Note: This review contains spoilers for Strike Witches season 1.

When we last left our heroes, a human-shaped Neuroi had attempted to make contact with Yoshika Miyafuji, only for the corrupt navy to use stolen Neuroi technology to create a new weapon, The Warlock, shattering all attempts at communication. The Warlock was effective at first, but was quickly overcome by the Neuroi, who transformed it into one of them and turned it against it’s users. The Witches saved the day, they were officially disbanded, and the global military decided to try what Yoshika had tried before... Contact with the Neuroi. No sooner do they find their first opportunity, however, than a larger, more powerful Neuroi hive shows up out of the blue to silence the smaller one! With this new threat looming over Romagna, the 501’st Joint Fighter Wing once again unites to save humanity from it’s extraterrestrial threat!

Before I go any further I should mention, this is meant to serve as a companion to my previous review(since the link feature isn't working, it's https://anilist.co/review/14286). In an effort to not repeat myself too much, there are things I said in that review that apply to this season, and vice versa.

Following the first season, Studio Gonzo ran into studio-wide budgetary problems, so although the blu-ray sales of this series were excellent, they were unable to continue producing the franchise. Therefore, the reins were picked up by AIC Classic, and there was no drop in quality as a result. If anything, the series looks slightly better, as the over-all animation looks crisper and more consistent. Characters no longer have to go into broken model mode to achieve more complex motion, and while there’s no shortage of frozen key frames(used sparingly and kept out of the way) nobody’s faces go off-model in long shots anymore. Director Kazuhiro Takamura also returns, and to the delight of franchise fans everywhere, his fingerprints are all over the visual style of this sequel series. The CG is used well, and while the computer generated flying scenes are a bit more noticeable this time around, it never feels like a problem.

There’s been no real change in the music since last time... Which is fine, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it... But the new opening is cool.

The English dub hasn’t had to recast anyone, and despite there being anecdotal evidence that a few of the actors have come to regret having their names attached to this franchise for the long haul, they all sound just as enthusiastic as they did in the first season. Several new actors do appear in small roles this season, but the most noteworthy ones by far are Funimation staples Colleen Clinkenbeard and Brittney Karbowski, each of whom get to cameo in their own focus episode, and they’re a welcome addition to any project. The adaptive script was written by Chuck Huber and Jamie Marchi, two voice actors who generally work really well together on the other side of the booth. I’ve had issues with Jamie Marchi’s brand of rewrites, particularly with her haphazard use of modern slang, but Huber keeps her grounded. In this case, the only character she feeds slang to is her own, and it winds up working as an endearing quirk rather than a distraction from the material.

The approach that Strike Witches used to set up this sequel series is, surprisingly, more American than Japanese. There have been plenty of cases in western media where a bold new movie was so popular and successful that the studio demanded a sequel, but in order to play it safe, they forced the team behind it to give people a retread of the first movie, even if it means retconning the end of said movie in order to return to the status quo. You may remember this approach from Men In Black, along with several entries in the Planet of the Apes franchise. Since the first season of Strike Witches ended with the Neuroi over Brittania being defeated and the team disbanding, of course season 2 starts with a new Neuroi hive appearing over a different country, and the whole gang returns to fight it.

This isn’t necessarily a bad approach to sequel-writing, but it’s transparent as hell. There are several episodes in season 2 that, if you took them out and placed them in the middle of season 1, nobody would be able to tell the difference. They’re in a new location, and there’s been some development since the previous season, but plot-wise? Pacing? Structure? It’s more or less the same as before. As for whether it’s gotten better or worse, the answer is... Kinda both? With the exception of the fanservice, which is pretty much the same... Uncensored nudity that’s almost completely casual and non-sexual in context, and constant panty shots whose justification is as flimsy as the fabric itself... Pretty much everything from the first season has been amplified. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

Starting with the good, all the characters are back, they’re still the focus of the story, and they’re still the cornerstone of the franchise. I didn’t mention this in my previous review, but one of the reasons they were developed so well is because they’re all paired up. With the exception of Yoshika, every witch has a direct counterpart, revealed without much subtlety in the openings, and when one character gets the spotlight, the other often shares it by association. The difference is that this season, instead of letting us learn about everyone through her, Yoshika takes a small step back this time, never exactly fading into the background, but still present. Not every episode is about her anymore, and because of this we’re able to enjoy deeper backstories, new dynamics and interactions we weren’t privy to, and more.

This season, we learn more intimate details about the cast, and while some of it’s obvious, there’s also some that’s more subtle. Using Erica Hartman as an example again, we learn she has a twin sister serving as a scientist on another team. We also learn, although it’s never directly explained, why she’s so lazy... Her sister is the responsible one, and isn’t that always the case? That’s not even counting her focus episode, where an old rival tries to pick a fight with her, and we find out just how far you have to push her to make her take something seriously. And speaking of focus episodes, the best one of this season... Possibly of either season... Features Francesca Lucchini, my least favorite character, showing people around her homeland. It’s no small feat to make me enjoy a Francesca Lucchini episode, especially that much.

Another stand-out is the episode where it’s revealed that Yoshika and two other witches have been slacking since the last disbandment, so they’re all sent to an elderly witch to go back to training the basics, and the stuff they learn there actually makes some sense(well, mostly, but we’ll get there). It’s a heartwarming episode, and you get some pretty funny backstory for Mio Sakamoto. This also kicks off a mini character arc for Yoshika regarding the development of her magic, and while I won’t go into specifics, it does bring me to another detail about the character writing that I forgot to mention before, attention to detail. Every character is unique, and they all have traits and quirks that seet them apart from each other, and I cannot for the life of me think of one example of these traits being represented inconsistently.

Well, the characters at least, are consistent. Unfortunately, this episode feeds into another problem I went into in the previous review, worldbuilding. I mentioned in my season 1 review that there were details about this universe that didn’t make any sense, and season 2 did not fix them... Although, I’m not sure how they could have. I can’t think of a single explanation that wouldn’t actively make everything worse, so I can’t blame them for leaning into what they’ve created. I can, however, blame them for making it worse. In this training episode, it’s revealed to the girls’ surprise that witches rode brooms before striker units replaced them. Only, the striker units were invented like, what, five? Six years ao? These girls are all mid-to-late teenagers, so there’s no way they didn’t know about that.

The finale is a retread of the previous season’s finale, but with less build, and a little more pay-off. Once again the military is mucking things up, once again the team faces possible disbandment. It doesn’t play out the same way, but it comes a little too close for comfort. Even worse is the NEW fanservice episode, once again episode 7, and it’s very deliberately so. There’s even a bit of dialogue where the focal character of that episode calls out it’s title. In this episode, we encounter a Neuroi the size of a bug who’s MO seems to be draining electrical devices of their power, and crawling up the girls’ butts. I am neither making that up nor exaggerating it than the slightest. At one point, I was going to call Strike Witches the best ‘monster of the week’ anime since the first half of Evangelion, but no, you don’t get that now. I will not compare you to the epic Angel battles when you have beetle sized aliens anally violating your cast. You lose, sir.

At this point, Strike Witches has become a very popular and successful franchise, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be dying out anytime soon, which is fine with me. It’s entered the kind of space in my life that Starship Troopers and Pirates of the Caribbean occupy, where I’m the kind of die-hard fan that will seek out every new title in the franchise and love it on principal, no matter how shit they get. The first step towards that franchise becoming a reality was the second season, and while it’s both better and worse than the first one for a variety of reasons, it proved at least that there was a lot more ground to cover in humanity’s war against the Neuroi, and there was a whole world of possibilities to branch off into. While it mostly plateaus from the first season, it does unfortunately feel like it stumbled a bit in some areas, and lost a step as a result.

I give Strike Witches season 2 a 7/10.