Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha: Detonation

I've been a fan of MGLN for a very long time now. I've watched all three seasons maybe three times each and read a bit of ViVid (though the anime and manga were both very disappointing and obviously 100% fanservice). I'm glad that they went back to their roots to create Reflection and Detonation. However, though i did appreciate the first movie (Reflection) a lot, I have to say that Detonation was kind of unnecessary.

First, the positives. The art was amazing and so was the soundtrack. There is about as many explosions in this movie as you would expect in a Michael Bay movie, ... so if that's a positive for you then you'll definitely appreciate this one.

Now, for the negatives. Almost everything about the story did not make sense to me as well as the pacing of the whole movie. I don't want to write any spoilers, but you do find out who is the "real" real villain (after you find out that Iris is the villain in Reflection) and you get this whole backstory as to why they became a villain...but the motivation and backstory do not make sense at all? It was quite a REACH honestly for the villain to commit those crimes and whatever plans they had. Like they really didn't have any logical motivation to do what they did. Also, for the matter of pacing, Nanoha doesn't get any of the spotlight in this movie (nor did she in Reflection, but in that movie it was fine since they were trying to set up the new characters and their arcs) but she randomly gets some character development at the very end of the movie for no apparent reason. It just felt so sudden and, again, unnecessary.

What I loved about this entire franchise is the way that they represented and wrote female friendships (or even gay romance if you see that). Their storytelling was always something that astounded me and moved me to tears no matter how many times I've watched the original three seasons. Yet, I am disappointed in this movie and how much of it fell flat. Well, I hope they continue to make more animes in this universe. I'll certainly give them a watch. If only they stopped making ViVid...

One thing I've noticed about Nanoha is how much of the conflict is steeped in stupid communications breakdowns and misunderstandings. It's like one of those high school drama shows only instead of being made a social outcast you get blasted into infinity by huge magical cannons. Honestly I hate misunderstanding storytelling because it's lazy and it doesn't redeem your villain to just have them being manipulated the whole time. It tries to remove accountability from them and place it on an even bigger badder guy, so they can have a cheap redemption arc that doesn't require them to really undergo any introspection or development.

I know ... this is a kid's show, I know I shouldn't expect much in the way of narrative structure from a magical girl anime, and maybe I'm just burnt out watching too much Nanoha as of late. It's everything about the genre done so by the numbers that it feels procedurally generated at times, like an AI was given a hundred magical girl scripts to learn and this is what it spat out. I might have been more generous to this movie if it wasn't such a rehash of every other plot line Nanoha has done so far. I give it a 7/10 for trying