Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid – 08
魔法少女リリカルなのはViVid
Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha ViVid episode 08

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Nanoha heads to the Saint Church facility to visit Ix and sees Sister Chantez, who is also entering the Inter-Middle tournament. Sister Chantez agrees to a little sparring session and is surprised by Vivio’s keen eyesight. Vivio uses Chris to boost her defenses, but in the end, Sister Chantez defeats her. However, this is not looked upon favorably by Sister Deed and Otto. After Otto escorts Vivio to see Ix (Ixy), Deed demands to know what Chantez was up to. Chantez says she just wanted to make Vivio more aware of the dangers she’d be facing in the tournament.

Meanwhile, Hayate, Rein, and Agito pay Einhart, Nove, and Cinque a visit to deliver the Device promised to Einhart. Since they knew of the snow leopards that protected Klaus’s family, the device is designed to look like a leopard kitten. Einhart names it Asteion after the snow leopard kitten that did not survive birth, and gives it the nickname Tio. With that taken care of, Nove assigns Einhart to train with Mikaya (Micaiah) Chevelle at the latter’s dojo since Micaiah is also entering the tournament and wants to train in katana vs. unarmed fighting. Nove then assigns Corona to train with Otto, Rio to train with Deed, and Nove trains Vivio.

The training goes into full swing, and Chris gets Nanoha to provide it with materials so that it can learn how to better help Vivio in combat. The time of the Inter-Middle Championship arrives, so Nove informs the girls the block groups they will fight the preliminaries in. Corona and Einhart end up in the same block, meaning they will probably have to battle each other. At the tournament, Zafira introduces nervous Miura to Vivio. Despite Miura’s extreme nervousness, her training allows her to easily defeat her opponent. Vivio also easily defeats her opponent despite her opponent being armed with a pole weapon. Vivio and Miura are happy for each other, but Zafira tells Nove they will face each other in the preliminaries since they are in the same group.

Thoughts/Review:

And so it is tournament time.  What cliche horrors await me here? 😉

You know, seeing how Vivio is always ready to do fisticuffs with someone always makes me smile. I love how she has her fists ready and does her feet like a boxer. It is cute to see, but seeing how she truly enjoys duking it out with others in order to learn and get stronger, it just makes me like her all the more as a character. I think this is the element that makes me much more accepting of a tournament arc that I otherwise would not be looking forward to.

Einhart gets her Device, which despite being designed to look like a leopard kitten, I kept being reminded of Ryo-ohki from Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki. I suppose that’s only natural since both are designed to look like cute, baby animals, yet are both very powerful devices.

It was nice seeing Hayate, Rein, and Agito again, even if it was just an extended cameo. I get the feeling we won’t be seeing them again for a while.

The majority of the episode’s humor came from Sister Deed and Otto taking offense to Sister Chantez’s battle with Vivo, whom they feel should be treated more respectfully due to her being royalty.

While speaking of Deed and Otto, I noted with interest that they refer to Rio and Corona with the “ojousama” honorific attached to their names. I don’t know anything about either Rio’s or Corona’s background, but I’d guess they are from affluent families.

Going back to the tournament, where was Nanoha? Seriously, you are never going to convince me that Nanoha isn’t going to see her baby girl in her first tournament to cheer her on. I thought “Where’s Nanoha?” from the moment Vivio showed up with Nove. Instead, Nanoha’s role in this episode was a cameo to show Chris some video material so it could learn to be better Vivio.

I did like that they showed Vivio being a bit nervous (another reason Nanoha should have been there, in my opinion). I’m trying to think if I’ve seen this element before in other battle tournaments I’ve seen or read over the years.  I can’t think of any.

Miura was even more nervous, which was cute and VERY understandable. I liked how she fell back to her training strategy and won her match. She’s obviously pretty powerful (and that has been hinted at by some of you 😉 ), so it will be interesting seeing her have to be pitted against Vivio.

In the end, this was a cute, enjoyable episode that hurried us along to get into tournament mode. I’m actually looking forward to seeing how things play out.