July 11, 2008

Strike Witches: map

/images/01828.jpg

That map seems a bit peculiar.

Meanwhile, a big picture of Sakamoto below the fold.

UPDATE: While I'm posting pictures, here's the magic circle that Sakamoto creates in ep 1 just before she shows off the Striker Unit for Miyafuji:

/images/01829.jpg

And this is the one Miyafuji makes in ep 2:

/images/01830.jpg

It's hard to be sure, but if anything it looks like Sakamoto's is the larger. Certainly they're nearly the same.

On the other hand, this is Sakamoto's shield:

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She's 165 cm, 5'5", so it's probably about 8 feet across. (Which is good enough; it doesn't leave any part of her unprotected.) Based on what we saw at the beginning of the first episode, that's pretty typical for the other members of the 501st. All the shields we saw were in the range of 8-12 feet. Here's Miyafuji's shield:

/images/01832.jpg

She's 150 cm, 4'11", and that thing has to be at least six times her height, if not even more. It's no wonder Sakamoto was impressed.

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Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 08:48 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
Post contains 167 words, total size 1 kb.

1 What's really odd is that all the other continents look straight out of Mercator.  So why do we look like somebody stretched the whole continent into the shape of a star?

Posted by: BigD at July 11, 2008 10:23 PM (JJ4vV)

2 It looks almost like the Yellowstone Super Volcano erupted and filled in large parts of the Gulf of Mexico and extended the east and west coastlines.

Posted by: Will at July 11, 2008 11:45 PM (oj5wx)

3 If the North American continent is shaped differently, it is very plausible that the political history of the continent is different. It is a cheap way of saying this is a slightly Alternate Universe United States, which might bring different policies to the persuit of WWII, thus explaining away any differences between the show's narrative of WWII, and the real world narratives of Japan and the United States. Either that or the aliens altering the continent in the past is part of the plot.

Posted by: PatBuckman at July 12, 2008 12:28 PM (JR4YN)

4 Pat, in ep01 of Strike Witches it's revealed that the Neuroi arrive before WWII begins (well, 1939, but you know what I mean).

Posted by: Wonderduck at July 12, 2008 04:15 PM (AW3EJ)

5 Heh. The European phase began in 1939; the American phase in 1941. But don't tell the Chinese living in Nanking in 1937 that the war hadn't begun. 

As usual, the Japanese gloss over the parts of their history they don't want to think about. 

Posted by: ubu at July 12, 2008 04:24 PM (UukMI)

6

It's clear that the arrival of the Neuroi is not the only difference between this time stream and ours.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at July 12, 2008 04:41 PM (+rSRq)

7 I was going to say something really grumpy, but it's spleen venting, and it doesn't belong here.

Posted by: ubu at July 12, 2008 06:32 PM (UukMI)

8 Ubu, if it was about my "before the war started" line, that's why I added the parenthetical comment.  Considering the brevity of the comment I had made, a lengthy screed on when and where the war in the Pacific began didn't seem worth the time or the effort.

*shrug*  If I was wrong, I'm sorry, but...

Posted by: Wonderduck at July 12, 2008 07:20 PM (AW3EJ)

9 Frankly, if the Imperial Japanese in the story had behaved as we all know they did in the real world, as opposed to how the J. Random Ignorant Japanese Highschooler thinks they acted, the story would likely be impossible. I suspect the Chuck Yeager of 1945-6 was not overly fond of the Japanese, for example.

Japan's centrally controlled curriculum might be pretty lousy in that particular area of history, but at least they don't celebrate Nanking and Bataan. I think people telling the history they want to tell is fairly common.

As an aside, according to Jun Chang's 'Mao: the Unknown Story', the soviets had a sleeper of theirs in the Nationalist Army attack the IJA. This directly lead to Nanking. The Soviets wanted the IJA to get bogged down in China, and thus not be in a position to move against the USSR. Despite orders to the contrary from the USSR, Mao ignored Chiang's United Front proposal, and basically used his communists as rear security for the IJA. This is how Mao got ahold of so much territory. Eitheir the book is a lie (it is disturbingly plausable to me), or years of communist lies have penetrated deeply into the American narrative of the second world war. I just looked it up on wikipedia, and the first part of the article reflects the communist narrative.

Posted by: PatBuckman at July 12, 2008 07:44 PM (JR4YN)

10 Sorry, guys.  No, I'm not upset over anyone's comments; I'm just kinda cranky, and all I meant is that Steven's blog isn't the place for it.  I wasn't very clear on account of my mood.   (Pat got close in his first paragraph, actually.) 

Anyway, I posted it here

Posted by: ubu at July 12, 2008 07:48 PM (UukMI)

11 ubu: I recently learned that Fuso is an archaic name for Japan. Fuso Empire seems to me as transparent as Federated States of Columbia in Tom Kratman's Terra Nova books, maybe even more so.

Posted by: PatBuckman at July 12, 2008 08:58 PM (JR4YN)

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