When it comes to entitlement and birthright Miho Nishizumi has a lot to be tankful for. Sorry but I promised Id make that joke at least once in this review so at least its past us now. She hails from a family of highly trained highly disciplined practitioners of one of their worlds most popular and prestigious forms of martial arts Tankery. Yes in this world the most globally popular sport isnt soccer its full blown tank battles and while its full extent is unknown we do know that theres a high school division thats taught as a class the students of which go to war with other schools in a yearly tournament. There are many nations taking part and many different styles to contend with but the Nishizumi family is at the top of the game. With the elegance of Wushu and the power of Krav Maga the Nishizumi style of Tankery specializes in cold hearted dominance seizing victory at the cost of all else and with more than 18 tanks at their disposal they had the force to overwhelm any opponent even at the acceptable cost of several of their own units. However there is a black sheep in every flock and the youngest daughter of the Nishizumi family The comparatively gentle Miho Doesnt quite agree with the allornothing approach that her family has long treasured. One day during an important tournament battle she abandoned her own tank to save the lives of several of her teammates whose tank had fallen into a deep river. Unfortunately shed been driving the flag tank so when the parked vehicle was shot by enemy fire her school wound up losing the tournament. Disgraced for her heroism Miho was spurned by her family which she repudiated in return. In order to get away from Tankery forever she transferred to a school that didnt have that class on its curriculum. Little did she know that on her first day at this new school Tankery class would be brought back and the student council would all but blackmail her into signing up for it. With the very life shed been running from having caught up with her will Miho become the leader her family never saw in her or will history repeat itself? Have I ever spoken about Actas before? Have I ever even heard of it before? I dont think I have which is understandable because while theyve done a ton of minor work on other studios projects they really havent done that much on their own. From what I can tell aside from Girls Und Panzer the only major work theyve done was the currently running Princess Principal on which they shared duties with Studio 3hZ. They did Moetan and a few of what I understand are the less popular Transformers titles but nothing else of any serious note which is a shame because I really like what they did with Panzer. Ive never really had a problem with moe designs Or moe blobs as theyre also sometimes called But its kind of toned down here taking a more grounded and natural approach to the bigeyed chindeprived features that are more closely associated with the trend. The moe design aesthetic works surprisingly well with the eponymous tank action even if the animation doesnt blend as smoothly as Id like. See Girls Und Panzer uses a mix of traditional twodimensional and more modern threedimensional animation and both work really well at least for the most part. The slice of life aspects of the series AKA the girls when theyre not operating heavy machinery are done using 2D animation and while I wouldnt say any of its bad it does feel wildly inconsistent. A great deal of it uses limited movement and smart budget saving tricks such as selective framing and frozen talking heads but it wouldnt be to a distracting or noticeable degree if it wasnt for certain other scenes that are so overanimated that they feel almost like they were done using rotoscope. The tanks in the series are almost always shown in CG and while their movements dont always look convincing or well integrated they both look and move like real tanks and the level of detail used on them is stunning. Unfortunately while both sides of the animation are more or less adequate they can look a bit cringey when both are moving at the same time. You get a dose of this right in the first scene of the first episode where we begin with a POV shot from inside one of the tanks and we catch several glimpses of moe girls sticking their heads and whole bodies out of their respective tanks and Good Lord does it look like an awkward combination. They just dont move the same and it doesnt always look Right. This gets better throughout the series especially after they figure out that it looks much better to focus the camera on the girls while keeping the camera steady negating any excess movement from the tanks so that they dont have to move the girls with them so its easy enough to get over. The character designs tend to get weirder as the cast expands seeing how the main cast is geared towards normalcy with hairstyles that inform their personalities The lazy girl has long thick hair the delicate girl has lighter and fluffier black hair the lovesick girl has hair thats long pampered orange locks etc But characters occupying the side tanks feature teams of military buffs younger girls girls who all look like clones of each other so at least you cant say they got lazy or uncreative with their moe blobs. The soundtrack by Shiro Hamaguchi is mostly set to the style of military march music and if you want a quick comparison theres a track called Panzer Vor that early on sounds eerily similar to the theme song from Disneys Recess. Theres a lot of rolling drums at the base of the music and its overlayed by a handful of different wind instruments your standard marching band fare. There are a few exceptions such as in regards to foreign characters like the British tune The British Grenadiers which acts as a reverse of a lot of the more standard tunes as it starts with the flute and then adds in the drums. There was initially a beautifully rendered version of an old Russian folk song on the soundtrack but because Crunchyroll couldnt get the rights to it they had to replace it with something else Russian sounding from the public domain bin. They went of course with the Pac Man theme which didnt even come close. Another noteworthy track is the cast being forced to sing the Goosefish song but its nothing without its insane dance visuals. Honestly though the most noteworthy music that the dub was able to retain is the opening theme Dreamriser from the band Chouco which is absolutely delightful. The English dub is unfortunately on the disappointing side as Sentai Filmworks apparently decided that instead of trying to match the moefied voice of the characters A feat that like an accurate kansai dialect is distinctly possible to pull off but still highly difficult They would instead use more normal natural sounding American teenage girl voices most of which hit a lower register than youd expect from a glance at the characters and it doesnt work as well as youd hope. To be fair it does start to sound a lot better after a few episodes especially as Meg McDonald one of Sentais most recent hires at the time manages to find a connection to her character that may have something to do with the character herself growing in confidence and comfort with each passing episode. Actually a lot of the cast of this dub are unknown names and recentat the time hires including Rebekah Stevens growing into her role of the excitable tank nerd Yukari and Molly Searcy Well honestly being a bit miscast as the sleepy and quiet Mako as you can just tell shes struggling to give the character personality despite the restrictions of a lower register. Caitlynn French was also hired around 20122013 but its arguable that shes come a lot farther than her contemporaries since then with plenty of notable star performances under her belt already and even though shes not playing the main character here she plays around with the role of Hana a girl trying to transition from the gentle delicacy of flower arrangement to the raw power of firing a tank cannon and finds a lot of character in this dynamic. There are a bunch of veteran actors in the cast with recognizable voices like Monica Rial and Luci Christian popping up in the rest of the main tank class and some incredibly talented names like Hilary Haag and Brittany Karbowski getting meatier parts as villains but the most surprising for me was the boycrazy Saori and after stumping me for most of the first episode as I tried to place where Ive heard her before it hit me like a ton of bricks that she was played by voice acting veteran Jessica Calvello who I honestly hadnt heard in anything since 2003. I mean okay she had like 6 or 7 jobs between 2004 and 2013 but none of them were really high profile and now shes getting lead roles left and right and deservedly so with fan favorite performances in Attack on Titan and Maria Holic to name a few. Ive mentioned in other reviews how excited I was to see her coming back in a major way to the dubbing industry and her performance in this is probably its biggest saving grace. The first episode does sound a little awkward all around but shes the only main actor whom I can confidently say was putting forth maximum effort since the beginning. Thats not to say she makes the dub sound good however because the deepened voices coming out of characters that are slightly grounded but still overthetop in design is a hard thing to get used to. Hell the perfect example of this dubs problems is the student council president a short girl with tsundere pigtails whose voice is way too deep for her stature. Its kinda worth checking out at least once to see what Sentais newest hires of this decade are capable of and to celebrate Calvellos triumphant return to action but the sub is way better. Girls Und Panzer is what I like to call a Gimmick Anime. Its not deep its not high concept its not a ripoff of anything more successful its not following popular trends Its the kind of showWell manga in this case where the creator was able to come up with one weird original concept and build a story world and cast of characters around it. This may sound like a new concept for some of you but if you think back there have been plenty of Gimmick anime that have become successful over the years. High School of the Dead and Tiger and Bunny lit up the market back in their day and over ten years later The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is still finding new ways to expand the universe it built off of its gimmick. All you really need to do is take your original idea set it into a tried and true formula populate it with archetypal or even subversive characters and then find ways to market it so that people get hooked on the new idea while being drawn in by the same old surroundings that the gimmick manages to cover up. If that sounds cynical of me well thats because more often than not Gimmick anime dont always work and there are a myriad of problems they can go through. For example the gimmick can get stale exposing the characters as running jokes who can no longer support it which is what happened to Dagashi Kashi at least in my opinion. You can focus on the gimmick to the point that the series loses its sense of direction which is probably how Bento wound up going off the rails with two unwatchable and thankfully skippable episodes. You can focus way too hard on marketing which led to Strike Witches going overboard on fanservice to an unforgivable degree or you can try to make your gimmick show more than the sum of its parts and fail miserably winding up looking stupid and pretentious as a result like SasamisanGanbaranai. If your main character IS the gimmick you run the risk of sacrificing plot story and the rest of the cast as props to support the exploits of said character like Squidgirl did. Or you could be like C3 and pick a gimmick that feels way too disturbingly similar to real life tragedies. Okay to be fair Girls Und Panzer almost falls to that last issue with tanks fortunately being a lot more removed from reality than lifelike toy guns and thus not nearly as uncomfortable to think about but aside from that it really doesnt have any of those other problems. It fused its gimmick with one of the most enjoyable story structures you can pick the underdogs proving themselves in a tournament structure template and in doing so it was able to keep the story simple hold to a consistent direction keep its gimmick fresh with the increasing difficulty of each battle and the challenges both during and inbetween and it had so much realism in the movement of the tanks and the tactical usage of terrain and strategy that they were able to get away with some otherwise ludicrous logic fallacies Which to be fair was more for the sake of keeping the show from crossing the threshold from tank violence to actual human casualties. Yeah Ill believe a human sticking out of a tank is too small a target to hit because a moe show like this one REALLY doesnt need to get that dark. Of course being a tournament style show that only has 12 episodes it did wind up facing one other potential problem. Using Yuri on Ice as a begrudging example Seriously I really wanted to like that show more than I did Its entirely possible for a large cast to feel underdeveloped in a story that seems to be focused more on performance performance performance with interchangeable stock characters just kind of existing for the sake of existing and its just as possible for a show like that one to carry low or even no stakes. Again though this is a problem that Girls Und Panzer manages to avoid. The characterization is a bit light with no individual characters having arcs outside of the tank battles and the few that do exist being resolved for better or worse by a simple win/loss and honestly none of the characters Not even in the main five Are particularly memorable as individuals. Even the villains who are a lot more fun to watch are little more than stereotypes. Up until my second time through the series this was my one major problem with it but now that Ive seen it again the characters are developed Enough. The main cast may not be made of definitive characters but you know enough about them to like them and to know why theyre in the game and what theyre getting out of it. They dont go above and beyond but its acceptable. They even change by the end albeit in smaller and more subtle ways than some viewers will be used to. The supporting cast is largely interchangeable but with the exception of some cosplayers towards the end none of them feel wasted or unimportant. They even wind up getting small arcs to themselves like when the bumbling underclassmen wind up scoring major achievements in the last fight. Besides when you really get down to it this isnt a character based story Its mostly plot driven and while its not going to break any barriers a team of underdogs surrounded by less important but still kind of interesting stock characters while battling foreign stereotypes that still manage to pull out redeeming qualities whenever needed is a scenario thats more than enough to support a tournament show. In other words Girls Und Panzers biggest accomplishment is in execution. The parts for the most part dont feel like anything special or revolutionary but when it all comes together you wind up with an intense energetic sports anime thats able to use likeable characters and smart writing to create a series of truly heartpounding fights full of devastating twists and sudden unexpected challenges that you cant help but cheer every after every single one that they overcome. I will admit that I had a lot of problems with the first episode and I found it really despicable that the student council would use such cruel and extreme tactics to force Miho to take tankery but even that becomes forgivable about halfway through the series when you realize that there isnt just the joy of success and the developing bond of the tankery class on the line oh no there are actual stakes at play here and the more you grow to love and identify with these characters the more youll want them to overcome all odds and win it all. Not bad for a show that needed two inbetween ova episodes to help us keep up with all of its characters. Girls Und Panzer is available from Sentai filmworks. The inbetween episodes I just mentioned are all available on the home release. A six episode OVA series is also available from the same company along with another OVA and the first of seven feature films although Ive seen none of these so I cant speak as to their quality. Two different manga series Girls Und Panzer and Girls Und Panzer Little Army are available stateside from publisher Seven Seas. There are actually a ton of different manga titles and one game that arent available stateside along with one light novel but Im sure well get them eventually. Girls Und Panzer is by no means a masterpiece but it still had every excuse in the book to not be as great as it is. Not only was it saddled with a production team that hasnt done anything else of note until this year it was also limited to 12 episodes and almost as many named characters as Fullmetal Alchemist had and despite these problems the final product is nothing short of amazing. It has some flaws but aside from the easily excusable logic and safety issues the only problems that hold me back from giving it a perfect score are the occasionally shakey animation and the handful of character arcs that get resolved way too easily at the end. None of these problems keep the series from being a blast from start to finish nor do they manage to derail that overall feeling that the people working on it fully enjoyed what they were doing and believed in it with complete sincerity. I know a world where recreational tank battles have achieved worldwide popularity is a hard concept to imagine but this series makes me believe in it one hundred freaking percent. Its exciting its smart its suspenseful and its honestly one of those rare titles that Id recommend to just about anyone. I give Girls Und Panzer a 9/10.