VainOrphan2000 said:OK, so I just watched the series and I thoroughly enjoyed it, i can see why it has such a following and I look forward to watching... well the other content that seems to be out for it (which seems to be a bunch of standalone movies or something?!?).
Now, whilst I had alot of fun, my ability to enjoy it 100% was kinda dampened by the huge amounts of questions I had regarding the rules of Sensha-do and the 'mechanics' of the universe. Maybe I just missed the explanation for certain things, or maybe I'm just being a nit-picky prick (I happily accept the latter, but I would like some clarification regardless).
1) Are they using actual tank shells? at first, i was wondering (from ep2) "hmmm, a shell from a long barreled StuG III gun wouldn't just 'stick-out' the back of a Pz IV's rear, would it?" surely that means that they're using some king of weaker ammunition to show that they've been hit by what would've been a kill shot, without, y'know, putting the girls at any major risk to the 15-18 year olds inside! So then i thought, Ok, so that's how this works, but then multiple tanks began catching fire from rear and engine hits, and in many cases, you can see physical HOLES in the armour! (there's mention in the final episode about some kind of 'carbon coating' that's supposed to make the tank indestructible or something, so I guess that would explain how a hit from a 128mm simply makes a tank go flying with no penetration...
2) WTF are the rules of this sport? In almost every match, the Oarai School's team is not only outmatched in every match by tanks of much later eras, but is usually also massively outnumbered? Surely this kinda sucks as a sport, whichever school has the most money to spend on the best tanks and in massive numbers are basically gonna win every time, right? is there even a limit on tanks per match? Maybe the limit is like 25, which the other schools can basically fulfill easily, but if Oarai wants to compete at all, they HAVE to go in under-gunned AND outnumbered... which sucks for them (even though they win by the end). A sport where skill isn't the main determining factor of winning is a crappy sport in my book, and it really pulled me out of the show.
3) So, now this is just a basic question about society in general in this universe but... is the serious injury and death of high school girls 'normal' in this society? like i could understand if this was just 'another sport' in this divergent timeline of the world, with aircraft carrier schools and tank battles as a feminine sport, but lmao, if you got hit by those shells, you'd be FUCKED. Also, uhhh... girls literally drowning in a watery grave, and Miho's the bad guy, like wtf mom and sis? i guess that's not the Nishizumi way, but I hope most people in this universe looked at that event and was like 'Okay, maybe being caring for your comrades and not letting them die isn't so bad as a way of fighting?' I know this is a weird nit-pick but i wanna know if were dealing with 'The Purge' logic here.
4) Machine guns? If the engagements are purely Tank-on-tank, and there's no shooting people who are walking about or dismounted (as many moments the girls are caught out in the open and not just sprayed with machine gun fire), so it seems redundant to even have them loaded at all, the only other reason to have them loaded would be to destroy optics, or maybe clear shrubbery. which makes it extra weird seeing the sisters team (Kuromorimine Girls High School) just begin to fire machine guns only to save cannon ammo... why? surely your not planning on a hit on the actual tankers to kill them (this is kinda linked to question 3 again), and those guns won't pen so what's the point?
Edit question 5: are the girls all Japanese? All the schools are obviously based on different countries and have tanks to that corresponding nation but the cultural differences,like the prevalence of other native languages (like Russian from Pravda and the 'Engrish' from the american school) makes me wonder, are these girls all ethnically Japanese? Its not a big issue, I'm just wonder how a Japanese person get the name Katyusha.
Now, i can look past all of this and enjoy the show for what it is, i gave it an 8/10, and with me being a bit of a tank nut as well, it was really interesting to watch.
BONUS NITPICK: anyone else find it annoying that the Firefly was shown in the show as some kind of 'super-accurate' and powerful tank? Firefly was powerful (penetration wise, although against the Oarai tank's they really dont need it lol), but is definitely not accurate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM74wlQongo&t=29s&ab_channel=The_Chieftain 
