(Discussed further in Episode 5 of the podcast I am in, Digitized Desperadoes. Here's a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWmf9zO83y8 )

What we have here is an unfortunate casualty of moe culture. It tries to (ab)use moe culture archetypes and typical story structure, but its attempt at distancing itself from more typical entries that tend towards slice-of-life 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 pro-military global culture, where all high schools (perhaps only Japan, but I’ll 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 (sensha-do in Japanese, Tankery in the Crunchyroll subs, Gun-fu elsewhere) and her schoolmates in their attempt to take the national competition to save their school. This is the most hackneyed concept you’ll 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? You’re not really watching something like this for a deep narrative, I’ll fully admit to that. I didn’t 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 it’s 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 they’re 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… they’re as one-note as you get. And the entire thing always follows the trend of “oh no, something bad is happening… but it got solved afterwards, so it’s OK!” One girl gets disowned by her mom for joining the tankery team. After a victory, the mom is okay with it. The main character’s 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. It’s stupid and stupidly predictable. There’s never a realistic or compelling arc, they’re 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 can’t make peace or reconcile people, but usually it’s 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 it’s not at all comparable to anything in reality that would get to the level of disowning.

On that note, let’s talk about the world-building. High schools have been decreed to be on giant warships/aircraft carriers. I’m pretty sure it’s 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, it’s a national competition? Also, you see lots of support and quasi-propaganda for Tankery all around. It’s a professional sport, it’s 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/it’s 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, it’s 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 aren’t 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. It’s unnecessary melodrama, like all of the non-battle stuff in the narrative. And there are a few episodes that are completely character arcs and slice-of-life rather than battles, so it’s not like I’m complaining about subtext or sideplots, it’s definitely around half of the anime’s 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, they’re still here! And they’re still weird and cute, don’t worry!” It’s infuriating. There’s 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 they’re confident. It’s so stupid.

The battles? Yeah, they’re fine. The animation is neat. I didn’t like the CG for the motion at the beginning but by the end, it looks great. I have a special fondness for the 3-4 first person combat segments, they’re really dynamic and adrenaline-pumping. 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 low-stakes war, and that’s refreshing to see. I don’t have a lot of complaints. If the show was 24/7 low-stakes tank battles (take out the fucking school closing subplot) I would love it. But it isn’t. So I don’t love it at all.

The fanservice is infuriating. The main school’s uniform has this really uncomfortably short skirt that they don’t wear spats under, so that’s dumb. There’s 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 orange-haired girl who I hate’s whole gimmick is that she likes guys and dating them but doesn’t actually have any experience, but almost all of her dialogue devolves into “I’m 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. It’s neat but it doesn’t stand out.

Overall? I don’t 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.