Strike Witches

Strike Witches was the creation of Shimada Fumikane (or is it Humikane?) who is probably the most well known artist associated with the mecha musume genre, and probably the military mo-e genre as well.

In roughly the same time period that Strike Witches came out, Wings of War: The Dawn of World War II was released. This tabletop game re-implemented the rules system popularized by Wings of War: Famous Aces for use with WWII era aircraft.

Combining Strike Witches and Wings of War seemed like such a logical step, that two doujin games were made in response. One being Wings of Witches (KASU ver.), and the other Wings of Witches (CUTE ver.).

I played a bit of Wings of War, and liked the system enough to consider making maneuver decks for use with 1/72 scale fighters and 65mm Strike Witches, but almost immediately gave up on the idea as being too time consuming. It was also a problem that there were no 65mm Strike Witch figures.

The first problem was addressed by Adorable Rocket, who introduced me to a homebrew version of the FlightPath system for use with petites. The D&D version of the original rules are available free from WizK!ds Games.

The second problem has yet to be adequately resolved. In fact, the only figure I own who wears a striker unit is not even an actual Strike Witch, but rather Konata Izumi cosplaying as Yoshika Miyafuji.

Like most Niitengo figures, the head and body are smaller than that of Nendoroid Petits (particularly early ones like Miku).

The only other SD Strike Witch figures that I could find that were close to being 65mm are Mame figures made by Liquid Stone.

The Mame figures stand about 70mm tall, and have proportions similar to early Niitengo figures. The most glaring difference between Mame figures and Nendoroid Petits is the length of their legs.

I purchased the figures individually, and am missing Eila (who seems to be rather difficult to find outside of the set). I believe there is also a secret figure, which is a witch Neuroi (the only figure in the set to be wearing striker units).

X-11 Witch-like Neuroi

In order to make an actual Strike Witch, I swapped Konata's head for Miyafuji's. Unfortunately there is no way to support the figure, since the socket for the stand was in Konata's hair.

完璧

Some other figures which I am interested in getting:

SD Sanya & Eila Set (Phat Company) which was a Chara-Ani and Comptiq exclusive. I'm not sure how big these figure are compared to other petites.

Nendoroid Petit (or at least that's what some vendors claim - looks more like Niitengo to me) version of Mio Sakamoto (12 yr ver.) that came with Strike Witches Zero 1937 Fuso Sea Incident Limited Edition (Kadokawa Comics Ace).

Good Smile (or Toy's Works) needs to make a complete set of petite witches in striker units!

65mm Gaming

As part of a new project I'm working on, I've decided to start cataloging my collection of Nendoroid Petits and other super deformed (SD) style character figures.

Most of my figures are Nendoroid Petits, so the typical figure is 65mm tall. Other brands of SD figures have different heights and proportions, however I am lumping all of what I consider to be roughly compatible figures under the category of 2.5" (or 65mm) "scale" :P.

I first became interested in these figures as references for sculpting because they had a minimalist level of detail that still managed to portray the character in a convincing manner. Later on, when Super Dungeon Explore was released, I started thinking about using these figures for gaming purposes.

After all, with millions of these figures sold throughout the world, what do people do with them? Can they be content with having the figures just sitting on shelves and taking part in the occasional photo shoot? Why not give them more purpose as gaming miniatures?

Anyway, I'll probably just start with posting comparison pictures of the various figures, and add material on my gaming system when I get them better developed.

みくみくにしてあげる♪

Tenra Bansho Zero

I never thought much about the motivation behind the work produced by a game designer or scenario writer because I always figured that people created games for the genres they loved. Why else would they do it? I have no problem with buying books made by creators who have a passion about their subject, because it (generally) comes out in the quality of the final product.

I could tell that Andy Kitkowski really believed in TBZ, but in the course of trying to find out more about this game, I got the distinct feeling that there was an underlying contempt for elements of the original work on the part of the developers (ostensibly because of cultural differences). I refer primarily to this post by wundergeek.

In the post, wundergeek claims that the cover is too graphic for "Western" audiences. Kitkowski seems to agree, but his comments are quoted without much context. I had to scroll up and down on the page to make sure that I didn't miss some other piece of artwork. Then I read the comments a little closer, and examined the area wundergeek was complaining about... Huh? There's no camel toe or anything... Frankly, what I see is a female character in what is typically considered a masculine pose.

In my opinion, someone must have a pretty skewed sense of perception to be solely focused on the character's crotch when there is so much else going on in the artwork. Below is a fairly typical depiction of Spider-Man. Is it significantly different? Is the pose acceptable because Spider-Man is male, or are people also offended because of the display of spider crotch?

Would the character on the TBZ cover be improved by having her assume a female pose that is more familiar to "Western" audiences?

Compare Superman's pose with that of Spider-Man.
Now compare their poses with that of Wonder Woman.

I'm a bit skeptical that such a pose is humanly possible.

The post then goes on to decry the evils of fanservice. A static panty shot of an animated sequence that probably lasted a fraction of a second is shown as evidence. So how long is an episode of Sailor Moon? About 20 minutes? I'm not sure how many times panty shots occur in an episode of Sailor Moon, but let's be generous, and say it happens half a dozen times. This still accounts for less than 0.5% of the content in an episode.

Again, the focus is on some minor element of the whole that wundergeek finds distasteful or whatever. I think that the majority of the time, these scenes happen so fast that you don't even notice them unless you are actively looking for panchira. The fanservice is there for a particular demographic. If someone doesn't belong to that demographic, but is still looking for panty shots, it seems like they're going out of their way to be offended. I'm sure that there are a lot of more productive things that they could be doing with their time.

I know I'm ranting too much regarding wundergeek's post, but I just find it annoying that she seems to think that her own views are equal to that of the entirety of "Western" culture. Wow!

Whatever. In the post, Kitkowski comes off as politic in his comments as ever, and I guess I can understand his stance regarding the perception of anime-based games given the amount of uninformed commentary received by Maid the RPG. Still, I find his response rather weak.

I guess his new project Ryuutama should be wholesome enough for "Western" audiences, so hopefully it will save him a lot of headaches in the future.

So why is any of this important? To me it's important because TBZ is a localized translation, as opposed to a direct translation, so I feel it is important to know where the people doing the work were coming from philosophically. I don't particularly like having someone sanitize or filter things so that they fit into some perceived world-view that may or may not be what was intended by the original creator without understanding how the sanitization was being done.

In the end, I did buy Tenra Basho Zero. It was only $14, but frankly, it is a game that I will probably never play, because nobody in my gaming circle (including myself) cares for storytelling type roleplaying.

My brief review of the game itself can be found here.

The offending cover which was not included in the pdf I purchased can be found here.