I have in the past both on this Blog and elsewhere referred to Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's as the Batman Returns of Anime in terms of the debate about classifying it as a Christmas movie.
I have since then learned that Die Hard is usually the first Hollywood action/adventure movie people think of when it comes to movies that are technically set at Christmas time but not directly about Christmas in an obvious way. I agree with James Rolf that BR is more of a Christmas movie. But I have enough posts on this Blog referencing Batman in the title for the time being.
I have however remembered that there is another Anime I've seen that fits that category of Christmas movie, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. That being a movie is probably easier to compare for most people. There is a film version of the story of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's but I honestly don't remember if it included the Christmas references and for a number of reasons I don't like it nearly as much as the two series.
The Haruhi film probably spends a larger percentage of it's run time referencing Christmas, BeneathTheTangles only lists episodes 9 and 11 of Nanoha A's as Christmas Episodes. But I feel Nanoha is more properly thematically right for Christmas.
Nanoha A's is also more like Batman Returns in being specifically a second instalment. Disappearance would've been the 3rd or 4th movie if Haruhi had been done as films from the start.
Still both are very good, Disappearance has pretty consistently been on my Anime Films 3x3 and Nanoha A's is one of my favorite instalments of one of my favorite genres.
Disappearance is also arguably a good example of a Eucatastrophe for any Tolkien nerds reading this.
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