Discussed further in Episode 5 of the podcast I am in Digitized Desperadoes. Heres a link: https://www..com/watch?v=BWmf9zO83y8 What we have here is an unfortunate casualty of moe culture. It tries to abuse moe culture archetypes and typical story structure but its attempt at distancing itself from more typical entries that tend towards sliceoflife is adding the feature of a unique world that has no place in our reality and thus tries to make itself interesting. The world is that of a strangely promilitary global culture where all high schools perhaps only Japan but Ill get to that later are on giant aircraft carriers and girls are encouraged to take up tactical tank skirmishes to enhance their feminine charm. This anime follows the story of Nishizumi the demure protagonist with a family history of these tank battles senshado in Japanese Tankery in the Crunchyroll subs Gunfu elsewhere and her schoolmates in their attempt to take the national competition to save their school. This is the most hackneyed concept youll ever see in what is essentially a sports/underdog story. It features most prominently in its contemporary the Love Live franchise and is wholly unoriginal at that. The plot is awful. Big deal right? Youre not really watching something like this for a deep narrative Ill fully admit to that. I didnt expect anything groundbreaking. What matters are the characters and the tank battles. The characters suck and the tank battles are good but I hesitate to say that. The characters are so godforsaken unoriginal that its painful to watch. They toe the line of what is acceptable in moe culture with all of them being fairly normal and cute but just weird enough that theyre somewhat fetishized. They fit the mold of being just strange and relatable enough to materialize in the fantasies of conformist Japanese youth. One girl has family pressure to be girly one girl has an unwell grandmother/guardian one girl is an otaku one team is obsessed with volleyball one team is all history nuts theyre as onenote as you get. And the entire thing always follows the trend of oh no something bad is happening but it got solved afterwards so its OK One girl gets disowned by her mom for joining the tankery team. After a victory the mom is okay with it. The main characters family dislikes that she does things like has fun and thinks creatively. So she beats them in a tank match and they get all nice. Its stupid and stupidly predictable. Theres never a realistic or compelling arc theyre all typical we do not support you but after you try really hard we love you and forget whatever troubles we had. In real life sometimes you cant make peace or reconcile people but usually its a lot less black and white than anything. I feel like there are too many instances of a family disowning a child for just playing a sport when its not at all comparable to anything in reality that would get to the level of disowning. On that note lets talk about the worldbuilding. High schools have been decreed to be on giant warships/aircraft carriers. Im pretty sure its stated that this is in Japan only but all of the other teams do seem to come from different countries like America Britain Russia and Germany so this makes no sense. Also its a national competition? Also you see lots of support and quasipropaganda for Tankery all around. Its a professional sport its highly encouraged for girls to join it has a lot of money pumped into it across the world But yet pretty much all of the girls families are like uhh why would you do that sport? No one does that/its unfeminine/you get nothing out of it. Even though there are tank cafes and tank specialty stores just like in a normal town. A town without a tankery team also That reminds me its absolutely hammered into the viewer that the high school will be shut down. The student council knows about it very early and other rivals from other schools blatantly admit to that knowledge yet there are no rumors or leaks of this information. No one knows about it except for rival schools and the leadership of the school. In Love Live it was announced to the entire world because you know these arent things that happen secretly or under cover. You kind of have to let students of your school know that their school might not exist in a year especially when they live at their school. Its unnecessary melodrama like all of the nonbattle stuff in the narrative. And there are a few episodes that are completely character arcs and sliceoflife rather than battles so its not like Im complaining about subtext or sideplots its definitely around half of the animes focus. Also even in some of the combat scenes they feel the need to include a line from every single peanut gallery character in order to remind the viewer that oh theyre still here And theyre still weird and cute dont worry Its infuriating. Theres a particularly bad set of episodes against the Russian team e8 or 9 where literally every single member of the allied team gets a line of dialogue just to prove that theyre confident. Its so stupid. The battles? Yeah theyre fine. The animation is neat. I didnt like the CG for the motion at the beginning but by the end it looks great. I have a special fondness for the 34 first person combat segments theyre really dynamic and adrenalinepumping. The tactics are mostly interesting and only occasionally the fights between the first and last devolve into simple underdog/gimmick combat. They clearly did research on tank battles and the specifications of each model of tank and how they react in certain environments. It feels like a lowstakes war and thats refreshing to see. I dont have a lot of complaints. If the show was 24/7 lowstakes tank battles take out the fucking school closing subplot I would love it. But it isnt. So I dont love it at all. The fanservice is infuriating. The main schools uniform has this really uncomfortably short skirt that they dont wear spats under so thats dumb. Theres also this gag where they lose a match so they do an embarrassing dance in an embarrassing outfit which comes back later when they have the whole group sings to improve morale scene. The orangehaired girl who I hates whole gimmick is that she likes guys and dating them but doesnt actually have any experience but almost all of her dialogue devolves into Im good at texting or this ought to help me get guys The historical references with each team are entertaining but useless and all of the teams are unnecessarily antagonistic before the matches turning into straight up hatred and derision. None of the teams are sportsmanlike before they lose but they turn into perfect sweethearts afterwards. The soundtrack works well with the nationalities because most of it is actual classical music from certain countries. Its neat but it doesnt stand out. Overall? I dont like it and I would never recommend this to anyone. If you like tanks watch it. If you like historical tank battles watch it. If you like really boring cute girls with vague tragic backstories go watch it somewhere else I guess. 4/10.