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Digital Downloads
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Written by maehara
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Wednesday, 17 September 2008 03:23 |
 Strike Witches discovers its serious side, as Yoshika breaks curfew to learn more about the mysterious Neuroi she met last episode. Is it friendly? Is it a Neuroi trap? Will breaking orders land her in even more trouble? And is this the end for the 501st..?
Mio's been seriously injured after her encounter with the humanoid Neuroi, and even Yoshika's best efforts at healing her, stretching her powers to the point where she passes out, don't seem to have any effect. Repeated efforts, though, finally bring results. In the inevitable blame game that follows, though, Yoshika is blamed for the incident - she did disobey orders by making contact with the Neuroi, after all - and is confined to her quarters. The lure of confirming that the Neuroi she met was friendly sees Yoshika leaving the base on her own, though - a decision that has immediate consequences...
Mio takes recent events surprisingly well, all things considered, and even Minna seems to make an effort to go easy on Yoshika for her disobedience - but orders to remain in quarters are orders (which make the bath scene seem ever-so-slightly out of place, but what the hey), meaning the moment Yoshika heads off to the Neuroi hive you know trouble is going to be right behind her. So it's no surprise when the orders are issued to shoot her down - but more of a surprise when the backup plan to deal with the 501st in general kicks in at the end of the episode. Let's just say that was an unexpected cliffhanger.
The real point of this episode is what happens inside the Neuroi hive, though, which leaves me with an idea of where we're heading. The Neuroi are clearly trying to communicate with Yoshika, and through a series of video clips that Yoshika doesn't manage to piece together, it seems that the story goes something like this: the Neuroi can't speak our languages, naturally, and so have tried to communicate by mimicking human behaviour. Unfortunately for them, they arrived at the peak of World War II (or this alternate world's version of it), and set about mimicking humanities most destructive moments, unaware of what they were really doing. The human-form Neuroi is an extension of that, copying humanity's latest fighting machine, but Yoshika's actions in trusting the machine have opened up a line of communication that was never there before, and that I'm guessing may well lead to peace if she's given the chance to follow that through. Events at the end of the episode put that in doubt, but if it all goes wrong from here, it's entirely the fault of the military - the Neuroi don't really seem to be the "bad guys" anymore.
See what I mean by discovering its serious side? Yes, the fanservice is still here, so if that's what you're after you'll still be catered for (although the gratuitous bath scenes again suffer from a haze of censoring steam, and the service outside that scene is more restrained than usual), but suddenly plot has taken centrestage. That's good to see, if a little late in the day. Two more episodes to go, and I'm thoroughly looking forward to them.
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