This was a series of comments but I decided to turn it into a post.

The way I figure it, the movie plot is this:

The sword gets found. At the end of the last episode, there's a picture of the Shinden and Reppumaru sitting on an Italian beach, not far from the hulk of the Yamato, and at the very last instant a human shadow appears.

The sword will turn out to be acting strangely. It will glow and hum, and if anyone tries to touch it, they'll get zorched. Even Sakamoto, who will realize that she no longer owns it. Miyafuji does.

Sakamoto will also realize that Miyafuji's magic all moved into Reppumaru -- but it didn't get used up. It's still in there, and that means that Miyafuji probably can use it, even if no one else can.

She'll travel back to Fuso with Reppumaru and with the Shinden. The Shinden will get repaired, and then Sakamoto will visit the clinic, and invite Miyafuji down to the base. Miyafuji will be able to pick up the sword, and when she does, then there are several ways to play it.

One way is that her magic flows back into her, and that's the one I like the best. A different way is that as long as she's holding the sword, or has it slung over her back, then she can use her magic. It's still in the sword, but as long as the sword is near her, she can draw on it.

Regardless of how it's played, Sakamoto will put it to Miyafuji that she may be able to do again what she did before.

No one else has ever been able to take out the core of a nest. Miyafuji has done it twice. The first one was a fluke, of course, and anyone could have done what she did. But the second one wasn't. A lot of people have been trying to come up with ways of taking out nests, and no one else has ever done it.

Even if she can't do it more than once again, it's still damned well worth doing. Taking out the Gaullia nest and the Venezia nest was worth doing, even though it didn't finish the war.

And she agrees. Her spirit hasn't gone away, just her magic. If she can get her magic back, she's certainly willing to rejoin the war.

Of course, a katana is a melee weapon. For her to repeat her miracle, she has to be within close range of the core, maybe 30 feet, and there's no way she can do that alone, even with her hyperpowered shield. She'll need a force of witches to get her in, and who better than the squadron she already knows and trusts? So orders will go out to collect the group together again, and they'll eventually set up and start working out a plan.

There will be critical training. She has to be able to do the shin reppuzan reliably before they can risk making an attack on a nest. And maybe the whole unit, or at least some of it, has to upgrade to jet strikers. Perhaps Ursula has figured out the problem and come up with a fix. (Having it be Barkhorn and Yeager allows for some fun character moments, for example.)

Miyafuji will continue flying the Shinden, which almost seems to have been designed for her, and I wouldn't be surprised if it has some surprises.

So, which nest will they take on? I think it'll be the one in Orussia, mainly because we can get some sweet character moments with Sanya the way we did with Lucchini in SW2.

So we get a fairly long and very tense battle scene which ends with Miyafuji not being able to get close enough for the version of shin reppuzan she used in Venezia.

She'll have to hype the power more, to make the resulting energy blade bigger. And it'll work, and the nest will be destroyed. But it will also vaporize Reppumaru.

I think Miyafuji gets her power back afterwards. But with the blade gone, she can't do it a third time. It's a major achievement in the war, but the war isn't over. The Egypt nest is still there.

A possibility I like is that it takes Sakamoto and Miyafuji working together to make that final attack, and a side effect of it is to power up Sakamoto.

In the epilogue, we'll see Sakamoto back in Fuso, working to see if she, or some other younger stronger witch, can replicate what she did with Reppumaru and can in turn do the shin reppuzan. And maybe it'll work, and maybe it won't, but it's certainly worth trying.

By the way, according to the Strike Witches wiki, there are four squadrons of witches already operating around the Orussia nest, in St. Petersburg, Suomus, Chelyabinsk, and Ostmark (Austria? Romania? Don't know).

For purposes of a movie, a mass attack by five full squadrons would sure as hell make for an exciting climax, wouldn't it? (Or four, if they decide to disinvite the Suomus Misfits.) And it might well take that many to get Miyafuji in through the nest's fighter cover.

Thing is, she'll use her shield when she has to but she can't use it much without risking not having enough energy left for the shin reppuzan. So she has to be a passenger, as much as possible, and leave the fighting to everyone else.

Sakamoto has to be there, because the audience will expect it. So I figure that she creates another sword for herself, and during the training phase she, too, tries to master the shin reppuzan, working alongside Miyafuji. And they both get it, and the final attack is both of them, side by side, each with her own blade, and pushing it to the max.

Sakamoto will be indispensible for a different reason: she's the only one who can figure out where the core of the nest is. So she has to be involved.

Anyway, absent any hints from those in charge, that's my best guess as to the story of the movie.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 06:57 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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