Reviews

What I find fascinating about Brave Witches is the fact that its protagonist is different in just about every way to that of Strike Witches'. Whereas Yoshika has prodigious levels of latent magic power, Hikari has less than average, and isn't much good at using it either. This creates a set of problems for her that Yoshika never even had to think about, for example where Yoshika was scouted Hikari had to prove herself, a feat possible only with her incredible levels of grit and stamina. This extended socially as well, manifesting in Kanno. While Yoshika and Lynne became friends because they saw eye-to-eye and related heavily to each other, Hikari and Kanno start out hating each other's guts. Right, "each other's." I appreciate that Hikari responds to Kanno's aggression with a reasonable amount of her own, which is something I couldn't imagine Yoshika doing. That, too, is part of Hikari's determination, I find.
Those two and Takami were the best characters in Brave though, most of the rest weren't quite as interesting or lovable, (but they were still cute) though they have potential were we to get another season. (Which we should.)
I've heard people say Brave's art and animation is a lot better, which you might think based on the date and studio, but nah, some of that CGI was pretty bad. Still looks good overall.
Brave Witches is much more about Hikari, as opposed to Strike Witches tending to focus more on everyone, so even with its inferior cast Brave can get surprisingly close to Strike in overall enjoyability for me. While Strike is a more episodic show about the world's best witches beating the strongest Neuroi and living together, Brave is the story of Hikari's growth and acceptance into a community despite the odds, and for that I think it deserves more credit than it gets. That's not to say Strike lacks such things, but Strike can do it for everyone so it's different than Brave pretty much dedicating itself entirely to it.