Saving the world with the power of friendship and this gun that found me

Through a series of misadventures I'm once again thinking about Lyrical Nanoha and how no media truly captures the hypeness of the Strikers' end-of-season fights, especially Nanoha's duel. I'm simply never not emotional about Raising Heart's and Nanoha's friendship, the way it allows Nanoha to trascend her own limitations, and Nanoha in turn allowing Raising Heart to reach its full potential. Season after season, the most powerful force in the known universe is the friendship between an AI and its primary user.

It's especially noticeable in Strikers, where we see Subaru essentially go through Nanoha's A's arc with Mach Caliber, seeing her build a partnership that she has to give all of herself into for it to truly be functional, embrace that the full picture of herself is not too much to handle, and that the only way she can bloom into her most powerful version is to stop holding back. The Devices are externalised representations of self-confidence, of the ability to rely on your own power and the importance of not hiding your own candle under a bushel, about how talent can only develop if it's given open air to expand to.

And every time a character goes through those steps of understanding themselves better, they're rewarded by becoming more powerful, and every time they become more powerful their confidence grows. Like... yes, Lyrical Nanoha appeals to me for Little Boy Pew Pew Lasers Explosions Are Cool reasons, but that's just the aesthetic. I like Symphogear for similar shallowly aesthetic reasons, but Symphogear isn't as magical girl-y as Nanoha to me, and the main reason is that in Lyrical Nanoha the weapons do not become more powerful when you develop as a person, the weapons become more powerful because they want to support your growth into that better person because they love you.

Mages in Lyrical Nanoha have an in-built support system of Big Fuckoff Gun that more than anything wants to see their Master succeed, and will celebrate by putting the power to end the fucking world in their hands when they do. Power in Lyricalverse is always something you have to grow into, if you do not have the confidence to wield that power... well, you'll be able to do it, but you're not going to truly be a master of it, and your Devices will only respond to you with the mastery over the world when you feel capable of wielding it.

Also, aesthetically nothing beats Raising Heart chewing through an entire magazine of cartridges only for Nanoha to go "not enough" and slam a second one in. No scene in anime has buildup like that scene. A masterclass in Oh Boy It's Going Down.