Review of Strike Witches: Road to Berlin
Trude punches an Su-57 with her goddamned fists. That line should be enough to convince you to watch what I consider to be the best season of Strike Witches to date (excluding Hasshin Shimasu, which is untouchable). However, if you need more convincing, the rest of the review is there for you. Road to Berlin is exactly what you'd want and expect from a Strike Witches sequel, and apart from Shizuka's existence, it delivers on every front. The animation noticeably received a huge bump even before the BDs are out. The action scenes and 3D models look as good as, if not better than their moviecounterparts, and the girls look fantastic in HD. Traditionally episodes 1,2,11,and 12 are the weakest episodes since they're the only plot-focused episodes with Miyafuji as the center, and here they still are the weakest episodes, but even then they're still vastly improved compared to their S1 and S2 counterparts. Thankfully gone is the formulaic "Miyafuji takes a boat ride to Europe that lasts two episodes while the Navy is useless, and the girls take down the Neuroi-fused superweapon of the season that was previously thought to be a good idea". At the very least, now, the military (in the mainline series) is finally shown to be at least somewhat competent, taking down some Neuroi or another with some degree of success, even if they still need MiyafuJesus to save their asses in the end. Yoshika's Jesus Complex is still there, and while Shizuka does receive some form of character development that makes her less bitchy, that just means she becomes even more useless than she was in the movie. I can't believe we traded in Mio for this...
Thankfully the rest of the girls fare much better, especially in their spotlight episodes. As mentioned earlier the Karlsland girls (especially Trude) steal the spotlight in this, but my favourite episode, as usual, is the Shirley/Lucchini bonding episode. Sanya/Eila's episode is fine if not as strong as before, Perriene's episode was surprisingly good, and Lynne's focus in Episode 7 is fantastic, even if she is shafted otherwise. Shizuka is useless and I dearly miss Mio's laughter.
Again, we receive little to no new information on the Neuroi, seeing as more information about them or allusions to a peace with them would mean the end of the series, and Lord knows the Production committee doesn't want to lose their golden goose. The timeline even progressed to 1946 with large swarths of the world still Neuroi-infested. Still, more Strike Witches means more Hasshin Shimasu so I ain't complaining much. The series is always better with the episodic SoL comedy stuff than it is with the action and Neuroi stuff.
RtB is a great sequel that's everything you'd want but unfortunately doesn't do that much to truly innovate or stand out on its own. It has some real great memorable moments and is great entertainment, but one wishes that they'll do more plotwise with later seasons/spinoffs.
7/10