It´s about a fictional sport called tankery and centers around Miho Nishizumi, who tries to lead her academy to victory in a big annual tournament and not much else. If you expect mainly a Slice of Life with cute girls doing cute stuff, than you will be surprised with what this anime actually does. While cute girls are indeed all you will see for the whole show, the producers focused very heavily on the fictional sport of tankery. Almost the entire series consists of the matches as well as the preparations for the matches.
This makes Girls und Panzer a comedic action show, and it is actually one worth watching too. The story moves along at a nice pace and despite the heavy focus on the sport itself, you also will see some nice character development too. The supporting characters are highly entertaining and funny, especially those from abroad.
If the various stereotypes surrounding the other academies are funny or just annoying is probably completely up to the viewer. Personally I had a good laugh about all these clichés thrown at me (like the English team drinking tea all the time and so on), but it might be a turnoff for others.
The biggest flaw of this series, apart from the easily predictable outcome of the matches, is clearly the animation. Actas tried their best but they do not have the budget bigger studios have and it shows. While they put a lot of love for details in the tanks themselves (which are all after real tanks used in world war II), the same cannot be said for the backgrounds, and the faster scenes stutter a little bit too.
However, I honestly don´t think this should keep anyone from watching this anime. It´s highly entertaining, it´s only 12 episodes and hey…most importantly it´s girls driving tanks and blowing stuff up! Which guy wouldn´t wanna see this?
If you like the TV series, Girls und Panzer also offers you quite a bit of bonus material and extras. There is an extended episode on the match against Anzio (which is the only one not fully shown in the TV series) and also six OVAs for those who would like to learn more about the tanks featured throughout the series. Also watch out for a two hour long movie coming out in November this year!
I give Girls and Panzer a solid 7 and also recommend to watch this subbed rather then dubbed.
