Yūno Scrya

Yūno Scrya (ユーノ・スクライア) is one of the major characters of the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha series, but not Triangle Heart. He is voiced by Kaori Mizuhashi. A mage and archaeologist at the age of nine, he comes from Mid-childa in search of the Jewel Seeds and becomes Nanoha's partner. He is also a shapeshifter, turning into a ferret, and is thus often mistaken for Nanoha's familiar and serves the same function. He was the original owner of Raising Heart. He is also referred to as Yuuno Scraia, Yuno, and Euno, the latter being a reference to Eunos cars, as the names of the Wolkenritter were in a possible reference to Magic Knight Rayearth.

The official website romanizes his name as Yuuno Scrya.

Yūno in Nanoha
Before the start of the series, Yūno lived in Mid-childa, a magical world, as an archaeologist. He had no parents, so was raised by his entire tribe, the Scrya, from which he took his surname. He also obtained or created the intelligent device Raising Heart around this time, but his talents lay as a support mage, and so his attack abilities were low and he never made the device into a weapon.

Yūno first appears running from a gigantic monster in the woods and attempting to seal the Jewel Seed inside it with Raising Heart. He fails, letting the monster get away, and collapses wounded on the ground. Yūno uses his remaining power to call out to the nearest magic user and turns into a ferret. His call was heard in Nanoha Takamachi's dream, and later that day, she found the ferret in the woods and took him to the veterinary hospital. He quickly recovered, taking a liking to Nanoha and recognizing her as a possessor of the magical aptitude, a rarity on Earth. Later that night, he calls out to Nanoha again and she leaves the house and finds the Yūno-ferret cornered by the same monster. He entrusts her with his weapon, Raising Heart, and seeing her raw power when she activated it, deduces that she can create magical armour and turn Raising Heart into a weapon of her design. She does so and begins her journey to seal away Jewel Seeds.

It turns out that Yūno discovered the Seeds on an excavation, but officials of the Time-Space Administration Bureau lost them on Earth. Though Yūno searches for the Seeds while Nanoha is busy, and though he fears that she is too inexperienced, he quickly recognizes that she is more powerful than anyone he has ever seen. When Fate arrives on the scene, Yūno begins to fight Fate's familiar Arf while Nanoha is busy with her rival. This is the first time that Yūno is referred to as Nanoha's familiar, but Nanoha replies with "We're friends," a line later echoed in the first episode of A's, under different circumstances. This whole time, Nanoha is unaware that Yūno is a human male, leading to a running gag of some embarrassing situations with girls changing and especially during the onsen episode, and every time he panics and looks away. In episode 8, though, Yūno reveals his identity to Nanoha. Once Lindy Harlaown and her crew arrive to deal with the situation, Yūno convinces her to allow him and Nanoha to continue their retrieval mission and is let off with a slap on the wrist when he ignores orders and allows Nanoha to help Fate seal six Jewel Seeds at once.

At the end, he, Nanoha, Chrono, Arf and finally Fate team up to defeat the real enemy, the adamantly insane Precia Testarossa. Yūno cannot return to his own world for at least 6 months due to the aftereffects of the collapse of the Garden of Time, so he remains as Nanoha's pet. However, just before the start of A's, he returns to work with the TSAB and help with the trial of Fate and Arf.

Yūno in A's
Yūno finishes up helping Fate with her trial, and he still does not get along with Chrono, due to their rivalry over Nanoha. When news comes that the most sought-after Lost Logia, the Book of Darkness has surfaced, the Asura mobilizes to retrieve it, and once Yūno and company learn that it is in Uminari City, they take the assignment right away, Fighting off the Wolkenritter, who take the Linker Cores (magical power sources) of unsuspecting mages to complete the Book, Yūno becomes more and more useful in both forms as a backup and overall white mage; his counterpart in the opposition is Shamal. Yūno also resumes his civilian life as Nanoha's pet, and is subsequently showered with attention by Nanoha's friends and family. Unlike in Nanoha, humor in A's at his expense is less common, save for deadpan jokes from Chrono and a gag scene where Nanoha dreams of eating baked sweet potatoes but instead bites Yūno in her sleep.

In the epilogue which takes place six years later, Yūno continues to work for the TSAB as chief librarian of the Infinity Library, now wears glasses, and is in love with Nanoha but has not made "much progress" in their relationship (they are later stated to be best friends). It is revealed in an A's databook that the ribbon that binds his ponytail is one of Nanoha's.

Yūno in StrikerS
Yūno returns in episode 7 of StrikerS during an auction of several Relics at a hotel. Due to his position as chief librarian of the Infinity Library as well as his experience as an Archeologist, he was called to speak at the auction for his expertise on Magic Relics. Later (in episode 8) he has a happy reunion with Nanoha, their relationship still shown as a strong one. He also appears in episode 21 with Arf telling Chrono there isn't much data about the Saint's Cradle. In the end he has no combat role in StrikerS and is ultimately relegated to administrative functions.

Powers
All of the human, magic-using major characters in the series have high-quality Devices specifically designed and suited for them, which greatly enhance their particular abilities. However, Yūno is uniquely unfortunate in that he doesn't have one. Though he used to possess Raising Heart, it was apparently ill-suited to him, as he required incantations to use its abilities, could not achieve its full activation as a weapon, and could not use it successfully in his one on-screen attempt to seal a rampaging Jewel Seed (though he had succeeded in capturing one Seed before that, offscreen). After he gave the Intelligent Device to Nanoha, he never got another. This does not help dispel the idea that he is Nanoha's familiar, as familiars apparently do not own or use Devices.

In addition, Yūno's offensive powers are notably more limited than everyone else's—Binding and Chain-type spells, which are primarily intended for capture and restraint and which everyone else can use, are the most aggressive abilities he ever displays. However, he does also possess the much rarer skill to forcibly teleport unconsenting targets over large distances to locations of his choosing. This ability proved invaluable for defeating the rampaging Defense Program of the Book of Darkness in Episode 11 of A's.

In contrast to his limited offensive abilities, however, Yuuno's defensive abilities are unparalleled. In Episode 1 of A's, Vita and her Armed Device, Graf Eisen, soundly defeated Nanoha and Raising Heart, breaking through their defenses and inflicting an incapacitating amount of harm on both of them. Minutes later, in Episode 2, Vita proves incapable of defeating Yuuno's defenses or injuring him at all, despite the fact that he is dividing his attention between fighting her and dispelling her imprisoning barrier. And he has no Device to help him accomplish these simultaneous tasks. In Episode 5, while everyone is attempting to move as far from the Book of Darkness' Annihilation Lightning impact as possible, Yuuno simply casts Steel Defense directly underneath the barrage, and comes out unscathed.

In fact, at no point in any of the main anime series does any attack ever successfully pierce one of Yuuno's defensive spells on screen. In supplementary materials, such a thing happened only twice. The first time, between the original series and A's, Nanoha was testing an experimental variation of Starlight Breaker. Yuuno attempted to contain it, but it included a new barrier-piercing quality neither of them had expected; Nanoha would later use that new variation to break through Vita's imprisoning barrier in A's. The other incident was a friendly battle between the Mid-Child Mages and the Belkan Knights on board the TSAB headquarters station, following the end of A's. It eventually became a showdown of the powerhouses, with Nanoha and Fate attempting to compete with Hayate's full firepower. Yuuno attempted to prevent all collateral damage to the practice room with his barriers, but proved unable to handle all three of them at once.

In general, Yūno is a powerful mage in his own right. Because he specializes in types of magic that many of the others do not, he is highly valuable in a support role, on and off the battlefield. These types include healing, barriers, force fields , teleportation , and the obligatory shapeshifting. He is also knowledgeable of spells that allow him to gather and process large quantities of information very quickly, as demonstrated in A's when he was searching through the Infinity Library with Admiral Graham's familiars. In combat, his defensive abilities were strong enough, even without a Device, that he was able to hold off Vita and Graf Eisen, who had just defeated Nanoha and Raising Heart - and he did this while cooperating with Arf in an attempt to dispel Vita's imprisoning force field.
 * Jewel Seed Seal &mdash; Seen only once in a failed attempt, this is generally the same ability used by Nanoha and Fate. However, because Yūno's abilities are not conducive to attack magic, he needs an incantation to activate it.
 * Shapeshifting &mdash; Yūno transforms from ferret to boy and back in a flash of light.
 * Physical Heal &mdash; Yūno uses his power to heal wounds. He is one of the few mages in the series to possess this skill.
 * Temporal Force Field &mdash; In order to "mask" magical effects from public view, Yūno used this to alter the flow of time in a localized area.
 * Floater Field &mdash; Using his magic circle, Yūno can create antigravity fields. This effect is cumulative with more circles.
 * Dispel Force Field &mdash; Arf and Yūno attempted to use this to disable the Wolkenritter force field.
 * Transporter &mdash; Also called "Dimensional Teleport" (次元転送), Yūno used this to transport Nanoha from the Asura, and later the Book of Darkness' defensive program . Yūno can also use the advanced version of this ability (called Transporter High) to teleport several people at once.
 * Chain Bind &mdash; This binding magic can additionally cut through physical objects if "pulled" hard enough. Yūno was able to use this spell to restrain a number of Precia Testerossa's defensive robots, preventing them from attacking Nanoha or avoiding her attacks.
 * Struggle Bind &mdash; A very powerful binding spell that also acts as a magical "ground", specifically, it inhibits magical abilities of the target and can even dissolve transformations in use. Yūno uses this in A's against the final enemy. The only other mage that was ever seen using this spell is Chrono Harlaown.

Defensive Abilities

 * Barrier Jacket &mdash; Yūno's battle costume consists of a green and cream tunic over a pair of tan shorts, a dark brown T-shirt, a tan cape, brown arm bands, cut-off gloves, and tan boots. Similar to Chrono, he often wears his Jacket (sans cape and gloves) as his regular attire, giving some the impression that his tunic and such are normal clothing. But Yuuno (and Chrono) can be seen wearing more casual clothes in Episodes 9 and 13 of the original season.
 * Round Shield &mdash; A powerful shield that can withstand a prolonged attack. Unlike other barrier-type magics such as Protection, it can only guard in one direction.
 * Round Guarder Extend &mdash; This is a stationary shield and magic circle, useful for protecting weakened mages.
 * Circle Protection &mdash; This is identified by the DVD booklet as the ability Yūno used to defend against Arf . Geometrically, it is similar to Nanoha's Round Shield, but is easier to penetrate.
 * Sphere Protection &mdash; As Circle Protection, but in a spherical configuration.