"Kuso baba!" Damned old hag! That's what Yoshika finds scratched into the headboard of the bed she's sleeping in.

After 6 months of inactivity, Perrine, Bishop, and Miyafuji are having control problems, sufficient so that the unit commanders don't think they're combat-ready.

"You shall train with the master that trained me." So saith Sakamoto. My first reaction upon seeing her and the place she lived was that her name was Circe. Actually, she's named Anna, and she can fly... on a real broom. Her job was to teach PBM to do the same.

Attention to continuity is extremely poor in this. They're trying to fly with buckets hanging off the ends of their brooms in one scene. In the very next scene the buckets are gone. The scene after that the buckets are back again. Naughty, naughty... (And where did their guns come from? They weren't carrying them when they flew in to the island.)

Speaking of "naughty", there are a couple of closeups which push the bounds of decency, I'm afraid. AIC isn't forgetting the fan service.

Perrine isn't as poisonous as she was in the first series. For one thing, she doesn't seem to have the hate on for Yoshika, which helps a lot. But she still idolizes Sakamoto. And she's still arrogant.

By the way, my original retcon for this series was "interstellar law enforcement chasing a criminal."

I'm beginning to think that the real story, intended by the director, is "Interstellar war".

Suppose there are two factions of Neuroi, who are fighting a war with each other. A member of the military from one side, or possibly a spy, was being chased by a unit of the other side, and he crashed on Earth. The other unit which was chasing him came down, and that led to the first invasion.

Eventually he was killed (by the Strike Witches) so the other Neuroi, who were there to kill or capture him, left. That was the hive over Gallia and Karlsland.

We need names for the two factions, so arbitrarily Blue and Red. The original fugitive is on the Red side. The group chasing him are the Blues. It was Blues that the Strike Witches fought against in the first series. They eventually figure out that the inhabitants of Earth are not dumb animal vermin, and tried to make contact with Yoshika, only to be interrupted by the Warlock, which is to say the Red fugitive, enslaved by the humans.

Only he broke free of control, and fought against the Blue hive. Eventually he took over the hulk of Akagi, and was destroyed by the Strike Witches.

The second hive was also Blue. It got the message from the first one that the humans were civilized beings, and it was trying to establish diplomatic contact with the 504th when a Red hive showed up. The Red hive obliterated that Blue hive and decimated the 504th, and now it's the Red hive that the Strike Witches will be fighting.

Unlike the Blues, apparently the Reds don't give a damn whether the humans are civilized. Quite possibly they're taking revenge for the death of their guy in the first series. Possibly they truly mean to conquer the planet so they can colonize it. Or maybe there's some other reason they're on the planet. Either way, they're a true enemy and will have to be defeated, unlike the Blues.

Possibly, just possibly, there will be another attempt by the Blues to cooperate with the humans. Maybe eventually even an alliance.

How's that sound?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 10:34 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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