What happens when you combine a girl, gun, kemonomimi, school swimsuit, seifuku, magic and mecha in one character? Form a team of these hybrid girls and you get Gonzo´s newest series Strike Witches. Series I´ve waited for god knows how long.

Basic idea is simple. In alternative universe the year is 1939 and evil aliens called Neuroi are attacking Earth. To fight against them, humanity developed Striker Units. They are leg armors with propellers and they enhances the power of female magic users i.e. witches. Striker Units increase witches physical strength, making them humanity’s trump card in the war. When witches are using their magic, animal´s ears and tail grows from their bodies. To use these devices, young witches from all over the world have been brought together to form an elite task force unit called the 501st Joint Fighter Wing, commonly known as the Strike Witches.

But what made me, bishounen-loving fangirl interested of loli series like Strike Witches in the first place? It all started from figure series Mecha Musume, they are cute girls who are personifications of military hardware. My sleeping military nerd awakened because of their cuteness and brilliant designs. I became a fan and I was overjoyed when I heard that there´s coming Mecha Musume-themed anime series. Strike Witches is this series and it focuses on aircrafts. Each character is named after World War II´s flying aces. Also their armaments are modeled after WWII´s real weapons and their Striker Units are based on fighter planes from the era. Aces from major world powers of the time were picked up to Strike Witches and even Finland, my homeland, has it´s own Witch named Eila Ilmatar Juutilainen who is based on Eino Ilmari Juutilainen. I can´t wait to see her in action using her MG42 machine gun.

And how did anime respond to my hyping? Was it worth it? First episode just introduced protagonist Yoshika Miyafuji and Major of the 501st Joint Fighter Wing, Mio Sakamoto. These two are Japan´s representatives in Strike Witches. Yoshika´s your typical boring main girl with clichéd past and Mio´s cool, but supporting Major with eyepatch. There were some really smooth aerial combat so I guess you can say that I´m satisfied with action of the first episode. There could have been more Witches and fights, but otherwise this was a good start.

But of course, there´s always something to complain about. What really disturbs me, is the amount of fanservice and this is very rare when we are talking about me, a girl who watches Ikkitousen with pure conscience. Maybe this reaction is only normal, especially when each girls´ uniform consist of only top part. No skirts or pants, bottom is just panties. Girl´s seifuku is a combination of a jacket and school swimsuit. Who needs panty shots from strange angles, when you can have your characters showing their undies all the time… ＿|￣|○ This bothers me a little, but it doesn´t lessen the love I feel towards this series. If I don´t run across some other great series, I will keep blogging about Strike Witches.

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