Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha AU: MAXIMUM YURI
So with a new Lyrical Nanoha anime coming out soon, I had a rather… interesting idea for a hypothetical AU for the series, the original first season, A’s, StrikerS, etc.
Presenting; the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha MAXIMUM YURI AU
Where all of the yuri subtext has been turned into simple TEXT.
Which is then dialed up to eleven.
And also trying to come up with as many NEW yuri ships as possible.
Basically, I am setting out to make Lyrical Nanoha as WLW as possible.
As I think we can all agree, it deserves to be.
Fair warning: this is probably going to get all rather unhinged XD
One thing I did want to mention before we start; at the beginning of the series Nanoha, Fate and the rest of her peers are aged up a few years to 14, with Yuuno and Chrono aged up a bit further still to 16. Simply because Nanoha and her peers being nine at the start of the series has always felt rather incomprehensible to me.
With all that out of the way, let’s start with Season 1:
First off, the NanoFate romance is ENTIRELY blatant and obvious. As in, even moreso then in canon, Nanoha just cannot stop thinking and talking about just how beautiful Fate is and is clearly crushing on her from the get-go. Even in-spite of, or maybe because of, Fate giving her a brutal ass-kicking in their first meeting. Like even moreso than in canon, Yuuno is quite flummoxed/concerned/annoyed that Nanoha insists on gushing about how pretty the other magical girl is as opposed to, you know, actually being worried or something.
Basically, NanoFate gets to be the outright Rivals/Enemies-to-Lovers story it always deserved to be XD Like Nanoha spends basically all of her encounters and fights with Fate alternating between super earnest attempts to befriend and get to know her, and super dorky/awkward flirting once it (fairly quickly) dawns on her that this is a MASSIVE crush. Fate meanwhile, for all her stoicism and conditioned emotional repression, is surprisingly (most of all to herself) rather receptive to Nanoha’s flirting. Like this is all the first time she’s been complimented by a pretty girl and she likes it? (though admittedly this does get all the more tragic once the full context of Fate’s backstory with Precia is revealed) Basically it quickly becomes clear that Fate is falling for Nanoha just as hard XD
And of course, the ‘call my name’ scene at the end of Season 1 ABSOLUTELY culminates with Nanoha and Fate having their first Big Damn Kiss.
Next, let’s talk about Nanoha’s friends Alisa and Suzuka. Because just like with NanoFate, here all of the original yuri subtext has been upgraded to full ‘text’. Namely in the form of the three friends being in what TvTropes would probably term a ‘Type 9 Love Triangle’.
Specifically, Alisa and Suzuka start the series already super close and at first seem to be a case of two friends who really should be dating but are too oblivious to it as well as being further hampered by Alisa’s very thinly-veiled crush on Nanoha. However, it later turns out that there is a further complication in that Suzuka is ALSO crushing on Nanoha just as hard as Alisa. Basically, Alisa and Suzuka are in a rather awkward position in that they both have feelings for each other and are largely aware of that fact, but also BOTH have an even harder crush on NANOHA. And they both have no idea how to deal with that.
And things get even more awkward (and funnier) after Fate properly enters the picture after Season 1, because once again building off the subtext in canon, Alisa finds herself crushing just as much if not even HARDER on FATE. Like there’s a running gag in this AUs version of A’s with Alisa lamenting that she wants to be jealous of Fate for being with Nanoha, but she CAN’T because Fate is just so pretty!
Basically, Alisa and Suzuka are a hilarious gay mess and their issues aren’t really fully resolved until years later when they get to have a super kinky four-way with Nanoha and Fate XD
Oh, and in the event that Nanoha and Fate have a ‘rough patch’, then Alisa and Suzuka are ALL too happy to be Nanoha’s (temporary) rebound lol
Touching on Aruf for a moment, as you can probably guess her feelings for Fate are much more explicitly romantic in this version, though still ultimately one-sided. Basically, it all plays into a rather tragic, lightly-doomed yuri dynamic between the two. But don’t worry, I have plans for Aruf to get her own GF later on XD
Moving on to Lindy Harlaown, well it turns out she’s got some connections with Fate’s mom Precia Testarossa in a nod to the INNOCENT spin-off manga. As in, they actually dated in collage, things did not end well, and there is a fair bit of BAGGAGE. Which in turn leads to them having a major confrontation during the assault on Precia’s base at the end of the season which ends up getting quite SPICY in very toxic/doomed-yuri fashion. It does all still end effectively the same as in canon with Precia falling into the abyss with the soulless husk of her daughter Alicia, but the journey getting there is more interesting and fun. As well as giving Lindy more concrete and narratively resonate reasoning to adopt Fate at the end of the season.
There is also another interesting bit going on with Lindy, but I’ll have to come back to that later…
Also, touching on Precia herself a bit; flashbacks in the backhalf of the season will show that she had a very dysfunctional, codependent romance going on with her familiar and Fate’s mentor Linith. Which also happens to parallel Fate’s dynamic with Aruf in a rather ‘like mother, like daughter’ sense.
Basically, Precia is something of a magnet for toxic/doomed-yuri in this AU lol
The next bit I’d like to touch on is the Takamachi family, who have actually been tweaked a fair bit in this AU.
Also, this is where the yuri shipping starts getting a tad more… unhinged XD
You see, the revamped Takamachi family background here is essentially a mix of canon, as well as their ‘proto’ versions back in the Triangle Heart 3 visual novel. Particularly when it comes to the status of Nanoha’s father, Shiro.
Namely, like in Triangle Heart; Shiro isn’t around anymore, but like in MGLN canon; he’s not dead either. Instead, in this version after the bomb attack that killed him in TH3 and forced his retirement in MGLN, here he pulled a classic ‘gotta disappear to find and kill the bad guys who did this and to keep my family safe’ deadbeat dad schtik.
Now there are a few fun ripple effects of all this. For one, it means that there is basically a version of the plot of Triangle Heart 3 playing out in the background of the early MGLN plots, with Nanoha’s older brother Kyouya (the original protag of that game) getting roped into his father’s various supernatural spy-thriller shenanigans and getting secretly trained by said father to fight in this whole secret war.
And where things get REALLY fun is the fact that Shiro’s fixation on staying away from his family and keeping them in the dark to ‘keep them safe’ has left him, as well as literally everyone else involved in his whole story thread COMPLETELY OBLIVIOUS to all the fun ‘alien magical girl’ adventures that NANOHA has been getting up to. Like how even Nanoha’s mother Momoko and sister (technically cousin) Miyuki know about it, but Shiro has been absent (ergo; being a deadbeat) so much that he hasn’t even gotten a chance to hear about it.
Basically, by the time these two plotlines actually intersect, say around the events of Nanoha A’s, Shiro and ALL of his associated allies and enemies are in for one HELL of a surprise when his assumed-to-be normal, helpless daughter turns out to have become an insanely powerful extraterrestrial magical girl, along with her surprise similarly-powerful girlfriend, and their new friends. Who also all happen to pretty cleanly outscale everyone in the TH3 plotline in power XD
Oh, and all this backporting of Triangle Heart 3 plot-points means that Suzuka’s family are secretly vampires again. Also that Alisa is some kind of revenant/ghost (haven’t fully figured that part out yet lol)
Now as to how this setup leads to more yuri, well Shiro’s whole ‘gotta be a total deadbeat husband and dad to keep my family safe’ shtick has led to a… shall we say amicable estrangement between Momoko and Shiro, which includes an agreement between them to have a fairly open relationship. Basically, Momoko is an effective single-mom who is, shall we say, very close with SEVERAL other women.
As in, she’s sleeping with both Jodie Bannings and Haruna Tsukimura, ie; Alisa’s and Suzuka’s moms. Oh, and Jodie and Haruna are also sleeping together as well.
Heck, going back to a previous point, Momoko even has a fling with Lindy starting during their first meeting.
It turns out that Nanoha’s ‘befriending’ skills are something she absolutely inherited from her mother :D
Which means that yes, by the end of the first season, Nanoha’s, Fate’s, Suzuka’s and Alisa’s moms have ALL slept together/are sleeping together.
Like I said, this is the MAXIMUM Yuri AU XD
Basically, when he eventually comes home, Shiro Takamachi is going to find himself in the rather awkward position of now essentially being a second-tier (at best) member of his wife’s harem.
Oh, and you know how in MGLN canon, Nanoha’s older brother Kyouya was dating, and eventually married Suzuka’s older sister Shinobu?
Well here they were briefly dating, but then Kyouya let himself get dragged into his father’s supernatural spy-thriller BS which tanked their relationship and Shinobu ended up hooking up with Nanoha’s older sister (actually cousin) Miyuki instead XD
There’s a bit of a recurring theme here lol
Finally, just to make these family relationships even more unhinged and confusing; Amy Limietta-Harlawon in this version is not Chrono’s handler and future wife, but instead adopted sister. And she ends up in a love-triangle with Miyuki and Shinobu, and possibly an eventual polycule.
Simply put, by the time this AU gets to StrikerS, the in-law overlap between the Takamachi, Harlaown, Tsukimura and Bannings families is going to be rather nuts XD
(and don’t worry about Chrono. In this AU, he’s gay and eventually hooks up with Yuuno)
Now with that, we have reached the end of Season 1 of this AU. So let’s tally up the ships. We have:
Nanoha/Fate
Alisa/Suzuka
Nanoha/Alisa/Suzuka (semi-one-sided)
Nanoha/Fate/Alisa/Suzuka (eventual casual)
Fate/Aruf (one-sided/unrequited)
Lindy/Precia (past-doomed/toxic)
Precia/Linith (past-doomed/toxic-one-sided)
Momoko/Lindy (casual)
Jodie/Haruna (casual)
Momoko/Jodie/Haruna (casual)
Momoko/Lindy/Jodie/Haruna (casual)
Miyuki/Shinobu
Amy/Miyuki/Shinobu (casual?)
That’s a total of Thirteen ships.
And we haven’t even hit A’s yet… XD
So that’s part one of this weird, unhinged little AU idea.
There will hopefully be more :D
