Well, my 24″ Dell monitor that I spoke of about two weeks ago arrived on last Thursday. I promised that I’d get a photo up so…well, uh…better late than never.

In case you were wondering, I’m not actually using a screenshot of the opening sequence of StrikerS as my wallpaper. I just set it up that way to (try to) look cool. I’m still using Hinagiku as my wallpaper at the moment. Though, if a good 1920×1200 wallpaper pops up somewhere, I may be inclined to change it, we’ll see…

This episode reminded me of why I like Nanoha and also reinforces the thought. Beyond the fact that she can be totally badass, Nanoha is also a wonderfully selfless character. Now I’ll admit that there have been cases here and there throughout the series (as a whole including the first two seasons) wherein there were some touchy scenes that ended up being utterly lame, but the message itself doesn’t change. Nanoha is a caring person that puts others before herself and the back story presented this episode helps put further emphasis on this notion.

I’m really glad that they actually showed what happened to Nanoha with regards to her injuries since I was really worried that they’d just kind of lead in to it and then kind of fade back in without revealing anything. I felt that the entire storytelling scene was played out very nicely and I felt that the seiyus did a really good in voicing the characters.

Of course, this episode was just too perfect so they had to add oddities like this one to wake everyone up so they could shrug their shoulders at each other. Seriously, what the hell is that? Maybe it just looks stupid because she’s holding to it with one hand or something, I don’t know. I can’t say that I saw this coming despite the fact that Raising Heart and friends all have an “alternate” mode that they can transform into like how Bardiche can turn into a big hunking sword. Whatever, complaining isn’t going to fix anything, so I’ll reserve my final judgment until I see it in action I guess.

Wow. This episode was nice. You don’t get to see a decent fight scene or a ticked off Nanoha every day, that’s for sure. We all know how badass Nanoha can be from the first two seasons, but she was just harsh this time around. Sometimes you just got to do what you got to do, I suppose. You can really see the different in skill levels here given that Nanoha was able to stop Subaru and Teana’s attacks with her bare hands. Scary, just scary. I’d love to see what Hayate is capable of although I’m not sure if we’ll be getting much of that since she’s at a more senior commanding position.

Yuuno’s appearance in this episode was cut extremely short although this scene somewhat compensated for it as I’m a huge supporter of this pairing. Given what happened this episode, I can’t decide whether Hayate likes Acous or not. I kind of got that vibe when I was watching them talk this episode but I really can’t say. Personally, I don’t find him to be particularly good looking in the face of the other male characters in the show, but anyway…

I didn’t check out the previews so I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next episode. I guess that Subaru might turn emo or something and run off somewhere, possibly home. Teana will be bedridden and I’m pretty interested as to what she’s going to do when she regains consciousness. This ought to be the last of Teana’s stubbornness and I hope to see her lead her comrades into the fray of the battle. I thought we’d get some of that last episode when she was giving out orders but that didn’t really happen.

This episode was not bad although I think it could’ve been better. The fights were way too one-sided which, well, quite simply, makes them not look like actual fights. Episode 5 was better in that regard since it was the new characters doing the fighting instead of having the veterans slaughter everything with ease. I was hoping for a dragon fight this episode but that never happened since Lutecia didn’t summon such a thing.

Now that Caro and Teana have both had their emo episodes, I’m wondering as to whether we’ll be getting two more episodes of that from Subaru and Erio each. Erio doesn’t seem like the kind to pull something off like that but I could definitely see Subaru getting all teary-eyed and stuff. She did a bit of that in the first episode already but I think that’s just a small teaser preview of what’s yet to come.

One thing I liked about this episode was the appearance of Yuuno and I hope that we’re going to be seeing more of him in the future. I suppose that it would be kind of pointless to have this brief cameo of him and then have him subsequently removed so my wish should be granted. The fact that he’s on the character page on the official site does translate into some comfort for me. Unfortunately, Amy doesn’t seem to have the same treatment. Since Chrono’s going to be around, I think she should at least show up here and there on occasions.

So this episode really didn’t bring much onto the table beyond revealing and implying some additional information about some of the characters. We see a return of the jewel seeds from the first season here although I’m going to guess that it’s not really going to be playing much of a role. They’re probably going to elaborate on Fate and some stuff from Mid-Childa which will obviously tie in with the events of the first season but I doubt that the jewel seeds themselves will be of much importance. After all, the relics have taken on this season’s role of the “jewel to have”. ;)

The training sequences that were presented left much to be desired for when compared to real action sequences, really. I think I’m just going to give up on expecting anything cool from these scenes because the series seems to be busy developing the plot instead at the moment, though this is completely fair. You can’t be running around fighting things for no reasons after all. My faith in this series is still strong and I believe that StrikerS will top A’s at the end of the day.

We saw another reference to Nanoha’s injury again this episode from Vita further implying that things may go awry at some point in the series. I’ll be happy with any developments so long as it’s reasonably sensible and not something that’s horribly lame. Yuri scenes would fall into said “lame” category and they’d have to try pretty hard to make me do anything but laugh.