Strike Witches: Delightfully Crazy

Do you remember that episode early on in Welcome to the NHK where Satou and Yamazaki are sitting in a cafe in Akibhabara, trying to come up with a main character for their eroge? Remember after being immersed in the Otaku Holy Land, Satou basically threw every single gal-game cliche at Yamazaki, who’s furiously sketching as Satou suggests a half-alien maid-robot with cat ears who is a childhood friend and is possessed of a spirit of a fox and…

Well: take that idea. Give them a high budget–a very high one. Give it a genuine classical music soundtrack (Rachmaninov’s 18th Variation on a Theme by Paganini in this case), a serious war story, and add WWII-style dogfight sequences. Add fan service.

What you get is what you see above–Strike Witches, an upcoming OAV. Every single moe convention seems to be thrown into this one, as well as mecha drama, and even more–it works. It’s beautiful to look at and even, at the end, a little stirring, which is far beyond anything I expect from this genre. This is an 8.5 minute triumph. It shouldn’t work, but it dang it, it does. I watched slack-jawed at the sheer audacity, ridiculousness, and delight that went into this production.

I must watch the full length episodes of this when it comes out. Now.

HT to my friend moritheil for introducing this to me.