This series really has started to shine since episode two and I admit that Tanya is carrying the show all by herself. The first episode shows what this series would be like without her character background and while that was serviceable, it’s on a much better footing now. Tanya’s quest to land a safe job out of the frontlines and God screwing her over at every point makes for a far more entertaining story than your standard magical girl anime. The cushy job testing a new magical device turns out to be even more dangerous than the front lines due to a crazed inventor. Thanks to divine intervention, Tanya ends up with a magical device far more powerful than anything else but as a tradeoff, she is forced to praise God every time she uses it. In the source material, the praising of God was involuntary and often came out of Tanya’s mouth no matter what she did. While the animated series depicts Tanya begrudgingly praying on her own accord, which certainly makes it all the more cathartic. After all, this device is likely to push her on to more and more battlefields where her life is in danger. In order to survive she will need to make use of the device and pray, which in turn forces her into even more battles. God has literally forced her on a path where the only way she can survive is praising him, which amounts to cheating when it comes to developing Tanya’s faith.
As I said before, God in the anime is treated differently from the source material. Originally, there were dozens of gods and Tanya’s Type 95 device was something that landed in her hands by coincidence. Originally it was intended to help inspire faith in the gods. I find the anime version to be more poignant and interesting as I’m not certain if God is working in his mysterious ways or if he is genuinely unreasonable. After all, God is being a bit of an jackass if you take the time to read the Bible. Honestly, I only managed to make it ten pages into the bible before it started putting me to sleep but within those ten pages, he seemed rather trollish. It is a question of whether this game he has with Tanya is a matter of God punishing an arrogant man or if he is using her to promote faith in others. Tanya’s actions do seem to encourage piety within the army and Tanya herself seems more or less oblivious to this fact because she’s too focused on proving being X wrong. The idea of Tanya doing god’s work while under the impression that she is rebelling against god is the kind of irony I find most amusing.
I was worried that the dreaded school setting was coming into the story, which is an aspect I detest when it comes to anime shows. But from the way things are looking, God is sure to have plans that will ensure that Tanya doesn’t get too comfortable. It also helps that this is a war college rather than a typical high school but still I get worried when any show tries to cram in a school in a story that doesn’t need one. However, if there is one thing that Tanya needs right now, it is strong side characters. So far, Tanya only has her girl subordinate acting as a foil but she could really uses a character to bounce off and interact with. She doing an admirably good job in carrying the show but a great lead needs others to work off. All the signs point towards the series is heading towards World War One with Tanya being at the very center of it all. I appreciate the level of quality that has gone into these past few episodes but numerous war scenes have a tendency to drain budgets and animation quality. Considering this is Studio Nut first work, the last thing I want to see is the quality of the show taking a nosedive.
