Girls & Panzer: Complete TV Series

Now here is a concept that almost seems tailor-made for anime: the madcap antics of bubbly high school girls in an armored tank. The central character here is Miho, who enrolls at the Oarai Academy specifically because the school doesn't have a tank training program. To Miho's horror, the academy suddenly adds a required “tankery” class. Miho, who had an upsetting tank-based incident at another school, eventually overcomes her loathing of tanks and quickly joins her classmates in cleaning their vehicles and participating in war games with rival girls' schools. Along the way, the girls learn quasi-lessons about teamwork, overconfidence, overcoming fears, and—of course—plotting military maneuvers. Despite a relatively compact 12-episode stretch, the 2012 series Girls & Panzer ultimately feels like a weird joke stretched to the fraying point. Miho is not particularly engaging, her classmates are fairly one-dimensional, and even the war games are not all that exciting. Presented in a dual-language set, rated TV-14, this is not a necessary purchase. (P. Hall)