So the new season of anime is coming up, and honestly none of the shows look that appealing. I think the anime industry has evolved to the point where if you are not familiar with the newest LN/manga/source material fad, then you'll find a lot of seasonal anime uninteresting. So this means that I'll probably miss a lot of what apparently makes, let's say, the KanColle anime 'so good' unless I go ahead and play the game. 

I guess this is, more or less inevitable because the anime industry has never really attempted to make itself 'accessible', to popularize itself amongst the general population. More recently, I think it has completely turned into a sort of self-sufficient market, where whatever it produces is produced solely to satisfy otaku demands (by otaku, no less). So it's hardly surprising that just about everything you watch nowadays has cute girls in it and are set in high schools. Maybe it's because otaku tend to be the least popular people during high school, and that to be the centre of a high school harem fulfils their subconscious fantasy or something like that. Well, that's just my speculations.

So first, let's talk about Strike Witches -Operation Victory Arrow-. It's a three-part OVA series set between season 2 and the movie. The subs only came out like a few days ago, so I was really eager to check it out because I've always been a pretty big Strike Witches fan. 

Strike Witches is best described as a guilty pleasure. It's got quite a bit of fanservice, most of the time it's really nicely animated, there's a lot of action, and there's plenty of cute girls (a whole squadron, in fact). So for me Strike Witches kind of hits all the right buttons, although I can understand that it's the sort of anime that's designed to appease a very specific crowd of people. I've watched both seasons and the movie, and I liked season one the best because it's got a nice balance of drama and comedy, while season two didn't feel as 'fresh', so to speak. 

So even though the writing of Strike Witches isn't anything too exceptional, I felt they did a really good job with character interactions. You could clearly feel the distance between the cliques of girls, so that even though they are all technically friends, there's still a bit of distance between, let's say, the Karlsland girls and Charlotte/Francesca. And you could sense that Perrine is kind of in that weird spot where no one really likes her, but for the sake of etiquette hangs out with her anyway. It's very subtle, but I thought they did a really good job of it.

So the first episode of the OVA series centres on the girls from Karlsland: Trude, Erica and Minna. Erica's sister, Ursula comes along and tries to get the girls to try out the new Me 262, aka the very first combat-ready jet fighter ever produced. Erica throws a tantrum, some Neuroi appears, everyone works together after some minor drama, Neuroi gets destroyed and somehow Trude got herself inside a dirndl. It's a pretty typical Strike Witches episode, honestly. But everything about it felt nice, probably because I haven't watched Strike Witches for such a long time, and I really really wanted my fix. Besides the lack of fanservice (for my standards), it was a good episode.

I'm really looking forward to the next episode, which will be about Charlotte and Francesca. Although honestly, the girls I'm most looking forward seeing are Lynette and Yoshika, since they're my favourite. Oh, and also Mio. I really miss her laugh. Now that I think of it, I really miss Strike Witches as a whole. It was such a wonderful ride while it lasted.

Oh, and also, check out the OP single for the OVA by Yoko Ishida. 'Shooting Star' is a really catchy track, at least for me.