Summer 2010 in Anime: Strike Witches 2

//I wrote this two years ago but never published it, now seems like as good a time as ever right? (no.)

I've rewritten this review several times, trying to figure out how to best criticize a show like this. In the end, I've just decided to do a plot summary and rant. Let's begin by introducing the characters shown in this episode, for those who are unfamiliar with the series or need a quick refresher:


Meet Major Sakamoto, the commander of the 501st Joint Fighter Wing and sadly, not the main character. She's a strong-headed person who's served in the military for several years, having known Yoshika's (the main character) father while he was building Striker Units, a jet propulsion system that conveniently only works on underage girls in their underwear. Misinterpreting the eye-patch as a sure sign of leadership, the military puts her in charge of the Strike Witches, an elite squad  a team of armed fighters  eleven half naked lolis who don't seem to own any pants and are moe renditions of famous, real-life ace pilots like Chuck Yeager (first person to go faster than the speed of sound) and Kaneyoshi Mutoh, who is so unimportant that his Wikipedia page just redirects you back to the Strike Witches article. Major Sakamoto is actually based off of two people.

She also seems to believe that a katana is actually a useful weapon against
enemies armed with lasers.

The show takes place in an alternate WWII era, only instead of Nazis, we have alien spaceships called Neuroi attacking, and the Strike Witches are humanity's only chance for survival.  The absence of figures like Stalin and Adolf Hitler never gets an explanation. I guess he did get that job as a painter in this timeline.

Anyway, meet the main character, Yoshika, who reminds me of that brain-dead girl from K-ON. She's a kind, caring person who has magical healing powers and wants to grow up to be a doctor and cure people. Obviously good reasons to join the military.

What I don't like about her is how much the writers try to develop her character by having her do things like curing birds and bears in several tedious scenes. I mean, this show is about teenage girls with no pants on who fly around making sounds like jet engines and fucking shit up with huge guns. Why should anyone give a damn about characterization?  These characters are based off famous pilots; don't disgrace their honor by trying to humanize them in some twisted way and drawing connections to the real life heroes.

Nope, can't tell the difference.

For example, take legendary pilot Chuck Yeager (pictured above) and his counterpart, Charlotte Yeager. From what I've heard, he was pissed when he learned that he had been portrayed as a pants-less 16-year-old girl in an anime series. On top of that, Yeager spends most of her time with the Italian Strike Witch, Francesca Lucchini, who has developed an unhealthy fixation with Yeager's breasts. I'm sure that's somehow politically symbolic.

Nobody is going to cheer for Charlotte Yeager when she finally achieves her dream of breaking the sound barrier for the first time in history. Fans will cheer because the sonic boom that was produced upon reaching supersonic speed tore her clothes to shreds. It's completely pointless to try to get the audience to develop empathy for these characters if the show is just going to treat them like sex objects for the rest of the time. There's already been a really good film made about Chuck Yeager's Mach 1 achievement (it's actually one part of a very long movie that's ultimately about astronauts, go figure). Why can't the show just relish its silliness like To Love-Ru or Kampfer? Stop wasting my time with this bullshit "plot" and "character development", I don't think Yeager needs any more development of any kind. 

Now I have to admit, the premise is really creative, but they could have done so much better with the execution. That said, have a moe Hitler .

No words, nothing can be said.