Over the past two months, Australian anime publisher Hanabee Entertainment have released the complete Girls und Panzer anime series over two collections. The first collection in March 2014 consisted of the entire 12-episode TV series while the second this month contained all six episodes on a single DVD / Blu-ray disc. Question is… despite its popularity is Girls und Panzer actually worth picking up?
Series about young students taking control of mecha and other technological devices has long been a soft spot for me, and is a plot device well used in past by many anime, manga and other media franchises. Some fond examples range from Stellvia of the Universe which sees high school students piloting futuristic space crafts / robots to Strike Witches which sees girls piloting leg adaptations of historical aircrafts.
Based around the premise that doing so can deliver many benefits to growing ladies, Girls und Panzer is a story about a group of students who become involved in their school’s tankery club, where they maintain, control and compete in tanks against other schools. It may not be your ordinary school club activity (Not that I can say much as in my school experience clubs were almost non-existent), but it was out there enough to be eye-catching and to the animation studio and production teams credit, turned out to be very enjoyable and entertaining despite a few lingering issues that inevitably came with the idea.
Girls und Panzer primarily focuses on female protagonist Miho Nishizumi whose family has contained many well renown individuals in the world of tankery. Due to an incident that happened prior to the events of the series, she leaves her previous school and reputation in order to study at Oarai Academy which does not have a tankery program… at least not until she arrived. Soon after arriving and making friends, she is persuaded by the student council to take part in the school club again in which their success at the upcoming championships could determine the fate of their the school. Joined by fellow members / friends of the Anglerfish Team, she begins leading the five tanks of the Oarai Academy school fleet in training and competitively against other schools.
While the first couple of episodes are dedicated to introducing the characters and core concepts of the series, by episode four most of them are dedicated to the matches against other schools (Often taking up two episodes each) with small plot events surrounding a character or the series in general dispersed between them. While the outcome of each match is usually glaringly obvious, the actual fights are well handled and filled with enough drama, action and distinct events between each to make them enjoyable to watch.
Most of the episodes proved to be legitimately enjoyable where it matters, to the point where I personally finished the series in a single sitting. The one issue with Girls und Panzer that didn’t translate well to the anime format was that there are just too many characters. An issue not exclusive to this series (The Mahou Sensei Negima anime adaptations come to mind) is that with such a sizable character cast and a main story to tell, there is just not enough time in a 12 episode series to give each character ample development.
While they manage to group the girls into different teams based on their personalities (Fans of historic figures, first-year students, former volleyball club members etc.), not even the main cast of girls seemed to receive the development they could have used. The biggest issue was the final match where a new team of girls were introduced and subsequently downed a few minutes into the match, pretty much being forgotten by the writers after that.
While an issue, it doesn’t detract from the fact that Girls und Panzer is enjoyable to watch with some interesting concepts added into the mix that I will let you discover for yourself if you haven’t already watched it.
The separate OVA collection that was released the other week contains six OVA shorts at approximately 11 minutes each. Most of these contain content such as the girls shopping for swimsuits, the girls going on a camping trip and an extended look at the Ankou Dance which makes this collection scream “Side Content!“. But fortunately there were also a few features that contributed to the experience more deeply including a feature on the Oorai School Ship and a look into the reconnaissance mission into Pravda-held territory by Yukari and Erwin during Episode 10. The OVA episodes are generally the series’ source of fanservice with the main episodes containing very little of it.
Girls und Panzer features a standard of visual quality that well justifies the inclusion of a blu-ray release in the Australian market. The animation studio Actas handles the combat scenes particularly well with a strong merger of the standard anime 2D visuals and the CGI animation / designs for each tank which are very detailed and go hand in hand almost flawlessly. Asides from this the character designs themselves are nothing remarkable, but at the very least are detailed enough that in most (Although maybe not all) cases it is pretty easy to tell the characters apart.
The production team have included realistic sound effects for the tanks to add an extra layer of immersion to complement the CGI artwork, from the general running of the tanks to the simplest click of a trigger. These sound effects are joined by a decent soundtrack arrangement with tracks that really suit the military approach to warfare.
Girls und Panzer features a single opening theme “DreamRiser” by ChouCho and a single ending theme “Enter Enter Mission!” which is performed by the main Japanese voice cast. Both themes are nothing special, but the ending sequence does feature some rather cute chibi artwork of a different tank group each episode.
Similar to what Sentai Filmworks had to do with Bodacious Space Pirates a couple of years back, given the high volume of female characters in Girls und Panzer the English dub could in some ways be considered a sampler of some (although not all) of the many voice actresses who work on properties licensed by Sentai Filmworks. Featuring both big names and newer names in the English voice acting scene, the dub is overall of a good quality. As usual the original Japanese dub is available for those who prefer to watch their anime this way.
The TV series collection features a small collection of bonus on-disc content including clean opening / closing animations, two bonus recap episodes (5.5 / 10.5) and a small collection of other content. The OVA collection is more limited and consists of only clean opening and closing animations.
Girls und Panzer ended up being a highly enjoyable anime series, which while lacking in character development made up for it to some degree with enticing tankery warfare and a number of creative ideas added into the mix resulting in every fight being distinct from the others. While it could have used a bit more substance in some areas, there still seems to be more one-off OVA’s / films being released for the series in the near future, hopefully providing more depth to the field of Tankery and the students studying at Oarai Academy.
Special thanks to Hanabee for providing me with blu-ray review copies of both Girls und Panzer: The Complete TV Series and Girls und Panzer: Complete OVA Series for the purpose of this review.
