And now, we'll let the epic befriending begin.

I'd start with "this is a tough call", but the easy calls are all over - nobody left but solid moe at this point. Even so, though, Nanoha vs. Rena is a pretty good match-up. One friend commented that this match contains the entire sexy content of the quarterfinals (or at least one hopes, anyway... ya pervs.) Both characters are simultaneously cute and extremely violent.

If Nanoha has a problem, it's that she's presented as being too good - she'd almost be a Mary Sue type character. Her only weakness is the occasional pang of doubt, but she overcomes that and goes out and kicks ass over and over again. We never see her be petty, or cruel, or suspicious, or jealous, or even annoyed. She's always acting out of motives which are essentially selfless and pure. She doesn't hate. Even Fate, though she ends up acting like Nanoha, has to make an effort to pull herself in to prevent her from killing an enemy; out of the four people who Nanoha is best friends with at the end of Strikers, she has blown the hell out of EACH of them at maximum power at one time or another, without either party holding it against the other later. (Thus, the "befriending" jokes.) Mind you, she also has a fortunate set of enemies...

Rena is very much a broken character. In cute mode, she's enjoyable if a bit ditzy - "I'm gonna take it home!" But she's absolutely top-class as a yandere - not just that she's insane, but that she's so variably insane, due to the weird nature of Higurashi. And it's not even possible to stop there, because there are plenty of times where she's probably being -actually- sane, but the person observing her is insane themselves, so it's hard to tell where Rena's nuttiness stops and everyone else's picks up.

Voting strength is tough to gauge. Rena has, after all, landed the highest number of votes of any character. But her performance in the final round makes it clear that a lot of those votes were anti-Kagami, rather than pro-Rena. Nanoha may have picked up some anti-Luna support too, of course, but probably not nearly as much - Luna was never the threat that Kagami was to otherwise-uninterested parties. Then again, Nanoha has a sort of veteran disadvantage - she did win this shindig before, so plenty of people are going to say "go home and let the new kids take a chance at it".

Naturally I'm an unabashed Nanoha partisan here - and if I wasn't, it would be bad, as I still have three episodes to proofread tonight before I submit them. So sure, if you're reading this, take a moment to go vote for her - we like busty transforming magical girls with banana ammo clips for their wands way more than we like crazy chicks with billhooks, right? Right?
竜宮レナ＠ひぐらしのなく頃に(Ryuuguu Rena@Higurashi no Naku Koro ni)
高町なのは＠魔法少女リリカルなのはStrikerS(Takamachi Nanoha@Mahou Syoujo Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS)

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 07:20 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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