English Dub Review: Strike Witches – Road to Berlin “The Fog”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

A strange fog overtakes an important port, delaying the planning to retake Berlin, which worries Barkhorn and Minna, as they are growing close to aging out of their magical powers. Sanya and Eila go into the fog with Shizuka and Yoshika to detect the Neuroi causing the fog, but conflicting signals cause the two to bicker and Eila is taken off the mission, only to realize that the target is able to evade even Sanya’s detection. Eila is able to make it back in time to make up for that and they are able to destroy the Nueroi and the fog.

OUR TAKE
This was definitely one of the more dramatic episodes of the season thus far, which is well timed as this marks the end of the middle third. Sanya and Eila are another known pair of the group, with Sanya being stoic and soft spoken and Eila contrasting that by being incredibly expressive. Sanya also has a notable edge of radar detection which naturally comes into play here. I think I remember Sanya and Eila’s stories from previous seasons also being a bit more tense and substantive than stories that would go to, for example, Lucinni or Barkhorn. It’s kind of weird that they only save the slightly more heavy episodes (that aren’t connected to the key plot points of the season) to Sanya, though I suspect it might have to do with the fact that she is a bit more complex than a lot of the other characters. That complexity more comes from her needing to communicate her emotions through ways other than the norm, and possibly because her magic is a bit more sensitive and specific than others.

Whatever the case, it definitely made this episode quite a bit more enjoyable, as well as somewhat contributing to a seemingly bigger issue by protecting the port. That gave use a link to a brief but likely important scene between Barkhorn and Minna, who are close to losing their powers, which I imagine is going to really hamper the war effort. Putting aside the possibly problematic elements of how these girls lose their powers after a certain age, it’s worth noting that this is a plot used before. Back in the second season, Sakamoto was on the verge of losing her own powers, which was a point of contention for her and something she had to grapple with up until the finale, when she was able to use them one last time before finally losing them. I can’t say for certain how they’ll make use of this for Minna, who was Sakamoto’s loyal right hand woman before now taking the leadership position (which seems to be the focus of the next episode as well), but hopefully it won’t be too samey. We’re onto the final third of the season and probably getting more arc based stories instead of these stand alones, but it was nice to get a pretty good one to close them out. The fog has cleared as we head to the final battle.