Strike Witches Complete Box Set

What do you see here?

So I finally bought the Strike Witches Complete Box Set.  Some of you may wonder why I’d buy something like this, while the rest of you (some of which have seen this series already), will either look away in disgust or giddily ask to borrow the damn thing.

The (slightly flimsy) box is covered in panty shots and “Winning the war on pants!” is written in bold red text on the back.  The first season is 12 episodes on two disks and is entirely uncensored.   It also comes with an official Strike Witches fighter wing patch.  A nice addition, dunno what I’m gonna do with it yet.  FUNimation has been releasing double-pack, half-season, and full season thin packs instead of one DVD at a time recently, which is nice, because you get more anime for your buck.

The special features are kinda lacking, and personally, I think the episode commentary for this series was really slow and rather boring.  Other than that there’s the usual previews and textless opening and endings.

Now, I normally promote watching an anime in both english and japanese.  However, the japanese for this series is slightly easier on the ears.  For some reason, the main character gets really, really screechy sometimes and can be a annoying.  Otherwise, great performances with all the other characters.

The series itself is fairly easy to describe, and yet, you wouldn’t be getting the entire concept if you just read initial summaries of the thing.  As a basic description, its “animal-eared witches fly around in special leg-mech…things while wearing no pants and fight aliens from space.”  If you’ve seen any previews or even the first 5 minutes, you’d think the entire thing was 30 minutes of panty flashes.  However, this series won the 2008 Japan Media Arts Festival Award… so that has to count for something right?  Right.

If you can make it past the first two or episodes, they start adding in some decent character development.  Yes, the series ends up being 12 episodes of decent character interaction, character development, and quality animation, all hidden under constant panty flashes and the occasional innuendo.  In fact, most of the nudity and panty flashes are just… well… there.  They don’t make special note of them during the anime, they aren’t exemplified during episodes.  They’re just there, and you’d better get used to them.  If you can get past the women’s undergarments shoved in your face, you’ll start seeing everything else the show has to offer.  Yes, shove down that embarrassment, ignore it, and just enjoy the show.  Its no Shakespeare, but its highly-enjoyable.

Now maybe its because I enjoyed the series that you may think I’m going to easy on it, but check it out for yourself.

FUNimation is streaming both dubbed and subbed versions of the series on their website, so you can make your own decision.

Strike Witches Homepage

Strike Witches Streaming Episodes