(L) Strike Witches TV (Mecha Musume)

[Tabris]

I just finished watching the last epi of Strike Witches and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The ending was nice enough so that you see the characters get on with their lives, and closure is always nice. But it's open at the same time, which just begs for a sequel (as if anyone would have a second thought about another series anyway)

[Fynal_Fyre]

Supposedly this is the DVD page according to 2ch. That's going to bite my wallet hard...

26/9/08...I can't read Japanese well so all I know is that you can get Eila's tarot set, and....a drama CD and artbook? Any info on that 13th episode will be awesome.

And yeah, the ending was pretty good for GONZO, it's somewhat closure-ish, you see the characters get on with their lives and the pairings form.

Although part of me thinks Miyafuji's striker is also engineered with stolen Neuroi tech, maybe that's why.

Spoiler for pairings:

Erica + Minna + Barkhorn (and her sister?)
Sanya + Eila
Perrine + Lynne (To rebuild Gallia)
Miyafuji returns to her normal life
Mio become a Phys Ed teacher?
Shirley + Lucchini

Still, season 2! Not seen any details on 2ch, they all look like speculation to me. Only DVD details.

Also:

Spoiler for EILAAAAAAAAAAAA:

I LOL'D

Edit: wtf preorders for the set with Eila's cards sold out....

[Littm]

I hope for the second season. This show was really nice.

[einhorn303]

Awesome episode was awesome. I thought ep 11 was a bit weak, so I was worried, but this redeems the series. To copypasta some more serious plot thoughts of mine from the BOST forums:

Spoiler for ep 12:

I was wondering, "Wait, what about Karsland??"

I actually feel like everyone but Mio (who's powers are too weak now) and Yoshika (who really never was the type for fighting) are still fighting...they just got to return to their homes and have brief vacations, as shown in the credit roll. The 501st was created to protect Britannia, and so now that unit's disbanded, but there's still ltos more to do. And Yoshika's possibly about to get conscripted again, heh.

I think this episode also showed that "the Neuroi aren't a perfectly unified hive mind"...even if they're a hive mind to some degree. The Neuroi-tan that Yoshika tried to befriend had a different consciousness than the one in the Warlock, as Yoshika stated herself. Perhaps some Neuroi could be made peace with, even if others are more warlike. This is just speculation, of course, but it seems to make sense.

Spoiler for pairings:

Also, the epilogue totally fucked with my lust for Lynne x Yoshika. When Michiko said "Yoshika-chan, Yoshika-chan!" I thought it was Lynne's voice (they sound kind of similar, especially to an English speaker like me...harder to tell Japanese voices apart). And when it panned up on Michiko, I was like "LYNNE MOVED TO FUSO AND TRANSFERRED TO YOSHIKA'S SCHOOL OH GOD THAT'S HER NEW UNIFORM FFFFFFFFFFFF--ah, damn." And when a witch fell out of the sky, I thought that might be Lynette too. Ah~...overly excitable fandom.

Yoshika and Lynne are totally penpals though. I maintain that Yoshika's writing a letter to her in that scene at the end credit roll. And they send each other treasured sepia-toned photographs and can't wait to be reunited...ahh, so romantic.

Originally Posted by kaosmos

I
Admit it,that last battle would make a freaking good "rogue squadron" look-alike with strike witches,i mean....the deathstar lol!!

I was hoping I wasn't the only one who thought of Star Wars when they entered the Warkagi, heh...I was all like, "Stay on target...stay on target..."

Originally Posted by Fynal_Fyre

Edit: wtf preorders for the set with Eila's cards sold out....

It is, after all, called the LIMITED edition :P It's sold out on Amazon.co.jp, at least. It's funny, because it used to be #1 on their Anime DVD sales chart, but now it's dropped to like the 73rd because...people can't buy it anymore.

Will they make more Vol 1 DVD's? Like some sort of reprinted edition?

[mg1942]

i was like WTF when something happnened on the aircraft carrier Akagi

[Kuroi Cosmo]

Pretty good final episode, nice animations and lots of action.
I'd have preferred a more open ending, not just the father's letter, but I guess that the dvd sales will convince Gonzo to make a second season.

It's a shame that this thread had to be ruined by all the very annoying rantings of the homophobe people... "xxx is absolutely not gay", "all the girls like co**s", "I'd hope all the gay people to disappear", etc...
Seriously, people... all this hate against homosexuality makes you ridicoulos, why can't you accept people who are different from you?
Bah, AS can be a very sad place sometimes...

That said, EilaXSanya FTW!

[Guppy]

Spoiler for ep. 12:

I suppose it's somehow appropriate that the Zero's antiship attack should be a kamikaze.

Originally Posted by selkirk

Spoiler:

Suwa Amaki!

Spoiler:

An interestingly ahistorical point here - she introduces herself as belonging to the 47th Chutai, which no longer existed by 1944, having been redesignated as the 47th Sentai. (The 47th fought the last IJAAF air-to-air combat of WWII, eight Ki-84s bouncing five 35th FS P-38s covering rescue planes in the Bungo Strait and downing one of them while recording two losses in the ensuing fight.)

Does the first manga say what Amaki's Striker unit is? The 47th was equipped with Ki-44s until very late in the war when they converted to Ki-84s, but the length and slenderness of her Striker makes me think more of the Ki-61...

[FoxxFireArt]

Originally Posted by Guppy

Spoiler for ep. 12:

I suppose it's somehow appropriate that the Zero's antiship attack should be a kamikaze.

Spoiler:

An interestingly ahistorical point here - she introduces herself as belonging to the 47th Chutai, which no longer existed by 1944, having been redesignated as the 47th Sentai. (The 47th fought the last IJAAF air-to-air combat of WWII, eight Ki-84s bouncing five 35th FS P-38s covering rescue planes in the Bungo Strait and downing one of them while recording two losses in the ensuing fight.)

Does the first manga say what Amaki's Striker unit is? The 47th was equipped with Ki-44s until very late in the war when they converted to Ki-84s, but the length and slenderness of her Striker makes me think more of the Ki-61...

I'd like there to be a second season, but didn't see how likely that is when one of the popular characters is losing her magical abilities. Sakamoto's shield doesn't work at all anymore.

[SuperKnuckles]

But why would Sakamoto matter solely? She could still very well be in a supporting role and she was basically just that in this first season.

I think a sequel is just about official considering the final moments that just SCREAMED "CLIFFHANGER". Also, I hear the manga is continuing, so why the heck not?

Also, Druaga basically did the same thing. And wait, so did Rosario + Vampire though that show didn't drop the huge cliffhanger bomb like Druaga did. It seems to be Gonzo's modus operandi now.

[selkirk]

Originally Posted by Guppy

Spoiler for ep. 12:

Does the first manga say what Amaki's Striker unit is? The 47th was equipped with Ki-44s until very late in the war when they converted to Ki-84s, but the length and slenderness of her Striker makes me think more of the Ki-61...

Yep, it's a Ki-61-II Kai (Hien). At least at the point where it's shown in the manga, which is a "preview" of what Amaki does later when she's already an ace. She's still a cadet for most of the manga, so she isn't assigned to a unit yet, just the Fussa Academy of the Imperial Army Flight Test Unit. Her sister Masuzu is in the 47th Independant Chutai though.

Your knowledge of WW2 era fighters is kinda staggering .

Originally Posted by FoxxFireArt

I'd like there to be a second season, but didn't see how likely that is when one of the popular characters is losing her magical abilities. Sakamoto's shield doesn't work at all anymore.

There's plenty more characters in the SW world setting. I'd actually be a bit surprised if they continued with the 501st JFW, considering there was a lot of closure for those characters already.

Also, the producers actually getting an up-and-coming VA for Suwa Amaki (an established character who never got her story told) instead of some generic witch/army private makes me wonder if they'll actually go into her story, along with the rest of the Suwa and Nakajima families. Their whereabouts are currently unknown for reasons of military security, so they might even be on the Siberian/Orussian front, where another Neuroi wave appeared, and where a lot of Fuso Witches are stationed/stuck. They've already covered a lot of the other main areas of conflict.

Of course, this is all pure guesswork. No news yet, and I don't really expect anything solid any time soon. IMHO, that letter from Dr. Miyafuji is a really big hint at a second season though...

[Eps~]

Speaking of VA's, here's the image showing the seiyū and their anime counterparts.

[Fynal_Fyre]

Wall of text which is basically all my thoughts on this episode. hehe.

And with regards to the VA...that's great news Selkirk, time to read the manga in (heightened) anticipation of S2's announcement (hopefully).

FoxxFireArt > Just because you lose your magic abilities doesn't mean you can't play a role in anything.

[Guppy]

Originally Posted by selkirk

Her sister Masuzu is in the 47th Independant Chutai though.

Oh, that's right; I remember reading your translations of the official doujinshi novelette. (Thanks for those, by the way!) I wonder if Masuzu was still in the unit when Amaki joined it.

Originally Posted by selkirk

Your knowledge of WW2 era fighters is kinda staggering .

You should see the folks who hang around on the varlous WW2 aviation boards out there. Some of them are downright scary.

This one was fairly straightforward, though. Strike Witches tends to portray radial-engined Strikers as a bit rounder and tubbier than the inline-engined types. That points to Amaki's Striker being inline, and the Ki-61 was the only one of those the Japanese ever fielded (well, there was the Ki-60 prototype that Masuzu flies, but that never saw service in the real world).

Originally Posted by selkirk

There's plenty more characters in the SW world setting. I'd actually be a bit surprised if they continued with the 501st JFW, considering there was a lot of closure for those characters already.

I actually wouldn't mind seeing...

Spoiler for novels:

Haruka again, assuming the light novels finish while still in the 1940-41 period. Last we saw her, she was starting to show signs of real talent in the fighter business. By 1944-45 she'd be very experienced and still in her prime as a witch, so she ought to be at the absolute top of her game (especially with an airframe upgrade - the Fuso Navy gets no late-war love. Anyone for an N1K2-J Shiden-kai?).

Not sure if Tomoko would still be active by then, considering she's about the same age as Mio, but she and Haruka make too good a double-act to split up. Wonder what Yoshika's classmates in the manga would think if they knew what was really going on with their idol?

(And that movie must have been really good, if it was made in 1940 and remained that popular four years later. Tomoko will probably have to beat the movie producers and agents off with a stick, if and when she retires from the Army.)

[Kimura sensei]

It can be about the witches from the 501st again.
It's not that hard to do it. Maybe they can start season 2 with all the characters joining this new squadron one by one.

Also, it's pretty clear that there will be a new season.
I would say that they added the last scene just for that. They weren't planning a second season when they finished the last episode, but their minds changed when they saw how popular it was, so they added that scene in the end.

[Tk3997]

Originally Posted by kaosmos

.....So,where's my game now?
Admit it,that last battle would make a freaking good "rogue squadron" look-alike with strike witches,i mean....the deathstar lol!!

I was thinking more "Ace Combat" myself though it's tunnel missions have got progressively more insane with time the last one had you flying DOWN THE BARREL OF A RAILGUN!!!

Merely on example selected for the irony of the fact they're sent in to destroy "The Core"

Spoiler for Size:

Ace Combat also loves air battleships and the latest one has as many missile contrails as the show has beams...

Originally Posted by selkirk

Yep, it's a Ki-61-II Kai (Hien). At least at the point where it's shown in the manga, which is a "preview" of what Amaki does later when she's already an ace. She's still a cadet for most of the manga, so she isn't assigned to a unit yet, just the Fussa Academy of the Imperial Army Flight Test Unit. Her sister Masuzu is in the 47th Independant Chutai though.

Your knowledge of WW2 era fighters is kinda staggering .

Spoiler for Oh crap I started rambling again...:

That’s hardly staggering IMO. The Ki-61 is lesser know, but then most people seem to think the only thing the Japanese Flew in WW2 was Zeros… hell Allied pilots thought that half the time. You’ll constantly see reports of them fighting “Zeros” when if you look at the records the nearest A6Ms where thousands of miles away. Usually they where facing Ki-43 Oscars, but they’d call just about anything that was round’ish in crosssection, had an elliptical wing, and meatballs on it a “Zero”.

Allied recognition skills in general though often seemed lacking how ANYONE could mistake the sheet metal monstrosity that was the P-47 for the refined lines of an FW-190 is beyond me, but it happened, repeatedly hence the banded paint schemes. It happened the other way around as well as I’ve heard of at least one P-47 pilot that moved to join up with some “friendlies” after being separated in a furball and only realized they were 190s when they start shooting at him! Opps!

The Ki-61 is actually mainly of note for it’s engine it was powered by a license built BD-601 inline; the same one that powered BF-109s. In fact when first encountered it was thought to be a German or even Italian aircraft license built by the Japanese hence the codename Tony.

The KI-61 ended up being a bit of a dog though really it was faster, but its engine was never really made satisfactory. It was probably just too complex for the Japanese aircraft industry to produce effectively it didn’t help they tried to squeeze more power for less weight and made there job even harder. Then on top of that it was liquid cooled as well which hardly helped as they had little experience with the type in Japan. It was faster then other Jap aircraft at the time, but not faster then most allied planes to any significant degree and quickly fell behind and didn’t turn as well as earlier machines either. These problems where only compounded as attempts where made to added heavier weapons which reduced performance even more.

On the bright side it didn’t burn nearly as readily as earlier Japanese aircraft, and was (relatively speaking) more heavily armed, and it could dive with most earlier war allied fighters. The unreliable engine probably countered most those benefits though. There are incidents where long range ferry flights lost over half there machines to mechanical problems. Part of this is probably because by the time the Tony began to appear Japan was at the start of its escalating spiral into industrial oblivion and quality control was already starting to suffer. It’s something of a comic irony that the bombing of the factory for the engine which then forced them to improvise and switch to a new one actually produce a more reliable and probably more effective aircraft… Too bad this happened in spring of 1945.

I’d still take a working Tony over a Zero or Oscar any day, but that’s the rub working Tony’s always seemed to be a rather scare commodity… and I’d take a Ki-84 or an NK1-J over all three.

So can you tell why I watch the show? Yeah it's not for the girls or the pantsu... Anything with an engine and a weapon on it is intresting to me.

There's plenty more characters in the SW world setting. I'd actually be a bit surprised if they continued with the 501st JFW, considering there was a lot of closure for those characters already.

They're STILL churning out WWII video games every other month after all there's plenty to work with.

Also, the producers actually getting an up-and-coming VA for Suwa Amaki (an established character who never got her story told) instead of some generic witch/army private makes me wonder if they'll actually go into her story, along with the rest of the Suwa and Nakajima families. Their whereabouts are currently unknown for reasons of military security, so they might even be on the Siberian/Orussian front, where another Neuroi wave appeared, and where a lot of Fuso Witches are stationed/stuck. They've already covered a lot of the other main areas of conflict.

It would seem to make little sense to do that unless they had some kind of plan, but time will tell as with all things.

Of course, this is all pure guesswork. No news yet, and I don't really expect anything solid any time soon. IMHO, that letter from Dr. Miyafuji is a really big hint at a second season though...

Indeed mostly because it wasn't openned if they showed it read it and it provided some kind of closure that would point away from S2, but the fact they left it hanging is a gaint flaming plot hook. Anyway that's played an RPG can tell you that mysterious leaders are ALWAYS important and plot relevant.

Originally Posted by einhorn303

Awesome episode was awesome. I thought ep 11 was a bit weak, so I was worried, but this redeems the series. To copypasta some more serious plot thoughts of mine from the BOST forums:

Spoiler for ep 12:

I was wondering, "Wait, what about Karsland??"

I actually feel like everyone but Mio (who's powers are too weak now) and Yoshika (who really never was the type for fighting) are still fighting...they just got to return to their homes and have brief vacations, as shown in the credit roll. The 501st was created to protect Britannia, and so now that unit's disbanded, but there's still ltos more to do.
And Yoshika's possibly about to get conscripted again, heh.

Or they're tours are up, most western powers did not draft for the duration of anything and successful pilots where often withdrawn home to do training and such even before they where officially done. I think some of them probably will find there way back into combat, but some we might not.

Spoiler for Stuff:

I think this episode also showed that "the Neuroi aren't a perfectly unified hive mind"...even if they're a hive mind to some degree. The Neuroi-tan that Yoshika tried to befriend had a different consciousness than the one in the Warlock, as Yoshika stated herself. Perhaps some Neuroi could be made peace with, even if others are more warlike. This is just speculation, of course, but it seems to make sense

I'd point out that a hivemind where individuals can have different views and thoughts is sort of no longer a hivemind it's just kind of a mindmind.

Spoiler for pairings:

Also, the epilogue totally fucked with my lust for Lynne x Yoshika. When Michiko said "Yoshika-chan, Yoshika-chan!" I thought it was Lynne's voice (they sound kind of similar, especially to an English speaker like me...harder to tell Japanese voices apart). And when it panned up on Michiko, I was like "LYNNE MOVED TO FUSO AND TRANSFERRED TO YOSHIKA'S SCHOOL OH GOD THAT'S HER NEW UNIFORM FFFFFFFFFFFF--ah, damn." And when a witch fell out of the sky, I thought that might be Lynette too. Ah~...overly excitable fandom.

Search: Sympathy
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I was hoping I wasn't the only one who thought of Star Wars when they entered the Warkagi, heh...I was all like, "Stay on target...stay on target..."

Na man what they really needed was a Macross cannon the counter to guns(beams) is always a bigger gun(beam) after all.

To quote a famous engineer on the matter...

Spoiler for Quote:

Engineer: "Hey look buddy, I'm an engineer, that means I solve problems. Not problems like 'What is beauty?', because that would fall within the purview of your conundrums of philosophy."
Engineer: "I solve practical problems."
Engineer: "Fr'instance... How am I going to stop some big mean mother hubbard from tearing me a structurally superfluous new behind?"
Engineer: "The answer... use a gun. And if that don't work, use more gun."

[Fnights]

A very good serie end. I'm sad.
Hope they do second season and more stuff about mecha musume.

[selkirk]

Originally Posted by Tk3997

Spoiler for Oh crap I started rambling again...:

That’s hardly staggering IMO. The Ki-61 is lesser know, but then most people seem to think the only thing the Japanese Flew in WW2 was Zeros… hell Allied pilots thought that half the time. You’ll constantly see reports of them fighting “Zeros” when if you look at the records the nearest A6Ms where thousands of miles away. Usually they where facing Ki-43 Oscars, but they’d call just about anything that was round’ish in crosssection, had an elliptical wing, and meatballs on it a “Zero”.

Allied recognition skills in general though often seemed lacking how ANYONE could mistake the sheet metal monstrosity that was the P-47 for the refined lines of an FW-190 is beyond me, but it happened, repeatedly hence the banded paint schemes. It happened the other way around as well as I’ve heard of at least one P-47 pilot that moved to join up with some “friendlies” after being separated in a furball and only realized they were 190s when they start shooting at him! Opps!

The Ki-61 is actually mainly of note for it’s engine it was powered by a license built BD-601 inline; the same one that powered BF-109s. In fact when first encountered it was thought to be a German or even Italian aircraft license built by the Japanese hence the codename Tony.

The KI-61 ended up being a bit of a dog though really it was faster, but its engine was never really made satisfactory. It was probably just too complex for the Japanese aircraft industry to produce effectively it didn’t help they tried to squeeze more power for less weight and made there job even harder. Then on top of that it was liquid cooled as well which hardly helped as they had little experience with the type in Japan. It was faster then other Jap aircraft at the time, but not faster then most allied planes to any significant degree and quickly fell behind and didn’t turn as well as earlier machines either. These problems where only compounded as attempts where made to added heavier weapons which reduced performance even more.

On the bright side it didn’t burn nearly as readily as earlier Japanese aircraft, and was (relatively speaking) more heavily armed, and it could dive with most earlier war allied fighters. The unreliable engine probably countered most those benefits though. There are incidents where long range ferry flights lost over half there machines to mechanical problems. Part of this is probably because by the time the Tony began to appear Japan was at the start of its escalating spiral into industrial oblivion and quality control was already starting to suffer. It’s something of a comic irony that the bombing of the factory for the engine which then forced them to improvise and switch to a new one actually produce a more reliable and probably more effective aircraft… Too bad this happened in spring of 1945.

I’d still take a working Tony over a Zero or Oscar any day, but that’s the rub working Tony’s always seemed to be a rather scare commodity… and I’d take a Ki-84 or an NK1-J over all three.

So can you tell why I watch the show? Yeah it's not for the girls or the pantsu... Anything with an engine and a weapon on it is intresting to me.

Well, I know as much about WW2 aviation as I do about, uh, rocket science, which is to say nothing at all. To me, all those Strikers look the same except for the paint scheme anyway . Except maybe the jet one, since that didn't have propellors. And maybe the two-seater training one, which was in CompAce but never got scanned... missed the chance to buy it too, since it was rather expensive at 1200 yen + domestic shipping + agent fees + international shipping for 3 pages ripped out of a magazine from 3 years ago <_<.

Maybe if I squint I'll be able to make out the words...

I'm much more familiar with land combat/equipment, so I really wouldn't mind having a second season with some armored ground infantry Witches .

[Tiamat's Disciple]

Anyone know what other shows are going to be released like this? Have GONZO announced any others?

And the 13th episode is listed on ANN

[Littm]

This episode should be DVD exclusive, it was said in this topic.

Anyone know what other shows are going to be released like this?

Well, Rosario to Vampire Capu 2 have something in common.

[technomo12]

after that i soo want a season 2 heheheh and also and every one would make a comeback in every episode ehhehehe