English Dub Season Review: Strike Witches – Road to Berlin

After a rather long delay and multiple spin-offs released, the third proper season of the Strike Witches anime has finally released and wrapped! Not sure why it had to take this long exactly, but with over a decade of wait, I imagine it definitely got the hype up when it was finally announced. But yeah, the show about girls wearing no pants and leggings that are intricately designed after real life planes that fight rather boringly designed giant monsters during a time in history that much more horrific things were going on in has returned AND…it’s largely the same thing it has always been. I mean, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, I suppose. This would make reviewing it seem rather easy, as I could simply just ask “did you like the first two seasons? Great, then you’ll probably like this one too!” and call it a night. But I think I can find enough that sets this season apart which makes it worth discussing all on its own. So, sit tight for the next few paragraphs as we take to the skies and fly right into the Road to Berlin.

Being the third season would make one think this is the third piece of media in this franchise that they would need to view, but there’s actually a bit more continuity than that. At the end of the second season, which I remind you ended in September 2010, rookie pilot Yoshika Miyafuji used up all her magic to win that season’s battle. Then, in Strike Witches: The Movie, released in 2012, she gets them back! As well as meeting an eventual new recruit to the 501st team, Shizuka Hattori. So, the third season essentially begins with getting these two back in the team, but after that, it’s pretty much business as usual, with most of the season being stand alone character focused bits that don’t really advance the plot all that much, but I think I’ve come to understand that this is not the reason that people like this show. The main reason is…look at girl butt flying around while it shoots stuff. But the SECOND main reason is the characters, who all continue to have their distinct and likeable personalities that bounce off each other and continue to do so in this third season. Also, if you enjoyed the dub voices for the first two seasons, they got them all back for this season!


And unlike the previous two seasons, this one has a pretty definitive ending, or at least one that would be quite hard to top. The witches are able to defeat the Neuroi menace in Berlin as they have been building up to for at least this season, and while they do mention that there are other Neuroi hives in other areas, it would be pretty difficult to match the finale here, with Yoshika losing her powers and heading into enemy territory in order to get them back at the last minute. And while Shizuka doesn’t get as fleshed out as I would have preferred, she is also a big part of that final battle, not to mention the hints at a couple more main cast members being very close to aging out of their powers, which is apparently a thing in this universe and the reason that the mentor character of the first two seasons is no longer on the team. So I have this feeling that, even if they were to do a fourth season, it would probably need to be considerably different, with it either jumping many years ahead, being in a vastly new location, or having at least a few more new members involved who will probably get the shaft and be less well liked than the characters they are replacing.

But whether or not we’ll see that in the future, I can at least say that this season was probably about as good as the first two and the movie. And if you enjoyed it enough, you can watch the spin-offs Brave Witches, which follows a totally different team, or the comedy spin-offs, one of which is currently ongoing. Plus I cannot imagine that this series is not totally making huge bank back in Japan, so I’m guessing they would definitely have the money and incentive to make more of this series in some sort of animated form. And if that ever gets animated AND dubbed into English, I’m sure that we’ll be covering it in some way. But until then, this is a perfectly serviceable next installment for this whole thing.