Studio Nut really must be hurting as this week starts off with a two minute recap of the last episode but what made this episode special is that for the first time, Tanya lost. The start of this episode at least had Ansen pay that check of giving Tanya a hard time. In particular I loved the irony that he tried to take her out with a suicide bombing much like Tanya did on their first encounter. There was also that moment where in Tanya was fought in close quarters and full herself getting manhandled. It’s sometimes easy to forget be she is still a little girl of twelve years of age. When in hand to hand combat she is at a serious disadvantage due to her under developed body. I spotted moments of janky artwork and cgi animation in the fight scene but otherwise it was a fairly accelerating affair. I am once again annoyed that Tanya shook off injuries and looked fine within the next scene.
They really need to clarify just how medicine works in this universe as this is the second time she’s gotten injured only to have it magically disappear by the next scene. It definitely gives a layer of invincibility to Tanya when she’s survived many explosions with only a bit of dirt on her despite being in the center of the blast radius. One really great detail of the fight scene was the Ansen was using a military shotgun which Tanya proclaimed violated wartime treaty. See in real history the German protested the use of shotguns in world war I. They stated the reason being that shotguns were inhumane and caused excess suffering to the victim. Though the real reason is that Germany didn’t have shotguns so they wanted to prevent the enemy from using them. What makes this particularly novel is that claiming that Shotguns were inhumane is rather hypocritical because Germany invented flamethrowers.
There may be those confused at what exactly happened in the second half of this episode. For that you may need to know so history on the World Wars. The first is the matter that command signed a Armistice, not a surrender. An armistice is only a formal agreement to stop fighting and one of the things that lead to the start of World War II. Another event to know would be the battle of Dunkirk which has been site of one of the points that Germany could have won WWII. It was a mass evacuation of 338,226 soldiers. If the soldiers had been killed then this could have meant that Germany could have taken England and thus deterred America from entering the war. Here we see a combination of the two events as the armistice was used as a massive distraction to ensue the Emipire doesn’t notice the mass evacuation. The goal in this war was to have a severe loss of life to ensue the enemy was incapable of fighting.
Now that the enemy has fled the mainland it opens up the war for new people to enter the field. Tanya knows her history and she knows that the empire will be in a very bad position if that happens. Here is the beauty of what happens next. Tanya only knows what she knows due to alternative history. Anyone high enough in command who would listen to her is dealing with negotiating the terms of the armistice. To anyone else she just sounds like a war crazed soldier who can’t leave the battlefield. But she know that this is her one chance for a peaceful life in this world. Yet command chains her for she just looks like a psychopath trying to start another war. This is beautiful. Tanya know’s exactly what is happening but is utterly powerless to do anything about it. All of her victories so far in the series have amounted to nothing as she will once again be forced into the fires of battle in the future.
