majestic

Indeed, how odd. Truly inexplicable. Must have slipped my mind there. Please, by all means, don't feel left out! Here, I'll link you the opening for good measure: There was one kind of clever joke in the first episode (I mean, a clever joke, not some inexplicable hijinks that's hilarious through sheer absurdity): Having something like that in there made me laugh and appreciate the thought that went into creating it, but that's not a whole lot to go by, huh? I also watched the second episode of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's. 25 minutes of action with no breaks. The bad guys are calling themselves Wolkenritter (Cloud Knights) and pretty handily beat up the team of heroes, and stole something from Nanoha called a Linker Core which powered up the Book of Darkness and seems to be a hitherto unmentioned McGuffin. I have no idea yet what a Linker Core is, but it's probably something important for mages and hasn't been mentioned before because nobody thought of it until they needed to make a second season. English speaking devices also showed some grammer problems, but the German ones are astounding. There must not be a single German native speaker working in the anime industry as a writer.

And now for something completely different. Like I said a while back, I watch Lady Asuka durning cardio, or I used to, until episode 10 killed my motivation to sweat and be bored at the same time and I moved on to watch Steins;Gate, which turned out to be less than ideal either, so I spent the last two weeks or so moving along my Deep Space Nine rewatch - until yesterday where it was two Lady Asuka episodes, and today where I watched another one. Thankfully that wasn't full of ludicrous behaviour by Asuka, and it wasn't too boring either. Asuka, after being grounded by the queen following her duel with the Duke de I'mnotgoingtorepeatthat, defies her majesty's wishes, takes André and rides off to her family's rural estate somewhere in Bumf*ck, France, where she gets a hefty reality check when the common rabble cannot afford doctors for their sick children, are basically extorted by both the tax collectors and the church and are exceedingly unhappy that the king and queen aren't doing anything at all to remedy the situation. The innkeeper of the tavern they eat at even tells them flat out that a handful of aristocrats live off the back of the hard working peasants. At this point I had enough, because I kept hearing Bruno talk about white priviledge, Skoop about boostraps and the currently active again second rate Stjepan giving out financial advice. Yeah, sure, but no thanks. Back to the queue you go, Lady Asuka, I'll finish you later. Then I decided on a radical new course and changed my approach. So far I've tried following the creative teams that made something I enjoyed around to various other efforts that were mostly middling, and sometimes even terrible. It needs to be said that Magic User's Club is from the animator and director of Sailor Moon and the Sailor Moon R filler arc. Following the director and parts of the writing team for the remaining seasons in turn ended with most of us watching Revolutionary Girl Utena. I also picked a random seinen show to watch on Prime Video, which turned out to be kemurikusa., something that... I also still have to finish, because ugh. So instead of doing research, or going completely random, I decided to... ...take some minutes to browse through Amazon Prime Video's "New Anime Series" list, which in Amazon-speak means series recently added to Amazon Prime, not new anime series. Instead of trying to gauge if I would like something based on the title, the blurb and some images from the show, or anything, really, I decided to go with the the animes on the list that looked absolutely terrible, then spun a mental Wheel of the Worst (tm) and landed on: Dropkick on my Devil! (no, really, that's the actual title of the show) Well, if you're looking for something that looks terrible, that does seem like a really good choice, right? A 2018 manga adaptation starring a group of girls of various origins in Greek, Christian and Japanese myth and their... yeah, god knows what exactly. Whacky adventures? Nonsense? I'm not even sure I should assume that the series is going to go anywhere with how that first episode went. The first episode more or less introduces the concept of the series in very direct exposition: When a sorcerer summons a demon from hell, it will stay bound to that sorcerer and can only go back to hell once it is sent back through sorcery, or the sorcerer dies. The episode then introduces the five main characters (there are seven on the poster, but hey, the two smaller ones in the background - upper left corner and directly underneath the sawblade - seem to be more prominent side characters coming later): Yurine, the girl with the eyepatch, who summoned the Lamia Jashin (the blonde half snake demon) to Earth, and her friends Medusa (purple haired girl), Minos (blue haired girl with the horns) and the angel Pekola who lost her halo and can't go back to heaven (the wingless blonde with the confused expression next to the angel who still has wings). It begins with all of them sitting at their table, making a hot pot. Jashin first melts beef tallow, then roasts their vegetables and Wagyu beef, then adds stock and lets everything simmer, and they begin eating. Then the first obvious joke comes up, they all agree the beef is great and that Minos should get more meat from her relatives. Minos doesn't think anything about eating beef, but just says that eating her relatives would be cannibalism. Jashin tries to make fun of Pekola asking if she's even allowed to eat a meal prepared by the denizens of hell. Yurine is a little miffed, it was Jashin who invited Pekola after all, and demands that Jashin just gives her food, which she does - just without any meat in it. Pekola wants some beef, but Jashin is adamant that she won't be getting seconds until she finished her bowl, that would be rude. Pekola eats all her vegetables, but Jashin doesn't want to give her meat, so Yurine just gives her some. Jashin reacts incredibly annoyed and wolfs down all of the remaining beef, even the beef of the other girls. Yarine wants to punish Jashin, and at this point the anime quite frankly... becomes absolutely amazing in a "what the hell am I watching here?" sort of way. Jashin attacks Yurine by leaping into the air, starting her "dropkick" attack (what a literal title drop) and breaks the fourth wall by saying that this isn't just going to be the opening episode of the show, but also the last one, and the rest will be specials because she's just going to kill Yurine and go home. Yurine just dodges her drop kick, breaks out a jagged sword and starts chopping up Jashin's snake bits. The then end up eating snake meat with their hot pot, which Pekola thinks is really tasty, while Jashin sulks and regenerates. That amounts to the first, like, less than half of the episode. I don't really want to spoil the rest, but it keeps up the fourth wall breaking when for instance Jashin tries to kill Yurine again, but she stops her. Jashin asks how she knew she would attack, and Yarine states that she talked about her attack out loud. Jashin turns around and starts complaining to the sound engineers that this was supposed to be an internal monologue, then demands a cut and a reshoot. Yurine then breaks Jashin's spine with a crowbar and dismembers her off-screen with a chainsaw. It's... baffling. It doesn't look half bad, or at least, modern anime looks don't stand out so much in a more cartoonish setting, and it's completely insane. The episode closes off by introducing what might become a running joke. If he hasn't seen it yet, going from simply how the first episode went, a definite recommendation for @KP the meanie zucchini. Plus it was actually funny. It's also only 12 episodes long. There's a spin off series licenced by Crunchyroll too.

Oh, right, there's something: Feels like Stardust Crusaders had a little blunder there with D'Arby the Younger.

Marie Antoinette does "girly" things. She spends a fortune on dresses, is all lovey-dovey with Hans Axel von Fersen and doesn't seem to have a care for the world, and is really not into the whole governing France thing. Much to the dismay of her mother, who hears reports of her daugther's shenanigans withe the appropriate grief. The whole duel was the most shounen thing ever, the Duke de Guéméné (well that's a mouthhandful) insults Asuka in passing and she immediately responds in the most predictable way possible, and he challenges her to a duel, which she readily accepts, and she's absolutely stupid about it too. The show has been going out of its way to show that Asuka is an expert fencer, yet she choses pistols, because the Duke won some shooting competitions. She wants to beat him at his own game. I'm still holding out a little hope for the directorial switch in episode 18, but I doubt that will make the premise salvagable, or change Asuka all that much, but perhaps everything else will be a little less boring. No, it's going to be action and then some, by the looks of the first episode, but I don't mind the drama zone in the first place. It just... you know, the setup, girl in a wheelchair, piano music, and all I did was burst out into laughter. That seems like the wrong reaction, but that was a pretty funny meta-situation after Komi Can't Communicate. Heh. Although, admittedly, it was pretty unexpected to see Hayate being the antagonist. Or at least, the leader of the group attacking Nanoha. If that follows the template of the first season they'll kiss and make up eventually. Probably. TEoE would provide narrative closure, and the original ending expand on what happened during Instrumentality, although I bet, given the choice, most people would just go with The End of Evangelion, if you would cut that up into a four parter and replace the ending with it that would just be fine, except for a certain and sudden super-focus on Shinji being all weird and creepy. If you'd rewrite both a bit and combine then, you could probably come up with four or five episodes that would make a wholly satisfying conclusion to NGE, instead of dealing it out like that. Alas, if you'd let Anno do that in this day and age what you get is Rebuild, so... but one can dream. Novelty is something that is hard to factor into enjoyment in a meaningful way that leaves the rating to stand the test of time, but it's also not the only wildely subjective thing that can affect enjoyment. There's also the time when you're watching it. I mean, compared to the mess that Blood-C was, the cringeworty animation and stolen characterization of Love Live! and the utter failure the Love Live! movie ended up being, I feel like I'm giving Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha too much credit, for instance - if we leave out the ecchi fiasco, it was an okay attempt at something different - a serious magical girl anime. Funny, it was a novel idea while utterly derivative at the same time. You don't see that every day.

Yeah, you haven't seen anything yet.

Not entirely on topic, but I feel like stating that I had exactly one multiple choice test in my entire life, and that was the entry exam for my high shool of choice. I can kind of see what the point is, especially for the ease of mass testing. There was no other way they could efficiently sieve through a couple of thousand of applications for the ~200 free spots (ended up being ~220, in the end) in the time they had for the examinations. They did take grades and averages into account as bonus points though, so if you did well enough at school before - and we never have multiple choice test there, a least, you had a pretty big starting bonus. Although that required you to have teachers that cared. Luckily mine did, at the time. Something that went a good deal worse later on though, but that's neither here nor there. I mean, I was assigned to a remedial course once after getting 100% on three consecutive tests because the teacher hated me thought I needed, ah, help with learning, so... let's better not talk about my experience with teachers, lest it depresses Hurlshot or something.

I don't have much too say on account of Neon Genesis Evangelion and The End of Evangelion, having just watched it recently and written what feels like a dozen essays on it, especially in light of making that terrible decision to follow suit and be a good anime thread lemming by watching Rebuild, so don't take me not writing half an essay in response here as a lack of interest. I pretty much agree, except for changing my outlook on characters in a different way than you over the course of the show's run. Mostly because I really started out disliking Asuka for her attitude, didn't find Shinji too annoying and loved Misato. Misato is a type of character that triggers a deeply set affection, in the same way Makoto does - and Rommie from Andromeda. There's also a readily observable pattern, all characters that are determined and strong / have a determined and strong facade while also being emotionally vulnerable. They're also all female, but that's only because who creates male characters like that (honest question, I can't come up with a decent answer)? So if anyone would want to make a character for me in any show, hey, that's the easiest - not the only - way to do it. Add a little mystery and we're all set, I'll boost your ratings for as many seasons as you'd like. The only thing that did not work for me was my own expectations regarding the ending of the original show. I don't know what I expected, but I thought I would find something that makes no sense. Instead it was an narrative unending and a well written thematic closure that people to this day mistakenly (in my opinion) praise for its avant-garde art sequences. That wasn't planned, they were just simply unfinished because the time ran out and Anno made the best of it - just like the entire ending. It still worked, which is the really impressive part. Having that said, it feels really weird to retroactively reduce a rating, right? Not that I really do ratings all too often, but that happened with Love Live!. No, that would never have gotten a good rating, really, but what little there was enjoyable in this show ended up being a copy from K-On!, which just means that watching K-On! made Love Live! worse. Strange how that works.

Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha A's. The intro has tansformation sequences in spades, all with the accompanying magical girl nudity. The episode begins with a girl in a wheelchair, soft piano music (which made me think of @Bartimaeus and had me randomly burst out in laughter, and hearing a voice at the back of my head: Roy from IT Crowd going "I'm disabled!") and an ominous book in chains that's sitting on the girl's shelf. She begins reading something else, and at midnight the unthinkable happens, the ominous, chained book suddenly starts to move, breaks it's seal and starts talking German. We're off to a really good start here, I think. Judging purely by the book's voice modulation, it's probably a magical thingmabob like Raising Heart and Bardiche. More as the episode progresses... Anyway, half the episode was character driven, then it got a really long action scene that is slated to just continue in the second one. Yeah, this doesn't waste much time at establishing the new threat and jumping right into serious mode. Ominous talking book is called the BOOK OF DARKNESS, by the way. Just in case it wasn't clear enough that the book is, like, ominous and sort of evil from speaking the universal language of ominous, evil things and being all ominous and chained up.

Lady Asuka, Episode 11: Well... Duke Someface just shot a three year old in the open street. The preview of the next episode has Asuka going for the obvious shounen solution to the issue: Challenge the Duke to a pistol duel. I think I'm finally seeing how this appeals to a fan of Cardcaptor Sakura. Astounding. Lady Asuka, Episode 12: Lady Asuka deflects the Duke's bullet with her pistol and shoots his out of his hand. Oh boy... this just keeps getting better all the time. 28 episdes to go. Yay...

I guess I asked for it, huh?

Changed it to your liking!

In the grand scheme of things these were smaller posts, really.

There's a lot to unpack, and that feels a bit like the joke about a physics professor asking their students whether hell is endo- or exothermic in nature. Short answer: Yes. Longer answer: Directly after episode 5 this would have been a resounding no. Much much longer answer: It wasn't all bad, actually. Take out the really terrible parts of episode 5, and you're left with one embarrassing episode and a few transformations that are a little too sketchy, and some fan service that should not have been in there, but isn't too overboard. Ultimately, most of the show's runtime is just as you predicted it would be. The biggest issue is the schizophrenic attempt at welding a Cardcaptor Sakura age group magical girl cast with an attempt at mature storytelling and an adult target demographic. This was made specifically to attempt to appeal to the demographic that watched Sailor Moon as adolescent boys, I guess. It's familiar enough to "feel" right, it just really messed up with the erotic/suggestive content in episode five and the age of Nanoha, because much of the runtime you simply don't buy that she's a nine year old. When Nanoha gears up and walks headlong into a battle that may very well kill her and ends it with Usagi's typical "We fought, don't you think it's time to try and be friends now?", all you really get is the incredibly Japanese thing to do: Make characters far too young for their own good. It also adds to the JRPG feel, because that is a very prevalent thing in JRPGs too, when young boys or girls are inadvertantly thrust into a situation beyond their ken, but resolve to do something about it anyway. Usagi spends an entire season not wanting to accept her responsibilities, and only truly does so after she's lost everything. All Nanoha needed as a nine year old was finding a magical ferret and a talking red marble with an AI turning her into a techno-mage, and two episodes to properly learn how to control it. Still, and that says more about what I've watched recently than it does about Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, it's been enjoyable enough. Unlike with Lady Asuka, Love Live! and Magic User's Club, I was actually looking forward to finding the time to watch an episode or two. That only stopped dead in its tracks after the loli incident. The most damning thing is, there's no real reason to watch this, in the same way that there's no real reason to play random JRGP #2321. Visually and in terms of music it's not impressive, but at least not offensive. The storyline is fine, but not great, and the writing is... fine too. It's a bit messy and sometimes confused, tries to add too much in too short a span of time (space ships, technobabble and the space cops are all things that could easily have been dropped without making any difference) near the end. It really is much like an anime version of random JRGP #2321, but it's nowhere near as bad as X is. What I liked about it, for the most part, is one thing that carries an undue weight for my enjoyment of entertainment - atmosphere. I loved the feeling the anime gave off when it wasn't trying to be disgusting. It's the same feeling I get when thinking back to playing Final Fantasy Adventure on the Game Boy or the journey of your character in Illusion of Gaia or Terranigma. It's much less about how good the sum of its parts are, how good the parts are, or how well they go together. That is, however, preciously little to go by as far as recommendations go, and I doubt you would find anything in it that would lastingly appeal to you. You might tentatively not hate the first few episodes, but the serious mode and the storyline, yeah, no. That's not character driven enough, and episode five would make you delete all anime you still wanted to try. edit: Oh, and welcome to the secod thread I ever made on the Obsidian forum! Figures, the first one was to provide the BISIMGs to download, the second one was foisted upon me, but I like this approach with splitting off the end of the old thread more than the lock and repost. That was a good idea, @Gorth.

Triple post power, because why not. Sue me! Although nope, it took too long to type and there was a reply in between! I'm done with Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Due to episode five I can't really recommend that to anyone. The rest is... well, what else is there to say than what I said before: It is occasionally good, mostly nice, and a whole lot derivative. It is also a little more serious than other magical girl shows, and apart from having a changing room scene with a collection of hypersexualized minors of various age levels (from nine to seventeen) that's where the target demographic mostly shines through. It's really tough to deal with that scene. There's fanservice and then there's blatant sexualized nudity. I'm just going to reiterate that so it sticks - we're not talking about Magic User's Club level of just embarrassing or Sailor Moon occasionally doing an unecessary upskirt because the animators felt like sneaking one in. Sadly the rest of the anime isn't free of that either, but it just pales in comparison. I'd also have less of a problem with a scene like that if all the charcters involved would have been the adults on the show. Then it would just be unnecessary, but thankfully over quickly. There's a lot less silly than in Sailor Moon or Cardcaptor Sakura, and that's fine. It isn't entirely fine when what you're looking for is silly girly stuff. However, it's not all stupid serious mode action either. That happens in the second to last episode of the season, and the show does a very sensible thing in dedicating an entire episode to the epilogue. It's a wonderful episode full of character moments, beacuse the story's all wrapped up. Sailor Moon could have really benefitted from one of those after the end of Sailor Stars' storyline. I guess, if you're ever bored out of your mind and want some magical girl action you can try Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, just as long as you skip 95 (I counted that - 95 - NO LESS) seconds in the fifth episode the moment you see two women leaving the changing room. The rest of the episode is embarrassing then, but at least won't make you feel like clawing your eyes out - and in case it doesn't, then perhaps it's time for you to get yourself into therapy before something problematic happens. Also, don't expect a whole lot of funny situations. There are some laughs, but it's not the focus.

Speaking of Madhouse, I thought about trying to get a copy of Cyber City Oedo 808. That's short and looks visually impressive. Not sure about the content, but a three episode OVA with 45 minutes each wouldn't be too much of a time waster.

Yes, it's like watching the tail end of a Sailor Moon season. It's a bit less disjointed perhaps (actually a lot less, arguably some thought was put into setting everything up!), but really... serious. The show didn't have many comedic elements before, except every now and then, but it went full storry and much less character interactions now. I'm pretty much at the end though, two episodes left. I vote for Sakura, because of course I would.

More Nanoha talk: Link to previous thread:

Nanoha and Fate have a nice JRPG like duel until Nanoha decides she's had enough and just flat out tells EVA to turn into the Ion Cannon an obliterate her. Well, Fate got really lucky that the Nanoha Ion Cannon has a stun setting, because somehow she survives that blast. Well... Fate is also often the victim of her attire, having only that bikini unitard to wear makes it sort of easy to add in some quick fanservice here and there, although that's mostly harmless. The twist hinted at by the last episode I watched might possibly be something else, by the way. I'm not sure yet, but apparently... Here's to hoping that they kept the seizure inducing battle scenes to a minimum. I'd rather take those if it means there are no more super creepy nude scenes, but ideally, no to both!

Surprisingly, much more than to the sequels to Love Live!, the Magic User's Club TV anime, and more than finishing Lady Asuka or that Korararagemimamimi-Thing with the travelling cat ears that I randomly started watching on Amazon Prime Video. I'm not going to mention watching and - for the most part - even liking this to anyone that I know in real life, and that is really only because of episode five so far. When it's not showing lolicon content, it's quite nice. Not great, because it's a disjointed, schizophrenic mess that tries to waffle in tone between darker than Galaxia level Sailor Moon villainy and the bubbly sweetness of Cardcaptor Sakura, but I have watched much less interesting things with worse characters recently. Really, that lolicon moment is all that's standing in the way of a mild recommendation for a somewhat messy and in terms of genre conventions and premise wholly derivative magical girl series. If that turns out to be true it also did the Sailor Moon villain thing. Which would be hilarious. Right, there's one thing I forgot to mention, Fate's and Nanoha's magical techno devices narrate what they're doing in the best Command & Conquer computer voices. Nanoha gets EVA and Fate CABAL, and I have to laugh like an idiot every time she activates it, because it keeps saying RAISING HEART, SET UP. Fate's thingy is called Bardiche, and not very surprisingly looks like one. Now... if they just had not set me up that nude content bomb in the changing room. Really. SHOOTING MODE. Targetting Episode 5 changing room scene. DIVINE BUSTER! I haven't really mentioned the soundtrack yet, which sounds a bit like generic JRPG #3241. All that said, the one thing I'm really not looking forward to is how the newer series look. The original from 2004 is already not as well animated as it could be and looks slightly more modern than it could, but it's not entirely awful. Scenes from the other series do look a lot worse though. Eh...

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.

It's interesting because for me that was a reversed process. I always* knew what I wanted to do with my life, until I stood there and realized that it's simply not going to work out, having to struggle against my nature to achieve what I thought was my goal in life. That might sound like far fetched silly philosophy, but in losing that fight, I ultimately won, atlhough I realize that I got really lucky that coasting on the river of life without the will to steer against the stream ended up carrying me to a pretty good place. Eh, but I posted enough about that already, suffice it to say that figuring "it" out is all nice, but no guarantee for anything. That makes sense, when you look at NGE in its function of being representative of Anno's struggle against depression. It also very neatly explains why Rebuild falls flat, because that shifted everything to his struggle with the inane NGE fandom, which is decidedly less interesting, and has a much less relatable personal stake. I mean seriously, how many people on the planet really have to engange with that toxic a fanbase on a regular basis? Certainly not me**. Plus Mari and the seizure inducing action that the team likes to sell as the creative vision behind NGE rounds that out. Sure guys, you do that. I agree on the feeling of catharsis, for me that's... Violet and her struggles. It just worked. *It changed, once. When I was really young I thought I'd go into electical engineering. **I also don't really know what depression is, but I still related to the struggles of the characters. I thought I did, once, but that turned out to be a stupor induced by too high blood sugar levels. In spite of having gotten better in time, my basic emotional level is more or less still nothing for the most part, and the way I understand it that's not the case for depression - I'm not under any strain or stress in that state. The closest approximation is a state of grand, cosmic ennui, except without the feelings that accompany ennui. Which means it's not really an approximation. Does that make sense? Whisper of the Heart caused the longest change in that state in recent memory, while watching Violet go through something similar was very impactful. More so than Rei in NGE was, to be honest.

Lindsay Ellis isn't entirely wrong when she says Glorfindel isn't necessarily a good character to include in a film already laden with too many, because he really doesn't do anything after that, but replacing him with Arwyn to force her appearance in Fellowship was a little, well, forced. I don't know, perhaps it would have been less distracting if someone else had played her. I've never once believed that she's an elf. Yes. Very much so. I'm not sure it was meant to be depressing, but that's how it was. Speaks to the strength of the movie that my experience was similar, but stemming from a different root. For me that was mostly seeing her work up that drive and determination at an age where she really should just be a child. I realize that this is highly colored by personal experiences and very much a projection, but back when I posted about it after watching, I said that I wanted to yell at the screen, tell her to take more time. Just because Seiji is in the process of runining his childhood (or already has) doesn't mean she needs to follow suit. The metaphorical dark to wander in, well, I had that at the age of 20. It was over by 22, but it sure wasn't the best of times. On the other hand, which times were the best? Sometime between 0 and 6, I'm sure. Probably because I don't remember much of that time. That might be, but I really don't want to experience that feeling again*, and I doubt knowing what will happen will change the outcome. I'm much more likely to rewatch Perfect Blue to see and pick up on clues I might have missed the first time around. Although... after listening to Tomoyo some more since then, I think that's going to be even weirder. Well, Mima is a good deal less squeaky unless she gets excited, but still... Speaking of knowing what to do with your live, it's also a part of K-On!, when Yui and Ritsu really have no idea what they want to do after high school, while the others have figured it out already. Also had one of the best jokes in the series, with that scene when Yui comes too late to the office. The comedic timing in it is also really good at times. I mentioned it in my complain post about Komi Can't Communicate that there's a majorly delayed joke about Azusa's cat ears, I think that's even in the very last episode, one of the bonus OVAs... *Very hard to explain. Feels like all the walls closing in, except it's not having a problem with the current situation, but the expectation that this will never again change. There's just no way back, and at any such given times, that's all I want to do. Go back. Yeah, I'll just go lie down before I think so more and don't need to rewatch it to throw me back into a nostalgic mood leading to nothing but melancholy and restless sleep, and potentially one of the school nightmares I still get occasionally.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha just invented a power scale for technomages. Nanoha sits at a comfortable 1.23 million MANA, while Fate has 1.46 million MANA, and both can in the short term triple their power output in a crisis. That's apparently enough to be classified triple A magi by the Space-Time Police, whatever that means. Space Cop Mercury wants to handle the Jewel Seed situation from now on, and Nanoha finds out that her pet ferret is actually a boy her age, and just like with Artemis in Sailor Moon Eternal, nobody thinks its weird. Nanoha ends up joining the space cops, and in the first really surprising twist (not counting the 20 seconds of lolicon content as a surprise twist, that was more like a surprise cause for projectile vomit) actually tells her mother about it (except the part where Yuuno is a real boy that watched their entire family bathing nude at the hot springs, they thankfully leave that part out!), then leaves home. Hm, should I rewatch Space Cop now? Just in case someone doesn't know what Space Cop is... but why wouldn't you know:

After I have watched Grave of the Fireflies I called it the best movie I never want to see again. It's really good, and you really never want to see it again. Recently though both Violet Evergarden (the series, not the films or the OVA) and Whisper of the Heart proved to be much worse for me. That's by far and large personal, and in the case of Whisper of the Heart not entirely logical. There was just something about the protagonist that threw me into a nostalgic and melancholic reverie that was really hard to get out of.

I'm not sure if I'm reading this right, but Grave of the Fireflies is from Takahata. Have you not seen it yet?