Somehow our pontifications on Strike Witches 8 flowed like wine in the streets, and, as such, that curious eighth installment, like the first, has earned a post of its own. If only we had a neat explanation for how and why that happened. But Strike Witches isn’t about neat explanations, is it?
(Pontifus = gray; Otouto-kun = blue.)
The war against the Neuroi intensified. Underwear was stolen and returned. And my brother and I made a slight miscalculation in our viewing of the seventh episode that resulted in the violent end of our innocence.
We are no longer fit for marriage.
(Pontifus = gray; Otouto-kun = blue.)
And so it was that your humble hosts forged onward into the very heart of Strike Witches, that paragon of Japanese cultural excellence that inspires so much musing upon the structural function of fanservice and the emotive impact of shoujo-ai insinuations given particular cultural contexts. Though perhaps we phrased such things differently in our discussions.
On a related note: you know you’ve seen too much Gundam in too little time when “it’s about time somebody hit somebody.” What have you done to me, Zeta!?
You know the drill — I’m in gray; Otouto-kun’s in blue.
The record of our grand adventure continues. With the first episode out of the way, and the lack of pants becoming less of a novelty than a common element of setting, my honorable sibling and I dove into the meat of Strike Witches. Though whether said meat was flavored more with action or with slice of life, we could not tell.
Same as before: my comments are gray, and Otouto-kun’s are blue.
My brother and I decided to watch Strike Witches. For some reason.
And we’ve decided, also, to subject you all to our experience. Because we’re demonstrably bad at audio, we’ve transcribed and abbreviated our conversations, adding screencaps and links for context.
Thus, for your reading pleasure, here’s our adventure through Strike Witches episode one, with my comments in the usual gray, and Otouto-kun’s in lovely #3f35a1 (i.e. blue). We’re giving you this episode by itself, as the transcription ended up at almost a thousand words; toward the middle of the show, we’ll start doing two episodes per post. We may seem inclined toward complaint here, but, lest you think future posts will sound much like this one, we came to admit, perhaps a third of the way in, that we were buying what Strike Witches was selling.
Well. Most of it, anyway. But we’ll get to all that.
Let’s continue.
I’m aware there’s another episode of Durarara!! out, but I haven’t seen it yet; it may show up in my next bout of catchup posts, after my next post-schoolwork marathon. Or maybe that won’t be necessary — spring break is coming up, and it’s not as if I have any plans.
School has kept me busy lately — you may have inferred this. My recent Super Fanicom activity amounts to 97% administrative, 2% writerly, and 1% other. And I certainly haven’t had time to keep up with anime in the past week or two. Until yesterday, that is, and during this rare breather I’ll do my best to catch you up with me. Or something like that. At any rate there will be a few of these, in the interest of keeping post length down.
Never has a show so thoroughly become exactly what I wanted it to be — which puts Sora no Woto in an interesting position. It didn’t surpass my expectations, which is more usual; I had high expectations to begin with (for whatever reason), and Sora no Woto met them with a vengeance. Is the latter preferable to the former? Well — I’ll get back to you on that.
So let’s talk about episodes six and seven. I hear the seventh episode has the internet all abuzz, but I thought the sixth was very good, too — and maybe it’s a necessary precursor to what follows.
Let’s talk about Christopher Handley for a minute. I don’t really want to, as I don’t much care to advertise my views on the matter. But there seems to be, as Anime Almanac’s Scott VonSchilling notes, a bit of an imbalance in popular opinion of the Handley case. Which is fine, of course, but it always bothers me when the underdog side of an argument isn’t standing on a solid foundation, as seems to be the case here.
So, if I may, I’ll make an effort at clearing things up a bit.
I’ll actually make a conscious effort to avoid major and specific plot spoilers here, both because you probably haven’t read IO (literally イオ) and because I want you to. I won’t say I guarantee you’ll like it if you have an interest in harem, or can get past the harem veneer, but it’s worth a look, not least because its harem lead isn’t quite what one would expect.
(P.S. I have been posting here frequently. If for whatever reason this excites you, I’ll warn you not to get your hopes up. Semester two of grad school is just beginning…)
(P.P.S. Though I guess it would be nice if I could pull out 500 words or so at least once a week. We’ll see.)
