Strike Witches Poster Art
© BOST TV

Mania Grade: C
Audio Rating: N/A
Video Rating: N/A
Packaging Rating: N/A
Menus Rating: N/A
Extras Rating: N/A
Age Rating: 13+
Region: 0 - Digital Distribution
Released By: BOST TV
MSRP: 1.99
Running time: 24
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
Disc Resolution: 480i/p (Mixed/Unknown)
Disc Encoding: MPEG-2

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Strike Witches Episode 05

When young women work closely together, is it inevitable that they will develop feelings for each other?

What They Say:
Shirley the speed freak is obsessed with trying to exceed sonic speed. Busybody Francesca Luccini meddles with the adjustments of Shirley’s Striker Unit before the water training drill required by all members, which subsequently leads to an unexpected incident.

The Review:
With the first third of the series out of the way, Strike Witches doesn’t break any new ground with its “middle arc” as it continues to flesh out the cast of characters that’s pretty big. By all appearances, a good chunk of this series will revolve around this idea before possibly getting to something a bit bigger towards the end in hopes of launching a second season. Fans of the show will certainly enjoy that aspect, but for those that want to see something actually happen in this particular season, well, they may be left feeling a little bit left out. Strike Witches hasn’t changed much since the second episode when it moved to Britannia and we got introduced to a big group of young women strutting in underwear all day long with no actual uniform consistency. Now there’s discipline for you.

The fifth episode of Strike Witches sets about to something that’s usually implied with a bit more subtlety than what we get here, as Yoshika is dreaming in bed about Lynne. We don’t see her dreams, but we see how she reacts, writhes and rolls around in bed before waking up to Lynne standing there, bending over in front of her to see what’s the matter. Even more surprising is that not much later, she’s actively trying to grab at Lynne’s breasts, only to inadvertently grab Mio’s instead which causes quite the little blushing meltdown. Many shows have a certain kind of sisterly love to them that can often be misconstrued as something more or played up to be something more, but this one seems to be pushing rather hard down this path in a way that does feel a little out of place. Yuri fans will be very pleased with it however and hope that the Gonzo folks take it a few steps further than most shows do.

A good chunk of this episodes is focused elsewhere however, as the latest characters to be tackled in terms of who they are is Shirley and Francesca. It’s focused far more on Shirley however as it’s her spotlight episode as she works on her Strike gear to get it to break the sound barrier. An outgoing and friendly young woman, she spent her time before joining the Strike Witches as a motorcycle racer who worked to break speed records. Once she broke all that she could at that time, she heard about the devices this team uses and decided that she’d join up to try and break the sound barrier. Her efforts are bearing quite a bit of fruit as she’s exceeding records regularly, but the sound barrier still eludes her. Though that may change of course once Francesca accidentally damages her gear and sets to repairing it herself in the middle of the night. Predictability, thy name is Strike Witches…

In Summary:
Strike Witches has set its course very early on and it’s running through familiar material with yet another episode. There are some nice changes brought into it with the way Yoshika reacts around Lynne but that can’t exactly carry this series. It could carry a completely different series, but not this one. Here, it’s an amusing accent to a very overly sexualized set of characters and events. Like previous episodes, we get some basic character material with Yoshika, more detail about one of the other girls and then a surprise Nerui attack that takes advantage of all the “new” material we just got. On the plus side, if you like the character designs and the girls, there’s a good bit of time spent at the beach here with everyone in swimsuits. So it’s certainly pleasant enough to watch in that regard, but Strike Witches continues to be without any real filling to it.

Features:
Japanese 2.0 Language, English Subtitles

Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70" LCoS 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer