Have you ever wanted to join the military forces? Become a soldier and fight against all those people who threaten the freedom of your country and the lives of the ones who love?
Saga of Tanya the Evil (Youjo Senki) is an anime based on Carlo Zen's light novel series (12 volumes currenlty) illustrated by Shinobu Shinotsuki. The anime series has got 12 episodes and a movie (together they catch until novel volume 3, this hints a possible season 2 sadly not announced yet).
This review has a lot of spoilers, be sure to watch the anime first.
Spoiler, click to view
Everything starts in our modern days and society, where power is the highest value and quality. Who has power can decide over others' lives and future. Humans are such pityful creatures, whose heart is easily corruptible by the emotions and instinct. A man, whose identity is unknown, meets for the first time God before his death, while time literally stopped. God asked him to show his faith for him, but he refuses because rationality is what reality is made of. There is no such thing as God. But what if he had a second chance? What if the most extreme situations could give birth within him the faith he lacks? As time started ticking again, the man wakes up as a baby, in another world where he never asked to be.Tanya Degurechaff is a very young girl with a great ability known in her world as magic. People with this power, the wizards, must join the army. Her only goal is to live a peacefully, without risking her life. But, as Destiny wanted, she has to fight at the forefront.
Do not be fooled by her seemingly "loli" aspect, inside her she hides a ruthless heart and an irrepressible thirst for war.
Spoiler, click to view
This is all planned by God, who Tanya calls Entity X because of her lack of faith. Everytime she has to attack, she has to pray God and the Saints, this is the "curse" God gave to her.The story makes us remember something as the II World War, but of course this is a different war, still fought in our same planet, with the same countries and cities.
When war starts, only an army can win, but human emotions as rage, fear, and revenge make every single decision and event unpredictable.
Spoiler, click to view
This ins't a normal war, soldiers against soldiers, instead... girl against God.The only sore point of the plot is its complexity. You have to follow every step, every plan, every dialogue, in order to better understand what is going to happen. It’s like being in a war, you can’t afford distractions unless you want everything you fought for to be thrown in the trash.
For this reason this series may not be very appreciated by the public.
The colors remain apparently static, tending to green and carmine red, colors typical of the war. As for the animations, we go from quiet moments, with the variation of the light of day and night, to exciting actions of war, in the middle of a shooting, between explosions and spells. The smooth animation really fills our heart with anxiety and mistery, wondering who would win and who would lose.
I have to say this, but this masterpiece has an enormous lack of character design and developing, apart from the protagonist Tanya. The other characters all have similar hair color, hair cut, and most of them aren't even that fundamental for the story. The only person who can do something that can change everything is apparently Tanya, this makes the whole story focused on her persona.
And almost all of the characters, Tanya partially included, have very long and hard-to-remember names (german or russian, mostly)
Even the characters who seem to be more important, like Viktoriya Ivanovna Serebryakov, still has no delevopment. Truly a big disappointment.
If we think of war we think of a national anthem, something that can get easily stucked in people's mind and that they can easily remember and sing. Well then, the opening and the ending of this series are the perfect examples.
When we listen to them, the first thing that comes out of our mind is surely Tanya's sadist smile
OP: JINGLE JUNGLE - MYTH & ROID
ED: Los! Los! Los! - Aoi Yuki
