No Pants, No Service, or WTB Skirts?
Well, this guy gets it.
I think it isn’t really a problem (some might even find it funny) per se that there’s an overall lack of pants in Strike Witches. In fact when Mio beseeched Yoshika’s mother in traditional old Japanese swordsman manners, it was good juxtaposition.
And comparing seifuku over sukumizu against the pantsless + leather jacket combo that was the eyesore of GITS SAC season one is unfair because in the latter case it was really a per se, aesthetics problem. In Strike Witches, even while stuffing the audience’s face with close-up crotch shots, Yoshika and her friends-to-be are still relatively palatable characters and designs. To me, what’s really weird is seeing how everyone else is equally in such fetish-catering attires that the whole experience feels like a cheap yaruge.
Is this what Strike Witches is going for? Maybe in parts. At least we know it is trying to cram in every single otaku fetish, archetypes, and moe triggers that invariably the whole experience feels very flat. It is as if the audience of the show is like some kind of dating sim where there are flags and buttons to be pressed to get us interested.
And maybe that is fine–if that’s what you expect out of it. My problem with Strike Witches is that I expect it to entertain along the lines of this anime. I guess if I was to draw comparisons, the two shows are opposite takes on the same mechamusume fetish; Sky Girls take it relatively seriously and is actually borderline outside the genre. Strike Witches…well. I want to say it is hardcore somehow; the girls in the show are actually not mechanized (save me, Chise!) so in some sense it is just like Sky Girls, or Code Geass, or any show with the attractive female character bending over to pilot a mechanized weapon. But at least Strike Witches is true to the mechamusume fetish.
I guess the first episode did well to lower my expectation, so it has succeeded in that front. It’s a common thing to say that the show is not to be taken seriously and put off negative comments on a stupid show for being what it is, but that’s still inexcusable when we’ve seen very stupid shows like this that still shine even under scrutiny. Just because the premise is ludicrous doesn’t mean there’s a license to goof around.
Sky Girls - The Satire Within
It’s relatively fair to label Sky Girls as a typical otaku-wallet-driven mechamusume pandering ball of fuss. Just because it can carry its own weight as a character-driven story (like many others before it) and take itself seriously enough doesn’t mean it’s any good (but also certainly doesn’t mean it’s bad). All that it does is carry the tune, like a snake charmer, and people who find it appealing will tune in based on the commonly understood concept as “taste” and “whatever floats his boat” and what have you.
Despite what I may find it distasteful, Sky Girls does have a moment of clarity as the clutter floating around parts way for a ray of amusing insight to pierce its reasonable but all too predictable testimony. The fansub translates it along the lines of that these highly mobile aircraft are pioneers in a new era of aviation and the squad of girls can pursuit dreams as acrobatic stunspeople, touring the world to show off their l33t skillz. The simpler reality was that they must demonstrate their l33t skills as weapons of war to get funding from the brasses.
What occurs to me here is simply–just why am I watching (or why is the average fan who’s watching Sky Girls) Sky Girls? Would it be OK if the mechamusume fetish was stripped (/zing) of its para-militaristic bent and turned into a normal sports drama? When I was watching Ginban Kaleidoscope I recalled the former occupation of Pete was a barnstormer. That’d be a cool crossover. But why not?
And how our heroine-protagonist Otoha Sakurano wrestle her military duties with her less violent and less gore-glorious calling seemed to me just that little bit more ironic. Is the average otaku no different than those nameless (but not faceless!) military generals who oversee the Sky Girls project? Are we just predators looking to exploit innocent girls to satisfy our own needs for things we can’t do on our own by paying for it?
