Oh get your mind out of the gutter already. Honestly… Well due to some unfortunate circumstances, the huge post I had written up is now useless as every one of the 40 odd pictures I took to accompany it were deleted by family members. *sigh* All That I can do is show off a picture of the finished result of my PG Strike Gundam, with the recently bought and constructed Striker Unit addon. Here is the big guy all finish, sprayed and posing his ass off on top of my desk..

I’m pretty bummed about not being able to follow up on my last gundam post which was ages ago. I went to a lot of trouble to have photos of nearly every step I did and even before/after shots of the pieces I had already constructed. Oh well though. So as I had this package arriving today I thought this to be a decent substitute, as i’m a bit low on stuff to write about today. Perhaps next time will be about an ongoing anime or something. Time will tell. Anyway.

So today the 2 things I ordered arrived. a PVC statue of Choco from Chocotto Sister, and a trading figure box from Pantsu/Strike Witches.

Well I that is the box itself, and pay no attention to my monitor… I was watching Zero no Tsukaima season 3 at the time I took these. Perhaps a little bit of shameless advertising for them but honestly HLJ.com are the best place i’ve found to buy anime related goods and random toys from japan. The stuff they have is cheap, very fast shipping (they can ship my order on a friday, and i’ll have it monday) and a pretty damn big selection of stuff. Ok plug over. 

This is what I actually bought. 

I was looking through HLJ one day and they were having a sale of old things that never sold. Fair enough I thought, there is bound to be something cool in here yeah? While there wasn’t a lot that interested me, I did find a ton of bargins such as things that were $110, but now selling for $15. Then I ran across this.

Way to cute to pass up and since I am a fan of the manga (never seen the actual anime however im in the process of fixing that now) I figured i’d pick it up since it was only $20. The super cute Choco. I wont go into the actual story of the show itself since that isnt the point of this post but rather just to show off some cute things.  

Next up we have the Strike Witches figures. There are 7 in the set, and come in a box of 10, all randomly picked so unfortunately I was 1 short of the whole set. To make matters even more disappointing, that 1 missing happened to be my favorite character… Lucchini. Oh well though.

And Finally, in no relation to anything mentioned above, I give you 1 of the best scenes/series enders in anime history. For those that don’t know, this is from the 2nd season of the show Zero no Tsukaima. In case you wanted a bit of a backstory for this, and I must warn that spoilers will be posted from here on so if you don’t wish to view them don’t read further or watch the video. The guy in the video, Saito, has gone to fight an army of 70,000 on his own in order to protect the girl he loves (Louise). If you were wondering as well yes technical he does die, although he is brought back to life and returns to Louise in the last moments of the same episode so there is a happy ending. This also happens to be 1 of the scenes where I started to tear up because it really is such a sad, sad set of episodes leading up to the cresendo you see now. 

Saito, for all your flaws and bog standard anime male lead features, when you’re trying to protect Louise, you become such a bad ass.

Also known as Pantsu Witches to some and is set to run for 13 episodes. Oh boy where to start on this show. What genre should I even classify it under actually? It hits so many bases that I just don’t know where put it. I’ll let you decide. Heres some of what you can expect. Bloomers, semi mecha, magic girls, furry, no pants and most importantly loli/jailbait characters. Where would you put this now? Yeah exactly. So anyway what is all this about? What possible storyline could they come up with to try and hold all these elements of service together? Here it is.

Strike Witches takes place in a world that has been under savage attack from an enemy known as the Neuroi which first started to attack in 1939. They sporadicly appear and attack and just when people think they have worked out how they think, they change their strategy often catching people by surprise. Neuroi take the form of abstract or funky futuristic style aircraft. Not much is known about them really except that they spread a destructive miasma that annihilates human life, and transmutes the land into weapons for them to use.

The only way to combat this enemy seems to be use mages, typicly young girls, in what is called Striker Units. These mecha-like contraptions are fitted onto the legs like large stockings and allow the user to fly, enhances the ability to carry/use weapons that normal humans wouldn’t be able to and create a defensive shield when for when the user is under attack. When using these units the occupant sprouts animal ears and a tail, different to each girl be it cat, wolf like or fox.

Interesting no? I thought so at least. However the real attraction is the characters to me at least. Also as mentioned above, all the women under in this show seemed to be banned from wearing pants. I have no clue as to why exactly this is as none is given, but the best reason for this I have heard is “Pants would probably interfere with the machines they use, and it would take time to take them off when they have to get in the air really fast”. You’re welcome to try and conjour up a better reason but for the sake of continuing lets pass that speed bump. Lets introduce a few characters such as the main character and my personal favorites. Please excuse some of the photos, i’ve had to cap them from episodes due to the disturbingly low amount of single character photos.

Yoshika Miyafuji – She is the 14 year old main character of the show. She is your normal anime 14 year old in personality. Perhaps a bit more caring than what you would fine but there you go. She is part of a family who run a doctor’s clinic that heals people using magic. When she was little her father was called to assit in the war against the Neuroi and as a result, he created the Striker Unit. In the later episodes (4 onwards I suppose) she has an attraction to large boobs. What? Don’t look at me like that, its true. I’m not sure why exactly and your welcome to try and answer.

Mio Sakamoto – She is the Strike Witches 2nd in command and ranks as the oldest of the witches at 19 years old. She has a fondness toward Yoshika and is a normal type of military commander of strict and dominating. However she is always kind to people. She wears an eye patch that covers her right eye. Under this patch is a magic eye that allows her to see incredible distances and helps when fighting Neuroi.

Francesca Lucchini – She ranks as the youngest girl in the witches at 12 years old. She often is found sleeping around the base in downright odd places such as a tree, or in the rafters of the mechanics bay. She would much rather sleep or find a way to have fun with the girls over training. Then again that is normal isn’t it? When in her Striker Unit she gaints the ears and tail of a black leopard. She is tied with the next girl as my favorite. I can’t decide between the 2.

Sanya V. Livyak – Close behind Francesca at 13 years old. She is quite nocturnal and is often put on night duty because of her magical ability to detect signals such as radio. This gives her quite an incredible detection ability and is little wonder why she is on night duty so often. Her personality is a bit introverted and is often quiet, thinking to herself rather than speaking. When she flies at night she has a pretty song that she sings in order to help her detect things. She shares the same birthday as Yoshika.

Charolette E Yeager – 16 years old and is called Shirley by friends. Like Francesca she is rather carefree but is quite fond of cleanliness. A speed freak (not the drug) who loves going as fast as possible and was the first witch to break the sound barrier. She has perhaps the biggest… er… bust of all the girls.

Well there are 11 girls all up in the witches squad and since I can’t really go ahead and write about all of them for the sake of space and time, here is a group shot that wiki was kind enough to help with.

So with the series half over (buu!) there is little doubt that a 2nd Strike Witches season will be announced eventualy. We can only hope at least that is. If 1 of more of the above genre tags pique your interest then it wouldn’t hurt to watch 1 episode and see if you like the show. I suppose the closest type show would be Sky Girls but having never watched that I cannot comment exactly how close the shows are. That said if you liked Sky Girls then give this a try. Worst comes to worst you just wasted a bit of your time right?