Girls Und Panzer (Season 1, 2012)
Miho Nishizumi comes from a family famous for their skills in Senshado, the art of tank warfare. However, she dishonored her family name, so she attends the no-name high school called Oorai, which doesn’t have a Senshado club, wanting to stay away from it. But, the student council president has other plans, wanting to save their school from termination by winning the Senshado tournament. – IMDB
Its been a while since we’ve talked about any anime here. Its fine time to talk about the the latest one that I watched although it has already left Netflix. Girls Und Panzer is a interesting premise with schools on freighter ships away from the main land and the focus on tankery as an extracurricular activity. There’s so much to love about it mostly because war-like commands seem like its very focused on men and war but this one is an amicable strategy competition between different schools and bases around these girls at this school as they work together to make it happen with the main girl Miho being a girl that wanted to run away from her family and tankery but ending up with a school who rebuilt tankery in hopes of saving their school. I’m going to say right away that this is the rare occasion that I watched the English dub version, which was very adequate and entertaining. Minor things didn’t match up to the subtitles in comparison but it all translated to pretty much the same thing.
Girls Und Panzer is a little odd at times and a little quirky but overall, it has a really positive and fun vibe. Using the whole tank warfare as their focus is a unique angle for the story especially when it captures a girl who has refound her passion for something her family is renowned for but she has been shamed upon her ways as she isn’t doing it the conventional way but in a more caring way. It reflects in the team that she eventually is asked to direct as the commander for all the other tanks. Miho’s character eventually is crafted into a much stronger one by the end of season one. Much her team, especially the her core team which she runs the tank with as the flagship. They end up truly bonding as each of the characters also have their little background and something that they are fighting for as well or a certain value they find from joining into this.
While the characters themselves are pretty fun, the key element and the most fun of the series is the tank warfare sequences which they do spend a lot of time doing as the Oorai school pretty much has one friendly match as practice and then gets pushed into the competition against some of the top schools which also brings in some colorful opponents from different parts of the world and their own set of strategy versus theirs. All that stuff is pretty fun as the crew learns more about how to strategize and it smoothly flows from one thing to the next as they learn from their previous matches each time around. Not to mention, they actually bring up different actual tanks that did exist (a mega thanks to my husband who knows a lot about history who shared this knowledge with me while we were watching it) even if some of them (according to my husband again) was a little out of reality but it is an anime so a lot of these things can be ignored in my opinion.
Overall, Girls Und Panzer is a really fun series. Its a unique angle and the characters are all pretty good plus there’s a decent bit of comedy that lands pretty well even if some of it is a tad bizarre and quirky. Its a little sad to see that they didn’t get past the first season but there are a few films released after the TV series which is something that I am trying to hunt down.
Tranquil Dreams 