After a recap episode last week, we are back to Tanya and her efforts in the war but I must admit that while still enjoyable, this was a weaker episode of the show. I am reminded of the first episode of the series which, while visually interesting, lacked a real hook to get the audience invested. The characterisation and interaction between Tanya and her subordinates has been lacking and I noticed that the past two episode had little of Tanya’s own inner monologue. One of the most entertaining aspects of this series is the contrast between how Tanya thinks and the views of others of her, but ever since establishing the battalion, there hasn’t been many times where we hear her thoughts. The five minute shorts do show more of how Tanya interacts with her subordinates but in the main series itself very little is shown besides her few interactions with Viktoriya and even those are strictly business.
Have you ever seen a simple action movie, where the protagonist’s family member is killed by the villain and then they grow up to take revenge in the films climax? Well, I feel like that is what is happening here but instead, the protagonist is the one doing the killing. It took me a while to remember that Anson was one of the officers who first fought Tanya on her first mission and it is rather odd that he got so much focus this episode. Anson Sue (Crunchyroll has translated this as Sioux but it’s up for debate if that is an accurate translation), sends his family away from the war and loses his life in a desperate gamble to take down Tanya. Tanya, with complete disinterest kills him and steals his gun which happened to be a Christmas present from his daughter, engraved with his initials. I doubt Anson will be making a second appearance as that fall looked fatal and any attempt to bring him back would be cheap or ludicrous.
As a result, Tanya is now lugging around a gun that signifies her as the killer and I think someone’s daughter is going to be out for sweet revenge once the war reaches American shores. It certainly seems like the workings of Being X, to give someone a personal reason to start gunning for Tanya’s life and give another a beatable antagonist for Tanya to face. It is rather hypocritical if this is the case as he choose to support a non-believer over a devout soldier which does call into question why he is deserving of such praise when he tosses aside one of his followers in order to spite a non believer? What I find especially delicious about this development is that Ansons daughter is named Mary. So Tanya would be, quite literally, fighting a Mary Sue. The biggest problem about this is that if Mary Sue is going to get involved in this war, it certainly won’t be in this season. Most likely, it will be later down the line in the novels which we may never see animated.
Other than that, this was another easy win for Tanya and with the Entente Alliance on it’s last legs, this could signal the intervention of other countries. Daika has already made a move, unwise as it was, but I will say that other countries are getting the same idea. The Empire has grown to an alarming degree and as predicted, will soon be fighting a war on all fronts. Tanya’s reputation is growing greater as she guesses the plans of the top brass and can even challenge her superiors with her opinions but I find this rather hard to be invested in. Why? Because it is set up for a war that we will not likely see play out in its entirety. As far as I know, this series is a single cour which would be enough to cover maybe two or three light novel volumes of content. There are seven novels so far and could end up following the likes of many anime series that are only designed to drum up sales for their source material. It could be possible that a second season is planned though considering the recap episode last episode, it’s possible that Studio Nut is already working to the bone to give one cour. My biggest worry would be that the rest of this season would be spent building up to a second season and have no real satisfying conclusion. It’s a sad fact as an anime fan, we do not see a proper ending to a majority of the series we watch. It would certainly be nice to have such a thing although greedy and unrealistic at the same time.