Do you remember that episode early on in Welcome to the NHK where Satou and Yamazaki are sitting in a cafre 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 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.
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