No, this isn’t one of those, “and it was awesome” post. It is one of those, “I thought I finished it seven years ago” post.

So, I’m sitting in my living room all cozy and whatnot due to the relinquishing of the ambient temperature during the season Winter, henceforth known as coldy-time. It being Sunday; me having completed my usual Sunday jog. I was settling into a nice morning of watching television. It occurred to me that I had plenty of time to finish the Last Exile re-watch project that I had started several days prior.

Sometime during the re-watching of Last Exile, it occurred to me that I was not quite recalling the events of said series. As the episodes progressed, I found that I was recalling less and less about the story. Until the point that I could not foretell anything that was going to occur in the final episodes leading to the climax of the story. This troubled me.

By story’s end, I had come to the complete realization that I had never fully watched the show. My re-watch project was a re-watch not. It was a watch project; yet, I was unaware until the very end.

Who knows how many more years I would have gone without knowing this, if not for the happenstance of wanting to watch it again.

Also, Al’s hair thingies are awesome.

I’ve always found it interesting that the heroines in anime are often strong, independent, and motivated. Whilst, the male heroes are often indecisive, reckless, and incompetent. The presumption is that this is because of the predominance of male anime fans. I’ve heard speculation that male characters are designed so that male fans can put themselves into the story in place of the male leads. This is more natural selection than design, IMO. (Specifically, I’m thinking about harem comedies, but I think it affects other genre.) The fact that these male characters do relate to so many anime fans is telling.

However, the fact that the female characters are often more popular than the male characters tells us something else. It isn’t always what one would think.

It has often been mentioned that the least interesting character in a harem comedy is the male character. This makes sense, if taken from the perspective of a male viewer experiencing the show through the male lead’s eyes. The other (female) characters play off the male lead to progress the story. The male isn’t as important as the female characters, in that sense.

Moreover, it doesn’t matter what the male character is supposed to be or be thinking in the context of the story as much as what the viewer is experiencing through his eyes (what the viewer is thinking). Thus, again, the story must progress through the use of the female characters. Because the story has to utilize the female characters to move the plot along. These characters become more defined, more human, and more relatable.

What happens when there are no male characters? Can you just give all the girls super powers, big guns, no pants, and mecha?

Will it be enough? Apparently.

Strike Witches is at its heart a magical girl show. There is nothing spectacularly different from any other magical girl show (aside form the striker units). But, like many others of its ilk, it proves that when it comes to anime you don’t need guys when you have a bunch of girls. You just need to give them big guns, independence, intelligence, and the ability to kick ass.

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I almost didn’t post this because there are a lot of contradictory examples that appose the arguments I made here. However, most of the ones I could think of have to do with the female lead being indecisive or incompetent.

There is never a flat chested teenage girl in a zombie movie. It’s a rule.

HotD doesn’t break any new ground when it comes to the zombie genre. The most unique aspect of the show is that it is probably the first “classic” zombie themed anime I’ve seen, ever. The basics are all normal. Some unknown pathogen is turning everyone into a mindless flesh eating killing machine. It is contracted through a bite. Everyone and their mother is being turned into a zombie. The whole world has gone to hell.

If you look closely, there is a bullet dodging some boobs

HotD is blazing new ground in the field of boob-physics, though. I’ve never seen breast move, in an anime, as they do in HotD. It isn’t just bouncing. These things have minds of their own. There is (literally) a scene where boobs dodge a bullet, individually. Yeah, you read that right. One boob moves out of the way. Then the other boob moves out of the way.

The scene where we see shock wave dissipation through boobs is very interesting. I think they could have done better. Obviously, they decided to animate that scene though simple assumptions about how boobies would react to short high-frequency shocks. Personally, I would have started with a computer simulation, followed by some experiments with high-speed digital cameras and ballistics gel, then animated based on the available modeling.

But, that’s just me. Nobody cares about what I think, anyway.

Also, little girls supplying ammo seems to be another level of adorable.

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Why didn’t I use “breast” instead of “boobs.” Well, “breast” is too mature of a word and “titties” is too immature. I decided on a happy medium.

Oddly enough, it was the lack of pants that originally turned me off of this show. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back, as it were.  Strike Witches has so many gimmicky aspects that I figured there was no way an interesting story lay underneath.

Let’s list them out, shall we:

1. No pants – girls don’t wear pants or dresses. Sometimes, they go commando (I’ve noted, that I approve of this).
2. All girl/witch defense force
3. Mysterious non-human invincible enemy, kinda’
4. Girls with guns, big guns
5. Girls with magical powers
6. Girls with magical animal ears/tails
7. Striker units

I mean, really?

I wasn’t all that wrong, either. While the plot is fun and the characters are entertaining, the story isn’t very interesting. It’s fairly predictable.

Oddly enough, it was the lack of pants that brought me back to this show. It was intriguing. Where are the pants? What did they do with them? Is it a war-time conservation effort? I imagined that it may be necessary to use the fabric for army uniforms.

If the answers to my questions were presented in the show, I can only surmise that the reason I didn’t take that in was because I was preoccupied with fluffy tails and big guns.

Angel Beats has shown itself to be adept at being funny, with plenty of physical (absurd) humor. In many ways Angel Beats is more humorous than our Best Show Ever pick. My only issue with Angel Beats: it does not show the same skill in conveying the emotion in its characters as it does with comedy.

Take Kanade, for instance. She is a fairly standard “silent character” following in the footsteps of others like her (Haruhi’s Yuki, NEG’s Rei, etc). There is only so much that can be conveyed through physical expressiveness, especially with such a blank expression. This means that the viewer is left to fill in the missing pieces, due to the lack of story-emotional context.  It’s a relatively simply ploy and an easy way to draw the viewer into the plot and characters (are anime fans self centered?). It means the character is limited by the viewer, as long as the character refrains from talking.

Otonashi is another story. His emotions are given in extremes with short bursts. Take compassion. It’s not unusual for a protagonist to show great compassion. The prevailing trait of the typical anime’s hero is compassion. It’s another matter for the viewer to keep up with the fluctuation in intensity.

Although, the manic nature of his compassion may be more natural to the younger audience. Maybe, I’ve forgotten what it feels like to be a teenager. On the other hand, I don’t really know what it would be like to die and then find myself back in high school with a cute silent girl trying to kill me. Hell, I’d rather have the cute silent girl trying to kill me than go back to high school.

The truth of the matter is that I feel it could be done better. Still, there is enjoyment in seeing the characters experience some form of deep feeling, even if it is a bit overplayed.