Strike Witches feels a lot like one of my all time favorite anime, Battle Athletes Victory. There’s similarities, a convenient excuse for teenage girls to be the only hope for mankind, an international cast of characters, aliens, the dead parent of the clueless main character as a central figure, and the girls in Battle Athletes Victory were almost as allergic to pants as the Strike Witches. Also, both shows are ridiculous in a good way. Ten years separates the two shows and it’s kind of fun encountering similarities and seeing differences between them as far as characters go, such as the stereotypes that persist or have fallen off.
Strike Witches is girls, guns and propellers. The girls have magical powers, which conveniently seem to fade after the age of 21 and don’t manifest in males, so no crones or dudes with misguided chivalry can save humanity, only cute girls. These magical girls fight alien invaders with the help of striker units, which are leggings that resemble famous propeller fighter planes. The aliens attack without warning, so the girls must always be ready. Every second is critical. They have no time to take off their pants to get into the striker units, so they walk around in their underwear in order to immediately jump into their units. Someone could die while taking off pants.
I guess Strike Witches also reminds me a little of Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 (not seen the original Bubblegum Crisis) with updated character types and fan service. Futuristic science fiction and cyberpunk have fallen out of style in favor of worlds with ambient tech levels equal to a pre-atomic 20th century. Watching cute girls blow shit up hasn’t gone out of style (hopefully never will) and neither has having these girls dress inappropriately, corruption within their own side, and regular guys have no place in these girl’s lives. They’re too busy kicking ass while being oblivious to low camera angles. Strike Witches is great and stupid, like Dirty Pair, except with more factions to ally yourself with than being a Kei or Yuri man. Strike Witches gives you eleven instead of two and oddly each of the pant-less witches wears more clothes than Kei or Yuri. The lines in the sand are panty lines.
Strike Witches is probably one of the best girls with guns series of the past few years, which hasn’t really been that prolific a genre to get an R1 release, even if it’s one of the first things I think about when I think about anime. I’m not a fan of the animal ears and tails, which turned me off on Strike Witches for a while, but girls with guns brought me there. It’s not a bad note for Gonzo to go out on either, probably its third best production behind Gankutsuou and Last Exile. It probably serves as a good signpost for not just the genre, but of fandom, at least the english speaking fandom on the net.
I went through Strike Witches on R1 a couple months back. I was probably more drawn to the series by the novelty of the Striker units (i.e., girls as fighter planes) than anything. It’s a good series, IMO, but it has been an unfortunate victim of the community’s wrath.
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It did serve as an us vs. them for a number of vocal anime fans, which had some impact on pushing me to watch it. I am such an un-fan of animal ears that I was steering clear of this show, but the chest thumping kind of called attention, stirring up my anti-smarter-than-the-room inclinations.
Ah…Strike Witches, interesting show once I got over the no pants thing I found myself enjoying the show quite a bit. Need to pick up the DVDs whenever I get funds.
They have an highly amusing chart as the insert for the dvds. It actually helped to get me to remember everyone’s name quickly.
One may look at it as a convenience to provide excusable, constant fan-service. At the same time, society can actually go in that direction, deeming it perfectly acceptable to parade around in nothing but panties for the sake of humanity.
It’s interesting how important social acceptance is in order to label nonsense as sensical.
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Pretty much. Context.
I liked “Strike Witches”, sure it was rife with fanservices, absurdity and a guilty pleasure but it was a solid series at the core.
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Most definitely. Only wish it had more episodes…well, we’re getting that with season 2, but I think a decent story could have been built up.
What turned me on was this quite unique mix of “mecha-musume” and 2ww planes/pilots ^^ Very nice and sexy representation ^^ As I always liked those war planes (fighters).
Well but once you check girls uniforms from waist down, one should know what to expect ^^ This is yet another ecchi anime oriented on pantsu. Still… in masses of ecchi lately, this one is quite original and I enjoyed watching it (thru it wont claim any top ranks in my anime chart).
I remember this rly made me laugh when I saw it! Parody on Iwo Jima flag rising: http://www.animeroot.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/bb-large.jpg
While plot of SW is “meh”, characters are very cute and there is so many, that most ppl will find at least one to match their moe type preference ^^ Mine was Sakamoto Mio at instant ^^
With eleven characters, you can pick more than one, though I like Shirley who I think had the best spotlight story. Though I found with 12-13 episodes, not everyone got spotlight time and you didn’t really get to know much more about them than when you first glom onto a character, but I think everyone got at least one time where they did something sweet.
I like that picture. Almost used it for the post.
It’s still on my To-Watch list. I think I might bump it up to the next series I’m going to watch ^^;
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I liked watching Strike Witches. It’s nice to see how they developed throughout the anime. They have a ton of merchandise to their name too. Figures, plushes, posters, and more that I saw while in Japan.
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What’s with those propellers? Honestly, I was laughing at the fight scenes. The propellers looks silly.
This series sucks. But don’t get me wrong, I like the plot and the characters. It’s just that those propellers and panties are kind of silly. If they rid of those silliness and use a suit instead then this series will pick up my attention.
This anime is suited for kids who had just reached the puberty period.