Posted by  |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
「一緒にできること」 (Issho ni Dekiru Koto)
“What We Can Do Together”
Technology is great. Not only do Striker Units help rookie witches control their magical power while flying, they don’t ride up the crotch area like a broomstick either. Naturally, that kind of depends on if you’re the rider or the spectator, so when Yoshika, Lynne, and Perrine undertook some old school training under Anna Ferrara (Ootori Yoshino) to whip them back into shape, it was mainly energy-sapping squeals for our entertainment. It’s hard to say who “felt it” the most, but my money was on Perrine for putting up the good fight for the longest. Granted, the slight nudge Anna gave Perrine’s broom put her over the edge fairly easily, but credit needs to be given where credits due. There’s no doubt in my mind that this was supposed to be a fan-service type of episode, but I was more amused by Yoshika spiraling out of control and crash landing than feeling aroused in any way whatsoever. Her reaction to getting her broom lifted made me laugh too, simply because it looked like a sharp pain shot straight to her head. The only thing missing was one of the girls collapsing right after from feeling weak in the knees, but I guess that would’ve been a little too suggestive.
In any case, I think Lynne’s a bit too innocent to be a victim of an old witch grabbing her breast and being told they’re what throws off her balance, but I’m totally fine with Perrine taking it to herself with her poor magic control since she’s obsessed with Mio and anything she’s touched. Admittedly, I do enjoy Nazuka Kaori bringing that side of Lynne out though, just as much as I do Sawashiro Miyuki doing the same for Perrine. While watching this episode, I was a bit worried that the fan-service-filled training was all they’d cover since it dragged out a fair bit, but luckily some Neuroi action was slipped in right at the end. The battle sequences didn’t come off quite as cool as the one from the first two episodes, and more or less rehashed Yoshika and Lynne’s combination attack from season one, but wasn’t too bad as the girls were actually dodging attacks for a change. After learning how poor they are at controlling their magical powers, I couldn’t help but wonder how the hell they managed to survived in the battle for Gallia six months ago. I don’t recall specifically since it’s been a while, but it must have been shield, shield, and some more shield now that I think about it. In terms of style points, Mio with her Reppumaru katana is undoubtedly a lot more fun to watch, so I’m hoping we’ll see more of her in action soon.
Story-wise, this latest Neuroi proved to be rather weak in comparison to the one they fought with the moving core, but served its purpose of giving the less experienced Strike Witches a moment to shine. To help commemorate that, the ending theme “Over Sky” was sung by the three of them this time around too. There will almost definitely be more variations of it in future episodes much like “Bookmark A Head” from season one, but this combination with Misato, Kaori, and Miyuki isn’t half bad. (Note: I’m slightly biased towards Kaori and Miyuki though. 😛) Overall, this wasn’t a terribly eventful episode but I enjoyed all the focus Perrine got this time around. The animation looked pretty good for the most part, but I did notice some art failure during the bath scene. It was really brief, but Lynne’s head somehow ended up behind Yoshika’s body.
ED2 Sequence
 |
 |
 |
ED2: 「Over Sky」 by 福圓美里＆名塚佳織＆沢城みゆき (Fukuen Misato & Nazuka Kaori & Sawashiro Miyuki)
Watch the 2nd ED!: Download, Streaming ▼
Preview
 |
 |
 |
First and watching this now!
ride on a broomstick, don’t ask about that
Kusobaba XD
The Neuroi this time looks kinda like a P-38.
Ouch man…. Broomstick with weiring only those.. I can imagine a world of pain
and awkwardnessYet lots of fun for others to watch (while others may just shake their heads and wondering why this is even in the series). To be honest, I am not even sure in which of the two categories I’d stand in.
RAGE
What is this blasphemy? Lumping Perrine-H. Clostermann with the, “I want to protect people!” oppai-groper and the gets-oppai-groped girl?
Fine. I can deal with that… Could’ve dealt with that… But where’s the hate, Perrine!? Look at Yoshika! She’s so freaking annoying! Serve it good, my liege! …It never happened. Come on, damn it, Yoshika did a face plant into Sakamoto’s bust last episode–you weren’t there but you KNOW. You always knew… ;~;
Also. They all suck at combat? They fought last episode! Dodging is all well and good and, yeah, relatively new as it WAS always shields prior, but what the hell do the broomsticks have to do with it?
Yoshika being out of practice I understand and not just because I loathe her–she was back in school on Fuso. But Lynnette and Perrine have been present! In episode one, Lynnette was off getting owned by the Neuroi! HONESTLY.
Much preferred how S1 played Perrine as being older than she is; focusing on Sakamoto lurve rather than her sad little peers. I didn’t even particularly like Perrine to begin with in S1 honestly, but this is unacceptable.
SANYA is THIRTEEN. Where is her training!? Then we’d get Eila too which would be great…
Rrgh. Annoyance. I has it.
Oh. And Lucchini. Who’s fucking twelve. Ages wouldn’t matter if the creators didn’t flake out and choose the youngins who WERE in combat but are all nicely the same age. What is this? WHAT IS THIS?
Clearly I’m just wrong for trying to take Strike Witches seriously but I feel so hurt. T_T
Siggghh….Junko was nice. Was waiting for her. Sawashiro Miyuki is my no.1 though she sounds quite different here than in S1. Odd. Hard to believe this is the same woman that voiced Celty, Canaan, etc.. xD Saeko! Damn, she’s good.
Trude is bragging about her country’s secret invention, and it involves Yeager.
Looks like we might be seeing a pair of jet powered strikers next week.
The bath animation error’s quite a failure. I thought animation had left such mistakes behind since the Transformers S3 days. 🙁
Anyone else notice the goofup? The 3 girls have buckets on their brooms in front of them, then a couple seconds later they are flying and there are no buckets. A couple seconds later the buckets are back in place.
I am definitely enjoying th beginning of this series much more than the beginning of the first one. This has a lot of awesome action and characterization from the get-go, where the fan service goes along with the progression of the story. The first season had a lot of waste-of-time episodes where all they did was tease one another, take a bath together, then have a lame Neuroi battle. Later the battles got much more interesting (from Shirley going super sonic and impaling that one Neuroi one on one) but this series started off with all the battles being epic and all the characters actually doing things that progress their own combat ability.
However I have to agree with Divine, it seems pretty lame that Yoshika seems to suddenly suffered from plot-convenient incompetancy after taking on the WARLOCK 1v1 at the end of the first series, where she showed she could fly on par with the Major. Now we are to believe she is one of the worse fliers? At least her magical power has increased enormously, able to throw up a battleship sized shield like it ain’t no thang.
Well… it’s been a year since the first season timeline ended. Not only that, I thought it was more off lack of coordination with each other. They can fly fine, they just banged into each other more then once. Anyways… with a year of no sort of training or flying apparently… it’s not a surprise their stamina is also terrible. The only thing I thought was strange was the fact that I thought Lynne and Perine were still part of the military. Yoshika understandable, but really? What the hell were those two gals or at least Lynne in the base they were station at this whole time.
What was Lynne’s magical power? I know Perine has that amazing Electric Storm ability (which I think is super strong and under-used as it can completely paralyze a Neuroi for a few seconds and halt it’s regeneration.) I can’t see why Perine wouldn’t still have been used on the frontlines with her offensive capabilities. I am glad that Perine and Yoshika didn’t reknew their annoying rivalry which caused so much unneeded drama in the first series – they seem to get along very well now.
I was disappointed that Yoshika is now the lowest ranking member of the unit since Lynne and Perine both got advances. I would have thought that her actions uncovering a government conspiracy and also helping in finishing the Neuroi threat over Gallia would have gotten her at least to Master Sergeant. I was thinking that the Major was going to try to rapidly advance Yoshika so that she could lead witches since in the first series, in episode 4 or 5, she was talking to Minna and mentioned that Yoshika will need to be able to lead the witches into combat one day.
Um… if I remember, she left the army without getting a promotion. Cause generally you would keep your rank if you return to service. Since there was no medal of honor or promotion during the time of service, even after the government conspiracy that she was left with her rank. It’s not like they’re going to be… oh right, you’ve return… let’s give you a promotion. Who knows if you’ll make the same contributions you did last time. Lynne and Perine who stayed in the army most likely recieved them during the year… which makes me wonder… What in the world were they doing that made them so out of shape and uncoordinated.
hope to see the story progress more
Agreed, I hope they don’t put another government-final-enemy plot twist. From what it looks like it will be good Neuroi allied with the 501st versus the new, more powerful evil Neuroi (if the initial Neuroi weren’t evil)
What was wrong with that twist?
Though I still don’t fully understand the part with the humanoid Neuroi.
Were those Neuroi, while evolving and adapting human characteristics (first by mimicking Sanya’s singing, then taking human form), decided that humans weren’t so bad after all and decided to defect by attempting a truce with the 501st by warning them of the Britannia Air Force’s treachery with the Warlock?
Could it also be them that tried to make contact with the witches (via Junko’s 504th) again 6 months later but then got busted by their superiors – the Uber-Neuroi?
I didn’t find anything bad about it, I just hope they don’t reuse the same plot twist this time around! And yes, I can see some kind of Neuroi civil war brewing. Like how Yoshika was alone among the Strike Witches to consider making peaceful contact with the Neuroi, perhaps that particular branch of the Neuroi were the first to attempt peaceful contact with humans for once. The whole war might just be a huge misunderstanding between species, because they have yet to explain WHY the Neuroi kill humans and destroy large human settlements.
Is it me or has the innuendo gone up one bar for this series? I don’t think even the smuttiest Harry Potter fanfics were that dirty when it came to flying brooms. lol
If I guess correctly, the girls are not gonna be wearing any towels when dipping in the bath for the DVD version.
Hearing Anna muse about what a crybaby Mio used to be, I’m suddenly interested in wanting a prequel of a naive teenage Mio, perhaps she was in the same witch squad as Junko, Minna, Trude and Erika back then.
A bit disappointed the rest of the girls were not present this week, though they’ll be back for next episode.
Yeah it seems like the suggestive dialogue has gone up while the nudity has gone down. I doubt they will make towel-less DVD releases. It actually doesn’t make sense for them to be bathing in that “puddle” completely naked. I did get a chuckle at how Anna told them Mio was super focussed, driven, and respectful right from the start just to make the girls shape up, despite us learning later that she was anything but.
I see next episode’s title is “Hard, Fast and Amazing” (かたい・はやい・ものす～ごい).
Last season, we had an episode on Shirley achieving supersonic speed, that was titled “Fast, Big and Soft” (はやい・おっきい・やわらかい).
Expect the title to have something to do with Shirley improvising her supersonic Striker unit since last season, as well as double entendres concerning her huge… assets. 🙂
It was actually that episode where I really started getting into the series. Before that I was pretty unenthused about the whole thing, then that episode happened, and not only did it get me excited about Strike Witches but it established the yankee Shirley as my favorite of the witches.
BLASPHEMY!!!!!!!!!! HOW COME GRANDMA is WEARING PANTS INSTEAD OF PANTIES!?!?!?
Cellulite *shiver* They probably forced her to wear pants and cease wearing only granny panties.
Wow…, I’m surprise you didn’t call that out on Yoshika’s Grandma. Observation fail?
haha, i’m quite new to da show, i didnt even know she was a witch. but now that u mention it!
OFF WITH HER PANTS TOOOO!
lame week. evil job interview but this got my spirits up again
Okay. I’m watching this now. :1
Ahahaha, I just caught up with this show, so I was reading through the posts on season one. For the pilot episode, probably the greatest thing I’ve ever read on Random C.
“If they’re comfortable wearing a school swimsuit under a sailor shirt as their school uniform, who am “I” to tell them they can’t do that?”
Logic functioning at 100%, it’s impossible to counter.
Ah, the good ‘ol days. Looks like I wrote some pretty crazy stuff back then.
Don’t ever change, it’s awesome. Season 2 is looking good.