Strike Witches First Impressions
I’m a little disappointed that Miyafuji’s friend isn’t a main character. She reminds me of Asakura.
Well, I decided to take some time away from work and planning to go abroad to watch a little bit of anime. I decided to watch the first episode of Strike Witches or Loli no Pantsu by the general fanbase due to the fact the characters don’t wear any pants. I actually liked this first episode, and didn’t really see too many problems with it other than the lol no pants.
When watching Strike Witches, you can expect a lot more shots like this and more!
I think I complained more about the fact that the characters aren’t wearing any pants than anything else about the show. Hell, I really like the character designs, and I’m all for diverse characters from different backgrounds/countries (like Sakura Taisen for example) but in my eyes, the show loses ALL worth while creditability because they’re not wearing any pants in combat. It’s just too easy to get viewers that way and really shows what kind of crowd they’re trying to draw in. It’s so annoying because it just gives the animators the ability for close ups on the girl’s panties, ass shots, frontal shots as they’re flying around shooting stuff. I just kinda roll my eyes and laugh. I don’t know about you but I don’t watch anime for fap material so I just get disgusted when I find it in my anime for whatever reason.
But if you look behind all the cheap fanservice it doesn’t seem like that bad of a show. I expected worse. I honestly love the animation for some odd reason. It’s not overly moe style and actually is pretty decent and easy on the eyes. I’m all for that. I’m trying to not like it too much though because, you know, this is a Gonzo show and I’ve lost all hope in Gonzo for the longest time but I haven’t seen a lot of their more fan favorites so maybe I should give those a shot. Anyway, I’m sure we can all expect the show to just turn to QUALITY mid series, but hey if it doesn’t that will be a welcomed surprise, wouldn’t you think?
The story is pretty cliche so far, but what isn’t anymore? To me it seems like a mix of Sky Girls (which I never seen) and the typical cheery girl (with awesome powers) pulled into a war story plot. You got this typical upbeat cheery loli girl with not so typical magic powers. Turns out said girl’s dad created these things that help fight against these aliens or whatever that is now attacking a 1939 Earth that hasn’t experienced WWII. We need more alternate world WWII anime with lolis by the way. Loli girl instantly leaves with a manly voiced loli to BRITANNIA to try and find out more about her dad. Other than that nothing is really explained or developed. I’m surprised the episode is about 24 minutes long because it really didn’t seem like all that development at all for a first episode. The series is 12 episodes long so I guess they really got to move along unless the show takes a complete 360 and just goes full blown ecchi and pointless beach episodes and what have you.
So back to the no pants thing due to the boots they wear to fight the enemies. Now they’re pretty snazzy looking, and I think the whole girl with guns/mecha armor concept is cool, but honestly is no pants really needed? Doesn’t this say something about the main character’s father who designed them? Pedo much? I honestly hope they TRY and give some kind of explanation for this other than lol no explanation.
Two of my favorite voices are in this show. Saeko Chiba who most notably played Natsuki from My HiME, which is actually the only role I seem to know her by. But I like her voice and how deep it is and Natsuki was a pretty badass character in HiME. The character she plays in Strike Witches is the one girl with the eye patch over her Geass’d eye.
Delicious
The other voice I’m quite familiar with is Miyuki Sawashiro who most notable plays a lot of stuck up bitch/spoiled characters who are sort of kind like Mint and Shinku. She plays Perrine who happens to be my favorite girl in this show because spoiled girls and glasses are somewhere in my assortment of fetishes and not to mention she wears pantyhose so I guess I can expect a lot of good fanart coming out for this character in the future. Would have been nice if she had drill hair or curls or something too. Don’t see much of that in anime. There really wasn’t a whole lot of Perrine in this first episode but there really wasn’t a whole lot of the other characters either.
Off to watch episode two. I’ve been watching the StrikeS subs but they’re not up to date so I wonder if I should just watch the other subs or not. Hmm…
You’re pirating this and not watching the official subs from BOST? You disgust me.
Hey, at least they are wearing pantsu…
Anonymous@ Lol I had no idea. Well, I’m getting right onto that.
LoliHat@ I suppose.
Strike Witches is a production, meaning it was created. Masterpieces are born, NOT created.
Cheap fanservice animu is cheap. I put Strike Witches in the same category that I put Code Geass and Lucky Star in. Strike Witches is the type of show that was created to pander to otaku/weeaboo fanbases. But I guess if you’re an otaku and/or weeaboo you’ll probably like Strike Witches (to each his own).
Anonymous@ That’s pretty DEEP, brah.
Wouldn’t you call the Empire State Building or the Hubble Telescope a “masterpiece” of engineering? The term masterpiece is not exclusive to the world of art. And creating true breakout moe otaku shows, though both an art and science, definately requires talent and a keen eye.
Anonymous@ I haven’t seen Code Geass or Strike Witches, but I have seen Lucky Star, and some really quick research reveals that the production of Lucky Star is an adaptation of the . I’m not trying to defend Lucky star or anything (personal rating 5/10 or less) but if your going to attack on that basis, might as well hate on all anime (although that should be obvious. Perhaps this is all just semantics, but keep in mind one thing:
Neon Genesis Evangelion is commonly considered to be the greatest anime of all time (an opinion that, in time, I came to agree with), and it was not based on anything- it was one of the (albeit very few) quality original animations- which is just as good an example as any that good animations don’t have to be adaptations.
not directly related, but I originally got a really bad impression of Tenchi Muyo after trying to read the manga- It was torture. So I was surprised when Koji Oe spoke favorably about it. So I figured maybe the Tenchi Muyo manga was a spinoff (like NGE) of the animation- turns out the manga is not only a spinoff, but the original author doesn’t approve of either manga series (non-canon). So I guess I’ll have to see the anime, since it’s no doubt far superior.
I’ve watched all 12 episodes of this show. So here’s my comments.
I didn’t think the panty shots really detracted that much from the show. I watched it for the action, not panty shots. But to people who are more interested in lusting after anime characters, then the panty shots might get them to watch the show. So by having BOTH panty shots AND action battle scenes, the great creators of this show have wisely appealed to 2 different audiences. Thus they have increased the number of viewers of this show, and an therefore the amount of money they’ll rake in from sales of the DVDs.
And you refered to the girl with the eye patch as a loli. that’s incorrect. In one episode, she state’s that she’s 20 years old. She says this as an explanation of why her energy shield didn’t work one time. You see, as a witch gets older, her power diminishes. That’s why most of the characters are teenagers.
And one more thing, while the main character looks like she’s 9 or 10 years old, she’s actually 14 at the beginning of the show, and later she’s 15. So she’s not as loli as you might think. I know her age, because in episode 5 or 6 (I think) she has her 15th birthday.
So in this show it seems you have to assume that the characters are about 4 or 5 years older than they look.
While this show doesn’t make the top 10 anime list, I think in should. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen an anime this epic since I saw Gundam Wing.
Videogamer@ For me, I usually label a character loli based on their looks and not their age.