You may have heard of kung fu, but the girls at Oarai High School practice gun-fu—really, really BIG
75mm gun-fu, in fact. It's called Sensha-do, and it's the martial art of operating armored tanks! They
take it seriously too, and since winning the national Sensha-do championship is such a huge deal at
Oarai, they sometimes go to extreme ends in order to get the best students from Panzer class to sign
up. Which is how Miho Nishizumi, who HATES operating tanks, gets drafted to join doomsday-driven
driver Mako, even-triggered gunner Hana, highly receptive radio operator Saori and combustible
tank-fangirl and loader Yukari as the incomparable Anko Team. They may not be on the half-track to
fame and fortune, and maybe a few of them would rather shop for tank tops than become tops in tanks,
but once their focus is locked and loaded, they're absolutely driven.
(Source: Sentai Filmworks)
When it comes to entitlement and birthright, Miho Nishizumi has a lot to be tankful for. Sorry, but I promised I’d make that joke at least once in this review, so at least it’s past us now. She hails from a family of highly trained, highly disciplined practitioners of one of their world’s most popular and prestigious forms of martial arts… Tankery. Yes, in this world, the most globally popular sport isn’t soccer, it’s full blown tank battles, and while it’s full extent is unknown, we do know that there’s a high school division that’s taught as a class, the students of which go to war with other schools in a yearly tournament. There are many nations taking part, and many different styles to contend with, but the Nishizumi family is at the top of the game. With the elegance of Wushu and the power of Krav Maga, the Nishizumi style of Tankery specializes in cold hearted dominance, seizing victory at the cost of all else, and with more than 18 tanks at their disposal, they had the force to overwhelm any opponent, even at the acceptable cost of several of their own units. However, there is a black sheep in every flock, and the youngest daughter of the Nishizumi family… The comparatively gentle Miho… Doesn’t quite agree with the all-or-nothing approach that her family has long treasured. One day, during an important tournament battle, she abandoned her own tank to save the lives of several of her teammates whose tank had fallen into a deep river. Unfortunately, she’d been driving the flag tank, so when the parked vehicle was shot by enemy fire, her school wound up losing the tournament. Disgraced for her heroism, Miho was spurned by her family, which she repudiated in return. In order to get away from Tankery forever, she transferred to a school that didn’t have that class on it’s curriculum. Little did she know that on her first day at this new school, Tankery class would be brought back, and the student council would all but blackmail her into signing up for it. With the very life she’d been running from having caught up with her, will Miho become the leader her family never saw in her, or will history repeat itself? Have I ever spoken about Actas before? Have I ever even heard of it before? I don’t think I have, which is understandable, because while they’ve done a ton of minor work on other studios’ projects, they really haven’t done that much on their own. From what I can tell, aside from Girls Und Panzer, the only major work they’ve done was the currently running Princess Principal, on which they shared duties with Studio 3hZ. They did Moetan and a few of what I understand are the less popular Transformers titles, but nothing else of any serious note, which is a shame, because I really like what they did with Panzer. I’ve never really had a problem with moe designs… Or ‘moe blobs,’ as they’re also sometimes called… But it’s kind of toned down here, taking a more grounded and natural approach to the big-eyed, chin-deprived features that are more closely associated with the trend. The moe design aesthetic works surprisingly well with the eponymous tank action, even if the animation doesn’t blend as smoothly as I’d like. See, Girls Und Panzer uses a mix of traditional two-dimensional and more modern three-dimensional animation, and both work really well, at least for the most part. The slice of life aspects of the series, AKA the girls when they’re not operating heavy machinery, are done using 2D animation, and while I wouldn’t say any of it’s bad, it does feel wildly inconsistent. A great deal of it uses limited movement and smart budget saving tricks, such as selective framing and frozen talking heads, but it wouldn’t be to a distracting or noticeable degree if it wasn’t for certain other scenes that are so over-animated that they feel almost like they were done using rotoscope. The tanks in the series are almost always shown in CG, and while their movements don’t always look convincing or well integrated, they both look and move like real tanks, and the level of detail used on them is stunning. Unfortunately, while both sides of the animation are more or less adequate, they can look a bit cringey when both are moving at the same time. You get a dose of this right in the first scene of the first episode, where we begin with a POV shot from inside one of the tanks, and we catch several glimpses of moe girls sticking their heads and whole bodies out of their respective tanks, and Good Lord does it look like an awkward combination. They just don’t move the same, and it doesn’t always look… Right. This gets better throughout the series, especially after they figure out that it looks much better to focus the camera on the girls while keeping the camera steady, negating any excess movement from the tanks so that they don’t have to move the girls with them, so it’s easy enough to get over. The character designs tend to get weirder as the cast expands, seeing how the main cast is geared towards normalcy with hairstyles that inform their personalities… The lazy girl has long thick hair, the delicate girl has lighter and fluffier black hair, the love-sick girl has hair that’s long, pampered orange locks, etc… But characters occupying the side tanks feature teams of military buffs, younger girls, girls who all look like clones of each other, so at least you can’t say they got lazy or uncreative with their moe blobs. The soundtrack, by Shiro Hamaguchi, is mostly set to the style of military march music, and if you want a quick comparison, there’s a track called Panzer Vor that, early on, sounds eerily similar to the theme song from Disney’s Recess. There’s a lot of rolling drums at the base of the music, and it’s overlayed by a handful of different wind instruments, your standard marching band fare. There are a few exceptions, such as in regards to foreign characters, like the British tune The British Grenadiers, which acts as a reverse of a lot of the more standard tunes, as it starts with the flute and then adds in the drums. There was initially a beautifully rendered version of an old Russian folk song on the soundtrack, but because Crunchyroll couldn’t get the rights to it, they had to replace it with something else Russian sounding from the public domain bin. They went, of course, with the Pac Man theme, which didn’t even come close. Another noteworthy track is the cast being forced to sing the Goosefish song, but it’s nothing without it’s insane dance visuals. Honestly though, the most noteworthy music that the dub was able to retain is the opening theme Dreamriser, from the band Chouco, which is absolutely delightful. The English dub is unfortunately on the disappointing side, as Sentai Filmworks apparently decided that instead of trying to match the moefied voice of the characters… A feat that, like an accurate kansai dialect, is distinctly possible to pull off but still highly difficult… They would instead use more normal, natural sounding American teenage girl voices, most of which hit a lower register than you’d expect from a glance at the characters, and it doesn’t work as well as you’d hope. To be fair, it does start to sound a lot better after a few episodes, especially as Meg McDonald, one of Sentai’s most recent hires at the time, manages to find a connection to her character that may have something to do with the character herself growing in confidence and comfort with each passing episode. Actually, a lot of the cast of this dub are unknown names and recent(at the time) hires, including Rebekah Stevens growing into her role of the excitable tank nerd Yukari and Molly Searcy… Well, honestly being a bit miscast as the sleepy and quiet Mako, as you can just tell she’s struggling to give the character personality despite the restrictions of a lower register. Caitlynn French was also hired around 2012-2013, but it’s arguable that she’s come a lot farther than her contemporaries since then, with plenty of notable star performances under her belt already, and even though she’s not playing the main character here, she plays around with the role of Hana, a girl trying to transition from the gentle delicacy of flower arrangement to the raw power of firing a tank cannon and finds a lot of character in this dynamic. There are a bunch of veteran actors in the cast, with recognizable voices like Monica Rial and Luci Christian popping up in the rest of the main tank class, and some incredibly talented names like Hilary Haag and Brittany Karbowski getting meatier parts as villains, but the most surprising for me was the boy-crazy Saori, and after stumping me for most of the first episode as I tried to place where I’ve heard her before, it hit me like a ton of bricks that she was played by voice acting veteran Jessica Calvello, who I honestly hadn’t heard in anything since 2003. I mean, okay, she had like 6 or 7 jobs between 2004 and 2013, but none of them were really high profile, and now, she’s getting lead roles left and right, and deservedly so, with fan favorite performances in Attack on Titan and Maria Holic, to name a few. I’ve mentioned in other reviews how excited I was to see her coming back in a major way to the dubbing industry, and her performance in this is probably it’s biggest saving grace. The first episode does sound a little awkward all around, but she’s the only main actor whom I can confidently say was putting forth maximum effort since the beginning. That’s not to say she makes the dub sound good, however, because the deepened voices coming out of characters that are slightly grounded but still over-the-top in design is a hard thing to get used to. Hell, the perfect example of this dub’s problems is the student council president, a short girl with tsundere pigtails whose voice is way too deep for her stature. It’s kinda worth checking out at least once to see what Sentai’s newest hires of this decade are capable of, and to celebrate Calvello’s triumphant return to action, but the sub is way better. Girls Und Panzer is what I like to call a Gimmick Anime. It’s not deep, it’s not high concept, it’s not a rip-off of anything more successful, it’s not following popular trends… It’s the kind of show(Well, manga, in this case) where the creator was able to come up with one weird, original concept and build a story, world and cast of characters around it. This may sound like a new concept for some of you, but if you think back, there have been plenty of Gimmick anime that have become successful over the years. High School of the Dead and Tiger and Bunny lit up the market back in their day, and over ten years later, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is still finding new ways to expand the universe it built off of it’s gimmick. All you really need to do is take your original idea, set it into a tried and true formula, populate it with archetypal or even subversive characters, and then find ways to market it, so that people get hooked on the new idea while being drawn in by the same old surroundings that the gimmick manages to cover up. If that sounds cynical of me, well, that’s because more often than not, Gimmick anime don’t always work, and there are a myriad of problems they can go through. For example, the gimmick can get stale, exposing the characters as running jokes who can no longer support it, which is what happened to Dagashi Kashi, at least in my opinion. You can focus on the gimmick to the point that the series loses it’s sense of direction, which is probably how Bento wound up going off the rails with two unwatchable and thankfully skippable episodes. You can focus way too hard on marketing, which led to Strike Witches going overboard on fanservice to an unforgivable degree, or you can try to make your gimmick show more than the sum of it’s parts and fail miserably, winding up looking stupid and pretentious as a result, like Sasami-san@Ganbaranai. If your main character IS the gimmick, you run the risk of sacrificing plot, story and the rest of the cast as props to support the exploits of said character, like Squidgirl did. Or you could be like C3, and pick a gimmick that feels way too disturbingly similar to real life tragedies. Okay, to be fair, Girls Und Panzer almost falls to that last issue, with tanks fortunately being a lot more removed from reality than lifelike toy guns and thus not nearly as uncomfortable to think about, but aside from that, it really doesn’t have any of those other problems. It fused it’s gimmick with one of the most enjoyable story structures you can pick, the ‘underdogs proving themselves in a tournament’ structure template, and in doing so, it was able to keep the story simple, hold to a consistent direction, keep it’s gimmick fresh with the increasing difficulty of each battle and the challenges both during and inbetween, and it had so much realism in the movement of the tanks and the tactical usage of terrain and strategy that they were able to get away with some otherwise ludicrous logic fallacies… Which, to be fair, was more for the sake of keeping the show from crossing the threshold from tank violence to actual human casualties. Yeah, I’ll believe a human sticking out of a tank is too small a target to hit, because a moe show like this one REALLY doesn’t need to get that dark. Of course, being a tournament style show that only has 12 episodes, it did wind up facing one other potential problem. Using Yuri on Ice as a begrudging example… Seriously, I really wanted to like that show more than I did… It’s entirely possible for a large cast to feel underdeveloped in a story that seems to be focused more on performance performance performance, with interchangeable stock characters just kind of existing for the sake of existing, and it’s just as possible for a show like that one to carry low or even no stakes. Again, though, this is a problem that Girls Und Panzer manages to avoid. The characterization is a bit light, with no individual characters having arcs outside of the tank battles, and the few that do exist being resolved for better or worse by a simple win/loss, and honestly, none of the characters… Not even in the main five… Are particularly memorable as individuals. Even the villains, who are a lot more fun to watch, are little more than stereotypes. Up until my second time through the series, this was my one major problem with it, but now that I’ve seen it again, the characters are developed… Enough. The main cast may not be made of definitive characters, but you know enough about them to like them and to know why they’re in the game, and what they’re getting out of it. They don’t go above and beyond, but it’s acceptable. They even change by the end, albeit in smaller and more subtle ways than some viewers will be used to. The supporting cast is largely interchangeable, but with the exception of some cosplayers towards the end, none of them feel wasted or unimportant. They even wind up getting small arcs to themselves, like when the bumbling underclassmen wind up scoring major achievements in the last fight. Besides, when you really get down to it, this isn’t a character based story… It’s mostly plot driven, and while it’s not going to break any barriers, a team of underdogs surrounded by less important but still kind of interesting stock characters while battling foreign stereotypes that still manage to pull out redeeming qualities whenever needed is a scenario that’s more than enough to support a tournament show. In other words, Girls Und Panzer’s biggest accomplishment is in execution. The parts for the most part don’t feel like anything special or revolutionary, but when it all comes together, you wind up with an intense, energetic sports anime that’s able to use likeable characters and smart writing to create a series of truly heart-pounding fights, full of devastating twists and sudden, unexpected challenges that you can’t help but cheer every after every single one that they overcome. I will admit that I had a lot of problems with the first episode, and I found it really despicable that the student council would use such cruel and extreme tactics to force Miho to take tankery, but even that becomes forgivable about halfway through the series when you realize that there isn’t just the joy of success and the developing bond of the tankery class on the line, oh no, there are actual stakes at play here, and the more you grow to love and identify with these characters, the more you’ll want them to overcome all odds and win it all. Not bad for a show that needed two inbetween ova episodes to help us keep up with all of it’s characters. Girls Und Panzer is available from Sentai filmworks. The inbetween episodes I just mentioned are all available on the home release. A six episode OVA series is also available from the same company, along with another OVA and the first of seven feature films, although I’ve seen none of these, so I can’t speak as to their quality. Two different manga series, Girls Und Panzer and Girls Und Panzer Little Army, are available stateside from publisher Seven Seas. There are actually a ton of different manga titles (and one game) that aren’t available stateside, along with one light novel, but I’m sure we’ll get them eventually. Girls Und Panzer is by no means a masterpiece, but it still had every excuse in the book to not be as great as it is. Not only was it saddled with a production team that hasn’t done anything else of note until this year, it was also limited to 12 episodes and almost as many named characters as Fullmetal Alchemist had, and despite these problems, the final product is nothing short of amazing. It has some flaws, but aside from the easily excusable logic and safety issues, the only problems that hold me back from giving it a perfect score are the occasionally shakey animation and the handful of character arcs that get resolved way too easily at the end. None of these problems keep the series from being a blast from start to finish, nor do they manage to derail that overall feeling that the people working on it fully enjoyed what they were doing and believed in it with complete sincerity. I know a world where recreational tank battles have achieved world-wide popularity is a hard concept to imagine, but this series makes me believe in it one hundred freaking percent. It’s exciting, it’s smart, it’s suspenseful, and it’s honestly one of those rare titles that I’d recommend to just about anyone. I give Girls Und Panzer a 9/10.
(Discussed further in Episode 5 of the podcast I am in, Digitized Desperadoes. Here's a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWmf9zO83y8 ) What we have here is an unfortunate casualty of moe culture. It tries to (ab)use moe culture archetypes and typical story structure, but its attempt at distancing itself from more typical entries that tend towards slice-of-life is adding the feature of a unique world that has no place in our reality, and thus tries to make itself interesting. The world is that of a strangely pro-military global culture, where all high schools (perhaps only Japan, but I’ll get to that later) are on giant aircraft carriers and girls are encouraged to take up tactical tank skirmishes to “enhance their feminine charm.” This anime follows the story of Nishizumi, the demure protagonist with a family history of these tank battles (sensha-do in Japanese, Tankery in the Crunchyroll subs, Gun-fu elsewhere) and her schoolmates in their attempt to take the national competition to save their school. This is the most hackneyed concept you’ll ever see in what is essentially a sports/underdog story. It features most prominently in its contemporary, the Love Live franchise, and is wholly unoriginal at that. The plot is awful. Big deal, right? You’re not really watching something like this for a deep narrative, I’ll fully admit to that. I didn’t expect anything groundbreaking. What matters are the characters and the tank battles. The characters suck and the tank battles are… good, but I hesitate to say that. The characters are so godforsaken unoriginal that it’s painful to watch. They toe the line of what is acceptable in moe culture, with all of them being “fairly normal and cute, but just weird enough that they’re somewhat fetishized.” They fit the mold of being just strange and relatable enough to materialize in the fantasies of conformist Japanese youth. One girl has family pressure to be girly, one girl has an unwell grandmother/guardian, one girl is an otaku, one team is obsessed with volleyball, one team is all history nuts… they’re as one-note as you get. And the entire thing always follows the trend of “oh no, something bad is happening… but it got solved afterwards, so it’s OK!” One girl gets disowned by her mom for joining the tankery team. After a victory, the mom is okay with it. The main character’s family dislikes that she does things like “has fun” and “thinks creatively.” So she beats them in a tank match and they get all nice. It’s stupid and stupidly predictable. There’s never a realistic or compelling arc, they’re all typical “we do not support you, but after you try really hard we love you and forget whatever troubles we had.” In real life, sometimes you can’t make peace or reconcile people, but usually it’s a lot less black and white than anything. I feel like there are too many instances of a family disowning a child for just… playing a sport, when it’s not at all comparable to anything in reality that would get to the level of disowning. On that note, let’s talk about the world-building. High schools have been decreed to be on giant warships/aircraft carriers. I’m pretty sure it’s stated that this is in Japan only, but all of the other teams do seem to come from different countries, like America, Britain, Russia, and Germany, so this makes no sense. Also, it’s a national competition? Also, you see lots of support and quasi-propaganda for Tankery all around. It’s a professional sport, it’s highly encouraged for girls to join, it has a lot of money pumped into it across the world… But yet pretty much all of the girls’ families are like “uhh why would you do that sport? No one does that/it’s unfeminine/you get nothing out of it.” Even though there are tank cafes and tank specialty stores, just like, in a normal town. A town without a tankery team, also! That reminds me, it’s absolutely hammered into the viewer that the high school will be shut down. The student council knows about it very early, and other rivals from other schools blatantly admit to that knowledge, yet there are no rumors or leaks of this information. No one knows about it except for… rival schools, and the leadership of the school. In Love Live it was announced to the entire world, because you know, these aren’t things that happen secretly or under cover. You kind of have to let _students of your school_ know that ___their school might not exist in a year___, especially when they live at their school. It’s unnecessary melodrama, like all of the non-battle stuff in the narrative. And there are a few episodes that are completely character arcs and slice-of-life rather than battles, so it’s not like I’m complaining about subtext or sideplots, it’s definitely around half of the anime’s focus. Also, even in some of the combat scenes they feel the need to include a line from every single peanut gallery character in order to remind the viewer that “oh, they’re still here! And they’re still weird and cute, don’t worry!” It’s infuriating. There’s a particularly bad set of episodes against the Russian team (e8 or 9) where literally every single member of the allied team gets a line of dialogue just to prove that they’re confident. It’s so stupid. The battles? Yeah, they’re fine. The animation is neat. I didn’t like the CG for the motion at the beginning but by the end, it looks great. I have a special fondness for the 3-4 first person combat segments, they’re really dynamic and adrenaline-pumping. The tactics are mostly interesting and only occasionally (the fights between the first and last) devolve into simple underdog/gimmick combat. They clearly did research on tank battles and the specifications of each model of tank, and how they react in certain environments. It feels like a low-stakes war, and that’s refreshing to see. I don’t have a lot of complaints. If the show was 24/7 low-stakes tank battles (take out the fucking school closing subplot) I would love it. But it isn’t. So I don’t love it at all. The fanservice is infuriating. The main school’s uniform has this really uncomfortably short skirt that they don’t wear spats under, so that’s dumb. There’s also this gag where they lose a match so they do an embarrassing dance in an embarrassing outfit, which comes back later when they have the whole “group sings to improve morale” scene. The orange-haired girl who I hate’s whole gimmick is that she likes guys and dating them but doesn’t actually have any experience, but almost all of her dialogue devolves into “I’m good at texting!” or “this ought to help me get guys!” The historical references with each team are entertaining but useless, and all of the teams are unnecessarily antagonistic before the matches, turning into straight up hatred and derision. None of the teams are sportsmanlike before they lose, but they turn into perfect sweethearts afterwards. The soundtrack works well with the nationalities, because most of it is actual classical music from certain countries. It’s neat but it doesn’t stand out. Overall? I don’t like it, and I would never recommend this to anyone. If you like tanks, watch it. If you like historical tank battles, watch it. If you like really boring cute girls with vague tragic backstories, go watch it somewhere else I guess. 4/10.
Girls und Panzer brings together the cliche setting of a sports team trying to save their school from being shut down and WWII armored warfare. While the series offers little in the terms of writing, the concept of introducing tank battles brings with it some interesting mechanics and fantastic combat scenes. For the casual anime fan, the series will come off as enjoyable though hardly exceptional. However, for those with a knack for WWII history in both a historical reference and pop culture references, Girls und Panzer is nothing short of a masterpiece. With the guidance of __Takeshi Nogami__ and __Takaaki Suzuki__ assisting the directing team, the historical accuracy of the series in terms of mechanical, technical, and operation depictions is absolutely spot-on. The tanks and other vehicles depicted in the series are flawlessly created to their historical accuracies. Operation names and references are abound, historical terminology and references flood every episode, and pop culture references in terms of movies, music, and more are hidden in the backgrounds everywhere. From movie posters to models, food to quick one-liners, there is no shortage of things to pick up for those with the discerning eye. In terms of the characters, they are all well developed and play true to their set tones, but are typically easy to pick out. The Americans are boisterous, the Germans overtly stringent, the British refined, and so forth. While none of these are particular unique, the way the characters are carried out make them all endearing in their own unique ways. Even side-characters such as the _Rabbit Team_ are given their due diligence. The _Hippo Team_ and _Duck Team_ are shown in amazing fashion of how characters in a club can still have their own interests and motivations outside of the series setting. Yet all of these are still weaved seamlessly into the narrative and help bring the individual characters together in a fitting fashion. Girls und Panzer is a rare gem in modern anime that follows through with its purpose in every conceivable manner to the point of obsession. Every minute detail is given a painstakingly amount of effort to ensure its authenticity and accuracy. While the underlying theme of the series is rather cookie cutter, its amazing follow-thru to ensure the journey is an enjoyable one is sure to entertain even those with little-to-no WWII knowledge. For others, Girls und Panzer is sure to be an instant favorite for anyone with any amount of affinity for WWII history or mechanized warfare.
Girls & Panzer is an original anime by studio actac, a studio of which I’m not familiar with. It was created in 2012 & has since spawned several new entries & even a movie franchise. I don’t know what else to say in this introduction, so let's get started. Might contain spoilers, read at your own risk Story: The story of Girls & Panzer goes as such. Two opposing academies filled with moe girls fight each other in Tanks. A competition is going on throughout the anime & that’s pretty much it. The plot is honestly a really stupid concept, but I genuinely think it could work, moe girls or otherwise. Get some serious moments in there, explain the different sides of each academy, & give the girls some personality. The problem here is that pretty much nothing happens. Don’t get me wrong, things go on in this anime but none of which is interesting because the series fails to explain anything or give us a reason as to why we should care. In the second half of the series they mention something about how the academy might close/needs saving or something along those lines but they don’t explain why, they instead only tell us & don’t show us how this affects anything. The storyboarding is also incredibly atrocious. The series just flip flops between different locations on a dime & rarely ever gives us something to ease us into where the next shot is going to take place. They never give us a line of dialogue, a character looking in a different direction, transitional shot, or anything to help ease the viewer into where the next-shot is going to take place. The only moment I recall from this series that had any remotely decent storyboarding was in either episode 7 or 8. We see some Tanks on the move, we then pan above the tanks, & in that same shot, we pan the frame to where some snipers are. That’s decent, no, even good storyboarding, shame that the rest of the series didn’t have that kind of storyboarding though. Characters: I don’t really have much to say about the characters in G&P. They’re pretty much 1-Dimensional stereotypes of moe girls & nothing else. Take the main 5 from K-on but strip them of their personality & character traits, you have our lead characters in G&P. They don’t see a lick of development, they have no personality traits, interests, or anything to make them stand out. For how seriously the second half of this show takes itself, it’s absolutely shocking how lacking the characters are in this series. Art: The artwork on display here is absolutely atrocious. The backgrounds often look flat & like very little effort went into them. The series also incorporates major CGI usage, which is horrible. The series has a big problem of using 2D character art on the CGI tanks, it sticks out like a sore thumb & they don’t even try to blend it in at all. The series would have really benefited from a full CG artstyle, given how adament the creators are on using CGI throughout most of the anime. Not only that, but given that the series revolves around tank battle royale & the tanks are comprised of CGI, it would’ve made perfect sense. Another aspect of the art are the PS2 rendered landscapes. These, of course, look awful & like barely any effort went into them. On top of that, they clash with the 2D character art. The series also makes use of out of place CGI character models, but they don’t even try to hide them away in the background, they’re often up front & on display to where you couldn’t possibly miss them. They suffer from looking jank & again, out of place to the rest of the 2D art. In general, the character designs are uninspired & look like they just selected the same 3 faces off of a template & then modified them ever so slightly to try & mask the fact. The series also has an incredible amount of discrepancies to its artwork. Background characters will often suffer from “no-face”, skirts will be missing line detail, proportions will be incredibly odd (though to be fair, anime characters are never proportioned accurately to real life). I remember a sequence in the first episode where there were 3 birds, & their wings were flapping at different speeds, yet they were all going the same speed, same length, & same distance. There are many more, but I don’t wanna list every last one of them off. I’ll admit, I could overlook discrepancies like this provided the show at least kept me entertained. But the only time I get enjoyment out of this show is when I laugh at these discrepancies that they don’t even try to mask. The animation here isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever seen admittedly. I wouldn’t call it good, but it’s tolerable I guess. At least the series actually animates unlike some of the absolutely abysmal OVAs from the 80s & 90s that I’ve seen. So I can at least give it that. Sound: The voice acting isn’t very good. The actors all sound like they don’t don’t want to be there & are just reading off the script. There’s barely any emotional depth or nuance here at all. I’m not asking for voice acting that’s comparable to some of my favorite performances ever, or even top of its class voice acting. All I ask is that the actors sound like they at least care about their roles and are having fun with it. I hate to say it, but Mad Bull 34’s English Dub actually wins out here, and that dub is TRASH! At least there the actors sound like they're having fun with their roles. The sound design is ok I guess. It’s pretty inoffensive & gets the job done, but nothing about it stands out at all. Which, credit where it’s due I guess. They got basic sound design right. Final Thoughts/Overall. I hated Girls & Panzer, I hated everything about it. The story concept while absurd & stupid, is underutilized potential. The plot itself barely explains anything and the story does an awful job at getting a viewer interested in what’s going on. The storyboarding is a fail. The characters are all stereotypes with no interesting personality or character traits attached to them. The series suffers from discrepancies up the wa-zoo, the CGI is horrible & clashes badly with the 2D character art. The voice acting isn’t very good, & the 2nd half was boring. If the 2nd half at least stayed awesomely bad like the first half was, I probably would’ve given it a 2, maybe even a 3 for entertainment value. But this anime FAILED at being entertainingly bad. Final score is 1/10, this show FAILS across all categories & is above all else, BORING.
Girls und Panzer is a show that knows exactly what it is & accomplishes the goals it sets out. This is one of those animes that is well received by many non-anime "fans" or "viewers". Sure, lots of anime watchers like Garupan, but its ability to __attract folks outside of this group is respectable__ on its own. Garupan's audience generally consists of three major groups: history buffs, tank guys (especially World of Tanks players), & curious anime watchers. I myself would be considered a mild history buff & a curious anime watcher so of course, there can be overlap or exceptions in these groups. _I will be using the term "tankery" instead of "Sensha-do" or "Panzerfahren" to keep things simple & clear._ __Animation:__ Now under most circumstances I would condemn such heavy uses of CG in anime, but Garupan is not most anime. It has tanks! Large & intricately detailed tanks, with many edges, grooves, & moving parts. Drawing the tanks moving in 2D would extremely difficult to accomplish. I hereby say that __the use of CG in the tanks is necessary__. That being said the CG is done well. The tanks are well animated, contain all the details they need. In fact, I think the 3D models used for the tanks are actually decently accurate to their real-life counterparts. Or at least that's the general consensus I hear from the tank guys, I trust that they know their stuff. The rest of the animation is drawn in 2D & it's drawn well. Moreover, the animators have more or less succeeded in animating the tank battles, where we have 2D anime girls supposed to be operating these 3D tanks. It's not perfect, but it works in illustrating these truly awesome tank battles in a way that flows. At no point did I think the animation subtracted from the marvelous tank battles nor did it take away from the characters' hilarious interactions. The not so serious tone of the show helps alleviate the 2D & 3D being used together. __Style:__ The general style of this anime is hard to describe briefly. There is an overarching military style in this anime. To that of, each high school is on a giant ship, the British team's (St. Gloriana) tankery uniform is based on the Queen's Guard uniform, the German team (Kuromorimine) have their own military styled uniform etc. Also, in some sense there is a sort of "nationalistic" aesthetic throughout the show. This is based on the opposing teams school identity. There is a Russian school (Pravda), a British school (St. Gloriana's), an American school (Saunder's), an Italian school (Anzio), & a German school (Kuromorimine) featured. Their aesthetics are based on their respective identity & stereotype. While, the main characters' team Ooarai isn't really a stereotype other than being sort of moe, it does compensate with the different clubs from the school joining their team and using their unique club related skills in tankery. Garupan's tank battles are extremely well choreographed & thought out. Much of the strategies used are based on real historical strategies for each respective team (some more than others), with the exception of our main cast. I don't want to give spoilers, but it was really fresh to see that kind of attention to detail. Even if you perhaps can't recognize a Blitzkrieg when you see one these battles are still super entertaining. Garupan isn't just tanks shooting at one another, there are real strategies at play, maneuvering, & individual tank features (i.e. some tanks like the KV-2 are going to deal much more damage, some tanks have thicker armour & are going to need more firepower to destroy etc.). The main cast uses their own novel strategies. That being said, there are some inaccuracies or stretches made, like the tanks move faster than their real life counterparts, but the inaccuracies are not too burdensome & they do make the battles more entertaining. All of this together makes for some really thrilling & engaging battles. __Characters:__ The characters of the other schools are all based on their identities' stereotypes. To that of, the British team are usually seen sipping tea, are very "proper", & their commander, Darjeeling, regularly says quotes to sound profound, the American team is jovial & wealthy, the Russian team is cold, stoic, & "look down" on their opponents etc. When these characters are on screen it's hilarious, but due to the large cast it becomes hard to give each character adequate screen time. The main cast is sufficient. Miho is very reluctant, but clever, Mako is lazy, but very competent, Saori is lively & joined tankery to become more ladylike, Hana is unsatisfied with being a master florist & prefers tankery instead, and Yukari loves tanks. Yukari represents the tank guys & the history club represents the history buffs. It must be stated that the tanks themselves have in some sense their own character. The Panzer IV is very reliable, the Churchill tank has thick armour, the KV-2 is big & clunky, but has great firepower, the Tiger II tanks have decent firepower & armour, but are a bit slower etc. Keep in mind I am not a tank guy, I learned this from watching the show. __Narrative:__ The narrative is very simple. Our main cast must form a new tankery team & win the tournament. At the same time our main character, Miho Nishizumi, must win the tournament to prove to her family that her kindness towards others isn't a weakness. The creators of this anime are well aware of what it is & I appreciate that. You can tell the beginning of the anime is speeding through all of the character origins & setup to get to the tanks. This is a good thing, __they know what we want, that is, tanks.__ __Sound:__ The OP is fine. The ED is pretty good. The OST during the tank battles sound great & almost perfectly suits the subject matter. The use of marching band style music really gets you in the mood for these tank battles, it's very remarkable. The enemy team will have or sing a song relating to their school identity/stereotype upon starting the battle. __Overall:__ There is no anime quite like Girls und Panzer. Sure there have been anime with cute girls and tanks, but Garupan is so much more than that. I unironically learned a decent amount about tanks from this anime. The nods to history are pleasantly surprising & refreshing. The stereotypes are funny. The world of Garupan is comedic. The strategies are clever. The girls are cute & the tanks are super cool. If any of these sound interesting to you, I think you will like Girls und Panzer. __Panzer Vor!__ *Don't skip out on the Anzio OVA, it's hilarious. You don't want to miss out on seeing Anchovy Duce, it showcases their whole battle with Ooarai.* *I don't know why it has the "Yuri" tag on AniList, there is literally zero romance in this anime.*
"Cute Anime Girls Doing Cute Things." That's probably what y'all thought when you clicked on this title, right? Well, Girls und Panzer knows this, so this show is anything but cute anime girls doing cute things. Girls und Panzer, or Garupan, is the golden standard of historical military anime. It's name is as widely known in the military genre as One Piece is known for shounen. It impresses with faithful accuracy, compelling plot, and interesting synergy. The unique aspect of Sensha-Do, "Way of the Tank", or Tankery as it is in a few translations, give us a fun way to see historic clashes of superior engineering in a modern lens. Let's start with **Overall Plotline** I'm gonna start by saying this, but Garupan's overarching story is far from original. A team of girls unites under one common interest and uses that interest to try to rescue their school from shutting down. To do so, they participate in the closest tournament arc to try to achieve the title of best Senshado school. Apart from that, there are a few minor conflicts going off, like Miho's family ties, Hana's flower tradition, and so on and so on. While they don't deepen the plot by much, they provide a nice little fleshing out of the plotline as well as worldbuilding. But other than that, its a classic tournament arc. Enjoy it, dread it, it is all the same. **Characters** For this section, I think it wouldn't exactly make sense to judge each character for how much the show develops them. You can't just pick out the commander of a tank and say the tank team sucks because their commander sucks, you have to look at the entire team functioning together and seeing the tankers perform in real time. First off, Garupan made a brilliant job at making their competitors unique in both personality and armament. Each and every school that participated is pure eye candy for history buffs and casual watchers alike. Each and every competing school is based off of a real faction of WWII, and each mirrors their real-world counterparts. Britain? St. Glorianna's obsessive tea drinking, use of proverbs, and tight and unbreakable formations have you covered. America? Try Saunders with their overabundance of finances and resortment to use rather underhanded tactics. Mother Russia? How about Pravda's relentless strategies forged in the cold hearts of winter, and a leader with a superiority complex. Each faceoff against different and I love the uniqueness this brings to the table. As for our central crews, we see significant development for the main team in the Panzer IV, and some development for the other teams, but the main spotlight comes at the team continuously adapting on the battlefield as well as seeing Commander Miho adapt to the situation. You see so much depth that goes into Miho's thinking that it makes this band of ragtag tankers actually deserve a win. On top of this, thanks to excellent background research, each and every strategy used in the fights are actual strategies used in history. I may not be the biggest history buff in the world, but I sure as hell can recognize a blitzkreig when I see one **Art and Sound** This is by far the most impressive part of Garupan. While there is a good amount of CG used to render the tanks moving around, but dear god the tanks were recreated so faithfully that I cannot give a possible crap about CG in anime. The interiors of the tanks practically mirror their real-life counterparts, the details in when the tanks move is uncanny from the way they screech when drifting to how their cannons fire. The sound is no slouch too. A vast majority of the anime's soundtracks are marching band-like military processions. Here, have a listen. youtube(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=val5LZ-YURo) The constant steady drums of themes like these gives the perfect dramatic vibe. Sensha-do is a respectful imitation of traditional tank-fighting, and the theme actually outlines the fact that this is anime girls commanding these tanks, not professional soldiers. On top of that, it eggs your heart on because that's what military marches do. Garupan is the golden standard of historical anime for a reason, its faithful recreation coupled with meaningful stories makes it an entertaining watch, and it pleases history buffs like me and casual watchers like my friends. So without further ado, let our tanks march forth! Panzer Vor!
#~~~__Girls Und Panzer Review:__~~~ #~~~__PART 0: Preamble__~~~ (This was watched in Dub, I use Dub terminology, apparently some subs use different words for stuff like Tankery. Quite Frankly, a Skill Issue on their Part.) Hey you there, do you like TANKS? Do you like Cute girls IN TANKS? Do you like Schools that are inexplicably GIANT WARSHIPS? Do you like WAR GAMES? Do you like Government programs that are almost certainly fascist governmental propaganda that's being used to indoctrinate a young female base into being normalized to the prospects of brutal mobile warfare in giant hulking deathboxes? You do? Hell yeah, me too. This show is like a gift sent from God, probably not specifically to me, but it certainly hit all the aspects of being exactly my kind of show. As a fan of stupid war shenanigans, anti-fascism, and cute anime girls, I was right in the demographic to be swept away by this anime's wiles. I love this show. I am EXTREMELY BIASED. Spoilers for Episode 1 unmarked mainly because they are either obvious or foundational. Episode 2 and onwards will be marked Spoiler, also any references to other plots. In Some Parts, I may blanket the entire thing as having spoilers, due to the way that spoilers work causing issues. Hopefully you will be able to see what is and what isn't, but please proceed with caution. img(https://files.catbox.moe/wmju5j.png) --- #~~~__Part 1: The Plot__~~~ The plot of Girls und Panzer is actually pretty simple. A quick rundown that only has spoilers for the first episode goes like this: Miho has transferred to a new school to avoid her previous schools Tankery Program, only to be roped into Oarai High School’s recently restarted Tankery program against her will. What is Tankery, you ask? I’d love to tell you, young padawan. In the Girls und Panzer Universe™, at some point in the 1920s, a sport developed around playing mock battles with the Giant death boxes that are commonly referred to as Tanks (Assumedly involving the Type 87 Chi-I and other future Japanese tank models). Why do they ride tanks, why do the use live Ammunition (that’s not a fucking joke it’s mentioned on two ocassions), why do the commercials for Tankery mention it’s a female-associated sport, why does it feel like this is a government propaganda campaign to recruit female child soldiers? Fuck you, go along with it. Overthinking this anime will drive you insane. So to elaborate a bit more, Tankery’s operation is pretty simple. You have two types of match, Team Deathmatch and a Pseudo-Capture-the-Flag. In Team Deathmatch, the winner is the team with either the last tank standing, or the team that eliminates all other tanks of the opposing team, depending. In the CTF, A single tank is designated, which when destroyed, loses the team that tanks the game. Most matches in the anime are the CTF kind, which is actually something I’m sad about. The Team Deathmatch format is a lot more interesting to me personally and incentivizes actual battles instead of bullheaded going for a single Target Tiny Ender’s Game (an Orson Scott Card Book) Spoiler that reminds me of the CTF system ~! (in a lot of ways, it reminds me of the flaws with the Battle Game in Ender’s Game, where Ender later exploits the game’s victory scenario for quick victories.)!~ Anyhow, back to my quick plot description. Miho is now in the Tankery club, and needs to reshape it to make it competitive for Tankery Nationals. A wide variety of girls join the club for so many different reasons, and Oarai Academy battles it out to be Top Dog in the nation. One really funny scene in the first episode mentions all the benefits that the girls in the Tankery club get (to incentivise joining). img(https://files.catbox.moe/yrmf5f.png) img(https://files.catbox.moe/dq1eld.png) img(https://files.catbox.moe/qewlbv.png) img(https://files.catbox.moe/38vdee.png) I can’t help but find it genuinely hilarious that they get such a ridiculous amount of stuff for a course that I would 100% be down to do. Well maybe not being a woman for me personally, but I'm sure that appeals to some people! Further Plot Developments Past Episode 1, Broadly Spoils Entire Series: ~!Eventually we find out that the Tankery Club being reestablished is due to school budgetary issues, which has caused the school to be given a one year closing deadline, unless they can pull through a victory in the Tankery nationals. It’s a neat bit of foreshadowing that the School Council, which is promoting the club, is so desperate to get new Tankery members as to give out all these privileges.!~ --- #~~~__Part 2: The Oarai Characters/Subsections__~~~ In this section I will talk about Individual characters I have something to say about, and Tankery Teams that make more sense to talk about as a whole (this will make more sense as I continue talking) #__1) Main Team:__ img(https://www.nextflicks.tv/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/girls-und-panzer-scaled.jpg) This group are the main characters, and group with the most individual notable characters, composing the entire team # Miho Nishizumi: img(https://s4.anilist.co/file/anilistcdn/character/large/b62939-WXOAXdfAhHrF.png) ~!Miho is a very serviceable protagonist for Girls und Panzer. She’s got a do-gooder personality with relatively strong leadership skills. Her backstory with her Sister and mother are relatively interesting, and provide some good tension for her battles with said sister. She’s generic, to put it bluntly, but I like her enough for there to be nothing that I want to detract from. She’s a bit awkward in public, so it is nice to see her taking charge of situations when forced into a leadership role.!~ # Hana Isuzu: img(https://cdn.myanimelist.net/images/characters/12/476966.jpg) ~!It’s not that I dislike Hana. I think she’s a really nice character, but unfortunately she's just kinda… Is boring. She’s the motherly shy figure of the lot, she gets a lot of screen time throughout the anime, even having a plotline involving her mother’s disapproval of her Tankery. Her mother expected her refined daughter to take up flower arrangement and doesn’t approve of Hana’s sport, which she sees as unwomanly (which is weird because it’s established many times that Tankery is seen as a feminine-coded sport). But this resides in the issue. Hana’s plotline is set up in Episode 4, but unless I missed something massive, nothing ever resolves it! Don’t mistake me saying that for her and her mother not reconciling, they DO reconcile, but it’s apparently offscreen, because we later get a scene where Hana’s (non-club) flower arrangement is praised and her mother walks in, already at peace with the situation. It’s genuinely confusing to me, because we never see Hana and her Mother hash it out. Her mother just relents offscreen. It's baffling! Anyhow, these factors combined make her my least favorite of the main five.!~ # Mako Reizei: img(https://s4.anilist.co/file/anilistcdn/character/large/b62947-i0EbCOwtyyIG.png) ~!Mako is one of the more interesting girls in the Tankery club, she comes in a bit later then the other girls, and has a cute personality of being slightly sleep deprived, having a complex relationship with her Grandmother, and even a Tragic backstory. She also probably has the most notable role in the tanking itself, with her driving skills being extremely necessary for winning many of the battles. I like her overall.!~ # Saori Takebe: img(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/e3/1f/5e/e31f5e82941870a705c3b0a45f46dada.jpg) ~!Saori is pretty boy-crazy, largely joining up with the Tankery club because she thinks it’ll improve her chances with boys in Orarai city. She’s a social creature, probably the most personable of the main group, very kind, and gives advice to girls when they ask her. She is probably my second or Third favorite character. She doesn’t really have a plotline, unlike the rest of the characters. The closest thing she has to one is her developing an actual interest in Tankery and ultimately becoming a Radio Operator. That was pretty cool.!~ # Yukari Akiyama: img(https://files.catbox.moe/06i3no.png) ~!Holy Best Girl Alert I unironically love Yukari, she’s cute, sweet, (~~best girl~~). She’s such a funny character, being an outcast who has an obsession with Tanks, her finding the Tankery program, being able to be in her element in front of everyone, it’s the cutest shit. She is extremely active in the plot, being essential to multiple fights and even doing Recon for the Tankery Team. She is also coded as being into Miho, which is something I wasn’t expecting. Point is, I love this character, she’s amazing, she’s good enough to be the sole reason I’d watch the anime. The heart of the show, she makes for a really fun time to watch. Best character, easily.!~ #__2) Student Council__ img(https://static.zerochan.net/Turtle.Team.full.1963724.jpg) The people who got the Tankery club together, largely, with a few notable characters. From here on all other Orarai groups are easily consolidated into one block of people. Also only two characters from here where notable enough. # Anzu Kadotani: img(https://s4.anilist.co/file/anilistcdn/character/large/b65267-VIXi60SIleM5.png) ~!The Student Council President, she is the person who gets the Tankery Club together. She's good friends with the rest of the student council, and the school closing is her main motivation to join. She's a generally domineering person, very bossy, but she knows she's lost when it comes to tankery leadership, and leaves that roll to Miho. She's not an amazing character but she's fine enough to note.!~ # Momo Kawashima: img(https://cdn.myanimelist.net/images/characters/2/184305.jpg) ~!Momo really shines in later episodes. Initially billed as the stricter member of the Student council, she is initially rather unlikeable, almost filling the role of a pseudo-antagonist (the student council in general feels like the antagonist for the first episode or two), but as the series continues forward, she really shows alot more of her kinder side, especially developing the relationship between her and the rest of the Student council.!~ #__3) History Buffs__ img(https://files.catbox.moe/bszlgd.png) For an anime about tanks, we of course need a group that are obsessed with tanks, history, ~~fascism~~, the various World War Two nations, and so forth. None of the characters stand out, and to be honest none from group 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 stand out either, they are rather more applicable as a single block of characters, maybe with a unique joke assigned to each of them. Of these six, my personal favorite is the History Buffs. Not exactly because they are good people, I think they have a slightly weird obsession with WW2 Germany in particular that leads to some fridge horror when you realize what they are attempting to say (specifically a reference to Stalingrad), but overall they make so many references that it’s really fun to see them around. #__4) Sudoku’s Clique__ Yeah my stuff to say really dries up past here, I’m not really gonna add pictures cause that’d take alot longer and to be honest, 4-8 are all relatively minor. ~!Sudoku come in a little later in the series. For most of the show she serves as a skit character who’s a hall monitor. Sudoku ends up joining the Tankery club with two girls that look similar to her. That’s it.!~ #__5) Engineers__ This group fixes the tanks, and later also joins the Tankery Club. #__6) Rabbit Team__ The least interesting group other than group 7, they have no real defining traits other than some of them being a little Nerdy. #__7) Gamers__ ~!Also not a very notable clique, they just come in near the end and don’t do anything particularly interesting.!~ #__8) Volleyball Club__ img(https://files.catbox.moe/dpl3n4.png) Not too notable, they have a running joke where they are sad about their Volleyball club getting closed down, but overall they don’t make a massive impact. They can be funny sometimes. (Welp, That's all the different groups. Initially I had a section here going over every opposition school, but I cut it to be a more reasonable length.) --- #~~~__Part 4: Criticisms__~~~ Girls und Panzer is not an Infallible anime. It has a lot of smaller and bigger issues, most of which I personally look past, but I can’t write a review in good faith without mentioning them. First thing’s first, technical issues. While I personally have not watched this anime subbed, I can say without a doubt that the dub for this anime is extremely flawed. I personally like it, it’s got a charm to it that undoubtedly just works for me, but from a purely technical standpoint it can sound downright bad at times. There’s a few animation errors, and depending on your tolerance for CGI, you may consider that bad. One very funny animation error happens in Episode 8, about a minute and a half in, where a character licks a spoon of jam, which suddenly appears to be spread all over her face. I’m sure if you really scrutinized the anime you could find a number of others. The other flaws largely stem around plot issues, and shall thus be spoilered: ~!There are 3 big plot issues. The easiest to tackle is the Battle with Anzio, which gets awkwardly skipped in Episode 7, which while not inherently bad, does feel very sudden and ultimately leads to it being included as an OVA. It’s just odd due to the episode itself being named after Anzio, so it may feel like a letdown.!~ ~!The next two focus on two plots for specific characters in the anime. Mako and Hana’s plotlines. Mako has issues with her grandmother, Hana has issues with her Mother who doesn’t like her doing tankery. The exact details aren’t super important, but the way it’s resolved in the anime is really weird. Specifically that it just kinda… isn’t? Hana’s mother just accepts her with no scene where they hash things out, and Mako’s grandmother recovers from her sickness. It doesn’t really feel like the plots are being resolved so much as dropped without the time to really develop them to a proper conclusion. It’s genuinely one of the most negative aspects in the show for me and I’m sad they couldn’t get it to work out better, I can only assume it was due to production issues.!~ --- #~~~__Part 5: Bach Gushing over a Stupid Tank Anime__~~~ I love this anime, it has so many stupid aspects, cute characters, and funny moments that I really had a blast while watching it. There are so many different things I love from this show, so I’ll just give a blanket minor spoiler warning for this section as spoilering images doesn’t really work super great. Each of the Schools the girls face against are full of Larpers. From Anzio’s Italian Larpers, to St. Gloriana’s teaboos with characters literally named after Teas like Darjeeling and Assam. Alot of the best references come through on from this. Talking of references in this anime, it gets to the degree where the fact that I’m a history nerd massively improved my liking of the anime, like a scene where Katyusha, from the Soviet Larper school, Pravda, drives to the battle site in a Katyusha Rocket Launcher, and then later she and her team sing the Soviet song called Katyusha, which just so happens to be one of my favourite pieces of Soviet music. img(https://files.catbox.moe/grroa7.png) Pravda in general is pretty Great, they have a lot of good jokes and the battle site they fight in is easily the most unique of the lot. Katyusha and her friend (Nonna is the black-haired one and Katyusha is the blondie), have a great dynamic and in general makes for a neat Tankery battle. img(https://files.catbox.moe/8mmozw.png) There’s also just some good plain old visual humor, like the tank-shaped food that’s shown in the fifth episode, img(https://files.catbox.moe/mplo7g.png) or how Yukari's room is a goofy nerd cave. img(https://files.catbox.moe/8ba1sk.png) And there’s also a few historical references like in a scene where some characters are asked to surrender, the characters respond with “Nuts!”, which was a famous line from Anthony McAuliffe, when he refused to surrender. There’s alot of other stuff I’d like to put here, but I actually want you to watch the anime, and I also personally just won’t be able to make it much longer without driving myself entirely insane. I love this show, this is my recommendation to watch it, now. --- #~~~__Part 6: Conclusions:__~~~ The show has a great atmosphere, I really like it. It’s characters are fun, it goes on about subjects that interest me, I love it. Watch it, or don’t. I know it’s not for everyone. It’s kinda cringy sometimes, and definitely not the best anime that exists, but it suits my interests perfectly. Thanks for reading my several page long unhinged rant about why the funny Child soldiers tank anime is good. If you notice any errors, wanna compliment or criticize me, or just want to rant, you can @ me any time, friendo! img(https://files.catbox.moe/gxbro2.png) - Signed Kronos Bach
~~~Brief story time.~~~
Alright. I've been wanting to write a review on this series for a while. It's just one of those series' that I hold to dearly to me that I just have to say something about it. __The whole review is just my opinion. Take it with a grain of salt, yeah?__ (Sorry if my English isn't on point, It's not my first language) __This review does contain spoilers.__ But I won't be going over the main storyline in detail. if you haven't watched the series yet, go watch it if you're already on the fence about it! __So, let's get into it.__ ------ # __Overview__ __Girls Und Panzer (directly translated to Girls And Tank.) Is an anime original series that was made in 2012 by studio Actas.__ This series is, exactly what the title is. Girls and tanks. Lots of tanks. It's a series where girls get into tanks to fight for sport. It sounds stupid. But hey, the thing that sets this anime apart __is__ it's stupidity. img500(https://f.ptcdn.info/638/029/000/1427123281-1212-o.jpg) This show is an anime original. Which is 100% why this practically stupid idea of a show can actually happen. And oh my god is this show amazing. ------------------- # __[The Tanks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank)__ The appeal of this show is about the tanks. img490(https://images.static-bluray.com/reviews/26496_1.jpg) I'm not going to talk about the characters. That's mainly because I wouldn't have enough time to do so. But I do have some time to talk about the tanks for a bit. All the tanks are real models made and produced before, after, and during WW2. __ Historically accurately modelled, The tanks are amazingly animated. Inside and out.__ img400(https://i.pinimg.com/564x/6a/1c/e4/6a1ce46a0300f38bf3ab89e4fdbbe54e.jpg) The tanks in this series are known to go way too fast for their models. But, it doesn't really matter. Also, some things that happen in the anime are easter eggs for tank and history nuts. The more you look, the more random info or references to historical events you can find! This show is the first anime I ever watched. At the time, I was just an average person who didn't really like anime. Until I watched this anime. This anime was too good to pass up. I watched it, liked it, and here I am now. I was and still am a fan of history. It was the whole reason I watched this anime. ---- #__The storyline__ (not really) The storyline is not what holds this anime up to the level it is at. The history, the tanks, and passion from the people who made it is what makes this anime fun. it's what makes it special. it's what makes it amazing. img220(https://i1.sndcdn.com/avatars-6OyEjmPLDQqrtAZx-0o8y4A-t500x500.jpg) The storyline is not what you watch this anime for. it's not the thing that this anime is best at. But, it helps support the main part of the show: the tanks. This show doesn't have an outstanding storyline. It's not what you're meant to focus on. It's about the level of story you'd be able to expect without the story really excelling. ----- # __The stereotypes__ The stereotypes in this show are funny. Because they make fun of everybody The Americans are rich, the Germans battle using the [ Blitzkrieg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzkrieg#:~:text=Blitzkrieg%20is%20a%20word%20used,the%20opponent's%20lines%20of%20defense%2C) tactics, The British as _constantly_ sipping tea. ___ #__Conclusion__ Girls und Panzer is a stupid anime that I love so deeply. I can see why the plot doesn't make much sense, but it's not meant to. It just works. _(Yukari is my spirit animal)_ img340(https://media1.tenor.com/m/_A_KhcF7R7kAAAAC/floof.gif) __I can confidently say that I love this anime.__ ___-Signed, Neo___