Honest question. I want to know, specifically, why do people connect the concept in Shirobako’s cour-2’s anime-adaptation-in-the-anime with Strike Witches.
And this is just an informal poll, but other than casual twitter searches seems to suggest this. I can make some guesses but I want to know that the observation at least has some merit among my social circles.
More importantly I want to know, perhaps, why not Girls und Panzer. Same director, same conceit, but no name drop? Or maybe I’m just not seeing it? Did Strike Witches blow up the mechamusume genre so much that it’s including the whole military girls conceit as well? Is there something more simple?
January 11th, 2015 at 3:51 am
Check if there’s an enemy and fanservice in there. Garupan was fairly prudish, with just tank washing and other innocent things of such nature.
January 11th, 2015 at 4:54 am
Before Shirobako showed us anything except the name, I think that Strike Witches just had the dominant mindshare and so was the obvious choice to be borrowed or parodied. I know that from the name alone I assumed that Third Aerial Girls Squad had actual combat, unlike Garupan, so SW seemed the best fit (flying, girls, combat). Once they showed us manga images in episode 13 it was clear that Strike Witches was the wrong model, since they were flying planes instead of flying on their own; this also excluded Sky Girls and Kancolle.
Garupan is such an out there thing as a concept that I think it’s unique, while mechamusume in combat is a well worn trope by now. Given ‘girls plus military’ as the starting point, I assume combat (or combat-lite, cf Infinite Stratos) is far more likely than sports and so a mapping to Garupan is way down on my list.
(I also suspect that a lot of people don’t know or don’t remember that Shirobako’s director also directed Garupan.)
January 11th, 2015 at 5:23 am
As per Twitter, Stratos 4 (which I note isn’t on the poll) was my first thought: girls piloting planes, some level of fanservice. It doesn’t sound like it has Girls und Panzer’s sports angle or, as Author says, its prudishness.
GuP is an original anime made surprisingly elegant; Shirobako seems to be presenting Third Aerial Girls Squad as what could be a pump’n’dump adaptation, with a publisher contact who doesn’t really care — I’m hoping that part of the plot of the second half of the show will be the staff’s struggle to elevate their work to be more than that.
January 11th, 2015 at 11:44 pm
I actually thought about putting Stratos 4 in at first but decided to make my point better by ignoring it.
January 11th, 2015 at 7:46 am
My first thought when they were talking about it earlier on was Strike Witches, but seeing the manga covers, what went though my head almost immediately was a Moeified Area 88. Probably because one of the covers features a Mirage 5 (probably an Israeli variant on closer examination).
January 12th, 2015 at 1:27 pm
I think just by initial hearing of the title without any information, like Chris said, what sticks in the mind easier is “girls in the sky”? And for some that means Strike Witches, and for others that means Sky Girls. More mechamusume, less… actual airplanes, I guess?
January 12th, 2015 at 3:13 pm
Going by first impression is one thing, but clearly all of you are watching the show. They displayed the cover to TAG (wow some abbreviation) in clear view at one point in the first half of the series, and it was obvious that this is a military girls themed fighter jet deal (see Mirage). But people kept going on Strike Witches for some reason.
February 9th, 2015 at 11:29 pm
I say Strike Witches only because the creator’s name is a clear reference to that guy who does Strike Witches dojin.
February 10th, 2015 at 1:26 am
Yeah Nogami Nogame etc.