You may recall when I was writing Yoru no Majo the slight disconnect we had, where I was envisioning Polikarpova and, indeed, all the other Fly Girls flying around without aircraft, Strike Witches style (although fully clothed) and you had to inform me that, no, Fly Girls actually fly their own planes, Arpeggio style. :)

(That disconnect still amuses me three months later, because it meant while that universe was being built we had radically different mental images.)

-Merc
Keep Rat

Indeed, I see now where you got that (and the notion of Ilyusha carrying her antitank cannon around like a woobie) from.

Also, be fair - the Strike Witches are fully clothed, they just had to do some creative rules lawyering to accomplish it. (They refer to their lower garments by the word for "trousers", apparently because the armed forces officially reclassified them as such so that the witches wouldn't be racking up constant infractions for out-of-uniform. I have to admit I enjoy that on a level of pure silliness. I mean, it's an absurd problem, but what an ingenious solution. :)

>(That disconnect still amuses me three months later, because it meant
>while that universe was being built we had radically different
>mental images.)

Maybe, like Strike Witches, there was a pre-TV Fly Girls OVA where the art direction hadn't solidified yet and they did it the way you were picturing it, and latter-day fans tend to run across it after they've seen the show and are like, "What the hell?" :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

- this is why I am still reading EPU 20 years on: it is made of awesome.

I really like the Strike Witches, and also the character pages. Way to go guys!

please keep 'em coming,
t.

Also like Vividred, it would've benefited from a somewhat less... childish? ...sense of character design, but alas. It even would've had a good excuse - most of the characters in the show are supposedly late teens. Ah, well.

-----

"V, did you do something foolish?"

"Yes, and it was glorious."

Oddly enough, most of the characters in Vividred Operation look older than they ought to. I mean, Momo is supposed to be in the fifth grade, and the Vivid Team girls are all in the... what... seventh? Twelve-year-olds didn't look like Himawari when I was in middle school, I'm just saying. :) (Which is admittedly its own case of "uh... what, guys?" - but sort of a converse to what's going on above.)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

"Wait a second," I thought, "why does this download pack have two copies of this episode? And what does 'UC' signify in this context?"

... oh.

Welp!

Does Japanese TV have a watershed? I'm... guessing it does.

--G.
Also, I guess technically I shouldn't have called it underwear since it isn't worn under anything.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

-Droken

More like the DC of an ancestor, as the series takes place in 1944. And it should be noted that that's a year later than her pilot archetype, Franco Lucchini, survived.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Renegade Time Lord

There are some nice design touches there, both specifically ("Gertrud Barkhorn" is inspired; making her a dog slightly obvious but probably inevitable) and generally (nicely ironic, for instance, that the Finn and the Russian are in love). It's obvious a lot of thought and care went into building that cast - more than one might expect for a show whose core conceit is "nubile witches with no pants on". I'm looking forward to researching the ones I don't recognize the references for once I've finished and don't have to be concerned about stumbling over spoilers.

Though there are also some significant liberties taken, naturally. For instance, I have Toliver and Constable's biography of Erich Hartmann, The Blond Knight of Germany, and though I admit it's been a while since I read it, I don't remember anything in it about him being a power slacker or serial pants misplacer. :)

(Seriously, how can you not love Hartmann? I don't think you can.)

--G.
Also, Ursula Hartmann was Erich's wife, which calls certain other matters into question.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

It's one of the reasons I've come to like the franchise, because they pay so much attention to the details. Like the color schemes of striker units (Erica's "black tulip" pattern a prominent example), Shirley naming her strikers "Merlin," and even the callback to historical events in the archetypes lives. Sanya is actually a great example, as she is the only one of the 501st who is based on an actual female fighter ace.

>Though there are also some significant liberties taken, naturally.
>For instance, I have Toliver and Constable's biography of Erich
>Hartmann, The Blond Knight of Germany, and though I admit it's
>been a while since I read it, I don't remember anything in it about
>him being a power slacker or serial pants misplacer. :)

The "pants" business, particularly her stealing Lucchini's, is supposed to be a reference to Erich Hartmann once accidentally taking Hitler's hat.

>(Seriously, how can you not love Hartmann? I don't think you can.)

Erica is one of those characters who is impossible to hate.

>Also, Ursula Hartmann was Erich's wife, which calls certain other
>matters into question.

Whereas here, she's Erica's hyper-competent twin sister.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Renegade Time Lord

Yes. Also Sanya's paint scheme, which is spot-on, modulo the modified national insignia. (The altered countries thing is a bit odd, but I suppose it helps them avoid dealing with awkward matters like whether Barkhorn and Hartmann are Nazis, and whether the armies of the Fuso Empire had been rampaging across Manchuria for three years by the time the Neuroi invasion began.)

They've each got their own crest, too (they appear in the ending credits of Strike Witches 2). I'm particularly fond of Barkhorn's, which has (unsurprisingly) a "dog of war" thing going on, though Sakamoto's "jackal with eyepatch" motif is also pretty good. :)

>>Though there are also some significant liberties taken, naturally.
>>For instance, I have Toliver and Constable's biography of Erich
>>Hartmann, The Blond Knight of Germany, and though I admit it's
>>been a while since I read it, I don't remember anything in it about
>>him being a power slacker or serial pants misplacer. :)
>
>The "pants" business, particularly her stealing Lucchini's, is
>supposed to be a reference to Erich Hartmann once accidentally taking
>Hitler's hat.

Ha! OK, I remember that anecdote. Didn't connect it because, you know. Lucchini is many things, but she isn't Hitler. I see how it connects to the whole "Hartmann is slacking the hell off on the day when she's supposed to receive her country's highest decoration" thing, though. :)

>>(Seriously, how can you not love Hartmann? I don't think you can.)
>
>Erica is one of those characters who is impossible to hate.

The show has a lot of those, I will give it that. Making everybody lovable on a show with an ensemble cast that large is tricky, but with the exceptions of Perrine and arguably Eila,* they did it. Heck, even Barkhorn - they managed to give the impression that she suffers from occasional flashes of intolerable martinetry and should be pitied for it, rather than that she's just an asshole. :)

--G.
* Eila gets some slack from me because she's a Finn, and looks like an anime version of one I went to high school with, but I am aware that not everyone finds their national inability to be cuddly as quirkily endearing as I may do. :)
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

The whole Strike Witches universe is sort of balanced on two mutually supporting ideas: Witches exist and a malevolent alien force has been attacking humanity off and on for centuries. That's led to some changes, like Karlsland (Germany) and Orussia (Russia) still being monarchies, Italy existing as two separate countries (Romagna and Venezia), Fuso (Japan) being a major industrial power due to there never being a national policy of isolation, and so forth. It's really one big handwave to explain why girls from countries who in 1944 would have been at one another's throats are fighting side by side instead.

>They've each got their own crest, too (they appear in the ending
>credits of Strike Witches 2). I'm particularly fond of
>Barkhorn's, which has (unsurprisingly) a "dog of war" thing going on,
>though Sakamoto's "jackal with eyepatch" motif is also pretty good. :)

I like Shirley's for the historic nod ("Glamorous Shirley").

>Ha! OK, I remember that anecdote. Didn't connect it because, you
>know. Lucchini is many things, but she isn't Hitler. I see how it
>connects to the whole "Hartmann is slacking the hell off on the day
>when she's supposed to receive her country's highest decoration"
>thing, though. :)

Well, it would be a bit hard to explain why the reason Erica didn't show up for the ceremony is because she was drunk on cognac and champagne.

>The show has a lot of those, I will give it that. Making everybody
>lovable on a show with an ensemble cast that large is tricky, but with
>the exceptions of Perrine and arguably Eila,* they did it. Heck, even
>Barkhorn - they managed to give the impression that she suffers from
>occasional flashes of intolerable martinetry and should be pitied for
>it, rather than that she's just an asshole. :)

To be fair to Perrine, she does change as the series goes on. Unfortunately, that meant that Eila and Sanya got the short end of the stick as far as characterization goes in the series. Eila's actually supposed to be more of a prankster with a mischievous nature, but her personality got boiled down to "aloof tsundere who's devoted to Sanya."

>* Eila gets some slack from me because she's a Finn,
>and looks like an anime version of one I went to high school with, but
>I am aware that not everyone finds their national inability to be
>cuddly as quirkily endearing as I may do. :)

I've not had the pleasure of knowing a Finn in my life.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Renegade Time Lord

I'm assuming the latter is explicated in some supporting material or other, since as far as I've been able to spot in the first 21 episodes so far, it hasn't come up in the TV series(es); there's only reference to the Neuroi war starting in 1939. A couple of characters do mention "the World War" at one point early in the first series, but from context it's obvious that they're talking about 1914-18, not a previous alien invasion.

>It's really one big handwave to explain why girls from countries who in 1944
>would have been at one another's throats are fighting side by side instead.

See, I figured the "aliens invade in 1939" part was enough to at least begin explaining that, and the countries-have-different-names thing was meant to cover the rest; I didn't realize there would even be another, larger handwave behind it, so they've already gone a mile or two beyond what I was expecting to explain things right there. :)

>>They've each got their own crest, too (they appear in the ending
>>credits of Strike Witches 2). I'm particularly fond of
>>Barkhorn's, which has (unsurprisingly) a "dog of war" thing going on,
>>though Sakamoto's "jackal with eyepatch" motif is also pretty good. :)
>
>I like Shirley's for the historic nod ("Glamorous Shirley").

Heh, yeah, I noticed that on her (orange, naturally) biplane in the last story arc of the first series. Same font, too, that was a nice touch, even if a bit anachronistic (Yeager's WWII aircraft was named Glamorous Glen, but not in that font). :)

Shirley as a nickname for Charlotte puzzles me a little - I have to wonder if the original intent was for her to be called "Charlie", but it got lost somewhere along the way. It's clearly written "Shirley" on the airplane and in the faux headlines and magazine articles they show in that one flashback, but I suspect they're both spelled/pronounced the same in Japanese, which makes me wonder if the art people flipped a coin and got the wrong side. :)

>Well, it would be a bit hard to explain why the reason Erica didn't
>show up for the ceremony is because she was drunk on cognac and
>champagne.

Would it? I'm not so sure...

(Then again, I expect she probably holds her liquor better than Major Sakamoto... mostly because the empirical evidence suggests that toddlers hold their liquor better than Major Sakamoto. :)

>Unfortunately, that meant that Eila and Sanya got the short end of the
>stick as far as characterization goes in the series.

Sadly true. And yet Sanya still manages to be one of my favorites. That bit where they explain that she passes the time on night patrol listening to stratospheric shortwave scatter with her magic radar. That's just genius.

>Eila's actually
>supposed to be more of a prankster with a mischievous nature, but her
>personality got boiled down to "aloof tsundere who's devoted to
>Sanya."

There are bits and pieces of that here and there (e.g., the blueberry scene), but yeah... another example of not enough time spent. Both of their spotlight episodes are pretty brilliant, though, even if the second one should've been a two-parter (in a series long enough to hold it) for better pacing.

(And again, I will note that it's a nicely done meta-irony that one of the least ambiguous relationships in the cast is between the Finn and the Russian. Presumably the Winter War didn't happen in the setting, but still.)

Eila's super-Finnish in the scene where she's telling Yoshika exactly what kind of pillow to buy, though. "Here, I'll write it down so you don't screw it up."

>>* Eila gets some slack from me because she's a Finn,
>>and looks like an anime version of one I went to high school with, but
>>I am aware that not everyone finds their national inability to be
>>cuddly as quirkily endearing as I may do. :)
>
>I've not had the pleasure of knowing a Finn in my life.

Weirdly enough, I went to high school with three, out here in West Podunk, Maine. There was a Finnish family here in town when I was a kid, because the local paper company got a lot of the Big Hardware in its mill from Valmet, a Finnish manufacturer of the kind of equipment you would expect to find in a paper mill. Great Northern Paper is gone now, but at the time it was a big enough client of Valmet's that they assigned one of their own engineers to work at GNP full-time. He and his family lived here for 10-15 years. He had two daughters, one a year ahead of me in school and one a year behind.

The third was a foreign exchange student who was in my sophomore class in high school. I think I've mentioned her on the Forum before; she was in my Driver Ed group, which was a hoot because by the age where an American kid is just being allowed to take Driver Ed, Finnish kids are basically semipro rally drivers already. :)

(In the interest of full disclosure, the one Eila looks a bit like is the elder of the Valmet engineer's two daughters. Though that was 25 years ago, so she presumably doesn't really look much like Eila now. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Yeah, most of the background info about the universe, the history of witches and the Neuroi, and other squadrons is covered in various doujinshi and light novels. Some of the characters who show up in the second season come from those works, like Hanna-Justina Marseille was introduced in the doujins dealing with fighting in Africa.

To give you some idea of how long the Neuroi have been plaguing humanity, the joint Allied force in North Africa ends up fighting against a force of Neuroi that were sealed in a tomb by the ancient Egyptians and then promptly forgotten. Before the current conflict, the last global conflict involving the Neuroi was termed the First Neuroi War, analogous to our WWI and ending in 1917.

>See, I figured the "aliens invade in 1939" part was enough to at least
>begin explaining that, and the countries-have-different-names
>thing was meant to cover the rest; I didn't realize there would even
>be another, larger handwave behind it, so they've already gone
>a mile or two beyond what I was expecting to explain things right
>there. :)

The biggest handwave seems to be the existence of witches not only being widely known, but their actually having a direct part in history. A witch saved the life of Julius Caesar from assassination, another influenced a unified Fuso to become an international power, Jamie Watt invented the magic engine and thus sparked the Industrial Revolution, the Wright Sisters invented the aeroplane, and so forth. While history broadly follows the same pattern, there's some major differences.

>Heh, yeah, I noticed that on her (orange, naturally) biplane in the
>last story arc of the first series. Same font, too, that was a nice
>touch, even if a bit anachronistic (Yeager's WWII aircraft was
>named Glamorous Glen, but not in that font). :)
>
>Shirley as a nickname for Charlotte puzzles me a little - I have to
>wonder if the original intent was for her to be called "Charlie", but
>it got lost somewhere along the way. It's clearly written
>"Shirley" on the airplane and in the faux headlines and magazine
>articles they show in that one flashback, but I suspect they're both
>spelled/pronounced the same in Japanese, which makes me wonder if the
>art people flipped a coin and got the wrong side. :)

You know, before now, I never really gave it much thought. I imagine part of it is due to the ease with which is can be said by English and Japanese speakers.

>Would it? I'm not so sure...
>
>(Then again, I expect she probably holds her liquor better than Major
>Sakamoto... mostly because the empirical evidence suggests that
>toddlers hold their liquor better than Major Sakamoto. :)

It seems to make a bit of cosmic sense that the oft-times fatalistic samurai would be a lightweight and crazy drunk.

>Sadly true. And yet Sanya still manages to be one of my favorites.
>That bit where they explain that she passes the time on night patrol
>listening to stratospheric shortwave scatter with her magic radar.
>That's just genius.

It gets better. Witches who can use magic radar can not only receive, but send long-distance messages. So there's actually sprung up an equivalent of a ham radio community amongst the night witches stationed in Europe.

>There are bits and pieces of that here and there (e.g., the blueberry
>scene), but yeah... another example of not enough time spent. Both of
>their spotlight episodes are pretty brilliant, though, even if the
>second one should've been a two-parter (in a series long enough to
>hold it) for better pacing.
>
>(And again, I will note that it's a nicely done meta-irony that one of
>the least ambiguous relationships in the cast is between the Finn and
>the Russian. Presumably the Winter War didn't happen in the setting,
>but still.)

Well, the Second Neuroi War started in 1939 and, unlike the Phony War of our timeline didn't really stop until most of Western Europe had fallen and stopped as far east as Moscow. So any rivalries that might have existed sort of went out the window.

>Eila's super-Finnish in the scene where she's telling Yoshika exactly
>what kind of pillow to buy, though. "Here, I'll write it down so you
>don't screw it up."

At the time I watched it, I just assumed it was a display of how much she cared about Sanya.

>The third was a foreign exchange student who was in my sophomore class
>in high school. I think I've mentioned her on the Forum before; she
>was in my Driver Ed group, which was a hoot because by the age where
>an American kid is just being allowed to take Driver Ed, Finnish kids
>are basically semipro rally drivers already. :)

Oddly enough, I was watching a rerun of Top Gear the other day and one of the segments was James going to Finland to learn the Finnish Way of Car Control from Mika Häkkinen. And that's when I learned that they spend roughly 3 years, from the time they get a provisional license, learning how to drive.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Renegade Time Lord

Particularly inasmuch as who even knows how long that wine was there. :)

Still, she probably needed it. She's wound awfully tight.

>>Sadly true. And yet Sanya still manages to be one of my favorites.
>>That bit where they explain that she passes the time on night patrol
>>listening to stratospheric shortwave scatter with her magic radar.
>>That's just genius.
>
>It gets better. Witches who can use magic radar can not only receive,
>but send long-distance messages. So there's actually sprung up an
>equivalent of a ham radio community amongst the night witches
>stationed in Europe.

Heh, cool.

The "listening to distant signals in the dark" thing just rings for me - I've always been kind of oddly fascinated by the way radio signals do that. When I was a kid I had a cheap little transistor radio that was molded in red plastic in the old Radio Shack logo (back when it was still two words!), and occasionally at night it would pick up Penguins games on some AM station in Pittsburgh. Even today I still sort of feel like radio (the technology if not the programming :/ ) is a kind of magic, so the concept of "sensitivity to the low electromagnetic" as a particular sorcerous talent especially works for me. Maybe in part, too, because it's so left-field compared with the fairly stock fantasy-magic bents most of the other girls' talents have (precognition, super-strength, healing, crazy sword stunts).

>>Eila's super-Finnish in the scene where she's telling Yoshika exactly
>>what kind of pillow to buy, though. "Here, I'll write it down so you
>>don't screw it up."
>
>At the time I watched it, I just assumed it was a display of how much
>she cared about Sanya.

Oh, it's that too, no question.

>Oddly enough, I was watching a rerun of Top Gear the other day
>and one of the segments was James going to Finland to learn the
>Finnish Way of Car Control from Mika Häkkinen. And that's when I
>learned that they spend roughly 3 years, from the time they get a
>provisional license, learning how to drive.

Yeah. And many of them have been racing in off-public-roads events for a long time before that. (I think that's the same episode where James enters a Finnish banger race? Which, well, there you are.)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Plus she wasn't exactly drinking it by the cup, she pretty much got drowned in it for a second. So perhaps "lightweight" is a bad descriptor.

The ending was also good for a chuckle, Minna just sitting on the beach, debating with herself about the drunken kiss Mio had planted on her.

>Heh, cool.
>
>The "listening to distant signals in the dark" thing just rings
>for me - I've always been kind of oddly fascinated by the way radio
>signals do that. When I was a kid I had a cheap little transistor
>radio that was molded in red plastic in the old Radio Shack logo (back
>when it was still two words!), and occasionally at night it would pick
>up Penguins games on some AM station in Pittsburgh. Even today I
>still sort of feel like radio (the technology if not the programming
>:/ ) is a kind of magic, so the concept of "sensitivity to the
>low electromagnetic" as a particular sorcerous talent especially works
>for me. Maybe in part, too, because it's so left-field compared with
>the fairly stock fantasy-magic bents most of the other girls' talents
>have (precognition, super-strength, healing, crazy sword stunts).

Unfortunately, the trade-off is that it's such a rare ability that night witches either tend to be limited to one to a team or part of a specialist unit who is assigned a wide swath of a sector, leaving them to a pretty lonely existence.

>Yeah. And many of them have been racing in off-public-roads events
>for a long time before that. (I think that's the same episode where
>James enters a Finnish banger race? Which, well, there you are.)

Yeah, that's the one. There's always something amusing about James getting into any sort of race.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Renegade Time Lord

Well... yes and no, I mean, being briefly immersed in wine doesn't generally have any effect other than to get people wet and, if it's a red, stain their clothes. It's not as if alcohol is absorbed that fast through the skin.

Still, it's good comedy. :)

>The ending was also good for a chuckle, Minna just sitting on the
>beach, debating with herself about the drunken kiss Mio had planted on
>her.

Poor Minna. Always a bridesmaid...

>>Maybe in part, too, because it's so left-field compared with
>>the fairly stock fantasy-magic bents most of the other girls' talents
>>have (precognition, super-strength, healing, crazy sword stunts).
>
>Unfortunately, the trade-off is that it's such a rare ability that
>night witches either tend to be limited to one to a team or part of a
>specialist unit who is assigned a wide swath of a sector, leaving them
>to a pretty lonely existence.

Well, at least there's radio. I mean, imagine what a bad draw it was before Marconi. Sitting around all night listening to the cosmic background hiss.

(I know, they still had the remote sensing thing, but. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

True, it certainly is that.

>Poor Minna. Always a bridesmaid...

Just can't catch a break.

>Well, at least there's radio. I mean, imagine what a bad draw it was
>before Marconi. Sitting around all night listening to the cosmic
>background hiss.
>
>(I know, they still had the remote sensing thing, but. :)

Apparently magic radar is one of those things that's also following the real-world equivalent in terms of when it was developed. Before the 1940s, night witches had to rely upon night vision or just blind luck.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Renegade Time Lord

"Minna's gonna need a minute."

Still, she's got a better statistical chance than Perrine. I could maaaaybe see Sakamoto bending the regs to have happy fun alone time with a superior if she wanted it bad enough - that's technically her misconduct, after all - but never a subordinate.

>Apparently magic radar is one of those things that's also following
>the real-world equivalent in terms of when it was developed. Before
>the 1940s, night witches had to rely upon night vision or just blind
>luck.

If I were really intent on following the timeline back, I would suspect that at some point before electricity and radar, there was some witch who had what a modern one would now recognize as magic radar, she just didn't think of it in those terms (for obvious reasons), and was considered weird even by the other witches of her day.

(The codename of the Ill-Advised Mecha in season 1 aside, I'm guessing there aren't actual warlocks? There seems to be neither sign nor cultural context for them, despite everyone knowing what the word means. Although if Yoshika's dad was a muggle, one wonders how he invented magic airplane pants.)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Hard to say how much of Perrine's...er, "interest" is actual love and how much is hero worship. It certainly seems like she mellows out over time.

>If I were really intent on following the timeline back, I would
>suspect that at some point before electricity and radar, there was
>some witch who had what a modern one would now recognize as magic
>radar, she just didn't think of it in those terms (for obvious
>reasons), and was considered weird even by the other witches of her
>day.

No doubt there have been witches who have developed abilities ahead of the curve. Then again, it could be a case of the ability always being there, just so weak naturally that it required artificial means to amplify it.

>(The codename of the Ill-Advised Mecha in season 1 aside, I'm guessing
>there aren't actual warlocks? There seems to be neither sign nor
>cultural context for them, despite everyone knowing what the word
>means. Although if Yoshika's dad was a muggle, one wonders how he
>invented magic airplane pants.)

As far as I know, it's strictly females only, and it's passed down from mother to daughter, though there are cases of girls being the first witch in their family. Could be legends of men who learned how to harness the power of magic that. As for Yoshika's father, he seems to be one of those geniuses who managed to adapt a old technology (the magic engine) to a new task (striker units).

--------------------------
CdrMike, Renegade Time Lord

It just occurred to me that there's something kind of weird about this. Witches, all women, have been so influential in the history of the Strike Witches world for so long, and yet mid-20th-century mainstream society seems still to be profoundly patriarchal. Hell, it's a recurring plot point in both TV series that the military brass - all men and virtually all raving incompetents - resent the flying witches' irregular-force status and importance to the war effort. At best they're sneeringly patronizing whenever they appear on screen. That one guy practically pets Colonel Wilcke on the head and tells her not to worry her pretty little butt about the details, and none of the other men present even blink, let alone react in a way that suggests they consider such behavior in any way inappropriate.

The mechanics are nice and seem to know their place in the war effort, but even the few high-ranking male military personnel who are generally portrayed as friendly, or at least sympathetic, to the witches (such as that one Fuso naval captain who's in both series) seem to be determined to arrange matters so that they're not the ones who get credit for winning the war (and because they're all idiots, those arrangements invariably make everything worse). How does that happen in a 1945 where women have superpowers and men don't, and human history has been overtly shaped by powerful women since antiquity?

(Also, isn't it convenient that witches lose their powers, and so cease to be indispensable front-line combatants, just as they're arriving at their peak childbearing years. Facepalm.)

I still love the show to an extent that is a bit unseemly, both for its lovable characters and for its cheerfully wacky art/tech design, but these details... task me.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Same reason why, in Sakura Wars, there's elements both within the Imperial military and in the government who'd prefer to see the Hanagumi deactivated. Or really any series where the male-dominated military has to rely upon teen girls to win the war because their most advanced war machines are impotent against the enemy.

Then again, it could be as simple as Maloney being an opportunistic asshole. The formation of the Joint Fighter Wings was his predecessor's idea, so he of course sees being the champion of a weapon system that A) can fight the enemy on equal terms and B) render the JFWs obsolete as the fast-track to higher office.

>(Also, isn't it convenient that witches lose their powers, and
>so cease to be indispensable front-line combatants, just as
>they're arriving at their peak childbearing years. Facepalm.)
>
>I still love the show to an extent that is a bit unseemly, both for
>its lovable characters and for its cheerfully wacky art/tech design,
>but these details... task me.

That only really happens to combat witches, who burn their powers out much faster than normal due to the demands of the striker units they use as well as their powers. Remember that Yoshika's mother and grandmother still have their healing powers.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Renegade Time Lord

Well... sort of, but no, that's what I'm getting at. It makes sense in the Sakura Wars universe, where an already-male-dominated society has been forced by circumstance to accept young women as frontline combatants generations ahead of when it would've happened normally. IIRC, no phenomenon like the Hanagumi had ever come along before in that setting. It doesn't make sense in a world where super-powered women have been the prime movers of history since ancient times.

>Then again, it could be as simple as Maloney being an opportunistic
>asshole.

Well, that much is certainly the case, but it doesn't account for the Fuso Navy's utterly brilliant¹ master plan in season 2, which was similarly presented as a group of patronizing brass trying to sideline the witches (and footnote them in future histories) at the last minute.

(Maloney's portrayal is... not entirely fair to Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, who certainly was a veteran Whitehall intriguer, but who, ironically, was strongly in favor of combined Allied air operations and joint command structures. Marshal Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris, architect of the act of pointless revanchism that was the firebombing of Dresden, would have been a better choice if they wanted to model their antagonist on a real brass-hat villain. But hey, liberties taken. Hans-Joachim Marseille was renowned for his charm. :)

>>(Also, isn't it convenient that witches lose their powers, and
>>so cease to be indispensable front-line combatants, just as
>>they're arriving at their peak childbearing years. Facepalm.)
>>
>That only really happens to combat witches, who burn their powers out
>much faster than normal due to the demands of the striker units they
>use as well as their powers. Remember that Yoshika's mother and
>grandmother still have their healing powers.

Hmm, I was given to understand that that's a peculiarity of their bloodline, although I cannot now remember where I saw that, so it might not be accurate. (The "burnout" thing doesn't really make sense anyway - it's like saying a person's intellect can be damaged by reading too many books - but even so.)

--G.
¹ Please note that by "utterly brilliant" here I mean "plainly imbecilic" :)
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Like I said, I think it has more to do with the men feeling sidelined by teen girls, their mighty weapons of war rendered so much wasted metal. Bad enough that their most advanced fighters, tanks, and ships can do little but piss off the enemy. But to rely upon teen girls to do the fighting must seem to rub a lot of old-line officers, who probably think of witches as curiosities rather than real soldiers, the wrong way.

>Well, that much is certainly the case, but it doesn't account for the
>Fuso Navy's utterly brilliant¹ master
>plan in season 2, which was similarly presented as a group of
>patronizing brass trying to sideline the witches (and footnote them in
>future histories) at the last minute.

Well hey, it did work...for a few minutes. I guess that's progress.

>(Maloney's portrayal is... not entirely fair to Air Chief
>Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, who certainly was a veteran
>Whitehall intriguer, but who, ironically, was strongly in favor
>of combined Allied air operations and joint command structures.
>Marshal Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris, architect of the act of pointless
>revanchism that was the firebombing of Dresden, would have been a
>better choice if they wanted to model their antagonist on a real
>brass-hat villain. But hey, liberties taken. Hans-Joachim Marseille
>was renowned for his charm. :)

Think this is where the legalese disclaimers about "resemblance to persons living or dead" come in.

>Hmm, I was given to understand that that's a peculiarity of their
>bloodline, although I cannot now remember where I saw that, so it
>might not be accurate. (The "burnout" thing doesn't really make sense
>anyway - it's like saying a person's intellect can be damaged by
>reading too many books - but even so.)

I'm trying to think of a good analogy that works. It's certainly not Yoshika's bloodline, because Anna (Mio's old teacher) can still fly well into her old age. A striker unit boosts a witches powers way above what they could do alone, making things like shields and flight possible. The tradeoff seems to be like that of performance-enhancing drugs: You can push yourself faster and harder, but you also are going to wear your body out faster. I don't know, there's no really good explanation for it.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Renegade Time Lord

Beyond its aforementioned wider societal significance, which is more implied that stated, the phenomenon seems mainly to have been introduced in order to make Sakamoto the Requisite Tragic Figure... which might've worked a bit better if they hadn't spent so much time showing her working around it in an approved plucky-heroine style (you know - the kind of thing that always works when other characters do it), then pulled the rug out ("Haha! You've actually made it worse!"). That was just mean, and bizarrely at odds with how everyone else gets handled.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

- not to intervene with an old thread, but if women lose their power when they hit 20, it's going to be hard to maintain their rank after that period. On the other hand men might be coming into their physical prime at 20+, and are likely stronger than women.
- the old plan wars, but the young fight them. See Owens and Sassoon on WWI.
- Pregnancy - witches need to beget witches. That might force them out of the military and thus have a limited number in the upper echelons with actual voice.
- And then there's the princess problem: what happens to the princess when she gets married in the fairy tales? She's has no future. Rarely do you see the princess after she's become an adult. It's as if her power is gone with the act of marriage; this was true for a long time in English common law; it could be still in many of these countries (if you want to stay within canon).
- It could be as simple that not enough women are witches. After all, what % of any given military is made of pilots?

Finally, WWII changed the US military from a mono-gendered, segregated institution into a 4 million person juggernaut. Who's to say that this isn't the war where were thing changes in the Strike Witches world?

my two cents,
t.

Trigger Argee
Manon, Maccadon, Orado, etc.
Denton, never leave home without it.

"This isn't exactly the Olympic Games." - Corwin of Amber

Oh, it's not a jackal; evidently Mio's spirit familiar is a Doberman. I suppose that fits:

Doberman Pinschers are often stereotyped as being ferocious and aggressive. As a personal protection dog, the Doberman was originally bred for these traits: it had to be large and intimidating, fearless, and willing to defend its owner, but sufficiently obedient and restrained to only do so on command. These traits served the dog well in its role as a personal defense dog, police dog, or war dog, but were not ideally adapted to a companionship role.

Some bits of that are inapplicable, of course - she's not particularly large, for instance - but "intimidating, fearless... but... restrained" and "not ideally adapted to a companionship role" together form as good a summary of Mio Sakamoto as you're going to find. :)

It's slightly funny to me, though, mainly because the configuration of the physical Doberman traits she adopts when powered up is goofily mismatched in a way that is a bit at odds with the usual standard of background research on the show. She has cropped ears, for instance (which gives me the slightly terrifying image of toddler Mio having to go to the witch vet and being promised a lollipop if she didn't cry too much - eegh), but her tail is not only not cropped, it's not a Doberman's tail at all. Uncropped Doberman tails are proportionally quite long and aren't fluffy.

Black-backed jackals, on the other hand? They do have tails like that, and naturally standy-uppy ears. I think maybe the Doberman thing is just something she tells people so they won't make jokes about roadkill cuisine and/or picking the garbage. :)

But maybe don't go by me. I mean, it says here that Lynne Bishop's spirit animal is a Scottish Fold cat, and her cat ears stand up too. (Which is kind of a shame, 'cause Scottish Folds are adorable. Maybe they figured if she was any cuter than she already was, Yoshika would just die, which would kind of derail the A-plot. :)

Also: "German shorthaired pointers have a lot of energy and if not given the right amount of attention, can become bored and destructive." Hmm.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Haven't seen this yet, so I'll ask: Ending not what we would prefer?
--------

this world created by the
hands of the gods
everything is false
everything is a LIE
the final days have come
now
let everything be destroyed

--mu

No, it's fine, even quite good, for the most part; just that one of the characters gets pretty much shafted, in a really pointed "everybody gets a miracle - except YOU" sort of way. It's weirdly at odds with the overall message. "Anything is possible! Oh, except this."

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Huh, that's weird. Maybe a result of Plot By Committee Syndrome. Regardless, we've covered the sheer catharsis of rewriting nonsense endings. =)

Makes me think of Sucker Punch, actually. I only read the synopsis but the ending made me grind a layer or two of enamel off my teeth. What a waste of n interesting premise.

--------

this world created by the
hands of the gods
everything is false
everything is a LIE
the final days have come
now
let everything be destroyed

--mu

That's the problem with taking new material on board: I'm likely to end up with even more to do.

>Makes me think of Sucker Punch, actually. I only read the synopsis but
>the ending made me grind a layer or two of enamel off my teeth. What a
>waste of n interesting premise.

I'm not familiar with it, but the context suggests that I should clarify: Only one part of the ending of Strike Witches (so far - the movie does end with a To Be Continued card) is on the pile. It's mostly quite satisfactory. Which makes the one character's fate stand out even more, really.

See, the central premise of the show is basically "try hard and believe in yourself, and you can do anything" - which is great! - but there's one person to whom, for no readily evident reason, that doesn't seem to apply. It looks like it's going to, briefly (and it does for another character who is in virtually the same position), but then it doesn't. It's like the universe is telling her, "You're not the main character, so you don't get the special sauce," in a curiously blatant way.

I don't like that. It rubs me the wrong way. But I want to make it clear, it's one glaring flaw in an otherwise very satisfying experience. It's not like, say, TLOK3, where the universe itself often seems to be saying, "Look, just give up already." Sort of the converse of that, in fact. That does make the flawed bit stand out more annoyingly, I admit, but it is overall a good thing.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

That said, the guy has at least some grasp of shot composition, which is more than can be said for a lot of people, and he made a campy, hilarious bloodbath of a movie out of Frank Miller's gay Nazi fantasising when I don't think anyone else could have done so. He gets credit for that and precisely bugger-all else. =]

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

There. I fixed it.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

Starlight Express: The Gun-Toting Cheesecake Edition

I could have sworn they mention that her hometown is Vienna at some point, myself.

-----

"V, did you do something foolish?"

"Yes, and it was glorious."

Vienna does get mentioned once in a flashback, but it's a reference to her having wanted, before the war, to study music there, or at the Mozarteum in Salzburg - the implication being that she'd never actually been to either place, nor was she ever likely to go, since the Neuroi had taken Ostmark (Austria).

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Well, when you get down to it, those three can be used to represent ninety percent of her emotional range in any given day.

Not that she doesn't experience other emotions, of course, but she's not the demonstrative sort for the most part.

Except for #3. That one pretty much has to be demonstrated.

-----

"V, did you do something foolish?"

"Yes, and it was glorious."

Not that demonstrating it does any good, but the gesture has to be made.

Trude's one of my favorites, I don't mind admitting, but she does need to loosen a few bolts. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

A big part of my initial problem getting engaged with Strike Witches is that Mio comes across as a colossal jerk in the first couple of episodes, for no evident reason other than the writers apparently wanted Yoshika to dislike her at first. She gets so much more likeable as the series hits its stride.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Having watched a bit more I'm leaning towards her being... I think 'gung-ho' actually applies here to the point she can forget not everyone has this much ham in their diet. She's clearly much more goodnatured than her 'business face' suggests - that laugh!