Have you ever had that one show you sit down to watch and you know, no matter how many check boxes it rattles off on your “should I watch this” checklist, you can never let any of your friends know you’ve watched it, because it’ll be critically terrible, but it’ll be a perfect guilty pleasure show for you, and then it actually turns out to be legitimately good, and now you can never tell anyone because they’re going to think the same negative things you thought about it? Well, Girls und Panzer is that show for me.
Girls und Panzer at first glance appears to be some weird moe-blob show with some tanks thrown in to get the militaria geeks’ attention, but this show is actually a tournament sports anime, and if there’s one thing I love in my anime more than tanks, it’s a goddamn tournament. I think the original Dragonball is actually better paced than Z because of the many tournaments in the series, my favorite saga of Yu Yu Hakusho is the Dark Tournament saga, and I prefer the original Yugioh to GX because of . . .well. . . the tournaments. Hell I don’t even give a fuck about basketball, but you will sure as hell find me glued to my TV and filling out a bracket every year when March Madness kicks in.
As per usual for moe shows, Girls und Panzer focuses on one main with her core group of three to five friends, but the tournaments in which they compete are on a platoon level, which means that there are four other tanks, each with their own crew that tag along as well, but unfortunately the show never goes into any depth with most of them. That’s regrettable, because look at the girls behind the sticks of the StuG III. Look at them!
Who are they? Where did they come from? Why are they dressed like that? Why are they always quoting Caesar and other great generals? Not a single one of these questions is answered. Attack on Titan went into depth with their cast, despite how massive it was, and I can still rattle off over a dozen characters from that show right of the top of my head. With Girls und Panzer? Ehhhhh, not so much. Even the name of the main girl escapes me for a while. (It’s Miho, by the way)
So, in the tournament, the school ships pair off in, oh yeah school ships. . . . look at this shit.
That’s . . . that’s just fucking cool. I have nothing else to say about it other than we need a naval-based spin off series of this immediately. So yeah, these school ships pair off in these 5v5-ish battles with each school being populated by walking, talking stereotypes of the countries that they are supposed to represent. The British are fair, chivalrous, and way too preoccupied with not spilling their tea. The Americans are loud assholes who bend the rules to win. The Russians are cold blooded stoics that rely on home-field advantage. And the Germans believe zat zhe best tank is zhe tiger tank and zhe tiger tank alvays vins!
How do these tournament matches go? Well, they’re quite entertaining. They take a number of twists and turns and instead of going down the overused Deus Ex Machina route of total ass pulls, Miho and her gang of motley tankerettes win their battles via cunning strategy and deft tactical judgment. They simply outthink their opponents who see them as mere underdogs who have only gotten as far as they have due to a series of flukes. They even go so far as to use real tactics taken from WW2 historical accounts. I like that. Good on you, show. Treat your audience like adult- . . . well as much of an adult as I can be. I mean, I’m watching a show about highschoolers fighting in school sanctioned tank tournaments.
Also, they’re not using paintball rounds either. This is live ammo people! Hell, one group of girls gets hit, they’re tank is knocked out, and they have to put out a frikkin’ fire inside of it. What the hell? I don’t remember the football team at my school ever having to do something that batshit crazy. Speaking of what-the-fuckery, why are there no males at this school . . . or any of the schools? There’s males in the show, but they are only ever shown once or twice. The schools aren’t girls’ academies. The girls attending these schools always talk about meeting their boyfriends and shit, but where the hell are they? The tankery clubs are all female because the show makes a half assed attempt to explain that girls who practice tankery grow up to be fine and desirable women, but as far as I can see, all the girls who tell their family that they’re in the tankery club get treated like shit because of it.
As visuals go, the level of detail in this show is stunning. All the tanks are rendered in CG so 3D models have to be made for each tank type and they nail them all dead on right down to the fucking rivets. And trust me, I know they got the tanks right, I play World of Tanks, bruh. On top of all that the show has an immense offering of tank facts and trivia that’ll make WW2 geeks like me salivate at the very mention of the phrase, “Eighty-eight millimeter main gun.”
With sound, the opening and ending credits are okay, the Japanese voice cast is alright, but the English actresses just completely phone this one in. It’s really unfortunate because the animators and designers obviously put a lot of hard work and TLC into this project. The music however is on point. The jaunty little military pieces that play during the battles and as such offer a light hearted touch that fits the show perfectly. Unfortunately this is shot down immediately for me, because the best music piece of the whole show, Katyusha, is omitted. Originally sung by soviet soldiers in World War II and later famously performed by the Red Army Choir, it was covered by the Japanee voice cast who sang it, in fucking Russian, and the North American release apparently couldn’t secure the rights to Katyusha, so they replaced it with the fucking Tetris theme.
I’m willing to largely forgive this due to the sound effects they managed to put together for this. Every tank sounds a little bit different and unique in its own right. From the initial rev of the engine to its cruising speed, each group of tanks puts up its own chorus of diesel, oil, and steel. As a guy who grew up on racetracks in the southeast listening to hundreds of different engines rev and pitch, I can really appreciate the commitment that takes.
Overall, Girls und Panzer is a fantastic little show that has an even-handed mix of historically based trivia and narrative pacing that culminates into a show that I honestly think most people will enjoy, whether they be history buffs like me or just the passing anime fan looking for a short and sweet anime to grab their attention. My only complaint is that there hasn’t been that naval spin-off show yet. Oh wait. . .
High School Fleet review incoming. . .
