Interest

Finnish Embassy Celebrates Strike Witches Character's Birthday

The Finnish embassy in Tokyo celebrated Eila Ilmatar Juutilainen's birthday on Tuesday with a message for the Strike Witches character on its official Twitter account. Earlier this month, the embassy responded that it "knew all about that" when a Twitter user asked if Finland knew that an anime had re-imagined the Juutilainen brothers of World War II as two sisters "with big breasts who fight in underpants."

The Finnish embassy posted the birthday message one day late (it was already Wednesday, February 22 in Japan) and noted that the expression "happy birthday" is "hyvää syntymäpäivää" in Finnish. The embassy also added that "syntymäpäivän sankari" is the Finnish term for someone celebrating their birthday, and that person normally treats birthday party guests to food and drinks in Finland, which is the opposite of usual practices in Japan.

The two Strike Witches television anime series and the upcoming March film are based on Humikane Shimada's mecha-girl illustrations. Funimation licensed both seasons of the series in North America.

[Via Moe Otanews Sokuhō]

Update: The embassy wrote, "Hyvää syntymäpäivää Eira Ilmatar Juutilaiselle!" but later explained that "Juutilaiselle" is not a misspelling. In the Finnish language, nouns' endings change, depending on how they are used in the sentences according to the rules of grammatical declension.