Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha: Detonation

During a rash attempt to save her father and her dying home planet of Eltria, Kyrie Florian is betrayed by her childhood friend, Iris. Furthermore, the power Kyrie has gathered from Nanoha Takamachi and the other Earth protectors cannot be used to help her father.

Iris casts the despairing Kyrie aside, having acquired what she desired to exact revenge on Yuri Eberwein, a powerful being who lies dormant on Earth. Left to pick up the pieces, Nanoha and her allies must confront the troublesome Iris to uncover the truth and stop the conflict between her and Yuri.

However, amidst the raging battles, a much more dangerous threat lingers in the shadows. No matter the obstacle, Nanoha remains diligent and does not hesitate to help those in need with her magic.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Testarossa, Fate Main

Mizuki, Nana Japanese

Takamachi, Nanoha Main

Tamura, Yukari Japanese

Yagami, Hayate Main

Ueda, Kana Japanese

Florian, Kyrie Main

Satou, Satomi Japanese

Iris Main

Hikasa, Youko Japanese

Florian, Amitie Main

Tomatsu, Haruka Japanese

Vita Supporting

Sanada, Asami Japanese

Signum Supporting

Shimizu, Kaori Japanese

Reinforce II Supporting

Yukana Japanese

Scrya, Yuuno Supporting

Mizuhashi, Kaori Japanese

Hatanaka, Yuusuke Producer

Hamana, Takayuki Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Kameyama, Toshiki Sound Director

Tsukushi, Daisuke Episode Director

Reviews

Mar 26, 2022

lamaraptor

Recommended

One thing I've noticed about Nanoha is how much of the conflict is steeped in stupid communications breakdowns and misunderstandings. It's like one of those high school drama shows only instead of being made a social outcast you get blasted into infinity by huge magical cannons. Honestly I hate misunderstanding storytelling because it's lazy and it doesn't redeem your villain to just have them being manipulated the whole time. It tries to remove accountability from them and place it on an even bigger badder guy, so they can have a cheap redemption arc that doesn't require them to really undergo any introspection or development.

I know ... this is a kid's show, I know I shouldn't expect much in the way of narrative structure from a magical girl anime, and maybe I'm just burnt out watching too much Nanoha as of late. It's everything about the genre done so by the numbers that it feels procedurally generated at times, like an AI was given a hundred magical girl scripts to learn and this is what it spat out. I might have been more generous to this movie if it wasn't such a rehash of every other plot line Nanoha has done so far. I give it a 7/10 for trying

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Dec 7, 2019

lanceypercy

Mixed Feelings

I've been a fan of MGLN for a very long time now. I've watched all three seasons maybe three times each and read a bit of ViVid (though the anime and manga were both very disappointing and obviously 100% fanservice). I'm glad that they went back to their roots to create Reflection and Detonation. However, though i did appreciate the first movie (Reflection) a lot, I have to say that Detonation was kind of unnecessary.

First, the positives. The art was amazing and so was the soundtrack. There is about as many explosions in this movie as you would expect in a Michael Bay movie, ... so if that's a positive for you then you'll definitely appreciate this one.

Now, for the negatives. Almost everything about the story did not make sense to me as well as the pacing of the whole movie. I don't want to write any spoilers, but you do find out who is the "real" real villain (after you find out that Iris is the villain in Reflection) and you get this whole backstory as to why they became a villain...but the motivation and backstory do not make sense at all? It was quite a REACH honestly for the villain to commit those crimes and whatever plans they had. Like they really didn't have any logical motivation to do what they did. Also, for the matter of pacing, Nanoha doesn't get any of the spotlight in this movie (nor did she in Reflection, but in that movie it was fine since they were trying to set up the new characters and their arcs) but she randomly gets some character development at the very end of the movie for no apparent reason. It just felt so sudden and, again, unnecessary.

What I loved about this entire franchise is the way that they represented and wrote female friendships (or even gay romance if you see that). Their storytelling was always something that astounded me and moved me to tears no matter how many times I've watched the original three seasons. Yet, I am disappointed in this movie and how much of it fell flat. Well, I hope they continue to make more animes in this universe. I'll certainly give them a watch. If only they stopped making ViVid...

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Mar 10, 2026

DuyDLz

Not Recommended

Spoiler

ABSOLUTE IDIOTISM.
Dear god this was such a wasted potential, man.

There aren't many things to say about the music or animation, it's nice and done quite well, the CGI looks fine too, though the mass produced robots do look clunky.

But the bad thing about this movie is the casts and the plot.
The prequel has a somewhat interesting setup, a girl desperately trying to save her planet and is manipulated by another girl for revenge on another girl, which some scene can be see as foreshadowed (like the way Iris looked and when she talks about the Book of Darkness).
But holy did this movie disappoint.
All the cast ... are done terribly, either from stupid decisions (every new characters), sudden changes too quickly (Kyrie) or doesn't even have any proper appearance at all (Looking at you Yuuno).
About the Kyrie, her sister, Iris and Yuri: Absolutely stupid. Everything could've been resolved with 1 single thing: A proper conversation, which is something these 4 couldn't have. Kyrie immediately trust a random girl she found, no question asked, no suspicion, total trust, which isn't that bad since we can consider she was stupid back then, but the sudden change after knowing Iris only used Kyrie for her plan is too fast to follow, her sister convince Kyrie and boom, she's on the good side now as if she didn't do anything bad, yippeeee. The sister which I can't remember the name is not that stupid but her spotlight are stolen by everyone else, like she only appeared to save Kyrie's images and then become a dummy. Iris is also stupid, the moment where she rage and attack Yuri is reasonable as someone she sees as a father died by her friend's hands, but later on? She find out that her father figure Maxwell was behind all of this, which is totally NOT something she can think harder from all those years spent with Kyrie, she thinks about Yuri all the time and couldn't try to make out what Yuri meant when she says it isn't what it look like? And then she gets convinced by the one she manipulated and she's good all of the suddenm woohooo. Yuri is stupid as well, why try to tell Iris to listen when she can just scream out that the also stupid Maxwell was behind this? And if Iris doesn't listen, then just, restrain her, use magic without turning Kyrie into a cheese from Tom and Jerry? Stop her from moving then try to convince her, grab a body to show the bullets and tell Iris that Maxwell is behind it? There are a bunch of methods to prove Maxwell did it.

Speaking of which, Maxwell is both stupid and feel like an asspull to make all the girls look good.
He appeared out of nowhere, no foreshadowing, just appear, aura farm for a moment before lose to the power of friendship, become the causes of all the bad stuffs then gets locked up for a perfect happy ending.
His plan is stupid as hell.
Unlimited soldiers? Then why the heck didn't he just spam create the soldiers before entering the battle and just destroy everything with the immense amount of firepower? Also, his backup plan is stupid as well, he knew that his enemies has the acceleration abilities which make them fly super fast and still used a freaking flying train head to fly to the space station, considering they can just snipe the train head as well. Also, just because the upper dudes cancelled the saving planet project doesn't mean he should kill everyone, if you're going to build an army for war, get as much support as you can is literally the basic of it, and it's not like the world is against him, the workers have bonded with him, they share the same goal, so they could totally follow his lead, boosting his process of creating soldiers speed by a million %.

The 3 cats are just extra, they aren't stupid simply because they're too bland.

AND FINALLY, Nanoha, oh dear Nanoha how the asspull resolved everything, "I saw it and copied it, quite hard" then destroys the main villain, holy moly absolute asspull on the villain and the mc was insane. Nanoha achieved something Maxwell couldn't even do, just, wow.

My boy Yuuno serves nearly ZERO PURPOSE as always, but if his backstory execution was bad like the movie's cast, then I think keeping Yuuno forgotten wasn't that bad after all.

In conclusion? Watch this if you want more yuri scenes, or if you want to laugh at everyone because of how stupid they are.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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