Schoolgirl Strikers: Animation Channel

Recommendation: Don't be deceived by the premise and genre tags on this series, it's roughly 90% slice of life comedy. If you go in with that understanding, it's a fun little magical girl show about cute girls doing cute things with some light action. Definitely recommended if you like CGDCT, not recommended if you're hoping to see cool action scenes or an interesting and complex plot. Light, very vague spoilers for the ending below.

The general vibe of Schoolgirl Strikers is "what if someone made Yuki Yuna Is A Hero, but replaced all the sad parts with more scenes of the girls having ... wholesome fun together". That's not to say the series is entirely without drama, especially in the last few episodes, but it isn't anywhere close to as dark as modern magical girl series like Yuki Yuna or Madoka Magica. It's much more in line with classic magical girl shows where there are obstacles they need to overcome, but the good guys always win in the end and learn a valuable lesson about the power of friendship or whatever.

The drama and plot is generally the weakest part of the show in all honesty, it shines brightest when it's in slice of life comedy mode. Fortunately that's the vast majority of the show. It's never really laugh out loud funny, it's just got a lot of gentle humor that'll get you smiling and make you like the girls. There are a lot of fun bits throughout, like Mana becoming a yeti hunter or Odile's shoujo anime parody, that are just cute and nice, even if there aren't really any great jokes or anything you would describe as hilarious. There's not a lot of substance, but it's very pleasant to watch and the girls are all very likeable, including the side characters.

It's got plenty of flaws too however. The art and animation looks a bit cheap at times. The action scenes are pretty uninspired. The deus ex machina ending is bad and they barely even put up a pretense of attempting to explain why everything turned out fine in the end. The characters and themes are a bit childish ("learning valuable lessons about trusting your friends" is a theme that would be more suited to elementary schoolers rather than high school girls, and some of them act more like elementary school girls as well).

None of that is enough to make me dislike the series as a whole though. Overall I liked the characters a lot (Odile best girl) and it was a consistently nice watch that always made me chuckle and put me in a good mood. It may be uninspired or lacking substance in some people's eyes, but I never had a bad time watching it. Frankly speaking, it worked as an advertisement for the mobile game too because I wanted to check it out and spend some more time with the characters, only to find out that it isn't available in English. Oh well. Maybe some day.

well i ended up enjoying this more then i thought it is not great but i do feel some effort was put in i would say this is average

story 6
well i can give the show some credit it takes the world it set up seriously which is a lot more then i can say about many other anime with cute girls doing things which i feel really does some good the it still does not get enough attention atleast i don't feel the only reason its in the anime is because the studio feels its obligated to put it in but as for the ... cute girls doing things part it was not as lazy as some other ones i seen but it does have that type of slice of life that depending on the person they either enjoy it or fine it plain boring and im and a bit surprising this anime actually has a ending climax but really only miner scenes were put in to set it up so really there was not nearly enough done to set it up and if they did it would of likely improved the anime

art 6
it is nothing specially it looks about average for a modern anime the fights seemed ok but for the most part felt average

sound 6
yet another part i would say was average but i did notice in some parts of anime music was playing during a fight scene or some other scenes to set tone which was more then i expected

characters 5
well the one thing i can give this anime is it was kind enough to not have a over hyper active main character that oh so many cute girls doing things anime have which can work but they don't put enough effort to not make it annoying but enough with that rant the characters i didn't find to be done in a way to annoy me the only a few characters personality the rest were basically pretty generic which i really could not say they had a personality but atleast was set up to be generically entertaining which kept my attention enough

enjoyment 7
this is the fist time i feel there is a point in doing this section as i do think the reason i enjoyed this more because before it i saw the absolute worse kind of cute girls doing this show before it were it really feels like the plot is a pure excuse and the girls are just everything expected that type of show with very little thought or effort put into it so in comparison even the this had was also kind of a show about cute girl doing things even the it could of used a good bit more work to put everything it has together it felt so much more enjoyable in comparison because i do feel some thought was put in and some thought and the world was handled in a way that made me feel like it was more then a cheap excuse to show cute girls doing thing

overall 6
really this is average at best but it atleast feels it not trying to lazily copy all the other cute girls doing things anime and have characters that give the tone a bit of a different tone even if to many are to generic but it can feel enjoyable if you like that laid back comedy slice of life it atleast feel like it had thought put into it so i do feel it more people might get a bit of enjoyment out of it even the i would it more one of those animes you watch when there is nothing else you want to watch

What LA feared Ange Vierge would turn into...

For a cute girls beating the shit out of monsters, Schoolgirl Strikers has a mash of slice of life *ahem* "COMEDY" and "action" genres, though this anime has a huge tendency to it's slice of life to it's action. LA thought this anime was a borefest from episode 1...-sigh- let's get on with this.

So from what LA said in the aforementioned above statement, for a mobile game anime adaptation, the anime has less action elements than anything and is a more footnote on the anime itself. The slice of life elements is a total bore, LA being completely ... honest here all due to the main cast effectively faffing about, having "development" as in none at all and their all stereotypical archetypes except Tsubame Miyama voiced by Kaori Ishihara who's essentially an amnesiac leader of Altair Torte but she doesn't come into focus until the anime final episodes.

The slice of life element to Schoolgirl Strikers consist of the main cast of Tsubame, Mana Namori voiced Yui Ogura, Yuumi Sajima voiced by Kana Hanazawa, Satoka Sumihara voiced by Rina Hidaka and Io Yaginuma voiced by Miyuki Sawashiro where they either go into the their real world school and does typical school stuff, in the parallel world, they "bond" together and do "stuff" with some other genre elements in certain episodes, the worst part is that the main cast hardly gets any character development from the slice of life elements to it and this anime heavily emphasis this but LA just couldn't see these characters develop or learn more about the world their in both the real world as well as their parallel world where red shirt bland monsters came from. Mana will always be the token genki loli, Yuumi will always be the other genki one with cooking as a hobby, Satoka being the foodie and detective and Io being the level headed one and the "athletic one". Let's not even get started with the huge cast list outside of Altair Torte who also doesn't get enough time to even develop anything about them becoming satellite characters within a group of satellite characters with their stereotypical personality and attire. Let's see each of the battle teams consist of 4 teams of 5, that's TWENTY characters plus minor characters and supporting characters AND VILLAINS that are just as bland and cookie cutter as the next one to the point LA had to keep saying..."who's she again?"...or "what's her name?". It's kinda a problem if LA even needs to say those questions even after the the halfway point..TO THE MAIN CAST CHARACTERS.

So with Tsubame's character development in the final episodes of the anime, it was already too late for LA to care about any of it even with Mana having a certain connection to some of the minions to the major villain of the anime. It's kinda simple why LA just doesn't care about any of it all. Why should LA care about characters LA doesn't care about and haven't been developed at all and have consistently faffed around and then expect us to care when it gets serious. Tsubame as a character gets a bit of an exception due to her being an amnesiac and all and her "mystery about her past" about her and is probably the only plot thread LA managed to be interested in....until they essentially expositioned Tsubame's past in just one episode effectively crushing any hope LA cared about ANY of these characters.

Ok, so how about the animation, done by JC Staff no less...is just "meh" at best. From it's bland character designs, the bland action scenes and backgrounds, LA just didn't have anything to say about the animation and it's just "meh" as best.

Voice acting?...-sigh- Kana Hanazawa and Miyuki Sawashiro are both wasted in this anime. Let's see, Yui Ogura got annoying very quickly what with her genki loli vocals and Rina Hidaka was ok at best. Seriously this entire voice cast is AMAZING not just Kana Hanazawa and Miyuki Sawashiro and their all wasted in this anime. Not much to say about the voice cast but...wasted beyond reasoning.

The final arc of Schoolgirl Strikers DOES finally bring some backstory to our major villain in waiting and her connection to Tsubame and at the VERY least, it does make "some" sense hell Schoolgirl Strikers tries to finally get serious with a cohesive narrative and LA DID quite enjoy it albeit only because it actually tries character development to one of it's main cast characters but taking the final TWO episodes just to get there?...yeah, THAT didn't help all the lull and slice of life "faffing about" episodes. The final battle and the aftermath of it all, well the final battle was actually pretty good if only because it's the FIRST legitimate fight in the entire anime, what LA really saw eye rolling is the fact that the final battle alluded to the previous "filler" episodes, sure it's a callback to the previous episodes but it's execution was laughable to again...eye rolling just so that those filler episodes had ANY relevance to the FINAL BATTLE AT HAND. The aftermath only brought on even MORE questions and yeah...it's never explained, just vaguely hinted at. LA was overall mixed with this finale.

So LA has said this anime is what LA feared Ange Vierge would turn into and LA stands by this one. Ange Vierge and Schoolgirl Strikers have similar settings and elements to them, from the groups of girls "fighting" monsters but where it differs is that Ange Vierge quite early on is that Ange Vierge scraps the "fighting monsters" and uses it's minor cast and turn them evil (ohh spoilers for Ange Vierge...ack...you know what LA doesn't care...it'll be a way to advertise Ange Vierge away from Schoolgirl Strikers all things considered) and BOTH characters on the good and evil side gets developed in their own episodes when confronting them, Schoolgirl Strikers just continues in fighting the bland monsters and "bond" with each other. Sure Ange Vierge uses more fanservice elements in comparison to Schoolgirl Strikers slice of life elements but it's kinda obvious with this why LA thinks that Ange Vierge is better in this regard. At the very least Ange Vierge tries to be different from it's genre brethrens, Schoolgirl Strikers feels like it was on autopilot for MANY of its elements of characters and plot until the final 2 episodes!. What would you rather see, a group of girls faff around and "occasionally" (LA says that loosely by the way) fight bland monsters and talk about friendship and stuff, or see once comrades turned villains and fight and bring character development with the occasional forced fanservice?...LA would say Ange Vierge if anything.

Schoolgirl Strikers is your run of the mill, mediocre "cute girls fighting monsters" just without the effort and none of the action in using it's elements of slice of life and action in anyways cept to waste your time. It's genre elements also clash heavily with one another due to the emphasis on slice of life more than the action. Might LA remind you this is suppose to be an anime about where dimensional monsters attack the real world and a school who established itself in fighting the monsters?. What's worse is due to the slice of life elements put into play more than the action is that it strips the main cast out of any urgency to act as it all work itself out just like that (yes even in it's more serious plotlines it has this atmosphere).

If you want something similar to Schoolgirl Strikers and wanted something to spice up this kind of "cute girls fighting" then watch Ange Vierge instead.

Schoolgirl Strikers is just a waste of time and only had glimmers of hope in some of it's plotlines only to flatline with lazy writing and lack of intrigue that for LA , this is probably the second worst anime for Winter 2017. -sigh- first Taboo Tattoo now Schoolgirl Strikers...well at least this is gonna be thee ONLY anime LA will berate JC Staff this harshly for Winter 2017 roundup.