Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha EXCEEDS Ep.12 - Wait, that was it for Eiji?!

Episode 12 of Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha EXCEEDS: Gun Blaze Vengeance completes the story with a rather uninspiring ending that didn't feel as good as I was expecting. The emotional payoff was supposed to center on Mana and Eiji receiving punishment for everything they did over the years, but it never actually materialized.

While Mana took quite a beating, her demise was caused by the original alien and not by any of the heroines. It's a safe way to keep the heroines "pure," I guess, but it's not very satisfying. Then we have Eiji, who just ended up in jail and mysteriously died there right afterward, with only a passing mention in the epilogue.

Turns out the yuri couple became the yuri family, all living together but never confirming the yuri of the situation.

Nanoha and Fate being relegated to cameos here and there as side characters was a shame, but it reminded me why I like them so much. They're both great, especially together!

It didn't really resolve the relationship between Shiina and Towa either, but at least they've started living together in the house where Shiina lived with Setsuna in the beginning. Their actual relationship is left uncertain. Friends? Lovers? I guess it's a cheap way out to avoid committing to a definitive stance.

The series rushed to a "happily ever after" very quickly, yet still hinted at new threats appearing to keep the bond between the characters active. However, this never truly addresses the ongoing presence of majin in the world, because just as Shiina and Towa still exist, others might be hidden out there somewhere.

This seems to be a pattern throughout the series: it all felt like a checklist exercise designed to take as many "popular" tropes as possible and mix them into one show. The end result is shallow and simply lacks the "love" you feel when a series is written by someone with genuine passion. It felt like the product of a corporate committee.

In the end, I think this series was just riding the popularity of Nanoha and her cast without ever truly committing to them. The new characters had a few good ideas behind them, but they never materialized into something that could stand on its own. Remove Nanoha from the story and you'd get a cheap, cliché action/yuri series with very thin developments all around.

Towa works hard as a yuri partner to protect Shiina from self-destroying. Blue flame and red flame!

The dream section was just a way to show Setsuna again, cheap move, but was nice to see her once more.

If they want to keep using Nanoha, they should focus on expanding her universe rather than creating a whole new series that uses the franchise merely as bait to grab people's attention. Better animation quality would also be welcome, as this production suffered from spotty animation that was often reduced to panning across still images.