My wife and I have been together for almost thirteen years, and married about half of that. Although she is not as filthy of a weeb as I am, she has partook in the cartoon waifus with me before. So she has slowly over time understood what kind of characters I tend to be drawn to in a show. It’s actually pretty frighteningly accurate in many cases. According to her, I prefer the shy, silent-type, which is in complete contrast to her who is most certainly not shy or silent in any way. I’ve never attempted to unravel this psychological mystery, but seeing as it mostly began with Nadesico’s Hoshino Ruri, I don’t think it’s so much silent as it is smart, and in anime, all the super-smart characters tend to be introverted shy silent-types. Except maybe Washu.
Of all the girls in the five-oh-one, I think what puts Sanya V. Litvyak out on top, aside from a giant-ass rocket launcher, is that I can respect the hustle of the night crew.
See, her entire job in the squad is to run night patrol using her ability to monitor radio frequencies and scan for enemy activity. But most of the time she basically just flies above the clouds, picking up distant signals, and singing to herself. At dawn, she hobbles back to base, and collapses into bed.
But aside from being a night owl and attune to communications, compared to most of her contemporaries, she is mostly calm and collected, atypical of your standard cat persona. Though given my affinity for cats, perhaps I always consider the cat-girl my spirit animal. Ruri wore the cat suit in Nadesico. Really, you just can’t watch a show with a large female ensemble and not have a BEST GIRL. You can’t be one of those hurr I liek ALL the girls equally because I R equality person!!!!1111!12 That isn’t how this works, kid. You jump into that camp and defend it as your life depends on it. Team Motherfucking Sanya, bitches!
But listen, don’t look too deep into this, it’s filler content, but I did give it some thought as I finished the first season rewatch of Strike Witches last night. I do also have a figure of Lynette Bishop. I’ll leave you to figure out all these loli airplane mechanics.