at least in the anime all of them were like, a bit witch-like The scandinavians use skies, the french use these weird horses without legs, metallic and seemingly magic in nature
But these guys got... snowmobiles? Just straight up snowmobiles.
Anno
well flying is one thing, plummeting is not ever an option.
the other thing is that despite this, the anime and manga still only ever have mages fly Like, they aren't ACTUALLY flying machines, even in the adaptions
it's just such a strange thing for the manga and anime to have added in when the LN never makes even an allusion towards tech like this having existed in the past, much less still existing The war that begins after Tanya gets isekai'd is... kind of implied to possibly be the first war since mages became able to fly at all, judging by the first real combat mission the 203rd went on, beating the snot out of a whole country's armed forces and pushing to the capital without any meaningful resistance due to the simple fact that this other country were still waging entirely terrestial combat and didn't even conceive of air forces being like, important as enemy or ally They had total air superiority against an enemy without even rudimentary anti air, which really only makes sense if this is the advent of airborne mages
S C
if memory serves, mages prior to airborne mages DID absolutely exist and were part of the military, but they were basically beefed up infantry Even if you can't fly, being able to project a shield in front of yourself and a small squad can really turn a fight around
S C
though aircraft absolutely are a thing, fighter planes and bombers are fairly common, so it is real strange for any country to exist without any anti air to speak of, their entire armed forces being like, 1800s era formation marches and... muskets? might have been bolt action rifles, but either way that's the type of tactics they had going on No armor, no AA, no aircraft, not even mechanized infantry, or even cavalry
I guess it was just the author showing the power of airborne mages by making up a guy for them to fight, but it does kinda make some strange implications about the lore How could a nation like that even exist, like literally at all, prior to entities like the UN or whatever? They'd get bodied by literally any one of their neighbors, and they'd deserve it for logging off the military tech tree over 100 years ago
