Guilty pleasures... everyone has one show, one song, one food, or whatever, that they are ashamed to admit to liking. You say you hate all that Taylor Swift crap, but then you catch yourself singing „We are never, ever, ever, ever, getting back together!“ in the shower (you know who you are). I am no exception to this rule, and I do love me some Taylor Swift, but that's not what I want to talk about. Instead, let's talk about Girls und Panzer!
[Story: 7/10] In the world of Girls und Panzer, it is a common thing for girls and young women to learn the ways of „Panzerfahren“; Sensha-do as the anime calls it, which basically means the operation of tanks. Nishizumi Miho, quickly gets involved in tankery and her school takes part in the Sensha-do Championship, which basically means tank-battles. That is basically all there is to it. This is very much like a Slice of Life, except with tanks. There are minor sub-plots regarding the individual characters, which I'll get back to, but the main focus of the show is the Championship and the struggle of our main heroine to lead her school to victory, despite all adversity. Nothing new, rather a known concept with a unique twist on it. The show is fairly minimal, but it does most of what it set out to do well. There is no heavy reliance on plot-convenience, most of it seems believable given the context of the show. A very nice story about overcoming adversity and challenges. I really liked that tankery was not just thrown in as a quirky little gimmick, but weaved into the world of the show rather elegantly. There are families, where it is unthinkable for a daughter not to practise Sensha-do, where this art has been practised for generations, some others who revile it as brutish and archaic. It is part of the society and culture. Now, there are some minor little nitpicks I do have. We are talking about full on tank-battles here, with live ammo. So, this not being a story about war, it may be a little hard to believe how eager these girls are to participate and how no one ever seems to die because of these battles, despite being in ostensibly mortal peril. And the characters constantly worry about each others well-being, so it's not like not dying is taken for granted. Also, there are some jabs at traditional gender-roles, tanks, of course, being traditionally driven by adult men, and the show does mention that a couple of times, but never really does more than that, which I found to be a little bit of a shame.
[Characters: 5/10] The show introduces lots of different characters over the course of its runtime. We are first introduced to our heroine and her ever-increasing tank batallion and, as the show progresses, to the opponents, who all vaguely represest different nations. There is the main team, which is the one we are all rooting for, the British team, the American team, the Russian team and the German team. Unfortunately this is where the show falls flat a bit, because most of the characters have next to no development or even character traits. I don't know if this was the show trying to keep too many plates spinning simultaneously, with the enormous amount of side-characters, or if it was just half-hearted characterization. Either way, we are left with a troff full of secondary characters, who get one character trait, which often falls into sad clichés. And I mean, the British girls spending half their screentime drinking tea levels of cliché here, so you know it's bad. While things do get more rounded with our main cast, they too fall victim to overused tropes: There is the Tsundere one, the overly excited one, and so on... There are some sub-plots with some characters, usually revolving around their conflicting relationships with Sensha-do, but those too are mostly taken nowhere, or magically resolved. Where the show gets, maybe not a gold star, but a silver star, is in the relationship between the characters, which for the most part seems believable (if someone shallow), and I feel that this is where the focus was, as this is a show about friends overcoming challenges together. Plus the positive dynamic between the characters made me smile several times, and perhaps that's all you should expect from a show like this.
[Art: 6/10] There is not much I can say about the visuals of Girls und Panzer, just because of how standard and unexceptional they are. From the character designs to the backgrounds, nothing screams out „awesomesauce“ and assaults the viewer with beauty. This is not necessarily a bad thing, however don't expect the best looking anime. Everything looks fine, nothing is terribly bad, but that's all one can say: It's fine... The animation of the tanks is done entirely in CG, and to the attentive viewer it will show, by what I mean, it could have been done better. I personally, as someone who does not know much about animation and has not watched every anime in existence, was not bothered by this too much. I could notice it, but it did not take me out of the experience. The tanks move alright, it seems authentic (mostly), and best of all, I admire the fidelity of the animators. The tanks, from what I could tell, are authentic representations of their real-life counterparts. Furthermore I found it interesting to research the tanks shown in Girls und Panzer and find out more about them.
[Sound: 7/10] The sound of Girls und Panzer fares, in my opinion, better than the visuals. The music is cheerful and does its job of getting the viewer in the right mindset for the show. At the same time it is not too saccarine and cutesy. Most of the music are renditions of military marching songs, which have quite the positive effect, at least they did for me. There is even a rendition of a Russian folk-song from the 30s, when the time comes for our heroines to fight the Russian team, which I found lovely. The characters' voices are not... too annoying, but they do fall into the very high-pitched range sometimes. Also, the tanks sound at least sort of believable, although that is hard for me to verify, since I have never heard the sounds of an actual tank. As for the different versions, I typically do not watch dubbed anime, but I have heard that the dub is kinda shit, so maybe watch it subbed, which I think is always better anyways.
[Personal Enjoyment: 8/10] Despite the flaws I pointed out during this review, despite the show being unexceptional when it comes to the artstyle, underwhelming with its individual character arcs I have to admit, that I really enjoyed watching this anime. Every episode had a pleasant effect for me, and I don't really know if that's a praise for the show, or an indictment of my personal taste. Girls und Panzer made me feel uplifted, cheerful, happy. And for this type of show, I think that's all that one should expect from this show. While I will probably not rewatch the show in the near future, I definetly am happy to have watched it.
If you are looking to be enthralled by a gripping epic about war, and the absurdities of combat and the brutality of tank-battles, then what the fuck are you still doing here? It should be pretty clear by now that this is not what Girls und Panzer is about. But if you want a cute Moe anime to cheer you up, but also want something different from the unending flood of Moe out there than I can wholeheartedly reccomend you check this show out!
[7/10]
