Nanoha stuff arrived!

I got my Nanoha-type and my Nanoha THE Movie 1st Blu-ray today! The first thing it had to do to me of course was make me sad I didn't get the Blu-ray from GAMERS, since the first page of Nanoha-type is an promotion that shows off a super special GAMERS edition of the blu-ray with all sorts of extra cool stuff. It's got a tapestry (i.e. wall scroll) that I could probably never put up and B3 posters and a tote bag and a clear file and an even more special box. NOOOOOO! Well, it would have been considerably more expensive though, so I guess I'm sorta okay with not getting it? No not really, but oh well. Anyway, Nanoha-type is surprisingly hefty, being about 13mm (1/2 inch) thick. So the biggest news I discovered upon getting Nanoha-type is that: Magical Girl Lyrical NANOHA The MOVIE 2nd A's has been confirmed! Ok, so you probably got that from a different site by now, since not only has the magazine been out for a few days now, it's just reporting on how they announced that over a week ago at Lyrical Party IV on 2010-11-23. Nevertheless, I was excited.

Their other big announcement that occurred during Lyrical Party is that they're making another Nanoha game for the PSP: Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's PORTABLE -THE GEARS OF DESTINY-. A quick glance over the content for that seems to show that they're adding two more heroines to it. They will be original characters named Amitie Florian and Kyrie Florian. There seems to be quite a bit more information about it as well, and maybe I'll get to putting it online a different day. Besides info on the new game, they also have a nice section about -THE BATTLE OF ACES- with some short stories included.

As for the rest of the magazine, I would bet the most interesting new information would be in the special dialog with Yukari Tamura and Nana Mizuki as well as the long interview with Masaka Tsuzuki. Outside of that, there are the guides to the comics ViVid and Force, as well as the complete The MOVIE 1st guide (I was highly amused that they accidentally did a combination of Raising and Raging for Raising Heart's name and labeled it Raiging Heart). There's also a history of Nanoha through event dates and DVD and comic release dates, and a section with pictures of every single piece of Nanoha merchandise ever. That's actually where the Weiss Schwarz Nanoha pin-up comes in, as it is exactly that: a pin-up poster that has images of all the Nanoha Weiss Schwarz cards. That kind of disappointed me, but I really didn't know what else to possibly expect from that. There's also a section that has various comics by guest artists, and that is what makes up a fair portion of the girth of the magazine. In terms of included merchandise, it does include the one year (from December 2010 to December 2011) planner and ballpoint pen as listed. The most amusing thing is that the planner and pen came with instructions, telling you things like "Don't wave the planner around" and "Don't throw the planner." It was pretty funny.

Anyway, there is undoubtedly a treasure trove of info in here, and I may highlight some interesting tidbits once I get through it, but otherwise, I'm sure there's a lot of good info that could go on the Nanoha Wiki. I bet someone there is already working on it.

As for the movie, I'd already seen it before in Japan, but overall, I still recommend it over watching the regular series. Although you miss out on character development for Alisa and Suzuka, and the development of Nanoha and Fate's relationship gets a little rushed, for the most part, making it a movie made the plot more solid. They also added a fair bit on Precia's past, making it worth seeing the movie even if you have already seen the show. They did update some things for the movie though, with Alisa's house suddenly having a Wii, even though they didn't even exist yet when Nanoha first came out in 2004.

As for the Blu-ray itself, there are a number of extras that came with the Blu-ray too, and those were all listed in the last post. I'll perhaps look at those another day. I did look at the special disc though, and figured out what the recording of the string instruments thing was about. It seems that for the movie they actually had a string orchestra perform the string instruments, so the recording is just a recording of the string orchestra. As for the first day stage greeting, it seems at some movie theaters in Japan, on the first day of the movie release, they had a special appearance by some of the voice actors after the movie was over and they talked for a bit, so this is just a recording of those events.