Retsgip’s Anime Blog

Darkshaunz dogfights with Loliplanes.

Score: 9001/9000 (Best Anime Ever, already)

So I was looking at all the potential releases for this season, and came across a title called “Strike Witches”. Now, after some good old fashioned research (also known as googling), it turns out its an OVA or some sorts on mecha musume (or lolis fused with WWII parts). This got me thinking, I wanted Epic battles in space (sky comes close) and WWII references in my previous Our anime passion post. Finally, I thought to myself, my dreams have been realized and I received a monster of frankensteinial proportions. Strike Witches is a shining example of an anime which does things all at once, especially fetish-wise, and the best thing is, you can throw your brain away whilst watching. Journey with me, into Strike Witches (Its not for the faint of heart).

This is one of the very first things you actually see.

The anime starts off with a very brief background on the Strike Witches world, basically its WWII gone horribly wrong. Apparently the evil axis empires are winning and they are destroying the world with their super war machines. Yes, I am making this up purely because the background info was something to be desired (yes I know its a prelude, but still it would help to show both sides of the fight). After watching a montage of some asses getting severely Blitz’d, we get a rousing shot of what appears to be Loliplanes performing dazzling manouvers across rolling green hills. They must be at a different place, because just 10 secs ago the places they showed us was bombed back to the stone age, I’ll take that shiny Sherlock badge now, thanks. Im assuming that the Loliplanes are part of an alliance against the oblivious and ambigious invisible evil axis force threatening the galaxy ™.

Planes get shot down by ambiguous dark forces. Same old, same old.

The chick in charge has an eye patch, this instantly makes her badass and cruel ice queen-like, just see Rets’s coverage on eyepatch-chan on VVV for Vendetta, and she wields a Katana around like a deranged ranger from the LOTR series, I bet she’s that new breed of Tsunderevy we have been talking about. So if, like me, you are wondering how in the hell Loliplanes came about, the process is quite scientific really. You see it involves all sorts of awesome gear, machines and precision and magic. Yeap, I said it, MAGIC, therefore any scientific arguments have just been reduced to null. They were created to shift the balance back to the alliance of countries to defeat the above ambiguous dark army of evil and tyranny. Now why the countries didnt just make them transform into Protoss Carriers to win the war, I will never understand. I guess because that way, there would be too much For Auir and very much less lolis flying around slamming each other with lead.

I think she meant, “What a WAIST of time”. Amirite?

You guys may be seeing cards, I only see a pair of squishy things.

Nothing spells, “Group Bonding” anime better than a good old fashion canteen scene. Where presumably, battle weary officers and loliplanes make do with some good ol fashioned socialising by a cup of coffee. Or in our case, a bowl of some of the nastiest, noodly shit an anime viewer have ever set eyes on. Now, in my experience of bad anime food, this has to be worst natto I have seen, even the one Murai stepped on in GTO looked less nasty (and thats saying leagues). If you watched this sequence, you would know that the natto was flowing both upwards and downwards, this because it was so vile, the thing became sentient…and it calls itself Frank (or Fred, I forget). The rest of the crew ate something like braised fish with a mountain of rice, which leaves me wondering how all the MILFs and Lolis in the squadron retain their superb figure. The answer lies with Magic, I suspect.

Even worms wouldn’t touch that crap.

After an appetizing recess, it was time for audiences to revel in some aeronautical spectacle. Yes, it was time for the scenes which will make this anime, the Retsgip Best of Best anime of 2007. Cleverly disguised as a “Mock Battle”, the order was to shoot the living hell out of the other lolis in the opposing team. The teams take off like normal planes would, but they have like a magical circle of shininess as they take off (dont you even dare ask me how that shit works). The teams then perform a scatter formation (thats actually an oxymoron for all you non-war junkies), and hunt their lolicious prey. Now, the teams aren’t very clear, but that doesn’t matter because at the end of the day, we just want to see some loliplane on loliplane action. I must admit, the action scenes were very entertaining, and I could just imagine the real life counterparts doing the same thing, save for the loliplane shields.

You could say the series is taking off. Har har.

“Does my arm look fat in this?”

Shields, I know some of you are rubbing your eyes, but yes the loliplane has shields. These are not your regular ionic deflector-particle ray shields we Star Wars nerds are familiar with, because that would take too much time to explain, but rather they are glitzy magical barriers (awesome, I know). How strong are the shields? certainly better than your standard sci-fi fare anyway, in one scene one loliplane launched like a salvo of RPGs at another, and she didn’t even take a scratch, she was only slightly stunned and could still fly. I think even Admiral Ackbar of the joined rebel fleet would have a heart attack fighting these truly Fearsome loliplanes. Then our Natto-girl (the lead loli) performs some awesome aerial acrobatics which lands her a perfect draw-shot on the lady who called her Natto gruesome shit. This reminded me of a manouver I loved to do whilst playing Ace Combat, you just pull up on the analog and hit the afterburners, bringing you to the back of the clown who keeps missile locking you from 6 o’ clock, so points to the anime for making me feel nostalgic of my virtual dogfighting days.

This is nothing for magical loliplane shields.

I had no idea what that pink glowy cat thing was.

Being the female loli lead with a strong sense of justice and compassion, she couldn’t pull the trigger. For those of you who thought, “God thats so typically generic and archetypical”, we shall save the High Fives for later, because she was about to get schooled by Kakashi-chan. Thats my new nickname for the Eyepatch-chan in this anime (eyepatch-chan is registered for the girl in VVV for Vendetta already anyway). Naturally, she is no match for Kakashi-chan who cornered our poor loli by cutting down not one, but TWO very large trees with her Katana. So lets recap, they have shields and have superhuman strength too? I wonder why in the hell they can actually run out of bullets. Our loli lead’s failure to shoot a fellow comrade meant that she sucked in the eyes of Kakashi-chan (the world is harsh), and of course she does the typical thing of packing her bags and leaving at night. Why do they have to do at night all the damn time? Why not mid-afternoon or even dawn? Just to be different.

“Roger that, its striped panties. Taking bogey down, taking bogey down”

Put that sword down you crazy one-eyed bitch.

But she is stopped (we didn’t see that coming!) before she can leave, she was saved by a pair of very healthy boobs. I was referring of course, to the very delicious Milf who just happened to be reminiscing about the past on a bluff just conveniently overlooking the path the loli lead Had to take to get to wherever she was going. Small world anime sequences aside, naturally she is returned safely to her very adorable and cute loliplane comrades in one piece, with half tears filling her eyes. There’s also the very feel-good ending message at the end about protecting all that is important to her. Well the way I see it, If you are a goddamned indestructible little girl with enough shield power to make Protoss players shit bricks, you better damn well be doing something =p. Admittedly, it was a nice, amusing and albeit zany break from the staple of titles I have been injecting myself with, its uniqueness makes this anime worthy for the curious (and slightly insane) among the community.

“I can’t wait until someone stops me”

Im Going to Protect Everyone!!! (then kill them for their money, Ahahahah!)

All the Fetishes

I don’t know why, but as soon as the lolis become loliplanes, they become half-animals too. Then I realized, this is a staple for the mecha-musume tradition. Seeing as they cleverly used magic, I guess its a magical side effect that the blonde in the Mustang lolisuit is also now a Bunnygirl with scary firepower (presumably this gives the series awesome fap leverage?). Only Japan would make a half cyborg babe even more ridiculously appealing than it possibly could be. It also leads to another question, what is the UN doing sending its WMD teams to the middle east? Nukes do not have anything against the might of the loliplanes. I think even the famed Laughing Reaper F-14 Tomcat Squadron of the US Navy (R.I.P boys) would have had some serious trouble dogfighting them, and they are legendary amongst ace combateers (real aces, not the PS2 franchise, though the games were damned awesome too). Being a WWII, Great anime and epic battle junkie, I have Super-Mega High Hopes for this series, this 10 minute prelude has built up my hunger for more aerial spectacles and really deep, moving and meaningful plot-related scenes.

A Flying Loli Neko-chan in Military Uniform with a Heavy Machinegun, I think the universe just came.

Cheers,

Darkshaunz

PS: Galm 1, Fox 2.