Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha EXCEEDS Ep.09 - Towa! We're coming for you!

Episode 9 of Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha EXCEEDS: Gun Blaze Vengeance moves quite quickly, starting with Towa's capture by Shinomiya Mana and immediately moving toward the rescue assault on the facility. I was honestly expecting this to take a bit longer, leaving her there for a while.

The episode goes pretty much as you would expect, without any major surprises. Mana arrives to take Towa from the corrupt police; Towa wakes up and attacks her, leading to a battle between the two. Mana wins with extreme ease, leaving Towa heavily injured.

She's right though, when the corruption starts from the top it's hard for the organization to be actually useful at its original purpose.

Mana, now was all this necessary if you're so strong that you don't need to do anything to defeat Towa? It feels a bit...

Towa's friends go to talk with EXCEEDS, and the rescue mission gets approved, with Nanoha and the others storming the base fully armed to take her back. It's not like Hayate was useful, by the way (which we talked about last week); most of the help was provided by the spider that Towa left behind.

The next episode will feature Towa's rescue, but I'm still not sure if Mana will be defeated here or if she'll just bail out and go back to her own laboratory. It would be more fitting if Mana and Eiji were defeated together, because you know they'll want to do the cheesy scene of him dying for her or something along those lines.

The question is, how are they going to defeat Mana in battle, considering she handled Towa with ease despite the absurd amount of power Towa had absorbed? In order to give closure to her story, it would be better if Towa actually fought and surpassed her, but I would be okay with a "yuri attack" with Towa and Shiina teaming up to defeat her.

It's clear that Nanoha and Fate won't have much of a role anyway; they are here merely to lure people into watching a series that would've never been popular otherwise. Let's be honest here: the animation is average, the story is extremely predictable and formulaic, and there's not even that much good yuri.

Mana, stop acting hot because you're going to die anyway by the end of this. They're going heavy on showing her...

Nanoha is in full battle mode, she even started wearing a shield. Did Nanoha ever had a shield in any adaptation? No right?

I would be hard-pressed to suggest this series to anyone after watching these nine episodes. The only thing I can say is, "Oh, but there's Nanoha and Fate," and that's probably what they thought when approving this direction. It feels cheap, especially because the entire series doesn't feel like it's set in the same universe, nor does it even feature tangentially similar magical systems.