First of all, I love the tank-perspective opening. Looking through the view-hatch and along the barrel, you get a great look at the other colourful death-dealing hardware as they all trundle off as a group.
Our main character, Miho Nishizumi, transfers to a new school to get away from such tank-related antics (known as Tankery) in a bid to break her family legacy of riding in tanks. So an everyday dilemma!
The genre, known as "Military Moe" is incredibly popular in Japan, encompassing planes, boats and, in this case, tanks. Such series are designed to sell model kits of the military hardware, and it's now as much a mainstay in Japanese culture as Isekai series (being reborn into a fantasy life).
Girls und Panzer arrived pretty early into this trend, and although the premise of schoolgirls riding tanks to "become better wives and mothers" and have men "falling at your feet" seems a bit over-baked, in the context of the show it all seems logical enough.
In fact, it's the sincerity that sells it - the presentation extolling the virtues of Tankery within the first episode is quite contagious. Driven by the advent of the first ever worldwide Tankery competition, students are bribed with wondrous benefits such as passes for lateness, triple credit and hundreds of free meal tickets if they take part.
Clearly Miho's reluctance stems from a past trauma involving a tank, and it's quite touching that her new friends are prepared to give up Tankery to support Miho and her reluctance to take the course. However, there'd be no series if that were the end of it, so in step the mean girl student Councillors and the Student President who force her hand, as the school has nobody else with any experience. The plot gets her in a tank, and that's what we want, so convenient as it is, we're delivered our reluctant hero.
We don't get a whole lot of character development, but it's a 20 minute episode so much of that will come later. The story is structured in such a way as to showcase at least 6 main girls (Miho, her two friends and the trio if bad-girls in charge) and we can safely assume everything will be fleshed out as we progress. What's here works fine, and forms a solid basis for the series to expand on.
On a practical level, the animation is standard TV animation fare, but backgrounds are very well detailed, and the shot at the end of the first episode, where the camera zooms out from the tank shed, across the school and then the town to reveal that the whole area is sat on the back of a giant battleship, is pure genius. Music also swells in the right places to create the impression of a grand adventure just begun. Because schoolgirls learning martial arts involving tanks isn't ridiculous enough.
Despite the bizarre premise and almost embarrassing moments of watching nubile girls going doe-eyed and flushed over the thought of a tank, there's a lot of charm to this. Yes, it's as daft as 10 Basil Brush puppets on roller-skates doing the hula, but by God do you believe these girls want to mount those tanks and blow things to kingdom-come. If you have a sense of humour and a love of trundling firepower, I'd say this is the series for you. Certainly the charm is entirely self-evident, and I can see this being a guilty pleasure over the Christmas period. Go tanks girls!
Girls und Panzer is available to stream on Netflix, and available to buy on DVD or Blu Ray from MVM Entertainment.
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