Saga of Tanya the Evil (Youjo Senki)

Tanya is one of those shows that forces us to talk about something that is technically a
spoiler but I have to do it anyways because it adds a particular context to the story,
one that I rather like about it.
While the spoiler is from episode 2 it does drastically change your impression of the
title character Tanya, quite a bit, so if you care about that sort of thing tread lightly.
Youjo Senki translated roughly to “A Little Girl’s Record of War” but more commonly
known by the much more fitting English translation Saga of Tanya the Evil, is about a superpowerd
loli natzi fighting in a world war-esk setting with magic.
She’s not really a Natzi though because they don’t exist in this alternate timeline.
It’s also not like world war II because this is the first big war, however there is
the social unrest and political…you know what, that’s….yeah we don’t need to
talk about the history, I’ll bring it up later if it’s relevant but for now just
know that shit’s going down and we follow the story of this prodigy tactician of a little
girl.
She takes the absurd orders from her superiors and using skill and sometimes pure rage she
pulls victories out of her arse like no body’s business and is singlehandedly helping her
country of not-Germany win the war against the not-allied powers.
Except she’s not a demon loli out for blood because that’s someone’s fetish, but rather
(SPOILER TIME) she’s a reincarnated middle-aged Japanese business man who picked a fight with
god at the moment of his death and got tossed into the body of a little girl in an alternate
timeline for his troubles.
This right here is where things changed enough for me to be interested.
Having little girls fighting wars is fun and all.
Like I really enjoyed Girls und Panzer, Sound of the Sky was war like even though they never
fought at all though if I wanted loli war fighting bad enough I’ve had a shrink wrapped
copy of Strike Witches on my shelf that's been sitting there for over a year now.
But that alone will not keep me invested in a series.
That said, watching this series about disgruntled Japanese man in the body of a little girl
have a pissing match with God was honestly some of the best entertainment of the year
so far.
All Tanya wants to do is live a safe but fulfilling life, that’s her current goal.
That’s always been her goal.
Even if her old life.
She’s just never been great at the whole social skills thing.
So getting sent to this alternate reality was probably the best thing to happen to her.
In war you don’t really need the kind of social tact that she lacks, you need results.
You can be a right bastard, which she is, but still get people to follow you and be
successful overall if you keep on winning.
Which she does… mostly.
The only problem for her is that her real opponent in this chess game of life is God
and he changes the rules on a whim.
The beef that they have with one another is that Tanya is a stout atheist, who does not
believe in the existence of god.
Therefore she should be able to survive under any circumstances without having to rely on
faith.
Her view of the world and reality is that you can succeed in anything as long as you
have merit.
If you can’t carry your weight you don’t deserve to be around.
God, or as Tanya refers to him, Being X is trying to force Tanya to have faith in a higher
power.
One would assume that higher power is him.
And he goes through great lengths to have her change her mind.
Though most of this just involves just straight up screwing with her.
Every time Tanya believes she has the world figured out and positions herself to get on
the fast track to easy street, Being X throws a wrench it her plans.
This would be spoilers if it wasn’t so freaking predictable every time.
She even has the defeat flag of constantly saying how everything is going to be fine
now right before things go to shit.
It’s like she’s a fake sentai villain or something.
[Go Watch Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger]
Of course all of this philosophical talk is
not the entirety of the series, it’s just what separates it from all the other shows
of its kind.
The individual plots all contain large amount of military fun and tactics for those who
want to see that kind of action.
The use of magic as well in the world in an interesting twist to separate the series even
further from one that might just be a stereotypical CoD clone in anime form.
One of the things I wish it did better was to try to be a bit more historically accurate
just keeping in mind its major changes, like the introduction of magic.
I thought it would be very interesting to see a take on history and how this alternate
universe is different from the world we know just because magic has become a thing.
Like the use of flying military artillery in the form of magic users I would have thought
to be something of a far more advanced change to warfare then what we saw in real life with
the introduction of tanks and yet the most common defence against these squadrons is
to dig a trench a la World War I.
It’s not like the flying mages can just position themselves over the trenches and
fire down....
Oh wait.
I realize that mages in this show are set up more to be a substitution for the WWI Flying
Circuses and not so much a replacement for the German Blitzkrieg of WWII but Triplanes
and Sopwith Camels never had the destructive power of Tanya and her mages so it just seemed
odd to me that the opposing military didn’t have much defence against enemy mages besides
you know just having their own.
But what do I know! I don’t claim to be a historian.
Trying to organize and analyse all of this ends up becoming
a pointless endeavor.
The TL;DR is that the show takes countless elements from both World Wars and doesn’t
care for the chronological order of how all this various tech came to being in the real world. Because
just doing it this way looks cool and makes everything more fun!
Historical accuracy be damned.
So that does make it slightly depressing to me, but the result is still very fun.
Now on the animation side of things the series was spearheaded by Studio Nut, a studio filled
mostly with old Madhouse staff.
Which explains the darker colors and some visual similarities to the more mature Madhouse
shows of years past.
The character designs though seem to take a different style then both from what you
would expect and apparently from the original material.
Both Tanya and her lieutenant Viktoriya lean far more towards the large eyes and softer
features.
It’s like their designs are trying to soften the blow of the more serious events that happen
around them. But Tanya still gets major style points for her dastardly facial expressions
that show off her vindictive side.
The battle scenes are very well animated and the special effects use for showcasing magic
looked quite cool.
As with most things in this series the rule of cool supersedes all and this is where I
give a quick shout out to the show’s opening sequence, because it helps to define the coolness
of the series with its addictively catchy song and the animation is up to snuff.
I don’t have much of a preference between the dub and sub on this one.
I think that the Japanese dub has the better cast overall, but the show is so focused on
Tanya as a character that the dub sails by with Monica Rial at the helm just fine.
Perhaps the dub will get tightened up before home video release.
Funimation has done swap outs in the past to make up for what I assume to be the rushed
production schedule of the simuldubs, so that might end up occurring here down the line.
and overall Tanya ended up being the show of last season that I kept up with because I
needed an action and explosion fix, and other anime of the season just were not scratching
that itch as much as I would have hoped.
It ignited a bit of a spark in me for it’s take on an alternate history even if I ultimately
was disappointed in how that ended up turning out, but the rule of cool had me keeping up
with it each week and even made me go back to it enough times and since it’s conclusion
that I really wanted to talk about it.
As such I’d like to present the Saga of Tanya the Evil with the recommendation to
Buy it.
It’s a remarkably fun series that I hope ends up seeing a sequel in the future but
I can live with what we have for now if it does not get one.
It’s been licenced by Funimation Entertainment here in the West and It’s available on both
Funimation and Crunchyroll’s website for legal streaming in dub and sub respectively.
Links in the description as usual if you need them.
Alternate recommendations to follow up some of the show’s themes...
First up is Alderamin on the sky, for a series that focuses on military tactics in a fantasy
world with magical elements, though I suppose that Code Geass is the far more mainstream
suggestion.
I’m just assuming that you’ve probably seen Code Geass already.
If you haven't you should go do that.
Second recommendation goes to Overlord, for taking ordinary Japanese workers and seeing
how they try to survive in a alternate fantasy universe.
Also noteworthy for it’s cameo in Tanya’s second episode.
Apparently the original writer is a fan.
Either way between those two you should find something to your liking.
And that’s it from me, a very special thanks to all my patrons including Hedrel Leon,
Bing Theo, Calhoonboy, Siri Yamako, Viktor Ekmark, Joshua Garcia, and Robert Chumzee!
not Chumzai, I apologise for that mistake!
and you all are all very especially awesome.
So until next time, Ladies, gentlemen, and others...
...stay frosty!

Saga of Tanya the Evil (Youjo Senki) | GR Anime Review

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