319th G-View: Schoolgirl Strikers – Animation Channel

First of all I would like to give a shout out to my boy Elkat from Yuri Tactics for covering this anime weekly ever starting from the lovely swimsuit episode. It was thanks to him and some of my other peeps that I decided to continue my coverage of the show before my workload got heavy. Not much else to say other than let us take a look at Schoolgirl Strikers and find out whether it is worth watching or not.

Genres: Action, Sci-fi, School, Comedy

Themes: Mecha Musume

Number of Episodes: 13

G-Rating: 7/10

Plot Summary: Goryōkan Academy is a new private senior/junior high school for girls with a vast downtown campus. This highly popular school has “another face” — a secret hidden side. It organizes and trains the special unit Fifth Force to protect the world from invisible supernatural entities known as “Oburi”/”O’Bli” that are devouring the world. A team of five trained with powers against the Oburi/O’Bli is to be chosen from the student body to perform missions. A new team leader has been appointed to assemble the five students.

Altair Torte: The main heroines of the show.

At first glance after watching the first couple of episodes the show comes off like a cookie-cutter/generic mecha musume action show where the girls do whatever they feel like doing during their spare time and then go fight off monsters whenever they are called to action by their cool headquarters. For the most part that does not change. It would not be surprising if people were to quickly brush the show off. Most of the characters are also, for the most part, defined by their respective anime girl archetypes. However, there is one driving force that could keep viewers coming back for more despite it not offering anything amazing at first glance and that is the main story. It is the kind of tale one would find in a sci-fi flick and again, while not game-changing is still interesting enough to keep viewers willing to give the show a chance reason to feel like their time was not wasted. Let us go over each part one by one.

The O’bli. The enemies our heroines will often fight against.

First of all the action scenes are solid. Each member of Fifth Force besides the main five has their own weapon and special ability to combat the O’Bli menace. The squads are split into teams of five each serving a purpose to help the others beat the usually huge ghost faced anomalies with the power of teamwork. Each time gets their time in the spotlight during combat. More on their time outside of the battlefield in a bit.

Coconut Vega: My favorite team based on their gear for obvious reasons.

As far as the casual scenes go the girls who do get more screen time than the others are fun to watch doing the usual “cute things”. Of course with there being at least five squads viewers will be left having the same gripes that befall shows with large casts, “These girls I really liked did not get enough screen time. I wanted to see more of them”. When it comes to shows with large casts such as Mouretsu Pirates and the KanColle anime it is understandable that viewers wanted to see more of the other ladies. However, I would say this is a similar situation to KEIJO!!!!!!!!! What I mean is while there are a lot of ladies in SGS, not all of them play an important role. They get their screen time and the viewers get to see them but only the girls who play an important role in the main plot get a lot of screen time. It is a shame for the other ladies but it also makes sense. Back to the casual segments, they are amusing for what they are with some stand out moments here and there. However, nothing that will amaze, just amuse.

Tsubame plays a very important role in the main plot…she is the main protagonist after all.

As I mentioned above the meat of the story besides seeing cute girls doing cute things and then seeing them kick bootie, is the main story and all of its sci-fi goodness. I believe that if this show had a similar pacing and feel to other more popular mecha musume shows like Nanoha and Symphogear with this kind of plot I guarantee SGS would have been better received. Again the plot is not game changing but is still an interesting one.

Animation and sound are both decent. The animation is good though it kind of gets dark (I mean in color) during transformation sequences. It is best seen rather than explained. The music gets the job done but is not particularly memorable.

Altair Torte from left to right: Satoka, Mana, Yuumi, Tsubame and Io.

Let us briefly go over our main heroines.

• We have team captain Tsubame. When she isn’t being haunted by nightmares revolving around her mysterious past or worries about being a good leader she’s very dependable.
• Next up is Yumi. She’s very eccentric and loves to cook. She claims to be a highly renowned chef but has shown several times that she may not be joking about her accolades due to her exquisite cuisines. Other than that she’s fun to watch and viewers can tell her seiyu has lots of fun voicing her.
• Third is Satoka. Her main attributes are having a poker face, being soft spoken and loving all things curry. She loves eating to the point of revering the creation of certain meals, talking funny and subtly making fun of people. It’s hard to describe what makes Satoka extra fun to watch.
• Mana is the cute one. Simple as that. She’s adorable and comes off as naive but isn’t really.
• Lastly there’s Io, the sexy dependable big sister of the group. She’s a great volleyball player and is a chick magnet.

While not the most popular ship on the show Io X Mana is still my favorite.

Of course the show has its yuri ships. As I mentioned in the above picture my favorite is Io X Mana but there are others who dislike this pairing for one reason or another. Though valid reasons I still like seeing these two together. If Io X Mana is not to some viewers’ liking, worry not for there are other cute and sexy ladies among the cast who show potential of becoming future newlyweds.

Overall Schoolgirl Strikers – Animation Channel is a decent show that, though generic at first glance could amuse viewers that stick around and give it a chance with its simple yet likable characters and its surprisingly good main plot. It is definitely worth checking out at least once, just do not expect anything that will change the game or create incredible memories.