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You know how Legend of the Galactic Heroes is Napoleonic Wars but in space? Well, Gunka no Balzar is the Franco-Prussian War but in the Franco-Prussian War. And it's not the only parallel. GnB is pretty much the manga version of LoGH. Absolutely sublime.

From a historical and political point of view, Baltzar is incredibly fascinating, because lesser stories would try to shoehorn in modern day ideas and morality, but instead it shows even Great War -era thinking as futuristic dreaming. Actually, it's so authentic, I'm even wondering if the author is a bit of a relic himself, heh. Not that I would mind, that ... would only make him someone after my own heart.

Anyway, how the characters behave like healthy 19th centurymen makes pretty much all of them likable regardless of whether they are technically protagonists or antagonists. In those days, autocracy, wars of conquest, revolutions, executions, corporal punishment, etc. were everyday, accepted things and thankfully, the story totally reflects that without more than a whiff of authorsplaining. The story builds up and you have to jump onboard at your own pace. Not that it moves quickly, you have plenty of time for that. Baltzar is a very slow story. Everything happens at a very relaxed pace, just perfect for a crypto-historical drama.

One thing that I especially adore is how uncharacteristically realistic the portrayal of military life is. You tend to either get a high school or salaryman office with army trappings, or something like Full Metal Jacket. But in reality, the military in a conscription country, especially military schools of different types, is regular life for the people in it. The garrison is your home. Your regiment is your family. Your comrades are your brothers. And the story reflects that in a beautiful way. An old reserve NCO like me gets all nostalgic about it all. If I had to describe GnB with a single word, I would use "cozy". Incredibly cozy. Reading about the students grappling with change and conflict and different backgrounds and worldviews is really just a damn joy. It's amazing how a historical and fictional story, a political drama, has more normal and relatable characters than almost anything that is a modern day personal story, specifically written to be as relatable to a reader as possible. Even though for Baltzar's genre, the people are technically speaking just there for the background, playing the roles of mooks to be expended to make the story go forward, literally everyone is soulful and full of character. In a world of death and war, marching in files and ranks, mechanically reloading muskets and cannons, everyone feels somehow totally irreplaceable. I can't put across just how goddamn full of SOUL this story is.

Little things I don't like is that the drawing is a bit shaky, especially in the beginning. Some parts are really good on the other hand, especially a certain cavalry fight between former students... you'll get there. Then there are some annoying anachronisms. Possibly since Prussia entered the Franco-Prussian war with the fast antiquated Dreyse, and the author had to show Weiβen (fictional Prussia) as a modern power, he chose to replace the musket-like arms with Kar-98k -lookalikes, which never stops looking dumb. He should have used the 1888 commission rifle instead. Or at least a long Mauser. Perhaps one faraway future year, some heroic fan will redraw them and save a million sore butts. Oh, and Bernd Baltzar (I mean, "Bernd", really?) himself is even a bit too good at his job, kind of bordering on being a male Mary Sue. And his hair makes him look like Phoenix Wright.

Anyway, f'ing read it.

This manga is... exactly what I'm looking for in life. Soft velvet for my fingers. Honey for my eyes. How so? Well, it has the one characteristic that makes myself too an ancient fossil in today's world... The story is not *about* the main character. Where is she from and what do others think of her? Who cares. She has interests and hobbies and obsessions and dreams and desires. That's what matters. She doesn't even want to be a villain, or to fight the heroes. But she finds out that by breaking all the rules of what she's supposed to do and how, she can ... instead use the position dumped on her to fullfill her own desires. And those desires are to molest all the magical girls that she comes across. Magnificent.

Apparently this show is a spinoff of something called "Swordo Artto Onrainu"... Never heard of it myself, but apparently it's a big deal in some circles. That attachment seems to be, as a person who has never gone near it, a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it's certainly brought a ton of eyes on something that clearly would not get much attention otherwise, being a budget-ish anime about not-lolis, guns and video games. On the other hand, it is a curse because the show effectively doesn't spend time selling this world to the audience at all. It is explained... but not sold. You ... are clearly meant to already care because it's SAO, and that is a great opportunity lost to make a setting that fits the story.

Technically, the show is competently enough made. Usually it's straight up good looking. Characters look nice. Backgrounds are actually very well made, I really like them, and consistently too. Then eventually something really sticks out as having totally screwed perspective or scale or being hastily drawn, usually the guns. It's kind of funny, in fact, when the show sells itself as gun porn but the guy who drew that AK or whatever clearly hasn't seen a gun in his life and it ends up looking like a misshapen children's plastic toy. Well, these days characters usually carry some sort of medieval implements as weapons, so it's not really a surprise if firearms fall out of the comfort zone of fresh faced animators. One thing I noticed is that in the ED art, probably subcontracted to another studio as is traditional, the characters look totally different. Better, I would say. I mean, damn, that's an epic thigh gap if you ever saw one. Ahem.

Sound design is pretty good. There was even a point where I really was stunned by how good it was. When some gunfire is heard and identified by the characters.... they actually sound exactly right. Like, if you paid attention to the sounds in the background, you could have literally come to the same conclusion as the people on the TV at the exact moment they did. Boom, you are instantly inside the fictional world, believing that the celluloid paintings you are looking at are actually genuine reality unfolding. Everyone in the industry take note. Music is pretty good also but also very light, easy, boring. AGAIN, I have to complain about the mixing. MAKE. THE. MUSIC. LOUDER. You know how movies make loud things loud and quiet things quiet? Yes, it's an insulated theatre, yes, they have massive audio equipment there. But people watch movies at home all the time and literally nobody complains ever that the audio isn't mixed to a monotone drone that turns into pleasant a white noise you can fall asleep to at a low enough volume. Gah!

The characters are all pretty enigmatic and not in a good way. In fact, the whole show has a "tell, don't show" thing going on. Partly it's the franchise spinoff thing, partly it's the story. But it's also a conscious or unconscious decision to not sell the audience everyone's motivations and worldviews. Things are just delivered: "This is how it is." and you should just swallow it. Not good. Should be much better.

Oh yeah by the way, almost forgot. The show has a whole bunch of utterly glorious jokes. It says PG-13 on the tin, and you can really get into that vibe after a while. Then the show suddenly unleashes a real Bruce Lee kung-fu punch straight into the gut by saying something that nobody under 25 could appreciate.

So you might wonder, since I have mostly said bad things about this anime, how and why the hell did I give it a nine? Well, for no objective reason whatsoever. I just really like it. It's my thing. It's made for guys like me. I like the characters not because they are well written but because I like them as people. I don't like the story because it's brilliant, I like it because it goes the way I like it. I don't like the world because it's diligently built, I like it because it has all the stuff I like in it. I don't like the art because it's high budget, I like it because there's a small pink girl with a machine gun. So einfach ist das.

I binged the entire show in just a day and I found it very enjoyable in a popcorn kind of way. If you ever feel like you just want to watch something that's easy to swallow but still stimulating enough to be entertaining, this is it.

Let us start with the bad side. The story is... okay, but the genre itself has so much built-in stupidity in it. It takes place in a fantasy world that is also fictional. It is high medieval but also an MMO with a GUI built into everyone's retinas. It is real life where people suffer and die but it's also ... a game where you get good boy points when you do fetch quests. It's a world where creatures literally grow older and wiser in days just because they get exp and level up. While this doesn't make it any less entertaining, it does ultimately mean that you are restricted in what kind of emotions the show can pull off. You can't be angry or sad or happy beyond a certain limit. Some character dies tragically for example? In real life it is crushing because there might be literally nothing that you could have done about that as the victim. But in a game world, if you can become essentially unkillable by common violence just by grinding trash mobs for a couple of weeks, getting killed by anything except some interdimentional hyper monster is effectively just your own fault for being lazy. And that means that the script has pretty much kneecapped itself before it even begins. Don't do MULTIPLE LAYERS of separation from reality.

That said, I'd still call it very well written in all other ways. It's just.... nice. Pleasant. The characters that are meant to be relatable are relatable. People generally act like you would expect them to act in such a world. It has interesting worldbuilding and it's especially well paced, every episode has tons going on. The one season itself could have been 3 or 4 seasons in lesser hands. And even after 25 eps, you still want more. It really is a grand adventure.

What comes to the technical execution, I would call it very competent. Only once for literally a second I got the feeling that a far away character had been drawn on top of a poorly animated 3D muppet. Otherwise everything looks beautiful, if not especially original. At one point the fur collar of the MC ruffles in the wind and I just thought... "That's nice... nice.", like the police officers from South Park. The red haired princess has an absolutely epic amount of emotion in all of her actions. Give the guy who's responsible for that a damn promotion. The emotional power she emits in every scene she's in is so strong that you barely notice that every other major character spends most of their screentime in the classic head-on portrait, 1/2 profile or full profile where only the mouth moves over 3 repeated frames lol. Ironically the main characters are the boringest looking and most simply drawn people in the show. Intentional to economize animation cost? The fictional GUI thing looks really great. Why do the studios absolutely knock it out of the park with this thing that seems so ancillary I will never know, noticed the same thing with Slime. In the past writing in such things wouldn't have even been readable, it would have just been squiggles and random words that don't even form sentences. Sound design and music are pretty great. I was never bothered by anything soundling out of place. Especially the first opening theme is pretty banging, though also funny because it's a Japanese college band rap thing.

All in all, I would recomment this show to everyone. All ages and sexes and regardless of preferences. It's like eating satsumas. You might not feel like eating a satsuma right now, but nobody hates satsumas, right?

Note; I have not watched the rest of the series when writing this because I had the chance to review the show in isolation and thus give it the fairest shake possible. This is something that could of course become a cause for regret later, but I thought you should know.

Crest of the Stars is an extremely comfy old-school anime that fills you with positive feelings. Nostalgia. Optimism. Freedom of thought. Attraction. Respect. Appreciation. It does things that only something from the 1990's can do and something that we, sadly, have lost forever. It should be raised to one of the greats that everyone refined ... should enjoy at least once in their lives. Do you know for how long to brew a tea before it gets bitter? Can you tell a good cognac from a poor one? Can you no longer use a keyboard without your favourite color of Cherry MX switches? Do you only drive a vintage Mercedes W123? Then, you must see this one. Like all things in life, it's not perfect. But it is exquisite.

To start with, it looks great. Of course, it's only of TV anime standard and not movie or OVA miniseries. But it's really good. There is that 90's haze that covers everything, and you know what, I don't mind it at all. Actually, this show just begs to be watched on a big CRT screen. The art style is unique and confident. Everything stands out. Especially, in the very beginning, you see some highrises painted on the background that immediately tell you that – viewer – we are now in the future. Simply looking at the terraced buildings climb into the sky picks you up like a pretty girl picks you by the shirt so high that your feet don't touch the ground anymore. Speaking of, the girls are very pretty. Ahem.

The soundwork in general must be quite good because not once did I note anything annoying. The space war sounds are very... usual, but you can't really fault something purely because it's ordinary. It could have been a chance to make something more unique instead however. The voicework on the other hand is very good. Every person's voice fit the role perfectly and conveyed moods and personalities appropriate to story and visuals. I looked up later and apparently most of the talent had long careers behind and ahead of them, no wonder.

The characters are really nice. They are all absolute 90's bait every one of them. Form fitting clothes, ideals, deep thoughts, morals of good and evil, doubts yet bravery in the face of danger. Wisdom beyond their nominal years. If you need a contemplation space to ponder how we all found ourselves in the 2000's with things turning the way they have, turn on an incandescent lightbulb, get a hot drink, cross your legs and pop this into the VHS. The heroic 90's teenagers, middle-age men with stubbles and sunken cheeks and unreasonably buxom mature ladies in very snug military uniforms will keep you perfect company while you meditate.

There is a fly in the soup however. There is, in the story, a part where it gets pretty stupid. Just... close your mouth and swallow so you don't bite on your tongue. It doesn't go on forever but it does take its time. Also, I will say that you might not be relating to or liking the people that you thought you would have. Not wrong or bad or perhaps unintended by the authors or anything. But it is a thing that I felt when I watched the show and that bothers me on a metaphysical level.

Unfortunately I did not like this last addition to Strike Witches. I wouldn't call it a huge disappointment since there are a couple of other things in the pipeline for the series that I am excited about, but I was kind of hoping Road to Berlin would pull me through the thin fall season and it didn't.

The animation work is alright and we've already gotten used to heavy use of 3D graphics, never done particularly well, in the series, which some may find off-putting otherwise. I have a personal pet peeve about how much gradient colouring there is, as it just makes everything kind of ... blend together instead of standing out. But this is just a matter of opinion really. The story tone of the season is on point compared to past works; the kind of things that happen are like the things that happen in previous seasons. The characters are also pretty much like they have been previously. Voice talent brings in a good performance. Music is good, maybe a little short of previous seasons and movies that had really banging soundtracks, though sound design otherwise is extremely uninspired. If you told me they never once used a sound effect that didn't come in a stock library, I'd believe it.

Then the tyrannosaurus in the room: The script. I'll be very frank. It is boring. Nothing emotionally impactful really happens. Not only do they use plot points and story structures that the series has used before, they also reuse those things within the season. Repeatedly. In addition, it is very thick on lore, which was weak before but was so sparingly used that it didn't really matter. Baddies be and WW2-fighter-aces-become-magical-girls fight the baddies. A good Strike Witches entry is perhaps 20% canon lore driven material and 80% mostly lighthearted character drama, fanservice, slice of life, comedy, period observation. This season has the numbers flipped the other way around. You only get a couple of episodes of the of the kind of things that I want from the series and the rest is bland and repetitive. You even get a persistent gray filter over the screen to make sure you aren't enjoying yourself too much. Oh, and the OP and ED themes are just... really quiet for some reason. Maybe everything would have just nicely come together after all if the the opening theme really rocked your socks off at maximum volume and got you pumped for an exciting adventure. Instead it's mixed in at a polite indoor speaking voice level. Like an itch that you just can't scratch no matter how much you try. Argh.

As an independent work, as much as I would want it to be otherwise, Road to Berlin does not stand. The words that come to mind are generic and childish. But as a continuation to previous work, since you are already attached to the characters, it's O.K.