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Digital Downloads
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Written by maehara
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Thursday, 17 July 2008 16:00 |
 An alternate past, aliens, witches, and magically-powered heavy artillery. What's not to like? Here come the Strike Witches in their downloadable glory (only a very restricted streaming option with this one) - but are they good enough to persuade you to shell out for the privilege of watching them..?
In 1939, a race of alien beings arrived at Earth. The came to be known as the Neuroi - little was known about their true nature or why they came to Earth, but they were far from friendly. In an effort to fight back, humanity developed weapons based around the power of magic, and gathered witches together from across the world to power the new weapons - and so the Strike Witches were born. Yoshika Miyafuji is a 14-year-old girl who possesses the powers necessary to be a Strike Witch - she's just been invited to join the 501st Joint Fighter Wing, but being avowedly against war (her specialty is healing), she's refused. But a letter from her supposedly-dead father may just change her mind...
Hmm. An alternate past where the girls seem to be restricted to wearing swimsuits. All the time, with maybe just a shirt to help them keep warm. I could get used to that. Add in magical powers that are accompanied by the appearance of cute little kitty ears and tail when the girls use them, and Strike Witches scores high on several levels (all of them arugably wrong) before it even gets off the mark...
As mentioned before, Yoshika hates war, mainly as her father left her to go and join the war effort and was reported killed shortly afterwards. But all it not as it seems - he's not dead, he's been working in Brittania on the technology used by the Strike Witches, and it's the prospect of being able to see him again that leads to her agreeing to at least accompany Major Mio Sakamoto to Britannia. That's the setup that gets Yoshika into contact with the Strike Witches, and if truth be told she is suitably impressed when she Mio demonstrating her Strike Unit (think witches' broomstick) in action. She's a sweet girl who wouldn't normally harm a fly, but you just know she's somehow going to get pulled into the war in some way.
As you've probably guessed from the swimsuit thing, Strike Witches is heavy on the fan-service, while its character tend to be on the younger side of the age scale - politically-correct it ain't. But if gratuitous fanservice floats your boat, this will be right up your street, as not only is there plenty of it, there's been a good amount of time and effort put into making it look the part, as well, leaving me with the distinct feeling after watching this episode that I was going to go straight to hell for having enjoyed it so much.
It was the story, honest.
This episode just lets you get a feel for the setting of the series - it's clear that we haven't even been introduced to all the main characters yet - so it's hard to tell if there are much in the way of redeeming features once the fanservice has been stripped out. I'd like to think so, but I suspect it'll be another episode or two before I've enough to go on to decide on that front. In the meantime, though, I'll be giving Strike Witches a cautious thumbs-up.
We'd love to have the YouTube version of the show here, but for reasons best known to themselves, GONZO are restricting the free stream of the show, both on YouTube and Crunchyroll, to a small time window - 2pm to midnight PST every Thursday (that's 10pm Thursday to 8am Friday UK time). Miss that window and you need to pay for the BostTV or Crunchyroll download-to-own versions. While I can understand that - it's a way of boosting sales of the DTO versions - I have to say it's a step back from the scheme that was used for BLASSREITER and DRUAGA...
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