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Franchise / Lyrical Nanoha

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This is a disambiguation page for the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha franchise. Please don't link here, unless you're referring to it in general. If the link that brought you here mentioned any particular series — including Nanoha Original — and not the franchise as a whole, please redirect it to one of the series pages listed below.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/fatenano_9547.jpg
Female bonding at its awesomest.

"Call me a devil... it just means I'll have to use my hellish powers to get you to listen!"
—Nanoha Takamachi, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, episode 9.

It has been noted by TV executives that Magical Girl series usually have Multiple Demographic Appeal — not only are they popular among 4 to 9-year-old girls, but also among 19 to 30-year-old males. Shows such as Pretty Cure attempt to please the first demographic. Nanoha is made exclusively for the second.

The series has a rather unusual production history. Nanoha first started as a Token Mini-Moe in a certain H-game named Triangle Heart 3: Sweet Songs Forever, part of a trilogy of such H-games. She was a very minor character, but proved popular enough to eventually get a mini Spin-Off game where she becomes a typical Sickeningly Sweet Magical Girl. A few years later they decided to make an anime based on that, and so Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha was born. Said series proceeded to throw in a bunch of tropes that would be more associated with Humongous Mecha shows for good measure, simply because a production crew member noted that Nanoha's costume design made her look like a Gundam. From there on she went on to become one of the most badass Magical Girls yet to have existed.

What makes Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha unique is the detail put into the fight scenes, much to the delight of the seinen market's nostalgia for grand space battles and fist-pumping action. Many people who can't stand typical Magical Girl shows enjoy Nanoha because of this. It is also unusual among more dramatic and action-packed Magical Girl Warrior series in that Nanoha loves her job, enjoys her powers, and makes responsible decisions regarding them extending into adulthood. In fact, her job and adventures extend well into adulthood, period.

Over the years Lyrical Nanoha has branched off into a multi-media franchise with several separate continuities:

Primary continuity

  • Has a canon spin-off in the form of a Yonkoma Comedy/Slice of Life manga called Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid Life mostly featuring Vivio and her friends from school but sometimes focusing on the old cast such as Nanoha, Fate, Hayate, and the Wolkenritter.

Alternate continuities

Supplementary works

  • A Light Novel adaptation, with mostly the same plot as the first anime, but with a few key deviations. Illustrations by the same artist as the movie manga. It has never been translated.
  • Original Chronicle Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha The 1st - yet another revisit of The Original Series events, this time in manga form, while also pulling elements from the movie, sound stages and light novel. (2013)
  • Three volumes of manga detailing various slice of life moments throughout A's and StrikerS, including six chapters that bridge the ten years between them.
  • A set of Audio Dramas called "Sound Stages":
  • A semi-canon (though its status is debatable) 4-volume anthology manga called Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha: Comic à la carte in the post-StrikerS continuity, as well as extra volumes for the Movie 2nd A's and the INNOCENT continuities;
  • Countless Yonkomas for almost every installment and continuity, up to the movie sound stages. Some are bundled as Omakes after the main manga volumes, others run in the same publisher's magazines;
  • Lyrical Nanoha×Prisma☆Illya - a one-shot non-canon Intercontinuity Crossover manga with Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA, which features Nanoha and Fate circa the first season (though looking like they do in the movie) teaming up with Ilya and Miyu after some time/space weirdness traps them in a pocket dimension together;
  • Numerous artbooks, guidebooks, character profiles, collectable cards, colored pamphlets and other things of dubious canonicity. Also a truckload Side-Story Bonus Art and other promotional materials from the various magazines publishing the different Nanoha manga.

The entire series is animated by Seven Arcs (Except for the ViVid anime, which is animated by A-1 Pictures) and written by Masaki Tsuzuki, who has a habit of radically shifting its tone and feel between almost every installment.

The franchise as a whole and the supplementary works provide examples of:

  • Abandoned Catchphrase: Nanoha originally had the cutesy catchphrase "Lyrical Magical". This was phased out in A's, and replaced with the far more appropriate "Zenryoku Zenkai!" (Full Power! Full Throttle!)* 
  • Adopting the Abused: Most of the cast are Happily Adopted so this comes up a lot. It's most prominently seen with series Deuteragonist Fate Testarossa, who was horrifically abused (both physically and emotionally) by her biological mother before eventually being adopted into the Harlaown family. She even continues the process from the other side as an adult, adopting several children of her own who came from similar backgrounds.
  • Air Jousting: Sometimes with rocket-propelled devices for good measure.
  • All Planets Are Earth-Like
  • All Deaths Final:
  • All There in the Manual: Many things, from details on how spells work to how characters came to certain decisions in the series, to even major parts of characters' backstories, are only discussed in the sound stages and companion manga. Even who some minor characters actually are. Recall the cheerful maid that took care of Fate and her sister in the dream she had towards the end of A's? Without seeing some of the official art, you'd never know she had cat ears and a tail under that outfit. She's Precia's familiar. This was corrected in The Movie.
  • Alternate Calendar: Old and New Midchildan Calendar.
  • Alternate Continuity:
    • Nanoha and family are an Alternate Universe version of the one from the H-game and OVA series Triangle Heart 3: Sweet Songs Forever where her brother, sister, and father were ninja-like bodyguards. The first season makes numerous references to this. Her father, killed in Triangle Heart, is alive in this universe, although covered with scars from "his old job". In addition Nanoha enjoys watching her brother and sister spar, using the same fighting style from the original series.
    • It's also an alternate continuity to the Lyrical Toy Box mini-game Spin-Off, which was the spiritual pilot for Nanoha, very little of which was kept in the final incarnation.
    • Within the franchise itself we have The Movie 1st and 2nd, which are considered an alternate retelling of the first and second seasons, with changes justified In-Universe as semi-biographical films, produced on Midchilda.
    • The first movie's supplementary manga diverges further into its own continuity, shifting the order of major events and changing the characters' personalities somewhat.
    • The PSP games Battle of Aces and Gears of Destiny are also an alternate continuity diverging from the main series shortly before the end of A's, though apparently all the events after the time skip remain unchanged.
    • Lyrical Nanoha×Prisma☆Illya is some kind Alternate Continuity singularity, considering it crosses over two Alternate Universe spinoffs of two unrelated franchises, while not being in continuity with any of them. It's still official, but definitely a Fake Crossover.
  • Amplifier Artifact: All devices, as they don't really enable people to cast magic, as much as they automate the process, control the flow of mana and in the case of the cartridge system enable short bursts of power.
  • Anti-Villain: Perhaps the most straight-played element from classic Magical Girl franchises present in Nanoha is that the typical antagonist usually is more misunderstood than genuinely evil. Unlike traditional takes on the genre, however, getting them to talk means having to beat the snot out of them first in the most spectacular way possible, or at the very least Gunboat Diplomacy.
  • Apocalypse How: Lost Logia in sufficient amount is capable of X-2 and beyond class as the Al-Hazard disaster showed.
  • Armed with Canon: The Megami Sound Stages were written by Yuunoha supporters (or at least Nanofate opponents), while ViVid gives a slightly different look not to mention is also written by series creator Masaki Tsuzuki. For instance mention is made that Vivio's relationship with Fate is like that of an aunt (Vivio says she knows Fate isn't really her "mama" since it was Nanoha alone who adopted her) — with the implication that Nanoha and Fate are Like Sister and Sister — but in ViVid she's back to calling her "Fate-mama". They also break the fourth wall, so their canonical significance was already pretty suspect. ViVid also has Vivio explicitly telling another character that she has two mothers.
  • Artificial Human: Many of the characters, both heroic and villainous, are lab experiments.
  • Ascended Extra: In Triangle Heart 3: Sweet Songs Forever, Nanoha is just a side character who doesn't get much development outside of Kuon's route. Then the fan box came out and gave her a small game. Then, that inspired this show.
  • As Lethal as It Needs to Be: With the right Device setting, spells can't kill people, and functional Barrier Jackets prevent most kinds of indirect damage.
  • Audio Adaptation: The Sound Stages. Most are manuals, but StrikerS Sound Stage X is a self contained story and even has lasting consequences in the series canon.
  • Author Appeal: No matter what direction the series goes in, you can always count on having cute girls blowing stuff up mecha style.
  • Badass Adorable: Anyone with magical powers between the ages of 9 and 12 easily qualifies.
  • Badass Family: Several. And they're all True Companions, so they practically qualify as a Badass Army of Badass Families.
    • The Harlaowns. Admiral Lindy, Admiral Chrono, and Enforcer Fate. Probably also the late Clyde Harlaown. Any of them can and will befriend you into outer space if you make them mad. Erio and Caro probably count as members as well and Arf's the family pet.
    • The Yagami family. Not actually blood-related, but a family nevertheless. Hayate, Signum, Vita, Shamal, Zafira, Reinforce/Reinforce Zwei, and Agito.
    • The Takamachi family. The White Devil herself, Fate, and Vivio. And if you go with the Triangle Heart backstory, also Nanoha's siblings, Kyoya and Miyuki Takamachi and their father, all of whom are superb swordsmen and able to defeat legions of gunmen in mere seconds. Not to mention the fact the entire family is descended from samurai.
    • The Nakajimas. With the exception of Non Action Dad Genya (who lets his 108th Battalion do the talking), all of the members of the family are formidable fighters. Quint, Ginga, Subaru, Cinque, Dieci, Nove and Wendi. Thoma Avenir will likely be joining them in the near future. And according to the First Movie Sound Stage, they consider Teana part of the family.
  • Banishing Ritual: This is called "Sealing": a procedure that renders pretty much any dangerous Magitek construct inert and harmless. Sealing sentient constructs, though, pretty much equates to murder, as the heroes learn in the season two finale, where they have to seal Reinforce Eins in order to stop the Book of Darkness for good.
  • Barbie Doll Anatomy: Used extensively in transformation sequences and in all other cases for the lolis in the manga and the anime series. The adults in ViVid and Force or anyone in the movie, not so much.
  • Battle Ballgown: Since Barrier Jackets and Knight's Armor can be customized, some characters (especially the slower ones) have rather elaborate outfits like Vita◊ and Victoria◊.
  • Beam-O-War: Subverted for the most part. In any Beam-O-War situation, nobody ever really has to work at it. Any time it happens, one of the people attempting it will lose almost instantly, because true Beam-O-War requires standing still, and anyone engaged in Full-Contact Magic loses when they do that.
  • Become Your Weapon: The Unison Devices are tiny sentient humanoids who exist specifically to physically merge with their masters and give them enormous power boosts. The only downside is that very few mages can handle Unison.
  • Begin with a Finisher:
    • Forbidden by the mechanics of Functional Magic for the title character: her most powerful Signature Move only works after a considerable number of magical blows have already been exchanged in the airspace, because it feeds on the magical energy that lingers in the area from those attacks.
    • Defied more explicitly in the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Striker S manga bonus chapter: the starting distance between Nanoha and Signum in a mock battle is chosen so that neither can effectively use their respective One-Hit KO moves (long-ranged and close-ranged, respectively).
  • Benevolent A.I.: Intelligent and Armed Devices are always depicted as being loyal to their users, and have on several occasions given them a much needed pep talk or demanded to be given dangerous upgrades to better protect them in battle. This loyalty goes both ways, as it is stressed at multiple points throughout the series that Devices are first and foremost a mage's partner.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Almost all of the protagonists are incredibly friendly people, and every single one of them can and will kick your ass if you somehow manage to incite their wrath.
  • BFG: Shooting-focused Intelligent Devices are basically the magical equivalent. To push the analogy further, the second season introduces cartridges, which might as well be magically charged shotgun shells or even rifle casings from their appearance, and Bardiche loads them from a swing-out revolver cylinder, while Raising Heart does so from a detachable box magazine. Raising Heart's cannon mode in The Movie even has a sliding trigger grip.
  • Blank White Eyes: In comedic situations.
  • Blue with Shock
  • Boring, but Practical: Storage Devices have no to minimum A.I. whatsoever and are limited to only one weapon form, but they process magic faster. The "practical" part makes them the most commonly used type of device among mages, while the "boring" part makes them the least used type of device among main characters.
  • Boxed Crook: One of the bureau's favorite ways to recruit new mages is to give defeated villains job offers. Contrary to most examples of this trope, the work involved is more akin to community service than anything else, and it's shown to be temporary. As of StrikerS, Fate and Hayate have both graduated from this program and gone on to become high-ranking officers and widely-recognized heroes of the bureau, and the Numbers seem to be on their way to similar status in ViVid.
  • By the Power of Grayskull!:
    • "Set up." Amusingly in very beginning, Nanoha had to recite a ridiculous chant in order to activate Raising Heart. She developed the reroute/short-cut on her own, much to Yuuno's shock and amazement.
    • Durandal's "Start up."
    • The one-time-only German commands used to initate the Wolkenritter's Devices.
  • Calling Your Attacks: And when the characters don't, their Devices do it for them.
  • Cannot Spit It Out: The more sympathetic villains regarding their true objectives.
  • Cast from Calories: The magical energy mages use to cast spells is generated by their bodies, so they have to replenish their calories at every opportunity.
  • Casual Interplanetary Travel: The cosmology is a bit vague. It might be that the different worlds in the setting are actually located in separate dimensions, as the space in between planets is explicitly NOT your regular cosmos and is instead called "The Dimensional Sea". However, the ships used to traverse dimensions are also sometimes explicitly shown in orbit of a planet, so it might be that it's only dimensional travel in the sense that it's done through a Hyperspace. Either way, for all intents and purposes, "dimension", "world", and "planet" are completely interchangeable in the setting. Spells like Dimensional Transfer are readily available to Magitek mages, and in ViVid, the heroes take a shuttle to another planet like one would take a bus to another town.
  • Central Theme: Family, both biological and Family of Choice. This article looks into it in depth.
  • Cerebus Rollercoaster: Most of Nanoha tends to alternate between adorably sweet and terribly depressing.
  • Character Class System/Common Character Classes: From Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS onwards, there's an established Class System squads of mages try to assemble either in full or split into subunits:
    • Front Attackers are warrior types that specialize in close-quarters combat, make great use of magical-enhanced attacks, and overall prefer the Modern Belkan magic system for its effectiveness in one-on-one melee combat. As the Front Attackers' role is to cut into the enemy lines and protect the squad, defense and survival skills are important to increase attack time and reduce the need for support. Characters in this position: Subaru, Vita, Ginga, Nove, Vivio, and Einheart. Probably, also Signum and Zafira.
    • Wing Guards are rogue types that rely on hit-and-run tactics, tend to be fragile speedsters, and abuse energy blades (protruding from their Devices) to slash or sword-beam the enemy. High mobility is needed so they can quickly shift from protecting the Center Guard or aiding in breaking the stall for the Front Attackers. The Midchildan magic system may be the weaker in terms of melee combat, but it grants energy blades and along with elemental magic, a Wing Guard can get a solid close-quarters combat. Characters in this position: Erio, Fate, Rio, and possibly Vita.
      • There's a variation called Wing Back that is virtually equal to the Wing Guard but being positioned between the Center Guard and the Full Back instead of between the former and the Front Attacker line. Furthermore, it seems to be less mobile than its counterpart as it mainly aids the Center Guard and protects the Full Back. There's only one known character occupying this position: Corona — she possesses a rare skill and uses the Midchildan magic system. Wing Backs don't appear to be rogue types but more of combat-oriented support types.
    • Center Guards are nuker types that overlap with ranger types because while their task is to deal as much damage as possible, a remarkable degree of accuracy is also needed. As they fight only in mid-to-long range, they gain the best scoping position which explains why the team captain or the best strategist often fills this position. Although this comes with the cost of it restricting their mobility and needing protection. Their spells of preference are shooting, bombardment and area-of-effects. Center Guards usually employ the Midchildan magic system for its effectiveness in long-range combat. Characters in this position: Teana, Nanoha, and Hayate if she ever learned to tune down her literally nuke-level spells so her allies don't get caught in the crossfire.
    • Full Backs are support types that rarely engage and instead focus on providing transport and casting increase (healing and boosts) spells on their allies as well as restraining and casting decrease (debuffs and dispelling) spells on the enemy. Other types of support include communication (e.g. telepathy), investigation, rescuing (e.g Holding Net), sealing, and shapeshifting. As such, Full Backs favor the Midchildan magic system for its wide variety of effects and applications. High mobility is required and more often than not they are aided by a Boost Device. Characters in this position: Caro, Lutecia, and Shamal.
  • Clones Are People, Too
    • This is generally the prevalent attitude regarding all the clone characters. Precia Testarossa is about the only character who doesn't share this perspective, and the reason she hated Fate is because she wasn't the same person as the girl she was cloned from, and Precia wanted a Replacement Goldfish. The movie backpedaled on this slightly, with Precia realizing much too late that Fate was effectively the little sister Alicia had always wanted.
    • In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid, it's revealed that while Vivio very closely resembles the woman she was cloned from, there are physical as well as personality differences between them (most notably, the fact that Olivie had no arms, though Vivio's "adult mode" also shows that she's bustier than her predecessor).
  • Clothing Damage: The clothing damage in the mangas is worse than in any other media.
  • Competence Zone: Averted with a vengeance. Where most magical girls lose their powers as they grow older, Nanoha and company get that much more badass as they go from their pre-teens to their early 20s.
  • Cool Starship: The first two seasons hat the Arthra/Asura. StrikerS has the Cradle. And Force adds the "Wolfram" and "Esquad Hückebein".
  • Creating Life Is Bad: Played with. While the act of cloning is both immoral and highly illegal, the people created as a result are the same as any other person and are given full human rights. The real problem is that the Mad Scientists that create them tend to abuse said human rights and use them as Super Soldiers.
  • Darker and Edgier: The series is gradually slipping into this as the franchise wears on. Well, the main continuity is anyway, the movies and games keep the tone consistent with the anime, and the spinoff manga go the opposite way.
  • Dashed Plot Line: The primary continuity of the series thus far spans 18 years of Nanoha's crime-fighting career, from an underage vigilante in season one to a legendary test pilot for the galactic military in Force.
  • Defeat Means Friendship: To the point where, among the fandom, "befriend" has come to be synonymous with "beat the crap out of".
    befriend (v.): to use mecha-class beam weaponry to inflict grievous bodily harm on a target in the process of proving the validity of your belief system.
    — From a post on rpg.net
  • Demoted to Extra: Frequently happens to character that carry over from previous seasons, even the main ones after the third series.
  • Dénouement Episode: This is pretty much standard procedure. Every season normally has its climax on the penultimate episode and devotes almost the entire finale to wrapping up the loose ends (along with an epilogue in A's and StrikerS).
  • Disciplines of Magic: Mages in the franchise tend to practice one of two distinct schools of magic, Midchildan and Belkan (the later of which is further broken up between Ancient Belkan and Neo/Modern Belkan). While there is no visible difference between the two apart from the shape of their magic circles (Midchildan being a circle and Belkan being a triangle), on average Midchildan mages prefer ranged combat and Belkan knights prefer close combat.
  • Dysfunction Junction: It's downplayed, given the idealistic nature of the setting, but up until ViVid, the only major character who hadn't suffered some sort of horrible trauma in their backstory (which normally involved the loss of a family member) was, ironically, Nanoha herself. And depending on your definition of backstory, she had her injury in-between A's and StrikerS.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Elite Agents Above the Law: The TSAB's Enforcers exist outside of the Bureau's regular rank hierarchy and are accountable only to the highest echelons of the Navy and, hence, the Bureau leadership. While this has rarely been put in the spotlight, supplemental materials reveal that an Enforcer's personal authority is extremely high, allowing them to potentially overrule any regulation or order not coming from an Admiral or a higher position.
  • Empathic Weapons: All the intelligent devices. This leads to somewhat comical moments where they will compliment one another. The unison devices take it a step further by being completely self aware.
  • Enhanced Punch: Magic-powered punches are a common attack type among mages in the franchise who eschew weapons. For instance, Einhart Stratos' signature super-punch, Unchain Knuckle, even got a chapter named after it in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid.
  • Everyone Has a Special Move: The cast have unique abilities fitting to the respective characters' fighting styles and it happens rarely that two or more people have identical fighting abilities. A mage who is trained by another one usually develop only similar, but not identical abilities or have an even entirely different fighting style. Even when different characters use the same spells, it often happens that they are not identical, e.g. Nanoha, Subaru and Vivio's Divine Buster have different performances. The most blatant example is Erio, whose Thunder Rage and Shiden Issen look entirely different than Fate and Signum's, respectively.
  • Excessive Steam Syndrome: Most Intelligent and Armed Devices usually discharges some kind of gas after any particularly impressive attack. It's apparently a design feature, since the vents have caps that pop off to let it happen. Especially with a cartridge system. This kind of supports the theory that Magi-Link Cartridges generate a lot of waste heat, if not for the AI system decompiling the Magic As Programs attacks in split-seconds and then cooling down in-between. In other words, AI split-second overclocking in weapon forms. In the side materials Nanoha mentions her new Raising Heart jury-rigged with a cartridge system is a total maintenance nightmare.
  • Fanservice
  • Fanservice Faux Fight: Every "mock battle" in the ever, by the virtue of its participants being mostly female while their weapons are safely set to Clothing Damage mode.
  • Fashionable Asymmetry: There's a single unruly tuft of hair growing out of the head of almost everyone, particularly prominent on the members of the Testarossa family.
  • The Federation: The TSAB.
  • Feminist Fantasy: The series takes a very subtle approach to its portrayal of women: it never, ever directly addresses the gender roles (or sexuality, for that matter), but looking at it from that perspective readily reveals that the main (all-female) cast masters both traditional feminine (home-keeping, family-building, children-raising) and masculine (money-earning, loved ones-protecting, and world-saving) tasks with equal proficiency.
  • Flash Step: Various spells allow this, but Fate is a regular practitioner who doesn't need special assistance from her Intelligent Device, Bardiche, to do so.
  • Flying Firepower: The Air Mages, especially those who use the Midchilda style, which specialize at firing beams and other energy projectiles.
  • Following in Relative's Footsteps:
    • Fate Testarossa-Harlaown ends up following the career path of her adoptive older brother Chrono, becoming an Enforcer during the Time Skip after the second season. However, she ends up staying in that position well into her adult years, while he transferred to a command position by the time he was 20.
    • The Florian family does this twice over in the Reflection/Detonation movie duology. Amitie and Kyrie assist their parents attempts to bring life back to their planet's dying ecosystem, and it's mentioned that both their paternal and maternal grandparents were members of the Planet Restoration Committee 40 years prior.
  • Frilly Upgrade: An interesting take on the concept, with later seasons trying to see how much metal parts they can jam into Nanoha's barrier jacket before she start resembling an actual mecha. The devices get more weapon-like as well. The movies, manga and games retroactively apply this look to the earlier periods though.
  • From Zero to Hero: Nanoha starts off as the youngest daughter to a family of bakers growing up on an Insignificant Little Blue Planet. The revelation that she had great potential in magic (along with several years of Training from Hell) eventually resulted in her becoming a celebrated hero throughout the multiverse, with In-Universe movies having been made about her exploits.
  • Genre Shift: Each installment seems to move further away from the stereotypical Magical Girl setting, and closer to Nanoha's destiny of being an RX-78-2 in a schoolgirl outfit.
  • Good Wears White: Most protagonists feature white prominently on their Barrier Jackets, usually the outermost layer. Hayate and Reinforce Zwei take it one step further by having white as their magic colors.
  • Gratuitous English/Gratuitous German: Nanoha and Fate's devices speak English, and the Wolkenritters' speak German. It's pronounced well because the actors are native speakers, although from A's onward the grammar does start to get a little funky. The movies fix that as well.
  • Great Offscreen War: The Ancient/Old Belkan War.
  • Happily Adopted: There are so many that it's easier to list the character who aren't adopted. Out of the main characters, there are three kids who are seen with at least one blood parent: Nanoha, Chrono and Lutecia. Out of the secondary characters, there are five, the first two and last two being siblings: Karel, Liera, Griffith, Kyouya, and possibly Miyuki.note  Pretty much everybody else is happily adopted.
  • Hit So Hard, the Calendar Felt It: The Midchildan calendar begins after the end of the Belkan War.
  • Holding Back the Phlebotinum: Done for good reason: the most powerful personal attacks, known as Breakers, don't use the caster's magic so much as latent magic leaked into the atmosphere by the repeated attacks and spells. As a result, a Breaker at the end of a long and intense battle can be on the scale of a moderate-sized nuclear warhead, while one at the beginning of a low-key skirmish might be little more than a belch. This is why Breakers are generally used only after a battle has been raging for a long time. In ViVid, this is actually noted, as Tiana first considers the saturation of magic in the air before prepping her Breaker during the training match.
  • Holographic Terminal: Magical ones, but holographic nonetheless.
  • Homoerotic Subtext: While it's unknown if the series had initially planed this from the very beginning over the years the Nanoha franchise has become one with the idea of deep personal relationships between women. While the relationship between Nanoha and Fate is the most well known and remembered the series has dozens of female characters who have a lot of subtext and genuine Ship Tease with one another (it doesn't help that, again, most male characters are Demoted to Extra as the franchise moves on). The only thing that stops the Nanoha franchise from being a flat out Yuri series is the strict No Hugging, No Kissing rule that the series follows.
  • Human Aliens: Most of the human cast isn't from Earth.
  • Impossibly Cool Clothes: To quote Raising Heart: "Barrier Jacket". Furthermore it's freely customisable by the user.
  • Improbable Age: All over the place. The only explanation is that the TSAB doesn't have age restrictions, allowing 9 year olds to become operatives.
  • Improbably Female Cast: In both population and screen time.
  • Instant Armor: The Barrier Jackets are skimpier than most example, but they still appear outta nowhere, and seem to outstrip a main battle tank in terms of defensive potential. They appear to be created by the user's mana and according to the movie manga can even be regenerated mid-battle. Then again that is an Alternate Continuity.
  • Instant Runes: Endemic to high-powered magic.
  • Interclass Friendship:
    • Nanoha (daughter of a baker/retired bodyguard) is Childhood Friends with Arisa and Suzuka, both of whom are Ojous.
    • Vivio's circle of friends in ViVid ranges from working class to incredibly wealthy, and several of them are direct descendants of royalty.
    • Fuka and Rinne from ViVid Strike!. They grew up in an orphanage together, until Rinne was adopted by rich fashion designers. Their friendship fell apart a few years later and the season revolves around them reconnecting.
  • Intra-Franchise Crossover:
  • Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Averted mostly, since the TSAB imposes heavy restrictions on the use of mass-based weapons, because unlike magic devices you can't set them to stun.
  • Land, Sea, Sky: The TSAB has the Air Force, the Dimensional Navy and the Ground Forces.
  • Life Energy
  • Light/Darkness Juxtaposition: The two heroines who are originally from Earth, Nanoha and Hayate, are associated with light and darkness, respectively. Nanoha's pervasive motif is starlight (and stars in general), while Hayate is officially styled the "Queen of the Night Sky" and is the only one in the main continuity who can use elemental darkness in her magic. That said, the two of them have never been in opposition to each other, since Hayate's darkness is of the sacred sort, and do, in fact, regularly team up.
  • Lost Technology: Lost Logia. Their power ranges from "safe enough to be sold as antiques at auctions" to "destroy the fabric of reality".
  • Magical Accessory: Several of the Devices across the franchise take the form of necklaces in their Standby Mode.
  • Magical Girl Warrior: With the exception of a couple of the early episodes they are called "mages" or "knights", which isn't strictly limited to females, though the ratio is quite heavily slanted in their favour. ViVid recently added witches, whose magic seems to work in somewhat different ways.
  • Magic Knight: Almost everyone, with Belkan Knights (except for Hayate and Shamal) and Fate being particularly reliant on close combat.
  • Magic Missile Storm: Several spells. These are types of shooting spells are some of the easiest and fastest to cast for a mage, and could be used as suppression fire as well as direct attacks. These spells often come with alternate versions that changes the amount of energy bullets and/or the way they are fired at the enemy. In particular, if the name of the spell is followed by something like Phalanx Shift or Genocide Shift, you should be ready to block or dodge like hell as you will be faced with a veritable wall of energy projectiles. Examples of these include:
    • Nanoha's Divine/Axel Shooter - homing energy spheres whose every movement Nanoha could control;
    • Fate's Photon/Plasma Lancer - arrow shaped, bolts of energy with limited homing capabilities. Comes in several variations and could be combined into an energy lance;
    • Teana's Cross Fire Shoot - controllable energy spheres like Nanoha's, but could alternatively be fired as a Beam Spam instead;
    • Vivio's Sonic Shooter - controllable energy orbs like her Nanoha-mama's.
  • Magical Foreign Words: Is a spell of Midchilda origins? Chances are good that it will be in English. Is a spell of Ancient Belka origins? Chances are good that it will be in German.
  • Magical Girl AU: Lyrical Nanoha got it's start in this manner.
  • Magitek: While using combat magic still requires some genetic predisposition, everyday technology on Midchilda is all magic based. The Ancient Belkans had an even more advanced fusion of magic and technology, to the point that even TSAB scientists don't know how most of their Lost Logia operate.
  • Master-Apprentice Chain: Yuuno > Nanoha > the Forwards (Subaru, Teana, Erio, and Caro). Unlike most examples, they all use vastly different fighting styles, they're all roughly the same age (a ten year difference between the oldest and youngest), and there is only one case of a technique being passed down from master to apprentice (Nanoha teaching Teana Starlight Breaker).
  • Mature Work, Child Protagonists: The franchise (apart from the meandering first season) is strongly targeted towards the 20+ male demographic, despite the protagonists of most of its installments being 10 to 14 years young.
  • Mildly Military: The Time/Space Administrative Bureau, which also acts as both The Federation and The Magocracy.
  • Military Mage: Due to the fact that the TSAB outlaws traditional mass-based weaponry, literally everyone serving in a direct combat role will be a mage by default (with one exception). Reference is also made to the fact that really powerful mages tend to shoot up through the ranks quickly, which occasionally leads to resentment from muggle officers.
  • Modified Clone: Most clones are modified in some manner, even before Clones Are People, Too is factored in. Almost all of them are more powerful mages than their originals and the combat cyborgs in particular have been adjusted to keep their bodies from rejecting all their mechanical implants.
  • Moe Couplet: Fuels nearly every standard fanship, to the point it replaces the otherwise vanilla Erio/Caro ship vaguely implied in the show.
  • Muggles Do It Better: Thoroughly inverted. Except for pesky Mage Killers, magic is superior in both strategic and tactical aspects. Even a mid-tier mage needs an anti-tank missile to kill, high-ranking mages throw out building-busters at least while outflying modern fighters and the Arc-en-Ciel Wave-Motion Gun makes mundane nukes look like firecrackers. Even the prototype "kinetic" weapons used to fight Mage Killers in the latest season are magic-powered and fire pure kinetic force, which is a whole different ballgame from Real Life weapons.
  • Mundane Utility: The Devices have many mundane functions, as they can take photographs, exchanging mails or photos, having schedules, and even phoning when telepathy is just too far. Some of them help their masters even in office work. There is even a picture where Nanoha and Fate use their Devices as microphones.
  • Never Gets Fat: Belkan style mages burn calories quickly due to the physically intensive nature of their magic. Subaru in particular eats more than five full-grown men, but maintains an athletic figure. This is an early hint that her body consumes a lot of energy, especially during physical exercise, because she is actually a cyborg and has to power all those electronic circuits with her metabolism.
  • Nitro Boost: In practice, the Belkan cartridge system works this way; shell casings full of compressed magic that give a power boost to the next spell used. Mages normally limit themselves to loading one or two per shot since too many can place stress on themselves and their devices, although there have been cases where people have used four or (in one instance) five at once. Comes in single shot, revolver and banana clip packs.
  • No Hugging, No Kissing: The series has almost no romance onscreen, although quite a lot is implied. Aside from Nanoha's brother and his girlfriend, the only confirmed relationships are between Amy and Chrono, and these characters mostly vanish after the second season, and nothing actually happens onscreen. There are several character pairs that have romantic overtones, but none of them are ever explicitly shown to be more than friendship.
  • Non-Indicative Name:
    • Raising Heart doesn't have any hearts. The name is an artifact from the Lyrical Toy Box, where it actually was a puny heart-shaped wand.
    • The TSAB doesn't do anything in the Time department. TSAB should in fact be translated as "Dimension Administrative Bureau", and going by the English subs of the first movie, this is the official English translation as used by Seven Arcs. It could also be more accurately translated as Space-Time Administration Bureau to correspond with the "Spacetime" concept that pops up whenever the Universe is discussed in Physics, but, uhh... the problems with that acronym should be pretty obvious.
  • No Transhumanism Allowed: The series has an interesting take on this. Purely artificial life is apparently not only allowed but common in the form of magic-based familiars and magic-based augments like ageing retardation/youth maintenance are widespread. However, transhuman enhancement with genetic engineering or cybernetics is outlawed. Despite the illegality, no stigma is attached to actually being either since those enhanced rarely had a choice in the matter.
    • The illegality of genetic enhancement and cybernetics seems based more on the implication that the average experiment in these directions fails horribly. The subjects themselves are often actually provided therapy for dealing with such things.
    • The fact that most results of the experiments double as Living WMDs is the other main factor. There's actually a good reason for this - the roots of the technology are derived from fallen civilizations that used it to create Super Soldiers.
  • "Not So Different" Remark: Part of Jail's Breaking Speech in StrikerS involves him pointing out the similarities between Fate and Precia. Jail points out that the two can be gentle but are quick to anger and sadness when their buttons are pushed. The two also send their children out to confront danger which temporarily gives Fate a Heroic BSoD before Erio and Caro assure her that they made their own choices and she didn't force them to do anything.
  • Offscreen Romance: Chrono and Amy go from snarky colleagues to married-with-two-children during the Time Skip between A's and StrikerS seasons, though some off-handed comments imply this was more of a Shotgun Wedding. Likewise, Griffith and Lucino complete their romance arc off-screen between StrikerS and Force and are married in the latter.
  • Old Magic: Zig-Zagged: in the first season, every mage uses a tradition of magic later dubbed the "Midchilda System", after the current central hub of the magic-using worlds. However, season two introduces characters wielding the much older "Belkan System", once used throughout the Belkan Empire, Abusive Precursors of the current magic civilization. While not inherently more powerful than the Midchildan System, the Belkan one is much more geared towards combat, making its users a major threat. However, in the ten-year Time Skip before the next season, Midchildan combat mages reverse-engineer Belkan magic and fuse the two systems into the so-called "Modern Belkan System", which becomes the most common form of Belkan-style magic in the multiverse, while the Old Belkan system more or less dies out again.
  • Only Flesh Is Safe: Midchildan combat magic is like this: you'd think that an energy beam that can pierce through layers upon layers of heavy spaceship armor would vaporize bare flesh instantly, but no, it merely knocks the target unconscious with not so much as a burn. Most cuts and bruises the characters sustain in combat actually come from secondary sources, like being slammed into a wall or caught under falling debris.
  • Opposing Combat Philosophies: The Midchildian mages focus on defensive barriers and Wave-Motion Gun tactics, while the Belkan Knights swarm up close with punishing melee attacks and cartridge-enhanced weaponry. There are exceptions to both rules like Fate, a melee-oriented Midchilda-style, and Hayate, a long-range Squishy Wizard Belkan-user, and things get more complicated as the series goes on with mixed types, defense and support specialists, exotics like summon magic, curses and various forms of magical kung-fu.
    • In StrikerS, this difference is reflected in the transformation sequences. For Midchildan users their clothing disappears piece by piece, while it disappears all at once for Belkan users. This little detail was not carried over to ViVid.
  • Overranked Soldier: Many characters hold ranks that are highly implausible for their age. Most gratuitous are Hayate (a lieutenant colonel) and Chrono (an admiral), both are barely twenty. Even Lindy commanding her own ship at 31 can be a bit of a stretch. Somewhat justified in Chrono's case, as he was promoted in the wake of a scandal that ended the careers of several high-ranking general staff.
    • Possibly complicated by the fact that many of them start service around age 10, so the 20 year old has 10 years of service already.
  • Person of Mass Destruction: Nanoha is a rare series where there's a good portion of individuals who treat theirs well. The ones who don't... well, they get befriended, in some cases fatally.
  • Phantom Zone: There is a spell called "Barrier" that pushes everything half a dimension over. The city is still there, but all non-magic users are no longer present, and thus cannot witness the light show. However, fights without barriers enclosing them leave massive collateral damage — like Nanoha's first, the cratered site of which she fled from upon hearing the sirens of incoming emergency vehicles.
  • Pink Means Feminine: Played with in many ways. The title character herself, a rather feminine young woman, has pink as the default color of her magic... which she usually uses to deliver a world of pain to her prospective friends and family. Then, we have Signum, a Lady of War who sports luscious waist-long pink hair... and is widely regarded as the manliest character in the series. Lastly, Caro Ru Lushe, whose hair and magic are pink... is a Girly Girl (and one of the most obviously heterosexual ones in this Les Yay-laden franchise, to boot), merrily playing this trope straight, even though she can summon dragons and huge dragons.
  • Powers as Programs: Yuuno explains right at the start of the first season that this is how the Intelligent Devices work, by channelling the caster's mana through standardized algorithms. This is somewhat subverted later, however, as all the high level mages personalize their repertoire. The more impressive spells usually combine several common effects and the unique skills of the caster, so while anyone with enough proficiency can copy the basic idea, matching the level of execution is a lot less likely.
  • Psychic Link: Belkan users can do this by themselves, while Midchilda mages need to use their Intelligent Devices.
  • Random Power Ranking: How mages in the TSAB are ranked. Various characters have been ranked as C, B, A, AA, AAA, S, S+, and SS in one of the three disciplines: ground combat, air combat, or composite. SSS also exists, but no one has ever been shown to hold that rank.
    • Hayate's SS rank is a composite rank, as opposed to a combative rank, which is believed to be only based upon magical capacity, and not much else. She even went as far to say that Caro, without the aid of her dragons, could kick her ass after being trained by Nanoha.
    • Body augmentation rank of combat cyborgs.
    • Mages who are not in the TSAB are not ranked by this system. Although TSAB use this mage ranking system to evaluate threat level of enemy mages.
  • Recurring Element: Every season will have a "girl with sad eyes" which the heroes will save from their own unhappiness. They're usually Dark Magical Girls, but there have been some exceptions.
  • Reference Overdosed: Mostly to mecha shows and cars.
  • Riddle for the Ages: The series has piled up a lot of questions over the years that have not been answered in the seasons they were introduced and will likely remain unanswered, given the series' tendency to steer the plot into completely new directions with every new installment. For instance, where exactly did Raising Heart come from (before being found by Yuuno)? Who was Alicia's father? Did Precia Testarossa ever reach Al-Hazard? How was the Book of Darkness corrupted? Who created the Type Zero cyborgs?
  • Rousseau Was Right: Mostly. Any given antagonist a has at least a 50% chance of joining the good guys in the next season. Well, the Hückebein will probably break the trend considering how they're all Omnicidal Maniacs and all.
  • Seinen
  • Sequel Escalation: Between the three main anime series, the stage just gets bigger and bigger. However, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS and later series consciously averted the Dragon Ball method of power-level inflation; in StrikerS and Force, the Riot Force 6 elites (Nanoha, Fate, Hayate and Signum) are the strongest mages in the story, and their opponents are dangerous because of new capabilities and tactics rather than greater raw power.
    • The stakes arguably get smaller with series, from "disrupt all dimensional travel" to "destroy this backwater planet" to "possible political coup with a city held hostage" to "good-natured teen martial arts tournament" in ViVid, even as the cast explodes yet again.
  • Shared Signature Move:
    • Nanoha mentions to Shamal in the final StrikerS Sound Stage that she's planning on teaching Teana how to use her signature Starlight Breaker spell, since its Energy Absorption mechanics make it perfect for a Weak, but Skilled gunner. By the time of ViVid four years later, she's mastered it to the point that she can actually overpower Nanoha's during a team mock battle.
    • Played with regarding Nanoha's other signature spell, Divine Buster. Both Subaru and Vivio have spells with the same name, though it works entirely differently (due to them both being close combat fighters using an entirely different magic system) and Subaru explicitly didn't learn how to do it from Nanoha as she's first shown casting it before Nanoha started training her.
    • Thunder Rage appears to be something of a signature spell for the Testarosa family. While it's most commonly seen being used by Fate, both her mother Precia and adoptive son Erio have used it at various points.
  • She Is the King: Various Ancient Belka Kings still keep that title even if they are female. Specific examples are Sankt Kaiser Olivie Segbrecht and Ixpellia, the king of Garea.
    Bardiche: Yes, sir!
    Fate: That's ma'am!
  • Ship Sinking: Triangle Heart 3: Sweet Songs Forever had Nanoha/Chrono as canon, with none of the major alternative partners for Nanoha or Chrono available. Naturally, in this universe, it's the one suggested Nanoha pairing that we're explicitly told doesn't happen, as Chrono marries Amy between A's and StrikerS.
  • Shocking Defeat Legacy: In the backstory, the Belkan Homeworld's disappearance into the interdimensional void was a major turning point in the Belkan Wars.
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: STARLIGHT BREAKER! It fixes everything!
  • Smart Gun: Many of the armed devices are magical variations of a semi-autonomous ranged weapon.
  • Smoke Shield: At least once each season, if not more.
  • Spell Levels: Spells are ranked by power output: D is pretty much a parlor trick, S is a tactical nuke.
  • Spell My Name With An S: Regarding the use of fan spellings of certain names as opposed to the official ones: examples include "Raising Heart"/"Raging Heart" and "Harlaown"/"Haraoun."
  • The Stinger: At the end of the Kaleid Liner crossover special when everyone goes back to their home dimensions, Ilya thinks of the pair of wonderful friends she made... then suddenly realizes she's holding Raising Heart, and Ruby is nowhere to be seen.
  • Stock Footage: Surprisingly little, but there.
  • Supernatural Sealing: Sealing is a basic Midchildan spell that renders magical constructs of all kinds inert and safe to handle. It sees most use in the original Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha series, which revolves around the protagonist's search for corrupting magical artifacts. It also returns in a much darker usage at the end of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, where it is used in the final episode to seal Reinforce — a benevolent and sympathetic magical construct tied to the planet-destroying Book of Darkness, — effectively killing her. In fact, the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable Alternate Timeline gets spun off at exactly that moment, because the protagonists refuse to cast the spell at her on moral grounds.
  • Synchronised Morning Routine: Played With because it's not done simultaneously but still shows how similar are Nanoha and her daughter over the years. Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha starts with a 9-year-old Nanoha waking up from a strange dream, turning off the alarm of her phone—it's on the floor—, stretching, and then tying her hair up in pigtails in front of her bathroom mirror. In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid, Vivio follows a near identical routine. The only difference is that her alarm is a clock on the bedside.
  • Talking Weapon: Devices.
  • Tamer and Chaster: The series has its roots in eroge.
  • Tangled Family Tree: Making an organized family tree of the cast is an exercise in futility, what with all of the adoptions, pseudo-adoptions, clones, Artificial Humans and implied romances. The trope page has an attempted example, but even that doesn't cover everything.
  • Technology Porn: With the exception of ViVid and ViVid Strike!, the Transformation Sequences focus just as much time on the individual components of the Devices snapping together in place as it does on the characters themselves. Every time a Device switches forms, it will dominate the screen while it goes through the process. Force takes this further by having a mini feature devoted entirely to new weapons and armor designs.
  • Theme Music Power-Up: All the insert songs sang by Nana Mizuki act as this, as they play during part of the climactic showdown of each season. The TV series have "Take a Shot", "BRAVE PHOENIX" and "Pray", while the movies substitute the first two with "Don't Be Long" and "Sacred Force".
  • Time Skip: Between each installment.
  • Timey-Wimey Ball: In the Gears of Destiny drama CD, the supposedly fictional movie versions of Fate and Nanoha are accidentally pulled into the PSP verse - itself an Alternate Continuity to the one that spawned their movie - to a time before said movie should existed, even if it will exist in that timeline.
  • Training from Hell: One particular subversion aside, most of the mage training in the series is shown to be very grueling.
  • Translation Convention: Messages displayed and spoken by Midchilda's Magitek devices are usually in English or Germannote , but all non-device characters exclusively speak Japanese. Since no explanation is ever provided, and it's possible that Midchilda could have picked up any or all of these languages through dimension-hopping shenanigans, it's unclear where the Translation Convention is being applied, or whether it is being applied at all.
  • Transformation Sequence: Present, but unusually for a Magical Girl series, not used as time-wasting Stock Footage. In fact, each main character gets at most two of these per season and only the first few times they transform.
  • Transformation Is a Free Action: While the aforementioned full sequences are pretty long, whenever we see a transformation happen "from the outside", it takes less than two seconds.
  • Trouble from the Past: The interdimensional community in the series is more or less a technological Utopia still reeling from the Belkan War 80 years ago. Every season so far has revolved around a piece of Belkan legacy from said war.
  • A True Story in My Universe: Both The Movie 1st and The Movie 2nd A's are produced when Nanoha and Fate are adults (post-Strikers) and the Sound Stages include their thoughts (and their friends') while each movie is being produced and the audio commentaries include them commenting on the various situations they lived as children and how they felt as they watch the movies.
  • Uniqueness Decay:
    • Played straight with Adult Mode. When first introduced in StrikerS it appeared to be something that was unique to Vivio as a result of being a clone of the Sankt Kaiser. Then ViVid introduced three other characters who could do so, and while two of them also had connections to Ancient Belka, the third has no such legacy. By the time of ViVid Strike!, it seems like every fighter that hasn't finished puberty uses it. Though in the series defense, their appearance coincided with the increase of hand-to-hand fighters in the cast and transformation magic has existed as far back as A's.
    • Inverted with Flight. For the first two seasons, the ability to fly appeared to be a rather standard skill for mages to have. Then StrikerS showed that being able to fly was actually really rare (only a few of the new characters can do so and none of them are protagonists). ViVid only had one and ViVid Strike! didn't have any.
  • Unskilled, but Strong: Each of the main girls started out this way to some extent. Hayate's the only one who remains so even into adulthood, needing Rein just so she can properly aim her attacks.
  • Variant Power Copying: This is actually the default way of "copying" other mages' spells; instead of taking spell formulas over verbatim, a mage usually adapts one of their own spells to emulate the effects of the one they want to learn. Two of Nanoha's students, for instance, have "inherited" her signature spells, but Subaru's Divine Buster is an extremely close range version of the original (long-ranged) spell, while Teana's Starlight Breaker is essentially her own Crossfire Shoot boosted with Nanoha's mana-gathering technique.
  • Vehicular Theme Naming: As in Magic Knight Rayearth, characters from the magical worlds are named for cars — (Ferrari) Testarossa, Scaglietti, (Opel) Zafira, Signum, Vita, (Maserati) Shamal, (Nissan) Teana, Subaru, etc. In total, there are around forty characters/devices that share names with cars.
  • Virtual Sidekick: The various Devices all come equipped with Magitek AI to streamline the process of calculating Magic Circles. The more complex AI found in Armed and Intelligent Devices are also shown to be sentient, and serve as partners for their wielders at the cost of casting spells slightly slower.
  • Wave-Motion Gun:
    • The Arc-En-Ciel is a good example of a traditional one.
    • The others are all powered by a Person of Mass Destruction. In the first movie, Nanoha's Starlight Breaker levels an entire city.
  • Weaponized Ball: Vita's long-range weapons of choice are iron spheres that she launches towards her targets by striking them with the polo mallet-like Hammer form of her Armed Device.
  • Wise Beyond Their Years:
    • Rampant. You'd be hard-pressed to find a child in this series that isn't at least a little more mature than you'd expect them to be for their age.
    • The closest thing to a normal child would be Vivio, but only when she was 6. By the time that she's 10, she has the emotional maturity that her adult form would suggest.
  • Wizards from Outer Space: Technically, it's inter-dimensional travel rather than space travel, but it's treated as the same thing.
  • World of Action Girls: Despite male mages shown to exist in the Nanoha universe the vast majority of characters are female (who kick a lot of ass) and the few male mages shown in the series tend to be Demoted to Extra. By the time that ViVid roles around you would be hard-pressed to find a single male character who wasn't already introduced in previous installments.
  • World of Buxom: There isn't much variety in breast sizes for the characters who are at least in their teens or are already adults (physically); the two most common sizes that you'll see are "big" and "bigger". They're realistically sized rather than being extreme like some examples of this trope can get, though. Downplayed in the first two series where a large portion of the female characters are children, but becomes more obvious after the Time Skip to StrikerS since at this point most of the female cast are either in their adolescence or adults. However, the rule doesn't apply to everyone: characters like Otto and Isis are flat-chested, Caro is as well once she gets older, and Sein is the only character in the animated canon who has small (but not nonexistent) breasts and isn't physically a child. Once ViVid comes around the trope starts to fade a bit; while some of the new characters are still buxom, overall they have a far more diverse variety of breasts sizes. For example, Lutecia from StrikerS shows up as a teen in that manga, and turns out to be one of the small-breasted characters.
  • Wrench Wench:
    • Nanoha's Shrinking Violet friend Suzuka mentions in the very first episode of the first season that she wants to study engineering when she grows up, since her parents own companies in both construction and heavy industry.
    • Alto of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS is a mechanic in addition to a helicopter pilot. StrikerS Sound Stage X reveals that she also spends her spare time restoring vintage cars.

Alternative Title(s): Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha

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