Girls und Panzer – 02

With only one rusty tank in the garage, the newly-assembled Tankery class must search for four more, which they find in a forest, on a cliff, under a pond, and in a warehouse. They clean the tanks up and await their instructor, Chouno Ami, who drops from the sky in an airlifted tank. A mock battle is commenced, in which the five teams must get their tanks into starting position. The last tank mobile will win. While escaping a pincer attack, Miho’s team nearly runs over the perpetually sleepy Reizei.

This show continues delivering what the title promises: Girls and tanks. More girls than tanks: by our count, there are twenty-four characters: the main group with Miho, the four other teams, Miho’s sister Maho, and the instructor Ami. (No guys!) We’re not even going to try connecting a face with a name – especially since not everyone is given one! – but we’re now reasonably familiar with Miho’s group: Hana, Saori, Yukari, and Reizei.

We like how this episode wastes no time getting the girls in tanks, even if they’re old, rusty museum pieces, and the girls don’t know how to operate them. For what it’s worth, they’re really cool tanks. We’re also a little fuzzy on details like the nature of the ordinance: you’d think live ammo would certainly result in some fatalities, especially when most of the tank operators don’t know what they’re doing. Ah well, we’re sure  they’ll be fine. We wish we had the opportunity to operate tanks in high school.

Rating: 6 (Good)

Car Cameo: We caught a glimpse of a Daihatsu Materia and Nissan Silvia, but most prominent is the school principal’s Ferrari F40 – one of only 1,315 ever built – which is utterly wasted by Instructor Chouno’s tank-drop. A sad day.

The Tanks: Team A: German Panzer IV. Team B: Japanese Type 89 I-Go. Team C: German StuG. Team D: American M3 Lee. Team E: Czech Panzer 38(t). Instructor Chouno: M1 Abrams a brand-spankin’ new Mitsubishi Type 10 MBT.