STRIKE WITCHES - 01 July 8
OP Sequence:
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OP: “STRIKE WITCHES ~Watashi ni Dekiru Koto~” 「STRIKE WITCHES ～わたしにできること～」 by Ishida Youko (石田 燿子)
Watch the OP!: Mirror 1, Mirror 2
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ED Sequence:
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ED: “Bookmark Ahead” 「ブックマック ア・ヘッド」 by Fukuen Misato (福圓 美里) & Chiba Saeko (千葉 紗子)
Watch the ED!: Mirror 1, Mirror 2
「魔法少女」 (Mahou Shoujo)
“Magical Girl”
Next Episode:
「私にできること」 (Watashi ni Dekiru Koto)
“To Do What I Can”
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Impressions:
For those of you who have seen Sky Girls, STRIKE WITCHES should seem quite familiar to you as they’re both created by Shimada Humikane. (There’s even an “MV Sword” like Sky Girls.) Evidently, Shimada-san has some sort of fetish with young mecha-girls who fight strange or unknown forces that are attacking the Earth. In Sky Girls, it was the WORMs; here it’s the Neuroi, which also look somewhat biological in nature. To counter these forces, mankind invented a weapon that augments magical power, the Striker Unit, which acts a “magical broom” for magic users known as “witches”. The elite task force assembled to fight the Neuroi is The 501st Joint Fight Wing, which gathered witches from all around the world. To the public though, they’re known as the “Strike Witches”.
Our heroine, Miyafuji Yoshika, played by Fukuen Misato (Eve from Black Cat, Konjiki no Yami from To LOVE-Ru), is a girl from a small town who gets scouted to join the Strike Witches, because of her latent magical powers. While Yoshika opposes war and only wants to take over her family’s clinic, an old picture of Major Sakamoto Mio and Yoshika’s late father suddenly arrives in the mail. Seeing this, Yoshika goes to see Mio again, hoping she’ll take her to Britannia, the focal point of attack by the Neuroi and the place where her father supposedly passed away. (Funny how there’s a Geass-looking ability and Britannia is the country being subdued here.) Willing to take her there even though she doesn’t want to join the army, Mio eventually shows Yoshika the Striker Unit, a device that her father helped engineer to combat the Neuroi. Seeing how awesome it is to fly around like that, Yoshika is interested, but still decides not to join as she doesn’t like war; however, their fleet of battleships is suddenly attacked by a Neuroi.
Now the concept doesn’t bother me at all, as I quite enjoyed Sky Girls in its own, somewhat inexplicable way. Now before you all jump in screaming “lolicon“, I’ll say it was more because of the cast and the fact that it was pretty much an anime based loosely on the premise of one of Konami’s classic games—Gradius. Also, not all the characters in Sky Girls or STRIKE WITCHES are flat-chested and have the underage-look like Micchan does, as we also have the likes of one Charlotte E Yaeger (full-length shot courtesy of myself), who is played by the amazingly awesome Koshimizu Ami in what appears to be yet another tsundere role. “Yet another” is not to say that I’m complaining or anything though, as we could always use more characters like Kallen Stadtfelt, who the producers of CODE GEASS are absolutely milking the fan-service out of this season. (I can already picture all the new Kallen doujinshi now.) Sakamoto Mio, played by the “now married, but can still be a seiyuu after marriage because I have the best (seemingly) fake laugh ever” Chiba Saeko, is also quite well “endowed“. (To our female readers, I apologize in advance if this is starting to sound like an impression about bust sizes. >_>) Anyway, I digress, but the point is, you probably shouldn’t be labeling this series as “loli” or “not loli” and deciding whether or not to watch it for that reason. Now the real concern is, why do the girls in this world not wear pants?
For meaningless anime argument sake though, if they’re comfortable wearing a school swimsuit under a sailor shirt as their school uniform, who am I to tell them they can’t do that? If these so-called Strike Witches like flying around in the air, feeling the cool breeze running through their legs while fighting some aliens, hey, that’s their prerogative. I mean, there are girls that dress conservatively after all, so it’s not like anybody’s forcing these girls to not wear pants. (Note: This wasn’t me jumping on a sexual harassment opportunity, but simply stating that, yeah, no pants is okay here… *cough*) As for the cat/dog ears and tails, I can’t see them serving any other purpose other than appealing to fetishes, so I’m just going to attribute that to yet another one of Shimada-san’s “tastes”.
Regardless of all these obvious “appeals” to the series (which will undoubtedly turn some people away), I actually like the character designs, animation, and story based on what I’ve seen in the first episode. Furthermore, the cast is ridiculously stacked with female talent, with the likes of Tanaka Rie (Lacus Clyne in Gundam SEED, Suigintou in Rozen Maiden), Sawashiro Miyuki (Shinku in Rozen Maiden, Kanzato Jun/Yuki in PERSONA -trinity soul-), Saitou Chiwa (Aika S. Granzchesta in ARIA), Kadowaki Mai (Illya in Fate/stay night, Hakase Satomi in Negima!), Nazuka Kaori (Yuasa Hiromi in true tears, Nakatsukasa Tsubaki in SOUL EATER), Nogawa Sakura (Asakura Nemu in D.C. ~Da Capo~, Hinaichigo in Rozen Maiden) in addition to the aforementioned seiyuus. I’m a fan of all these seiyuus (with Chiba Saeko, Koshimizu Ami, and Tanaka Rie being some of my all-time favourites), but really enjoyed Miyuki’s role as Perrine here, as her prissy attitude is exactly like Houjou Reika’s in Goshuushou-sama Ninomiya-kun, which I haven’t heard in awhile now. I just love watching her character being the target of jokes/scrutiny and seeing how see reacts to them.
At a slated twelve episode run (much like GONZO’s recently finished work on The Tower of Druaga ~the Aegis of URUK~), STRIKE WITCHES is just about the right length I’d like for a series with such a premse. While Sky Girls ran a full two seasons (i.e. 26 episodes), it felt somewhat long in retrospect. I just hope that Tamai Tsuyoshi and his crew has planned this well enough to make the most out of each episode, otherwise it runs the risk of coming off as just another anime people are soon to forget. Given Tamai-san’s previous work on Chobits, Rozen Maiden, and this season’s Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu though, I hope to be pleasantly surprised. As I mentioned above, Sky Girls wasn’t great, but I enjoyed it in its own unique way, so I’m hoping to find a similar appeal in STRIKE WITCHES. If you felt the same way about Shimada Humikane’s other mecha-girl series, then this should be right up your alley as well. If you’re a bit of a seiyuu-otaku, it’s a bit hard to ignore a series such as this.
Finally, note that this is yet another series GONZO is posting on online streaming sites such as YouTube and crunchyroll along with official English subtitles the day it airs in Japan, except this time, they’ve opted to make it a “time-limited” feature. By this, it means the video will only be available for about 10 hours and is then taken down (making it feel like a TV broadcast I suspect). Should you want to download a higher quality version copy of the episodes though, they’re available via a small $3-5 USD donation.
Cast:
- Miyafuji Yoshika (宮藤 芳佳) / Fukuen Misato (福圓 美里)
- Sakamoto Mio (坂本 美緒) / Chiba Saeko (千葉 紗子)
- Minna-Dietlinde Wilke (ミーナ・ディートリンデ・ヴィルケ) / Tanaka Rie (田中 理恵)
- Perrine-H. Clostermann (ぺリーヌ・クロステルマン) / Sawashiro Miyuki (沢城 みゆき)
- Francesca Lucchini (フランチェスカ・ルッキーニ) / Saitou Chiwa (斎藤 千和)
- Charlotte E Yeager (シャーロット・E・イェーガー) / Koshimizu Ami (小清水 亜美)
- Mother Miyafuji (宮藤母) / Amano Yuri (天野 由梨)
- Grandmother Miyafuji (宮藤祖母) / Midori Junko (翠 準子)
- Micchan (みっちゃん) / Satou Arise (佐藤 有世)
- Old man (おじいちゃん) / Shiroyama Ken (城山 堅)
- Laborer (土方) / Hino Satoshi (日野 聡)
- Professor Miyafuji (宮藤博士) & Narration (ナレーション) / Gouda Hodzumi (郷田 ほづみ)
42-42-564 at 6:41 am on July 8th, 2008
First episode captured me with its visuals. Seems quite epic.
Hope later episodes will be just as good, if not better.
shugima at 6:45 am on July 8th, 2008
A serie I’m looking forward to for the rest.
nyaa~~ at 7:07 am on July 8th, 2008
strike pantsu
Itadakimasu! at 7:15 am on July 8th, 2008
Loli pantsu action… I’m avoiding it like the plague
mutio at 7:18 am on July 8th, 2008
They actualy used WWII uniforms as design source for the girls’ uniforms.
Besides that, I like Sky Girls OVA but that was all. The series sucked and this one already sucks too. But for all loli fans a must I guess.
~Free
Ruk at 7:46 am on July 8th, 2008
Ugh. Kill it with fire.
Lithium17 at 7:46 am on July 8th, 2008
So basically, this has loli fanservice and nothing else, huh. I’ll pass, then.
oh Gonzo…. how far do you plan to fall?…. I crave the good ol days of Last Exile and Gankusu Ou.
divine at 7:50 am on July 8th, 2008
Hmm, I thought I made it clear in my impressions that I didn’t think it was about lolita fan-service at all. Are people just reading the first two lines or something? o_O
NegativeZero at 7:50 am on July 8th, 2008
I recommend getting it via BOST TV over Crunchyroll, as their downloads are h264 (and BOST are the people subbing it in any case). Plus they don’t sit in the moral grey area that Crunchyroll does, given that CR got where they are now by profiting off illegally streamed anime and stuff. Not that it really matters.
I enjoyed the first episode quite a bit. It’s much more of a ‘pure’ implementation of Humikane’s Mecha Musume concept than Sky Girls was, and by being shorter and with a larger cast there’s more potential for some decent and varied aerial action, where Sky Girls got a bit repetitive.
Crisu at 7:52 am on July 8th, 2008
They wore pants and skirts in the OVA, though, and that was just fine. Losing them in the TV series kinda makes for an imbalance of fanservice versus plot in my opinion. Sky Girls had a great balance.
Paraetta at 8:01 am on July 8th, 2008
I really like this show, is pretty different from sky girl, that suck imo.
Mecha musume, mahou shoujo, heavy weapons, epic air battles, nekomini, all in one, now i hope only for a good plot and this will be best serie of this season. Can’t wait for next episode, thanks a lot Gonzo. *_*
The 12 hours limited on youtube is pretty annoy and 3 bucks foe episode is eccessive. I watch it but this time sorry Gonzo, i don’t support it (like Druaga).
GDP at 8:18 am on July 8th, 2008
I facepalm at the egregious lack of pants, shorts, or skirts. Words fails me.
ark noir at 9:51 am on July 8th, 2008
TheHoodedRonin> its not made for 10 year old, more rather people double that age. That’s the true scary part.
falconx0101 at 10:36 am on July 8th, 2008
When I first watched this I was surprised to see the lack of pants. I’m not opposed to panty shots but come on… It’s not fun if every shot is a panty shot.
EroKero at 10:49 am on July 8th, 2008
Right, loli intonations aside, when even the full figured girls are lacking the “carpeting”, yeah…. Well, it’s pure fanny servvy so if thats your thing…
Som1 at 11:47 am on July 8th, 2008
I wouldn’t call this pure fanservicing as although the panty shots were somewhat excessive, it seemed that the story was getting somewhere. Also, if you didnt watch the first episode, dont make a quick judgment on it just based purely on images.
Kadian1364 at 12:06 pm on July 8th, 2008
@Divine: For all your arguments against Strike Witches as “not just lolicon bait”, most everyone operates on the “we know it when we see it” rule. No number of well-endowed girls (2?) or conservatively dressed characters (3?) can shake that feeling that is the first impression.
My impressions are that Strike Witches does share many similarities with Sky Girls, in set-up, character designs, general vibes. The exception being that Strike Witches looks like it has a huge main “girl battalion” cast (the cynical will say that’s to appeal to more fetishes), and it’s way more liberal with its use of fanservice. The opening battle sequence showed an obvious effort to alternate showcasing each girl’s gun and posterior. The camera spent so much time looking up at girls from the ground and glued to their butts, there’s so much in-your-face fetish pandering its really hard to just turn the blinders on and enjoy the war-with-aliens and heroine-in-the-making parts of the show.
The one scene comes to mind where the girl w/ eyepatch is trying to recruit the main girl and visits her house. She (girl w/ eyepatch) is wearing a high-class military uniform; long sleeved shirt, impeccably white and clean, with military insignia on the shoulders, the picture of Serious Business. But then the camera pans down and you remember: She has no pants on. It was so hard to take her character seriously! I half-expected the mom or grandma to throw her out of the house (interestingly, they were wearing full length skirts that covered up their intimate parts, the only two women in the episode I could remember that did so).
The issue is, you can’t like Strike Witches without liking the fanservice or at least having a high tolerance for the stuff. That’s not bad in it of itself; I imagine Strike Witches was made with that audience exactly in mind. But where Sky Girls could pass on merits besides lolicon or girls-in-plugsuits, Strike Witches demonstrated that those aspects are an integral part of the viewing experience.
Paraetta at 12:07 pm on July 8th, 2008
“What the fuck is this fucking shit?”
Get a life troll.
I’m surprised RC staff don’t clean the board and delete these useless and denigratory comments. A little moderation is needed, and if u guys dont like the show simply don’t waste u time on it and stop put shit here.
Lithium17 at 12:11 pm on July 8th, 2008
Ooohhh!! Looks the pedos are getting offended!
DmonHiro at 12:34 pm on July 8th, 2008
@Lithium17
Troll much?
I’m a big loli lover, but I can’t STAND this show. I hate the in-your-face panty action. It’s a turnoff if you ask me. Also….how am I suposed to take a team of fighters seriously if they don’t even wear pants? How intimidating would Viral be if he was walking arount in his underware?