Strike Witches 2 – First Episode Review

Episode Summary: Though the Witches of the 501st Joint Fighter Wing helped to bring about peaceful relations with the Neuroi, the peace is short-lived; a larger hive appears, destroys the original hive, and begins to obliterate cities while other Witches look on in horror.  Meanwhile in Fuso, Yoshika Miyafuji graduates from middle school and plans to train to become a doctor in order to use her healing magic to help people.  One day at home, a Witch arrives at her doorstep with a letter, supposedly from Yoshika's father, who passed away.  Yoshika travels to the local military base to consult with Mio Sakamoto, her former commander.

Sakamoto is on her way back to the base from forging a new, better sword to compensate for her weaker magic and inability to create shields for herself. Yoshika, in the meantime, overhears of carnage happening to some of her allies and feels impotent when she's unable to do anything and is eventually kicked off the base by Sakamoto herself who arrives.  Not to be denied the chance to help her friends in need, Yoshika breaks back into the base and obtains a striker unit, inviting herself along on Sakamoto's mission to Europe.

Thoughts: Strike Witches is one of those franchises that seems to invite controversy wherever it goes.  The first season was met with a lot of criticism in the US, not so much for its alternate-history World War 2 scenario, but for its treatment of the female characters, who were the main focus.  My personal reaction was almost entirely negative, due to the frequency of zoomed-in shots of crotches wearing nothing but underwear (or sometimes nylons).  In the meantime, the series garnered a passionate fanbase who spoke up for its other more positive aspects including the story it was telling and its reproduction (via the striker units) of various real-life era-appropriate aircraft.  In the meantime, watching fanservice-laden series like Queen's Blade and Seikon no Qwaser (yes, I watched half the season in hopes that it might offer some counterpoint to its atrocious, sleazy content.  Protip: it doesn't) helped to adjust my tolerance level to their brand of sexualized content.  That isn't to say that I accept a lot of fanservice or enjoy it, merely that I'm better able to tune it out if there's something worth ignoring it for.  While I wouldn't really recommend this series to most of the people I know (like-minded fans with even more severe aversions to this kind of material than I), watching the second-season opener has given me the impression that there's the seed of a good story buried beneath some of the more distasteful aspects of the actual production.

I'll get this out of the way first: I'm still not anywhere near convinced that the pants-less nudity is necessary, at all.  I got into an argument with a friend at a convention a while back in regards to the necessity of the characters not wearing anything on their legs.  The logical answer to that criticism is that they need their legs free to pilot the striker units, that they need direct contact in order to use their magic and that any sort of clothing on their lower extremities might get caught in the mechanism.  My opinion is that, if it were just a reaction to perceived issues of that nature, then the girls could just wear some short-ish shorts.  Having seen the kind of shorts that were sold in stores this Summer, I'm sure it would be easy enough to have drawn some that were both short enough to work feasibly with the striker units, while long enough to preserve some sort of modesty for the characters.  Arguing logistics about anime wardrobes misses the point, though; my friend offered as a closing point that the show simply wouldn't be the same without those character designs, and to that I can agree. 

Even from just this episode, I get the impression that this series occupies that weird in-between space with other shows that might have good enough stories, characters and acting to stand firmly on their own merits, but which employ cheap tricks to establish a fanatical audience and ensure some measure of financial success at the expense of respect or critical acclaim (which, unfortunately, doesn't always pay the bills). One valuable thing that I learned from watching Queen's Blade is that, even at the brink of becoming completely disgusted by a show's content, it's possible grasp some positive element and hang on for dear life, and to extract something meaningful from it.  In this particular case, I found the setting to be very interesting.  For those who are unfamiliar, a quick check of the Wikipedia entry reveals a wealth of information regarding the show's alternate version of Earth, complete with a map demonstrating the horrific damage committed by the Neuroi invasion (some parts of entire continents no longer exist, and the planet is pockmarked from the destructive power of the Neuroi).  This episode doesn't shy away from portraying the results of such power; there's a scene that shows an entire city burning to the ground, as well as one that shows the relatively shocking death of one of the humanoid Neuroi by the larger Neuroi hive.  As someone who originally suspected that each episode was entirely devoted to moe pursuits, these events stand in sharp relief.

The action animation is also fairly impressive, mirroring one of the few positive things that I had to say about the first episode of season 1.  In scenes where the Witches are flying, the sense of flying along with them is truly exhilarating.  The battle choreography is also very sharp and helps to provide the impression that the witches are all very skilled (perhaps too skilled: there's not a very strong sense of danger).  This certainly helps to at least partially dispel the myth that all moe series are boring slice-of-life affairs. I'm not familiar enough with the first season to detect any difference in the animation quality between Gonzo's contribution and AIC Spirit's animation production for the current season, but I don't get the impression that the quality has either dropped or increased sharply.  One complain I have is that many of the far-away shots of the Witches are accomplished with CG, and while it isn't especially overused or even all that obvious, it's still detectable and makes the characters look a bit too much like the figurines on which they're based.

Of course, acknowledging the positives only helps me to further dwell on the negatives, and in this case there are still quite a few that I'm unable (perhaps unwilling) to ignore.  Most obvious are the crotch shots which aren't as pervasive in this episode as I remember from the first episode of season 1, but are still there.  Considering how well put-together the choreography is otherwise, the frequency of , to borrow a phrase from Zac Bertschy, "flying half-airplane girl's taint" being thrust at the screen during the aforementioned combat scenes can only be seen as a truly deliberate choice, not as something that's an accidental result of certain camera angles.  I recently had the opportunity to see the original Strike Witches OVA, and while the quality of the animation certainly isn't up to the level of its later incarnation, there's one obvious and pleasant difference; while the girls are still flying around with no pants, the focus is more on their faces and the resulting imagery is much less grotesque and isn't nearly as distracting.  The TV anime could be classier and more refined, and that strikes me as a failure on the part of the creators to recognize that potential, even if the series is based on nothing more than some illustrations of airplane girls.

This franchise will never be compared favorably to Masterpiece Theater, nor is it anywhere near as repulsive as something like Eiken. It occupies a kind of a depressing niche for anime that could be something truly compelling were it not forced by whoever's perception of what's "sellable" to pander to an extremely specific audience.  I realize that there may be more there beneath the surface than I may have first thought, but there's a barrier to entry that I'm still not sure I'm prepared to cross.  The panty shots might attract one segment of the anime fandom, but I'm certain that it's driving away an even larger demographic, and that depresses me.

Pros:

• The setting is well-realized and helps to reinforce the danger of the series' main enemy.
• The action choreography is quite good.

Cons:

• The choice to use so many panty shots seems even more sad considering the potential of the story.
• The series' main gimmick revolves around the lack of pants, and considering the logical solutions to showing underage girls in their underwear that are available, speaks to the creators' intent to pander.

Recommended? I don't think that I could ever give this show a glowing recommendation, but I am curious to watch some more.  It speaks to very specific fetishes that I'm not able to entertain.