Thursday 5 August 2010

Strike Witches 2 - Episode 5

Disaster! The girls of the 501st Joint Fighter Wing have run out of rice! This means that it's time for a shopping trip, thus setting up the story for this fifth episode of Strike Witches 2.

Tasked with making the shopping run to Romagna are Lucchini (for her local knowledge, of course), Shirley (as she's the only one who can drive a truck) and Miyafuji (because she somehow has to be part of every episode, no matter what). Lynette is also supposed to tag along, but declines for reasons that we soon discover, and that are pretty obvious when you consider who is behind the wheel. The requests for items to purchase on this shopping trip also soon come flooding in from various members of the team, leaving those involved with a pretty hefty list to worry about.


Of course, that isn't all they have to worry about, as before we know it Lucchini goes missing as she races off to rescue a "damsel in distress", befriends her, and ends up taking her on a tour of the city. Inevitably, the episode ends with a Neuroi attack that our three heroines have to see off, while Lucchini's friend Maria also turns out to be far more important than first acknowledged courtesy of a decidedly predictable twist in the tale.

While there were a couple of laugh out loud moments in the midst of what was a broadly fun episode, this instalment of Strike Witches 2 did suffer on account of its predictability - You could see various plot points coming a mile off, leaving the episode to tick along without anything to grab the viewer's attention or take them outside of their comfort zone. I suppose you could argue that this is entirely the point of a show like this, and it certainly wasn't a complete write-off in entertainment terms, but at least previous instalments have progressed in a way which wasn't entirely mapped out early on. So, this was probably the least spectacular episode of Strike Witches 2 so far, although to be honest I'm not entirely sure what more I was expecting of it...

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