep being friendly.

Onsen Fun

This wasn’t that depressing, Einhart

I like that Einhart wants to open up to Vivio, and that Vivio wants her to open up. Einhart has a bit of a worry that she’s boring Vivio too much, but I think that Vivio wants to know as much as she can about Einhart. We get the benefit of a two-pronged explanation of the past of Olivie and Klaus Ingvalt, with Rio and Corona reading a book with Lutecia and Einhart recounting her inherited memories to Vivio, who is nicely interested in the history of Olivie. But something that Einhart could learn from Vivio is the ability to let it not bother her. Einhart is worried that she made Vivio sad with her story, but I think it’s pretty sure that Vivio just let it wash over her.

~float float float~

And speaking of washing, there’s the obligatory relaxing time in the onsen. This might have been the most comprehensively blocked onsen scene that I’ve encountered in anime, using natural movements and elements to figleaf everything. Floating buckets and leaves, long hair, foreground hair, rocks, forearms, drink trays, water droplets, if you can imagine it being there, it was blocking the view of something that should be blocked. That doesn’t stop mischief from happening, tho, as we get yet another character re-introduced in Sein, who torments everyone in the water, but gets her come-uppance when she tries to get Rio.

Next episode gets us to the climax of the training trip, the mock battle between the two teams. While the respective captains seem to be Fate and Nanoha, I’m sure that in this show the main focus will be a showdown between Vivio and Einhart, with a possible undercard of Rio vs Corona, who is getting her own intelligent device custom made by Lutecia. It would also be interesting for me, having not seen any of the previous Nanoha series, to see more of the fight between Subaru and Nove. They gave a quick name for how everyone fights, but it doesn’t really mean a lot until you see it.

About Highway

Proving that you don't have to be young to love anime, I enjoy all genres and styles of shows. If it's not hurting anyone else, you should never be ashamed of what you like!