Triangle Heart: Sweet Songs Forever

Like most people here, I came to Triangle Heart after watching Magical Girl Lyrical Nonoha. Triangle Heart is the original series that Nanoha was spun off of.

Initial Reactions:
I have to say that overall I was pleasantly impressed by Triangle Hearts. I expected Triangle Hearts to be downright awful when I began watching it. The main stay of this franchise is that it spun-off the Nanoha Franchise. When I began watching Triangle Heart, I just knew I wasn't going to like it. I was wrong.

Action/Story:
The action in Triangle Heart is very good. The fight scenes are really what makes ... Triangle Hearts. The fighting style used by the main characters is a "Twin Kodachi" style very reminiscent of the style that Aoshi uses in Rurroni Kenshin. It's a fairly flashy style that probably wouldn't be very effective in real life, but it looks really freaking cool. The fights in Triangle Hearts also perpetuate the old anime adage that swords are greater than guns. One thing that I though was really cool - as a Nanoha fan - was that you can see what can be considered a "prototype" version of the Nanoha battle system.

Art/Music:
The art style and music should be familiar to anyone who has watched Nanoha. I would go out on limb to say that the musical selection for Triangle Hearts is slightly better than that of Nanoha, but there isn't any significant difference.

Important Notes/Charming Points:
What I really enjoyed the most about Triangle Hearts was that it allowed me to see the Nanoha world from a completely different perspective. You see Nanoha's older brother and sister, Kyouya and Miyuki respectively, as the heroes while Nanoha is an unimportant side character. As I touched on before, another cool thing about Triangle Hearts is that you can kind of see where the Nanoha franchise came from and how it developed over time.

Conclusion:
Let me be frank with you. If I had never watched Nanoha, I wouldn't have even given this series a second look. That's not to say that Triangle Hearts isn't a good series. It just lacks the little spark of energy and excitement that separate a pretty good series from a really good series. That being said, if you are a fan of the Nanoha series, and you want a chance to see where it all came from then this is for you.

Here's the Nanoha timeline: eroge -> hentai anime -> this anime -> Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha series. This is the first time Nanoha appeared and although she plays a very small role, her character design is the same as we see in her own series. For anybody to enjoy this, they need to be aware and prepared that this story has nothing to do with the Nanoha series.


Animation:
1) the visuals are what you'd expect from 2003.
2) there's a lot of censorship with it comes to open wounds. To give you an example, there's a character that gets stabbed to the point where a sword ... is poking through his back. In the following frames, there's no visual evidence that ever happened.
3) a clean hit with a bullet to the head does not kill.
4) the same characters that have the ability to dodge bullets in close range are the same ones that can't dodge throwing knives and must deflect them instead. Just to be clear, I'm okay with having skilled swordsmen like One Piece's Zoro or Lupin III's Ishikawa Goemon, doing things that would be impossible for any human in real life because in their own worlds, gun, bullet and projectile physics are still respected to a degree.


Sound:
1) the english spoken and writen by a couple of characters is terrible and not even accurate in terms of grammar.
2) the soundtrack is bad but the sound design is even worse. I can't think of a scene where the music playing fit the animation.
3) The majority of the cast was a mistake. I didn't like some of the voices and the female voices are all too similar. If there are no visual cues to who's saying what, I have no idea who's talking. Also, I usually hate when the original seiyuu for a character gets replaced but in Nanoha's case it was for the best because the voice she was given for this anime didn't suit her at all.


Story and characters:
1) I hate characters like Kyouya that are created as perfect. SPOILER: he's the only intelligent person capable of reaching an obvious conclusion about the threatening letters, his "spidey-senses" feel trouble before it happens and no matter what, he's always right and everybody else is not only wrong but also stupid. Why do I hate it? Because it makes the other characters seem pointless and a waste of animation and sound resources.
2) this anime wants us to believe that a person would be faster than a car using a shortcut.
3) it should've ended sooner and SPOILER: it would've been better if the sentimental shenanigans talk didn't happen between Kyouya and Ellis.


All things considered, it's a 5/10 for me.

I've reviewed a lot of the Nanoha franchise. The first series, A's, StrikerS, Vivid and I'm sure I'll review the follow up to Vivid when it comes out. Why am I talking about Nanoha? Well, today's offering, Triangle Heart Sweet Songs Forever, is kind of a prequel but not really. The basic gist of it is that this series started as a series of eroges and OVAs called Triangle Heart. Nanoha's character was introduced as the younger sister of two of the main characters in the third instalment, and the one this OVA was adapted from. It was also the last hurrah of the series, ... with the OVA coming out late in 2000. Incidentally, the Nanoha franchise spun off of it in 2004, changing hands from Discovery to Seven Arcs. So, is it worth checking this one out or is it fortuitous for everyone that it isn't tied directly into the Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha franchise?

Story:

We open with a young woman named Crystela Fiasse, who's been receiving threats. She's about to go on a concert tour with charity along with the students at her song school. Her childhood friend, McGaren Ellis, is brought in to act as her bodyguard. She also reaches out to their old friends, the Takamachi siblings, Kyouya & Miyuki. They may not be professional bodyguards, but they're experts with blades. Ellis resents their amateur interference. Will they be able to put aside their differences and deal with this threat?

Let's start by talking about what the series does poorly. The biggest issue is that there's quite a bit of filler for a four episode series. We get to spend time watching people work in Kyouya's café, even though none of them are actually important to the narrative and the scenes do absolutely nothing. We also get to watch overly long exposition scenes about the shared back story of our four leads. We don't need these scenes since everything important in them comes out in the main narrative but we get them anyway. The climax is also weak. We get a lot of build up for a battle that gets concluded in a very short amount of time. That aside, what we're left with is a pretty standard action story.

Characters:

The cast in this is really boring and not just those café characters who just take up time. The main characters in this are just bland. Both Kyouya & Miyuki were better fleshed out in the Nanoha spin off. They weren't incredibly complex characters in that, but they at least had verisimilitude, which is more than I can say for them here. Which is really sad since they were just minor characters in that and they were the focus characters in this.

Art:

The art is pretty well done. Aside from some odd, faux artistic choices like tinting everything a single colour for some scenes. Overall, it is a nice looking OVA with some strong designs and solid action scenes. The artwork is definitely the OVA's strongest point.

Sound:

The acting in this is passable, mostly. There are exceptions. Kodama Satomi sounds like she's not trying at all. She gives a very listless, emotionless performance as Miyuki. Which could be why Miyuki was voiced by Shiraishi Ryoko in Nanoha. Seki Tomokazu has the opposite problem. He really chews the scenery in how far he goes over the top. Aside from that, we get performances that are functional, but not really good. The music, on the other hand, is pretty good. The biggest issue with it is that they talk the concert up quite a bit. In fact, they go really overboard with it, going on about how great it's going to be and how it's going to bring tranquillity to everyone who hears it and it really doesn't live up to that kind of hype.

Ho-yay:

There's only a little in this one. Surprising given how much is in the spin off, I know. A lot of the dynamic between Ellis & Fiasse comes across like they're an old couple. Although that could be more as a result of there being basically nothing to their characters than anything intentional.

Final Thoughts:

Triangle Heart isn't a bad little OVA but it is pretty weak. The story, what little it has, is largely forgettable and the characters are just dull. Overall, I give it a 4/10. Next week is going to be one that was requested quite a while back, Golgo 13.