Tiia-centric episode with a fair bit of fighting. On the latter bit, Riot Force 6 provides security for an auction which is a marvelous excuse for Hayate, Nanoha and Fate to don evening dresses. There is, however, no evening dress combat. Sigh. That’s left to the Hayate Cosplay Company Belka Knights (with nekkid transformation scenes ex Zafira of course) and the newbies. Loli Rider is indeed a summoner and an expert one at that. She buffs the attacking gadgets with winged pins and also sends a shadowy summoned to retrieve the mystery goodie. Meanwhile Hayate is reunited with Verossa and Nanoha x Fate with Yuuno. Bleah.
Erio and Caro shocked that Zafira can speak. LOL.
I felt that Signum-nee’s transformation scene was rather less intricate than Vita’s. But loli-fandom demographic is still probably howling in pain at the delolification of Fate so Vita, Caro and Lucetia are really all that’s left . *points at some of them while laughing*
Poor Rein. Cuteness is good but lack of combat power is showing. I suppose she’s gathered valuable combat intelligence about the summoned flying thumbtacks but I expected her to go Vita-nuts when her Hayate-designed costume barrier jacket got ripped.
My favourite part of this episode was Tiia’s character development, particularly her insecurity about her place in the unit (due to comparisons about how the other newbies all have personal links to the captains) and thus a need to prove her worth. Pushing herself too hard, she very nearly hits Subaru with her Crossfire Shoot. Given what her shots had done to the AMF plus Loli Rider Buffed gadgets, I think if Vita hadn’t intervened Subaru would probably have been killed. Much angst at the end of the episode and looking forward to see how she overcomes it in the next episode.
Particularly, because of Tiia’s cockup, which emphasized how the newbies are still, well, newbies, I did find the Evening Dress vs Combat modes of this episode to be pretty incongruous (keeping the real firepower in reserve and eye on the ball?) but perhaps the reason will become clearer to me when the subs are released.
Haha, Loli Rider is the first thing that came to my mind as well. Was good to see the main story progress after all the development that’s been going on up until now.
Reinforce 2’s battle against the “thumbtacks” was so disappointing! Shouldn’t she have learned some evasion or shields? Isn’t she supposed to be sorta one of the most powerful Logia? That was total crap! Good call about the possibility of going Vita on those thumbtacks, but alas it didn’t happen.
Speaking of Vita, she was really telling it like it is after saving Subaru. Teana’s lucky she isn’t banned from the server for an attempted teamkill. It was hilarious watching Teana all yelling and getting worked up during the Crossfire shoot, but her bullets were just going all over the place. It was like Teana was in an arcade and just spamming the trigger as fast as she could while roaring >XO.