Lazy and lowly.
Editor’s introduction: Our esteemed, adorable, erudite author.
We search everywhere for ports and shores,
Yet suffer grievously along the way;
Alas, we cannot draw near the bay,
Where humankind leaves the ship for shore.
We sail aimlessly to the ends of the earth,
For no one knows where to put in;
Neither day nor night do we find peace,
Yet no one cares for wisdom or heeds it.—Sebastian Brant (German), The Ship of Fools1
I
The anime adaptation of the Strike Witches four-panel manga began airing this April. The many projects marking the tenth anniversary may take this long-running franchise a step further, from Strike Witches to World Witches; perhaps the on-screen story with the 501st Joint Fighter Wing at its center will also draw to a close.
From the witches gazing toward the distant European mainland in the first season to Barkhorn and Hartmann looking across the Rhine at their homeland in the film, saying they cannot return, the protagonists of Strike Witches—that unusual unit, the 501st Joint Fighter Wing—always seem to be keeping vigil amid the smoke of war, like Odysseus on the rocks beside the sea. Their journeys to lend support elsewhere, and their repeated disbandment, make them seem all the more like voyagers adrift: displaced by war, never truly able to put in anywhere.
War seems to be a black tide that naturally brings life into being and destroys it. Even in the blind multitude turned into mechanical exhibits, the danger and pain that emerge as a savage nature returns, together with their terror and anger, make these lines from The Ship of Fools all the more vivid. They also bring out something of life’s condition as a passenger. On this voyage back to a land of ease, we are tempted by confinement, as though by singing heard through drifting mist; we can never truly make landfall anywhere, only sink into the mire along the shore, as if taking root in the wood of the suicides. It is hard to become stone amid all this. Even stopping our ears is futile, only making the music received by the other senses more vivid. It is precisely this capacity to feel that makes human beings fools; for machines, too, it is this capacity to feel that turns them into cutaway diagrams.
Suffering thus seems especially acute in these young, sensitive witches, who are not yet able to grow numb to it. Minna’s fear of her lover’s death, Barkhorn’s remorse over her inability to protect her homeland and her sister, and the burden Perrine bears for Gallia’s restoration all make them display some degree of blind attachment. All the warmth and happiness shown in the anime become a perplexingly tranquil scene upon a sea of suffering—a joy at once torn and intoxicated. Later, this state is shattered, like a Neuroi nest.
II
Upon life’s raging torrent, fools who transgress the moral law are banished and imprisoned, confined aboard a ship with black sails, as though under the gods’ punishment of Odysseus. The ship also calls to mind Deucalion or Noah. Collective blindness casts the mad fools out onto a ship, unable to find a harbor in the flood that punishes everything. The voyage of the ship of fools becomes a tragic hero’s lament, ending only when the hero is reconciled with the capricious powers that oppress him, and can return to his spiritual homeland.
The voyage of the ship of fools is therefore a journey of recognizing one’s sins and expiating them. We remember the Sphinx’s riddle, which stands in the way of a person’s return. But those whose eyes are veiled do not yet know that the ancient verse means human beings themselves, and so have not considered the consequences of solving it. All the sins that must be expiated are foreshadowed there. Sin does not mean only a wrong actually committed; it is also a predicament one must inevitably face: blindness where one ought to see clearly.
There is thus something especially pitiable about the blind attachments and lack of self-restraint shown in the anime. They seem to express the fear that accompanies the search for the meaning of one’s existence. What flying means to Barkhorn and Sakamoto is particularly revealing here: the very thing that seems to crush a person also contains uncertainty about the self. From the first season through the film, they come to know themselves and, on that basis, go beyond themselves.
Yoshika Miyafuji’s role as the protagonist is particularly interesting. Her innate healing magic is itself an expression of powerful vitality, one that can even spread to those around her. As an audio drama once noted, the witches of the 501st changed after she arrived. If the flying witches, too, become figures keeping vigil aboard the ship of fools, then through her interactions with them she helps them advance a little on this seemingly endless voyage. Within this relationship of care, human life itself seems to be affirmed; Yoshika’s resistance to numbness and mechanization also seems to bear witness to such a relationship. The affection between Lynette and Yoshika, for instance, allows Lynette to cast off the pressure that diminishes her. Seeing Yoshika as a younger sister likewise allows Barkhorn to change through their interactions.
Yoshika’s shield-like presence thus suggests a compassion that will not give way. Even the humanity the Neuroi seem to display can move her. She is especially receptive to the pain of fate, and so detests war, yet throws herself into an ever-sorrowing multitude. Her compassion not only allows her to feel others’ suffering; it also lets them see themselves reflected in her. Within this relationship of mutual reflection, they come to know themselves.
This may also be the significance of Yoshika exhausting her magical power at the end of the second season, just as Sakamoto does. When the necessity of protecting others places her in the same position, she does not feel that losing her magical power leaves her without value as a witch. Instead, she displays still greater vitality. This also allows Sakamoto to let go of her former fixation, as though only then does she finally recognize the nature of life and become reconciled with herself. Yoshika’s return to flight in the film, for the same reason, makes all of this a perfect cycle.
One ancient form of life’s salvation is this ascent after falling into the black tide. Inanna’s awakening from the sleep of death symbolizes life’s revival as spring returns to the earth. Later, in Greece, the cycle of the earth’s death and revival gradually gave rise to the Eleusinian Mysteries, revealing the meaning of life beyond this shore. Plato’s Symposium, too, speaks of a person continually becoming new throughout life, while letting the former body die away; and the vital impulse, set in motion by love, makes that person better. Both Odysseus and Aeneas sought guidance from the underworld during their wanderings. Dante revived this custom: in The Divine Comedy, he enters the eternally sorrowing multitude, descends to the deepest reaches of Hell, and washes away his own blind pride on Mount Purgatory, to ascend at last to Paradise.
III
Erica Hartmann seems to embody many contradictions. The work offers only glimpses of these overlapping contradictions, yet they attract attention with their faint, restrained fragrance. The languid, detached attitude of an outsider and the attentive, considerate perspective of a protector find expression in her through the fool’s language of inversion.
Outside combat, Hartmann gives herself over to indolence, displaying a deliberate laziness and ease. She seems to act more on instinct than on careful thought, doing as she pleases and remaining difficult to fathom. She seldom takes an active part in the group and has no wish to rise within it. Promotion and competition with others mostly weary her; her everyday conduct looks more like resistance. Her position as an outsider comes from her unwillingness to fit in.
This also makes her so unobtrusive that Lynette finds her difficult to assess. Even with Barkhorn, the person closest to her, she still appears to others to hover between closeness and distance. Her seemingly aimless, inexplicable self-indulgence is like a mockery of desire. As her teammates observe, even talking to her face-to-face gives them no clear idea of what sort of person she is.
This incomprehensible yet seemingly simple manner may, conversely, make it easier for people to relax. They find her baffling, yet she hardly seems like an ace; she becomes amusing and approachable. Sanya, for instance, who is described as an insubstantial, ghostlike presence and struggles to express herself, can show her feelings more openly and naturally around Hartmann, even though much about her remains puzzling. She can talk to Hartmann about her troubles, and even volunteers to help her train.
It resembles Hartmann’s way of fighting: her spontaneous, easy flight follows a trajectory that is difficult to anticipate, yet always lets her evade attacks and reach the best firing position. Both on the battlefield and in private conversation, Hartmann is a keen observer. Her position as an outsider seems to afford her a clear, open vantage point. She sees what is happening around her and the suffering at its heart, makes accurate observations, and responds with just the right touch.
To me, then, she seems to be trying to play the fool. Beneath a seemingly less-than-rational, unfathomable surface, she points out the heart of things with a certain calm precision, giving it a flippant form to defuse its force. This approach, like a dance of death, seems to be her attempt to confront suffering and offer rescue. She may appear to stand a little higher than those who are blind. Yet the observer’s self-preservation—drawing others in with a trace of arrogance while maintaining a safe distance—may bring her no peace. It may instead make her afraid, leaving her stuck in the comfort of the margins, unable to move forward. Perhaps this is what makes her a fool.
IV
It may be interesting to compare Barkhorn with Hartmann. Unlike Hartmann, Gertrud Barkhorn is a serious, tightly wound character, an ace who is meticulous in every respect. Meeting her for the first time can be somewhat intimidating, though later one discovers something of her gentleness. Compared with Hartmann, who always maintains a distance beneath her cheerful surface, Barkhorn seems to place her hope of salvation in intimate relationships. Her feelings for her younger sister are central to her characterization, driving her actions from the main anime series to the manga spinoffs.
In the long retreat after a rout, her profound remorse at being unable to protect her sister is a larger defeat in miniature. The inability to resist suffering and protect others brings immense grief and burden. Taking all of this upon herself, Barkhorn spends a long time like a string about to snap. Her way of facing the facts and saving herself from them seems to be to relieve suffering by realizing the possibility of saving someone else.
Someone outside a relationship can also enter it and thereby ascertain what remains of the self. Compared with becoming insubstantial through observation at a distance, this seems a more tangible form of existence. For Barkhorn, it is also a return to a relationship already broken, within which the self left over from that time can be repaired. Intimate relationships give her a feeling of power that confirms her place in existence. Perhaps a possibility emerges: if the relationship can be maintained, repair is possible, and she herself can be redeemed from suffering—whether past, present, or future.
Yet this seemingly tangible return to a relationship seems more like an illusory painkiller, a phantom consolation. Once she wakes, she discovers that a boundary like the Rhine still lies in between. This also becomes the source of a deeper unrest, leaving her, like Hartmann, trapped in a mire of comfort.
V
Seen through this analysis, the differences between the two are as striking as their common ground, like the same thing reflected in different eyes. Both are elder sisters, and this aspect of their images makes them overlap. Or rather, the anime’s portrayal of such intimacy shows, to some extent, different forms of resistance.
The emotional bond between the Hartmann sisters, together with Erica’s aversion to experiments and her reaction to her younger sister’s departure for Suomus as a soldier when they were ten, makes her indolence look like a passive response to power imposed on the body: half asleep at the margins, she mocks those who are awake. Barkhorn, meanwhile, intent on making amends, actively places herself within the relationships she needs, expressing compassion within the group to dispel suffering. Because of the group’s needs, this compassion necessarily conforms to its order, but this exposes her to further setbacks.
The first layer of overlap between them lies in a simple yet dangerous drifting outside the relationship and the compassionate attachment that holds it in check. The pull between the two produces a still, illusory image. Above this relationship, another layer reflects it in reverse, likewise a state of intoxication and dream: now the simple, almost drunken attitude soothes the danger straining to break free of an uneasy self-restraint. It is a relationship charged with expectations like Phaethon’s, and with the danger of burning within it.2 In the anime, Barkhorn’s occasional self-destructive impulses—that tension just short of snapping—ease under this unhurried consolation.
Such consolation may be so tranquil that one falls asleep in fear. Hartmann, who prides herself on her rationality as an observer, is in fact less able to see this clearly. The comforter is more afraid of the absence of comfort. She clings to an illusory stability, refusing to let that arrangement take on further layers and unfold. Thus, throughout her portrayal, she resists as a matter of course every change—to her own character and actions, her position within the group, and her relationships. Barkhorn, by contrast, transgresses the boundaries that have been drawn, driven by a dangerous impulse that comes with clear recognition. Here, too, we seem to glimpse a similar sisterly relationship between her and Yoshika. With Hartmann, by contrast, the two seem like mirror images, reflecting each other through countless overlapping inversions. Beneath their opposing figures of the fool, fear and unrest bring them together. From this, we can see that they depend on one another.
VI
What has always interested me about Strike Witches is how its characters respond to their past experiences, and the relationships of dependence and rescue they form in war as soldiers who are still girls—like the relationships passengers can form aboard a ship of people gazing into the distance. In thinking about this, I have drawn not only on the work itself but also on official material that fills out the story and suggests possibilities beyond it. Much of this essay is, of course, my own subjective imagining; I hope it may nonetheless offer a useful way of thinking.
Editor’s Note
The author is my one and only fave.