Manaria as a character feels really strange to me. On the one hand, I find her concept on its own really cool. On the other, the things she does and the way she does them feel completely disconnected both from her own established characterization and from the direction of the plot has been heading in so far. As many people have pointed out, she is currently used by the author as a blunt plot device to prod Rei and Clare along in their arcs, and I would have loved to see what she would actually do, you know, in-character, if the author had just let her.
The same conflicted feelings apply to the events of the newest chapter. Normally, lopsided confrontations that are provoked by the unfairly advantaged party and end with the underdog cruelly humiliated (boy, I remember how long it took me to get over Cypha beating up Signum in Nanoha Force) really rile me up. But in this case, the author is not even subtle about pushing those particular buttons, so instead of feeling angry with Manaria and sympathetic with Rei, I am just annoyed, like "okay, okay, I get it, let's just get this over with so we can go back to the actually well-written parts again".
last edited at Sep 14, 2022 7:37AM