English Dub Review: Strike Witches – Road to Berlin “What the Two of Us Can Do”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Shizuka officially begins her time with the 501st, having a tough time fitting in with her strict adherence to protocol. Yoshika’s powers begin to short out, worrying Shizuka and forcing Minna to ground her along with Shizuka, who is too new. However, the two work together to join the fight and defeat the most recent Neuroi.

OUR TAKE

This week begins the cast getting settled in their status quo of the season, starting with fully bringing Shizuka into the fold. Considering that basically her whole character at the moment is lack of confidence in herself and intense admiration for Yoshika, her first character development hurdle in this episode is gaining confidence in herself and helping Yoshika. Being a team in this instance may even help to form a genuine friendship instead of idolizing her. Yoshika meanwhile deals with a sudden shorting out of her powers, which she lost at the end of Season 2 but regained during the movie that preceded this season. The reasons behind these issues will probably be elaborated on as the season goes on, especially since having powers is the only reason she can even rejoin the team. And of course it’s worth mentioning that Shizuka adjusting to the team is a neat parallel to Shizuka’s first days on the job back at the start of Season 1, where she was the newbie and began making friends with her authenticity and magic skills. So it’s likely that Shizuka will also win everyone over with time as the season progresses, assuming she hasn’t already with her ass-up entrance. Man, this show sure loves its ass shots.

With this, we’ll be getting at least a few episodes for the next few weeks centering on the other members of the team, which was the norm for the previous seasons after the initial introductory episodes were out of the way. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does end up making clear that this show is not really about the story as it is being about showing slice of life shenanigans with cute girls followed by neat action scenes with giant uniformally designed monsters. Again, nothing wrong with any of that in and of itself, but it does become a bit mundane if the show’s main appeal doesn’t appeal to you. And it did appeal to me once upon a time, just not so much anymore. Though maybe this third time will be the charm and they’ll surprise me by taking it in a totally new direction that I didn’t see coming in the slightest. Anything’s possible in this crazy post-virus world, so I look forward to seeing what’s coming up with Strike Witches. Also, shout out to having “Geraldo S. Patton” in the cold open showing how grown men would be infuriated to leave the fighting up to magical girls. No opinion about that, just interesting that they showed it.