English Dub Review: Strike Witches – Road to Berlin “Hounds of Vengeance”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Erica is shot down by an insanely fast Neuroi, forcing a frazzled Gertrude to take drastic measures to compete and defeat it.

OUR TAKE

We reach another duo centric episode of Strike Witches, this time focusing on the lazy and busybody pair, Erica Hartmann and Gertrude Barkhorn. Like Charlotte and Luccini from a couple weeks ago and another pair coming up, these two have been a constant dynamic since the first season that has managed to endure all this time. Erica is the lazy one who would rather lie about and eat snacks while Barkhorn is very diligent in her training. Despite their differences, the two care about each other deeply, as shown in this episode when Erica is shot down. Thankfully her laziness doesn’t mean she isn’t well trained in being crafty and keeping herself alive, but it doesn’t keep Barkhorn from assuming the worst. She initially looks like she’s a complete emotional wreck, staying in the sauna for hours and losing a lot of weight quickly, but it’s eventually revealed that this was a quick strategy to increase her speed while maintaining her muscles, leading to her being INCREDIBLY JACKED by the end of the episode. By now you can probably tell that the Neuroi are really more props and devices for conflict than much else, so once this is achieved, it’s pretty handily defeated, though it does lead to a touching scene where Barkhorn thinks Erica is dead and says she was very precious to her.

Yoshika and Shizuka continue their sparce breadcrumbs of character development, with last episode giving Yoshika the training needed to stabilize her magical power and participate in active duty again, while Shizuka continues to…just be there. Because this episode was pretty much dominated by the Erica and Barkhorn dynamic, it’s understandable that they’d be pretty much in the background, but while Yoshika at least has shown progress in getting back into the air, Shizuka is currently at a concerning stand still. This is the sixth episode of the season, meaning we’re at the halfway point, so we do have just as many episodes to go, but we’ve also seemingly not gone very far in that amount of time either. And the next two episodes also don’t do much with her either, leaving only four. In fact, next episode is a total nonsensical filler, so I don’t exactly super look forward to trying to break that down. But break it down we must as we continue to fly head long through the third season of Strike Witches.