Blu-Ray Review: Girls und Panzer - The Complete TV Series (2012 - 2013)

Posted by Retrokaiser On Sunday, May 11, 2014 0 comments

Girls und Panzer (although when said out loud it sounds like "Girl's Underpants Ahh") is an animated drama comedy series. The show is about a teenaged girl named Miho Nishizumi who just transferred into a new school due to that school not having a class that she doesn't like. That certain class is known as "Tankery".  Tankery is a class that teaches students the fine art of riding tanks and learning how to operate their weaponry properly. Unfortunately for her the school she just transferred to has decided to bring back that class after it being removed from the school's program many years prior. The student council is also begging Miho to join but she doesn't want to join but when her friends want to join that class she caves in because she doesn't want to become a burden on her friends. Now the class is back up and running with the girls training up their skills so they can win the "National Tankery Championship" that has many schools competing in a game where they have two teams of tanks battling against each other, if one team takes out the other teams leader then the team that took out the other teams leader wins the match.  The downside is that the tanks that the girls will be riding aren't as good as all of the tanks the other schools will be using so they are going to have to work real hard if they want to stand a chance.  Panzer Vor! (Click "Read More" to read the full review).

 
The story in this show was fresh, original, and really, really good. The drama in this show was very well done and will get you caring about the characters. The comedy was pretty funny and will make you chuckle and it was also blended in with the drama well so the genres don't clash at all. The action is very exciting and really captured how awesome military tanks are which is good as there hasn't been a show that has made this tanks exciting in ages. This show also progresses very smoothly but there is an episode or two that builds up something big but they go a different direction instead and then get to that big thing on the last minute in a "by the way this happened" way and it did annoy me a little bit. Characters in this show were great, unique, have nice charming personalities, and were full of energy and spunk. You will have a hard time disliking any of them... Well after the first episode as some of the characters did get a little annoying as they were too whiny. 


The artwork in this show is very charming and beautiful. Backgrounds have a nice simple look to them and it works well plus they all have very nice coloring. The characters in this show look very beautiful and they also look a little bit like dolls due to their oversized heads and tiny bodies and it won't bother you but rather it helps with the look and gives them some extra character. This show also uses 3D computer generated models for the tanks and some terrain and it looks decent and I liked how they mixed it up with the 2D artwork. They do this thing in some scenes to where they go to a first person mode while the girls are driving and it looked great and makes you feel like that you are riding an amusement park ride.


The animation in this show is alright but nothing all that special but they do up the animation quality for the fan service scenes (of the heavenly body kind) but those are extremely short. The 3D animation in this show is a little choppy looking like they didn't render it properly. The English dub in this one was quite good with voices that worked well with all the characters and I didn't spot anything wrong with it at all. The soundtrack was very charming with some nice light hearted pop tracks mixed in with some nostalgic sounding military tracks that reminds me of "The Great Escape (1963)", "Hogan's Heroes (1965 - 1971)", and "Dad's Army (1968 - 1977)".

 
There is quite the decent amount of special features to be found on this release. You get two bonus OVA (Original Video Animation) episodes, special promos and ads that played on Japanese televisions, and text-less opening and closing credit sequences. The bonus OVA episodes were decent but I can see why they were put in the special features section as they are only just clip shows with bonus trivia and tid-bits about the characters and the class of Tankery. The television ads and promos were quite interesting to watch and I quite liked how they were advertising the show as "we are not one of those shows with shameless shows with sexual fan service" (even though that there are some shameless fan service moments).

 
The opening credits were charming to watch with some funny moments and good music to go along with it. Closing credits were also fun to revisit as they had good music and some very cute visuals to go with the music. Just a word of warning as the text-less closing section runs for the same amount as an episode itself due to there being so many versions of the closing credits so you might want watch while eating a snack (Tim Tams are good).

Overall this was an excellent show and there is no doubt that you should watch this show.  This anime is a great contender to being one of the greatest anime of all-time (around the top 300 - 200 section).  Classic show that needs to be watched.

Title: Girls und Panzer - The Complete TV Series
Animation/Production Studio: Actas
Genre: Animation/Anime, Drama, Comedy, Action
Running Time: 336 Minutes (12 Episodes + 2 OVAs)
Distributor: Hanabee Entertainment (http://www.hanabee.com.au/)
Rating: PG (Mild animated violence, nudity)
Price: $64.99
Recommended: Yes

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