Strike Witches Final Impressions: The Best Things In The Entire Show Were The Eyecatches.

Oh wait, there was also the action. And the character interaction. Okay, okay, the show was decent, I admit it.

As much as I’d like to not like Strike Witches, I can’t fault the show too much. The premise was irritatingly similar to Sky Girls, which I ended up hating with a passion, so I of course went into this series skeptically. And then I saw first episode.. and we had the infamous week of THEY’RE NOT WEARING ANY PANTS. People decided to lable the show as fanservice and let it go. Hell, I was going to let it go, but I kept watching for two reasons.

1. I have extremely low standrads when it comes to anime. Unless something’s outright horrible or boring, I’ll keep watching it.

2. I was captured by the fact that the characters HAD NO PANTS ON. I seriously just watched the second episode to see if this was some sort of joke. ‘TWAS NOT.

But as the series progressed and the setting, characters and plot developed I found that under the piles of fanservice, there was actually a decent series to watch. But I had to realise that I couldn’t take this show seriously around the episde where we had a massive panty stealing chain that didn’t end up in a yuri orgy.

So what was good about Strike Witches?

• The character relationships. Not only did having a pretty much all female cast make for awesome yuri scenes and bewb grabbing, but every character was uniquely defined. None of them felt like typical stereotypes and I couldn’t really predict what they were going to do next. It helped to have an episode devoted to most of the characters (not sure why they’d miss out Francesca and Sakamoto). But there were a couple of problems, like how Yoshika did that complete 180 in episode three and becamse an orgasmic boob fetishist, and how Sakamoto was cold and frigid through most of the series for no reason. Other than that though, it was great. PERRINE X SAKAMOTO WHERE?!

• The World War 2 Setting combined  was an innacurate but interesting time to have the plot take place. i’m still not going to forgive them for teh mapz though.

• The animation was consistently good throughout the series, especially the action scenes. If Dragounaut had been even half as well animated as this, it still would’ve sucked, but it would’ve sucked in style. It was also a nice example of CG not done shit.
• There was also one track in the BGM that was easily one of my favourites, and made the show seem more EPIC than it really is. Which is always a good thing.

And what wasn’t so good?

• The plot and the rushed conclusion. If the series hadn’t spent so much time dossing about with fanservice episodes, we couldv’e looked a bit deeper into the actual REASON the Neuroi were killing mankind. And if it was really a war, wouldn’t they just station the 501st Strike Witches squadron somewhere else if there were more Neuroi hives to beat? And why did Yoshika say “Thank You” to the Neuroi core? And why did her Strikers destroy it so easily? And why did half the characters only introduce actual magiacal abilities beyond flying and shooting only in the last episode like “Sturm” and “Tonerre”?

• Excessive and pointless fanservice. Also hampered by the fact I’m not into lolis. NEED MOAR SHIRLEY SERVICE.

So overall, I’d not really recommend this show, but nor would I say avoid at all costs. It’s all a matter of taste and whether you’re a pervert or not. Although these two just can’t get enough. I’ll probably check out the ep 13 OVA but other than that, I’ll say goodbye to SW.

P.S Best episode is 5, Shirley’s Supersonic Speed Breaker is UNRIVALLED.

One for the road.