I knew Id be at least entertained because veteran creator/director Tsutomu Mizushima knows how to make a fun anime. Girls und Panzer der Film is in some sense the Redline of tank combat. The entire latter half is a nonstop battle between a sprawling cartoon cast and their mighty armored vehicles. With 20M in the bank it surpassed the Japanese box office earnings of Madoka: Rebellion making it a force of otaku culture I knew little about. If anime of the past depicted the horror and pointlessness of war Gundam and promoted consumerism as the antidote to an ingrained war culture Macross Girls und Panzer goes a step further to abstract military combat from war itself. With my disbelief suspended by the industrial power of a construction crane the way of the tank is a bloodless and completely safe womens team sport professionally organized and practiced in high school. Nevermind the live ammunition and urban destruction. The ultimate basis of moe is idealized nostalgia a return to youth innocence and a past that never really existed. Panzer is moe for doeeyed children of course but also for WWIIera armored vehicles and the quaint nationalism they evoke. The tank fetishism is thick. Each crew is a cartoon of their nationality. The English crew sips earl grey as they work the proud Russians sing their native folk songs and a Finnish girl strums her kantele midcombat. The battle has them zipping across the named districts of an amusement park like Wild West Town and Nostalgic Japan Town. Its a childish and hypersanitized rebranding of WWII but thats the whole point. You can almost picture the hands of children gripping the tanks as they bound through the air and powerslide into the enemy: Vroom vroom Kapow Girls und Panzer is an otakus tank playset. Theres an innocent joy to the tanksport purified of complexities like logistics infantry artillery air and more importantly death consequences and morality. Perhaps thats the natural endpoint of otaku cultures pacifist streak or perhaps its merely the anime analog to the popular World of Tanks and War Thunder which are just as innocent glamorized and sportslike in their interpretation of WWII as Girls und Panzer. additional background info: