So I recently sat down and marathonned my way through both seasons of Strike Witches. I had heard of the show many years prior and even preordered a few figures based on some of the characters, but had not given it a serious run. Like many others, the loli-fanservicy aspects of the show, which were blatantly advertised everywhere during its run, turned me off and I put the show on the backburner until now.

Recently I’ve had an itching for historical works and since this falls into an alternative WWII scenario, I guess it fits. I’d rather not write a long intro to this whole series and its quirk so I’ll just copy a bit of Wikipedia which ilustrates the setting pretty well,

“Set in an alternate Earth in the mid twentieth century, Strike Witches tells the story of a fight to protect that world using a combination of magic and technology in a fictional recreation of events occurring in World War II with the national armies joining forces to confront an overwhelming alien threat together instead of fighting among themselves.

The titular Strike Witches are young women with high magical potential who are recruited into military organizations around the world to fight against the enigmatic Neuroi, which began an invasion of unprecedented scale on human territory in the year 1939. This puzzling enemy force has appeared frequently and without warning in many areas across the world throughout history. The weapons of the Neuroi mostly take on forms similar to aircraft, but their most troubling tactic is the spreading of a corrosive miasma. Not only do normal humans have no defense against this miasma, but the remnants of the land affected by it are processed by the Neuroi into new weapons, crumbling huge sections of former nations into the sea. As the miasma seems to be unable to spread across large bodies of water, humanity has designated such areas as their main lines of defense.

In order to bring out their potential for use in battle, each Witch equips a unique machine onto their legs: the Striker Unit. With the Striker Unit equipped, they gain the ability to fly and their tapped magical potential provides the strength to utilize weapons far too heavy and powerful for a normal person. A defensive field is also created that can protect the Witches from the Neuroi’s miasma, as well as other physical weaponry, making them humanity’s trump card in the war.”

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