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Before I ramble on about how much I enjoyed Strike Witches 2 I want to give you a wee background on why I watched this show.

When I picked up Strike Witches season 1 a while back it was because Affian recommended it to me for an amusing series. Honestly I struggled.
The levels of fanservice just didn’t sit well with me and I couldn’t focus on to the story and characters. It took me a year to get over myself and watch season 1 again to make sense of it. This time around I absolutely loved it…
It seems over the year I have simply grown accustomed to light ecchi fanservice anime and with that out of the way I could focus on the series itself. So a small piece of advice, if you can’t handle or dislike seeing young girls fly around without pants on your screen then avoid this show as you wont be able to look past it very easy.

If you can, then watch this show. Almost all the characters are loveable in some form or another and the further the series goes, the more we get out of them. This is exactly why the second season surpassed the first in every way, we get so much more out of the characters and its fantastic.

Just to point out, I’ll explain parts of the series in context to both the first and second season purely for the benefit of those that have not seen either. If you want the gist of my thoughts and recommendations…just sorta skip to the bottom of the blog.

The second season itself focuses on where we left off in the first season, the witches are attempting to make contact with human-like Neuroi and see if diplomacy is at all possible.

However the Neuroi hive that hosts the human-like Neuroi is destroyed along with the witches trying to make contact with her when a massive Neuroi hive explodes into existance to dominate Venezia and Romania (two countries located where Italy is according to our map).

Naturally the 501st Joint Fighter Wing aka The Strike Witches is reformed to fight once more against a relentless and powerful enemy – The mysterious Neuroi.

The world in which they fight resembles ours structurally but the countries are named different and borders dont match where ours would. Most of the represented countries match our own culturally speaking. For example, those from Karlsland are Germans in almost every way and those from Fuso are Japanese.

The story in a strange twist mimics World War II…The Neuroi arrive in 1939 and the world has to band together to defend their airspace against the invading menace.

The Neuroi themselves are weird organic structures that are black all over with a honey-comb pattern weaved in. They are capable of flight without a propelled engine and utilise laser weaponry. Their only weakness is that they are controlled by a core which if destroyed will disassemble the entire Neuroi structure.

The Strike Witches must fight these creatures using their blend of magic and machinery, their propeller-based leggings known as the Striker Unit and various guns.

Enough about all the stuff you already knew…its time to tell you why you should watch this series.

Firstly this:

But mostly because if you enjoyed the first then you can expect a lot more out of your favourite characters as they go into detail a lot as to the true feelings and responsibilities they hold.
The problem of course is, if you haven’t watched the first series then you simply cannot watch the second without having to gloss over major details of the characters’ past.
The characters are the same from the first season and every new character that is introduced is purely to support another character in their own episode and only lasts a single episode.
The character-specific episodes give huge insight into how the particular character lives and it makes the whole series absolutely likeable as you become attached to each character in turn.

From Left: Perrine H. Clostermann, Lynette Bishop, Eila Ilmatar Juutilainen, Sanya V. Litvyak, Minna-Dietlinde Wilcke, Charlotte E. Yeager, Francesca Lucchini, Gertrud Barkhorn, Erica Hartmann.
Not pictured are Yoshika Miyafuji and Mio Sakamoto.

After the characters the only other real reason to watch it is the fanservice as the story itself mimics the first in most ways and it is entirely predictable.

The style the animators used was rather pleasing to watch. Most of the non-combat scenes were bathed in a soft light and a slight blurry touched was made to the characters while they were indoors.
In the combat scenes though, we were granted copious amounts of blurring fly-bys and most scenes were shot with a dynamic and fast entry/exit…so we go from close-up to distance shot and then back to close-up in rapid succession. Because of this you feel like the battle really has a sense of urgency and it keeps you glued to the screen.
Hilariously though most of the animation budget seems to be spent of the nether-regions of the characters as they have very good animation for that but fairly basic animation for the rest of the costumes. Thankfully nothing changed from season 1 to season 2, so visually its pleasing to watch.

The voice acting remains the same as well from the first season…each of the characters voices matches their personality extremely well but theres still the odd few characters like Lucchini who have a cute personality but a nails-on-a-chalkboard voice.
The music however was great. The OP and ED were fantastic to listen to and were extremely catchy and the music throughout the series supported the scenes well and certainly added to the climate and feel.

The last thing I want to talk about that made me appreciate this series so much more was its “cog of war” approach to the Neuroi war. The whole fight against the Neuroi was to secure the air space over Venezia and Romagna and we see the 501st fight with all their might against this enemy but at no point do they really explore the fact of a global war.
Everthing that happens, happens alone in the Southern Europe air space and the Strike Witches victory is a victory for this small area alone.

And no…don’t panic, I wasn’t going to get through this whole blog without complaining…so here goes nothing:

1. What the fuck is wrong with Minna!
She does nothing but get in the way, she complains too much and she never really contributes to battle in any way other than shouting out a formation.

2. The weapon scaling is toast!
A battleship firing its main cannons at a Neuroi hurts it but the Neuroi instantly regenerates, however a few girls with a couple of LMG’s and a sniper rifle can tear the Neuroi apart.

3. The military heads of Europe are stupid!
Seriously, time and time again the Strike Witches prove themselves in battle yet whenever push comes to shove they tell the 501st to bugger off due to their new technology. It’s frustrating to watch a plot advance in such a way.

4. Some of the episodes were pointless!
Sure, its a fanservice anime so you sort of have to expect some episodes dedicated to pure fanservice but it can be tedious amidst a global war against an alien race. Seriously…a whole episode about Neuroi bugs crawling into asses? Come on.

Was a funny episode though.

To conclude this blog post I will say this:
If you enjoyed the first season of Strike Witches then watch this. It is almost better in every way and the depth it adds to the characters is worth it alone.
If you haven’t watched the first season of Strike Witches then I would recommend steering clear of this season as you will have to skip over quite a few details which can kinda dull out the series.

Oh and Witches fly brooms don’t ya know…but the logistics aren’t as simple as jumping on a flying away:

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