Strike Witches Episode 05 - Swift, Gigantic, and Soft

You know how sometimes, you just look at the title of something, and you just tell yourself, "oh dear god, this can only end in horrible catastrophe"? Well, I took a look at today's episode title, and you've got one guess as to what I thought.

I don't think I have anything else to say tonight. Let's just get this over with.

So today's episode starts with a recap of everything that happened in the last episode, because this is one of those shows that realizes you probably aren't paying any attention to it at all. Kinda like anyone who has never watched nor ever wanted to watch this show ever.

What gets me about the delivery of the recap is that the narrator gives it in that deadpan, military matter-of-fact-ness voice. Now, sometimes that can be great - in Macross, for example, that is the perfect kind of thing (early Macross mind you, the newer stuff is just so much improved). It's a throwback of sorts to things they used to do in anime - often these days, recaps are generally done by the heroine, or at least someone who sounds kind of excited. In this case, the narrator's voice is a perfect example of everything this show is: Lifeless and dry, with a hint of just wanting to get these formalities for a show done and over with, while trying to pretend that this show is supposed to be the best thing since bagels and cream cheese.

Anyhow, the episode opens up at the fortress of solitude, and one of the characters sounds like she's getting raped in her sleep. No, seriously, she is getting raped in her sleep. Turns out the character is Yoshi. Her responses in her sleep are literally as follows: "No, don't." "Lynne, what are you doing?" "So huge..." Then reveille plays and she is woken from her triple-x-rated rape-infused dream.

How you managed to wake up like this, I don't even know
and I was watching you sleep.

She hits the floor so loud, even Mio could hear that shit out in the courtyard.

Then her roommate comes in to ask what was going on, and she begins to tell about the dream she had.

Doing something completely inappropriate for our age.

 Then Lynne immediately gets up reaaaaal close, putting her boobs almost directly in front of Yoshi's face. Which, of course, causes her to blush.

Now, let me just reiterate this: She is having lewd dreams of a girl at age 14, and is basically showing every single character trait that is associated with being homosexual now. Why is this important at all in this show? Because it gives the pedophiles something more to latch onto. What's hotter than a little girl with no pants flying around fighting aliens? That same little girl making out with another one. Because that just makes this entire show THAT MUCH BETTER.

Embarrassed she attempts to hide under her blanket and then totally not blatantly stare at her friend's breasts. Then the title slide shows up and the girls are walking down the hallway. Lynne mentions just how very diligent little Yoshi is being. Why is she diligent, you may ask?

Yep, it's going to be one of THOSE episodes. Shit.

So. Training. Yeah. Training. TRAINING. Even Yoshi knows this is pure bullshit. All the while they're talking, we're treated to extreme close-ups of the character's faces when they're talking, to hide the fact that they have very little background, and then when they finally finish talking? They start treating us to a lovely zoom-in of Lynne's rack, because that is all that is on Yoshi's mind at this point.

I could go on about how this is entirely unnecessary for the show, but y'know what? I'm beating a dead horse. It's dead. Send it off to the glue factory and strip it for leather, it's dead Jim. Oh, but then it gets worse. Because she starts talking about 'in her dream'. So what's she do next? The only logical course of action possible in this instance.

She reaches out to grab hold of Lynne's breasts.

Free! almost killed me the other day. Honestly, I was about this close to just straight up walking away when I went on that lovely little tangent. I'm feeling that urge rising again. As if I just want to flip my desk over, grab hold of my tower, and throw it out the goddamned window because THIS IS THE KIND OF SHIT I HAVE TO PUT UP WITH.

Anyhow, Yoshi puts on a rape-face, but is interrupted by Mio just before she can feel just how lovely and soft those boobies really are. So she turns around, telling Mio it is totally not what it looks like, and... grabs Mio's breasts instead.

....

......

.........

F**k this show. Seriously. Just. F**k* this piece of f***ing shit-festering wall anus. I thing brain my broke is.

NO.

Mio then pulls out her sword, and proceeds to bonk her on the head with the flat of her blade I'm guessing, since god forbid they show violence between characters. Feeling them up is perfectly okay for a laugh, but there'll be no slapstick violence here. Oh, and then they're going to the beach.

Yeah. You read that right. This is now the obligatory beach episode. As if the shower fanservice last episode just wasn't enough, now you'll get to see everyone. In bikinis. As if the fact that they are all constantly pantless wasn't f***ing fanservice enough, NOW THEY ARE GOING TO THE BEACH.

There are several tropes in anime which tend to be present in almost every single mainstream anime/manga involving young people (and even young adults as well). Almost like clockwork. These tend to be 'themed' episodes, and they tend to be a major focus of them. These are things like the beach episode, the hot springs episode, and the date episode. Generally, the beach thing tends to come before the hot springs bit, but in this case? They decided to do the shower scene (which I would argue replaces the hot spring episode, given they have and open-air bath) before the beach episode. We've already seen three of them buck naked, what the f**k is seeing them in bikinis gonna show us that we haven't already seen.

Oh, right. THE REST OF THE CAST NAKED.

Anyhow. Yoshi gets all excited and shit that they are going to the beach on the very island they are on. Oh, but they're totally going there for training. So she's all excited for nothing. I'm calling shenanigans here though, because you can probably guess Perinne is going to try some shit too, because that is her entire character.

Yes, you need to learn how to use your leg-engines
as flotation devices, since they are buoyant in water.

Blah blah blah they'll meet up in the room tomorrow morning, and it's Yoshi's job to tell Shirley and Lucchini about the mission tomorrow. Then Minna is all "yo, we're not training all day so there's gonna be time for fun", Yoshi gets all happy and shit, grabs hold of Lynne and goes running off to do her assigned task.

So on their way to the hangar, Lynne talks about her misgivings regarding the swimsuit she's going to wear tomorrow. It's the one she had last year, but she's got a slight issue, as she doesn't know if it'll fit now. If you guessed the issue is her boobs, then congratulations. You are absolutely correct, and really good at this guessing the tropes thing. If you are excited by this prospect, then you are either a 14-year-old virgin, or a really creepy pedophile.

Then something explodes in the hangar and they go see what all the noise is about. Shirley is trying out her leg-engines, and of course they need to give us a nice panning close-up of her ass, because her entirely-far-too-small underwear is totally the big draw in this scene.

After some yelling they finally get her to stop doing what she's doing, and in the meantime they wake up a sleeping Lucchini nearby. We learn that Shirley has been modifying her own engines, and heads off to give a demonstration. I guess she's been tweaking the balance between offense and defense - she's basically found ways to increase her speed, but when they demonstrate it, it looks about as fast as a sloth that is on fire. No, that's too fast. A sloth that is being annoyed by ticks. Yeah, that's good, and won't get me in trouble with PETA.

But hey, everyone else is impressed at how quickly she can ascend, so whatever.

This is riveting, watching you tell us what is happening
somewhere else.

Then she does a flyby, but it seems her limit is 800 KM/hr. Not quite the sound barrier.

It is absolutely amazing that she is not a liquefied mess.

Moments later, she crashes on the others, and we get treated to a 3X PANTSU COMBO. But there's a SUPER BONUS: Yoshi is now grabbing Shirley's boobs now.

Welcome to Strike Witches: A show so devoid of anything that they dedicate entire episodes to grabbing boobs and showing off asses. But you know what's really bad about this? She doesn't even care about the groping. She just goes, "I'm hungry!"

I'm going to go to my happy place now. It's time to pause this, and meditate for a few moments. Get my Zen on. Become one with the universe, settle my inner f***ing chakra, center my goddamned chi or whatever.

Then they discover that Shirley used to ride bikes at the Bonneville flats. She's always been something of a speed freak, and one day she heard that magic girls were breaking speed records, and she knew she just had to get in on that. So she became a Strike Witch. Then she reveals that she just wants to break the sound barrier someday, because that is her one dream in this world.

Yes, Charles Yeager did that. It was incredibly famous, and he was freaked the hell out when he did the test that day. But it succeeded, and it was an amazing event. I can't help but feel that maybe they're being just a little bit too ham-fisted with this, however. Whatever.

Then she asks the girls just what they came to talk to her about, and they deliver their message, at which point she mentions her excitement at seeing them in swimsuits.

Once gone, Lucchini wakes up, and sees Shirley's goggles, and pounces on them like a cat, knocking over her Striker units in the process. Which breaks them.

This is the good half of the image.

Then she goes into this freakout thing which they repeat three times, just in case you didn't see her panties the first time around because the wind is blowing her top up. For no readily apparent reason, of course.

Clearly, the only thing left is to make repairs as best she can. Hopefully everything will be just fine. (Protip: It won't be fine at all.)

Then we get to see people in bikinis jumping into the water after the commercial break. Because why not? For a training day, the only two that seem to be doing any training are Yoshi and Lynne. By the way, that swimsuit Lynne mentioned? It is definitely too small for her. Anyhow, Mio forces them to jump in the water, and get their training done and over with. Just in case something like this happens during combat.

It's only an extra fifty pounds on each leg, you should be fine.

Now, magically, the girls sink. Despite the fact that last episode, THEY WERE CLEARLY FLOATING. I believe I even made a point about that fact. But now they sink like stones, because the plot dictates they must. Eventually they make it up to the surface briefly, before sinking once more. Then Mio tells everyone to take a break - as if they weren't already doing that - and we get some static images of girls at the beach doing beach things.

At some point Lynne and Yoshi finally get out of the water and collapse on the beach, at which point Shirley comes over and lies down between them, saying it's cool to just kick back and take a nap on the sand sometimes. So they do. This episode is so boring and boob centric.

Then while lying on the beach, Yoshi sees something shoot across the sun - it's an enemy unit! Gasp and zomgs. Shirley goes running off, and the others follow suit soon after, though of course Shirley is going to be the first one there, because we saw what happened to her Striker unit last night. So she gets in and takes off in her bikini because to hell with skin protection, and she goes zooming off into the sky.

Today's enemy is an ultra-high-speed craft, which means nobody but Shirley will even have a chance at catching up. It's target is London, and she's off, leaving Yoshi and Lynne in the dust, who are just now getting into the air. Down on the ground, someone is mildly concerned about this.

Gee, it's a good thing you fixed her engines.

Lucchini lets slip to her superiors that she royally screwed up, and then we get to see Shirley's boobs bouncing around in mid-air while she wonders what feels so different about today.

Probably has nothing to do with the fact that you aren't
wearing a shirt today. Yeah, can't be that.

Mio tries to radio her, but she's already out of range, and the other two don't have the ability to catch up with her. Then Shirley starts getting all excited because she literally can't stop accelerating, which is just like that one time she was on a bike on the ground, and then she hits a sonic boom, releasing a shockwave that nearly knocks Yoshi and Lynne out of the air. Now she's hit Mach 1. Congratulations, your dream is complete, you can now die happily. Oh, and it's at this point, traveling at speeds beyond that of even sound, that the radio finally connects with back home, and she is told that she needs to stop. Like now. Because she's about to hit the enemy.

Yeah when I said she could die happily...

So she puts up a defensive barrier and punches right through the enemy unit, completely destroying it, and somehow she manages to escape unharmed. Naked. But unharmed. Then her engines give out, and fall off, and she plummets hundreds of feet to the water below. Of course, Yoshi and Lynne manage to make it just in time to keep her from pancaking on the water's surface, and Yoshi takes this opportunity to sample Shirley's ample breastage.

Yes. She is feeling up her teammate. While she is unconscious. And naked. In midair. Oh, but it gets worse, because she then begins to fondle those breasts, and both her and her unconscious teammate have looks on their faces that are just entirely too happy.

You're the one that introduced this one to the team. The
blame for all team-rapes lies with you. Genius.

Then they fly Shirley home, at she wakes up at some point, saying she's hungry. The end. Or TO BE CONTINUED as the show would have you believe.

Y'know what? I'm sorry about this. Really. I'm absolutely sorry that I had to tell you about this show. So let me make it up to you. So here's the Safety Dance. Because I'm really, truly, sorry about this pile of shit.

This song makes everything better. I'm going off to my happy place now.