Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS:  C+

So, I haven't reviewed the first two Seasons of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, so a lot of my comments about Strikers won't make a lot of sense from that perspective unless I provide a bit of exposition:

The first season of Nanoha is pretty good.  It spends an unnecessary amount of time setting up the premise, but around halfway through the series it kicks into high gear and becomes very enjoyable and creative, a very different sort of magical girl series.

Nanoha A's, the second season, is outstanding.  Without having to explain the premise like the first series did, it gets straight to the action.  It has engaging characters, well-justified villains and believable emotional conflicts, all run through with gorgeously animated fight scenes.  Most notably, it makes very good use of it's time, the story is tight, with nothing more than what it needs.

Nanoha Strikers dramatically changes the formula, taking place on a world that isn't Earth and timeskipping forward about nine years, putting the original human cast around age twenty and introducing a half-dozen new characters who are their juniors and subordinates.  This in itself is an interesting twist with lots of possibilities but alludes to the larger problem: with that many new characters, new villains are needed to keep the entire cast busy, and they are introduced too slowly and too late.

Overall, Strikers is not bad, but is a disappointment after A's masterful storytelling.  Strikers' cast gets a little too large, a large portion of the villainous cast is introduced too late and not well enough and the pacing is poorly handled.  It adds a lot to Nanoha's setting, and if you want to see more of Nanoha, it is definitely worth your time.  If you're spoiled looking for amazing shows, you probably want to consider instead just stopping after A's.