Girls & Panzer is an original anime by studio actac, a studio of which I’m not familiar with. It was created in 2012 & has since spawned several new entries & even a movie franchise. I don’t know what else to say in this introduction, so let's get started. Might contain spoilers, read at your own risk

Story:

The story of Girls & Panzer goes as such. Two opposing academies filled with moe girls fight each other in Tanks. A competition is going on throughout the anime & that’s pretty much it.

The plot is honestly a really stupid concept, but I genuinely think it could work, moe girls or otherwise. Get some serious moments in there, explain the different sides of each academy, & give the girls some personality. The problem here is that pretty much nothing happens. Don’t get me wrong, things go on in this anime but none of which is interesting because the series fails to explain anything or give us a reason as to why we should care. In the second half of the series they mention something about how the academy might close/needs saving or something along those lines but they don’t explain why, they instead only tell us & don’t show us how this affects anything.

The storyboarding is also incredibly atrocious. The series just flip flops between different locations on a dime & rarely ever gives us something to ease us into where the next shot is going to take place. They never give us a line of dialogue, a character looking in a different direction, transitional shot, or anything to help ease the viewer into where the next-shot is going to take place. The only moment I recall from this series that had any remotely decent storyboarding was in either episode 7 or 8. We see some Tanks on the move, we then pan above the tanks, & in that same shot, we pan the frame to where some snipers are. That’s decent, no, even good storyboarding, shame that the rest of the series didn’t have that kind of storyboarding though.

Characters:

I don’t really have much to say about the characters in G&P. They’re pretty much 1-Dimensional stereotypes of moe girls & nothing else. Take the main 5 from K-on but strip them of their personality & character traits, you have our lead characters in G&P. They don’t see a lick of development, they have no personality traits, interests, or anything to make them stand out. For how seriously the second half of this show takes itself, it’s absolutely shocking how lacking the characters are in this series.

Art:

The artwork on display here is absolutely atrocious. The backgrounds often look flat & like very little effort went into them. The series also incorporates major CGI usage, which is horrible. The series has a big problem of using 2D character art on the CGI tanks, it sticks out like a sore thumb & they don’t even try to blend it in at all. The series would have really benefited from a full CG artstyle, given how adament the creators are on using CGI throughout most of the anime. Not only that, but given that the series revolves around tank battle royale & the tanks are comprised of CGI, it would’ve made perfect sense.

Another aspect of the art are the PS2 rendered landscapes. These, of course, look awful & like barely any effort went into them. On top of that, they clash with the 2D character art. The series also makes use of out of place CGI character models, but they don’t even try to hide them away in the background, they’re often up front & on display to where you couldn’t possibly miss them. They suffer from looking jank & again, out of place to the rest of the 2D art. In general, the character designs are uninspired & look like they just selected the same 3 faces off of a template & then modified them ever so slightly to try & mask the fact.

The series also has an incredible amount of discrepancies to its artwork. Background characters will often suffer from “no-face”, skirts will be missing line detail, proportions will be incredibly odd (though to be fair, anime characters are never proportioned accurately to real life). I remember a sequence in the first episode where there were 3 birds, & their wings were flapping at different speeds, yet they were all going the same speed, same length, & same distance. There are many more, but I don’t wanna list every last one of them off. I’ll admit, I could overlook discrepancies like this provided the show at least kept me entertained. But the only time I get enjoyment out of this show is when I laugh at these discrepancies that they don’t even try to mask.

The animation here isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever seen admittedly. I wouldn’t call it good, but it’s tolerable I guess. At least the series actually animates unlike some of the absolutely abysmal OVAs from the 80s & 90s that I’ve seen. So I can at least give it that.

Sound:

The voice acting isn’t very good. The actors all sound like they don’t don’t want to be there & are just reading off the script. There’s barely any emotional depth or nuance here at all. I’m not asking for voice acting that’s comparable to some of my favorite performances ever, or even top of its class voice acting. All I ask is that the actors sound like they at least care about their roles and are having fun with it. I hate to say it, but Mad Bull 34’s English Dub actually wins out here, and that dub is TRASH! At least there the actors sound like they're having fun with their roles.

The sound design is ok I guess. It’s pretty inoffensive & gets the job done, but nothing about it stands out at all. Which, credit where it’s due I guess. They got basic sound design right.

Final Thoughts/Overall.

I hated Girls & Panzer, I hated everything about it. The story concept while absurd & stupid, is underutilized potential. The plot itself barely explains anything and the story does an awful job at getting a viewer interested in what’s going on. The storyboarding is a fail. The characters are all stereotypes with no interesting personality or character traits attached to them. The series suffers from discrepancies up the wa-zoo, the CGI is horrible & clashes badly with the 2D character art. The voice acting isn’t very good, & the 2nd half was boring. If the 2nd half at least stayed awesomely bad like the first half was, I probably would’ve given it a 2, maybe even a 3 for entertainment value. But this anime FAILED at being entertainingly bad. Final score is 1/10, this show FAILS across all categories & is above all else, BORING.