In a list whit the animes Allison to Lillia, Valkyria Chronicles, He.S.My.Mstr, Wolf Rain (..) it makes a good look.
In my oppinion it’s an very good to awesome (10/10 pts) anime.

All three of the shows I just mentioned have a singular point that isn’t necessarily true in shows like Nanoha: their power does not exist in a vacuum; it is given to them for a purpose.  There are also shows like Yume Tsukai, where the magical girl part is just dressing and the bulk of the show is something else entirely (in that case, social criticism.)

freehrm – So interpreting the Strike Witches’ spirit as the goodness of the universal human spirit is impossible, because they are not average humans?  I certainly agree that they aren’t normal, but I don’t see the futility of a dream of peace as the ultimate take-home lesson.  Yes, humans make war and do bad things to each other.  Despite that, there will always be those who wish for peace. 

The Strike Witches differ most from regular humanity in their powers, not in their psychological composition. This is of course my own interpretation, but I think it has some support in the show: from the very beginning, all the moments when the audience is set up to identify with them are intensely “human” moments.

I think Vallen Chaos Valiant also makes a very important point, which cannot be overlooked when evaluating this series. It would seem that above all else the over-riding point of the narrative (besides pantsu) is to say that humans are an inherently violent race and we solve are biggest problems by killing each other.  And the only way we are going to be able to survive against impossible odds is to not only join forces but to go one step further and become one force. It is too bad that the Strike Witches are the only fantastic element in the series. It is as if the creators are saying, “Yes! Here is the answer to human survival, but its a fantasy and therefore impossible.”

But that is just my take, I’m probably reading way too much into this vehicle for panty shot fan-service.

I guess since different parts of the world associate different Bad Things with WW2, it’s a kind of convenient signifier for which everyone can provide their own horriffic-cultural-memory signified. Or something, I’m not very good with signifiers and signifieds and whatnot.

I found myself musing on a tangentially related subject the other day.

@IKnight – Certainly perfect unity amongst human beings is an illusion, perhaps even in the most desperate of times.  Above, I bring up the general cultural assumptions that inform the public in the Strike Witches world – assumptions which are informed by but by no means perfectly indicative of reality.  These assumptions give rise to the general spirit of camraderie and goodwill seen in the show.

I’m glad that you think there is merit in the concept of WWII as a cultural touchstone for evil.  In America and Europe, the Holocaust is probably the most prominent evil aspect of it. In China, I imagine the Nanking Massacre is given priority, and in Japan, the beginning of nuclear warfare seems to have the most weight.

@Vallen Chaos Valiant – There is indeed eventually proof that the Neuroi are not so much evil as tragically noncommunicative. However, I would argue that if you seek a statement on the human condition, you cannot ignore the show’s focus on the essentially good-hearted title characters themselves.   Thus, I think the suggestion that Strike Witches is an affirmation of human evil (as you said, the opposite of what I suggested) goes too far.  Most of the people depicted are generally good, if flawed.

This is not to say that the darkness of the human heart is not present as historical fact – as I noted, even without WWII, “there is still a long and brutal history of war, oppression, and slavery to contend with.” Viewed from the perspective of the average person, however, the Neuroi are not at all understood (it says so repeatedly in the narration), and it is easy to cast humanity as the heroes and the aliens as evil aggressors.  Culturally, then, this is how things stand. Note that the line you quoted about the cultural apprehension of evil is preceded by a reminder of “the ignorance present in the minds of virtually all characters in the Strike Witches universe.”

Except the episode with the friendly alien suggested otherwise; the aliens only attacked humanity because it thought that’s how humans communicate. They imitate human war machines, and fight humans because they think that’s the way humans interact with one another. The start of WWII being the first thing the aliens saw when they arrived. It says more about us than what it says about the aliens.

So the story is the exact opposite to what you suggest; evil IS found in the heart, and without that evil in humans the aliens would have attempted to make first contact peacefully.
When in Rome, do what Romans do.

I think there were some posts during the show’s broadcast examining the relationship between the understanding of WW2 in modern-day Japan and the version of the 40s that Strike Witches presents. Den Beste, for example, wrote something arguing that Japan has a different attitudes to the Japanese Army and Navy of WW2 and that this might inform SW. (I know so little about Japan and Japanese history that I can’t really comment.)

On a not-particularly-related to Strike Witches note, I think the idea that the Second World War (more specifically the Holocaust?) is our pop-cultural go-to event for Bad Stuff definitely has legs.