(L) Girls und Panzer

[fukarming]

one more week to go until we finally see ep 11. I must say that is one of the most hellish wait I ever had in anime. I must say I have sky high expectation but Girls und Panzer had always deliver so far.

So If they are doing a Captain Tsubasa style on the next season, ie all the best players from previously competed teams will form a team Japan and compete against players from other part of the world, what do you think the team will be?

[Random Wanderer]

Originally Posted by fukarming

So If they are doing a Captain Tsubasa style on the next season, ie all the best players from previously competed teams will form a team Japan and compete against players from other part of the world, what do you think the team will be?

Everyone.

...The Anzio group will be eliminated offscreen in the first few seconds of the match.

[arkhangelsk]

If you mean every named character so far, you are probably right. There aren't really that many teams doing tankery, based on the number of schools in the competition and they include some obvious joke teams (such as Chi-Ha Tan school, or Waffle and Yoghurt).

[wontaek]

Here is a different version of a question I asked earlier

Assume that you are a starting owner of a professional Senshado team thus need to purchase a group of tanks for your team. Obviously, you want good tanks to win the matches. But you also want the team to be profitable, thus you are concerned about repair cost and ease of repairing, since if it is too hard, you might have to miss some matches. You also are concerned about the cost of fuel, since they are costs as well. Another concern is personnel related. As time goes, some of the tank team members will leave for various reasons, thus you will regularly be hiring and training new people for the team. If a tank is too difficult for a newbie to master, then that could also mean your team not being able to participate in some rich-reward events. Thus if you are concerned with all these money, fuel, repair, and personnel training issue, yet wish to field a team that has good chance of winning in most of the matches, what kind of tanks will you buy? Assume that even though you are concerned about bang for buck, you do have plenty of funds as you are backed by a very big corporation, and you can have 20 + 5 spare tanks ( 20 since Senshado Championship match's limit is 20 ). Of the 20+5 tanks, you need to designate 10 as the core tank group to be used in 1st and 2nd round matches, so how will you form that starting 10 ? Remember that your sponsor might frown at you if you spend too much money buying the tanks as well, and also you have to pay attention to your team's morale as if the tanks are too uncomfortable, they might quit the team and apply to openings in another team with better or more comfortable tanks.

[arkhangelsk]

Not really a big expert of WWII equipment but I'll probably go for a bunch of Brit Comets firing APDS - they give me the ability to fight even the most dangerous likely German and Russian designs while being relatively light and economical. The accuracy of APDS apparently isn't so accurate over 1000m but since average Senshado gunnery standards (even counting the fact we've only seen High School level competition) seem lower than our world (even as their driving skills are at least competent ranging to somewhere between "demo team" and imposssible levels), this should be adequate.

For my "spare tanks", I'm going to consider some German designs since if used right they still seem to be the best at long-range, and I expect as a pro team I can get at least one or two "snipers" like Nonna or Naomi that can fire and hit things at thousands of meters firing on the move, and I should prepare something for them.

[rocket]

T-34s are going to give you your best bang for your buck!

I'd do T-34s, preferably 85s but I'd be willing to take up to 50% of the 1943 model.

Then I'd pour any available left over money into Tiger Is, and buying StuGs when I can't buy Tigers. I suppose an argument could be made for sticking with Soviet equipment for lower maintenance and ammo costs, but we're talking such a small number of units I kinda doubt there's meaningful economies of scale on the logistics side.

But that's a tank-geek fantasy... what about a proper otaku fantasy, eh?

Who'd you recuit for your dream team and what role would you have them in? Factor in not just their ability to perform well in a match but also the fact that you need to have fan appeal. So outgoing characters or moé characters are important for sponsorships. Also these girls have friendships and rivalries that can improve or degrade their performances and that's a factor as well.

Say you could only draft 5 players from the one's we've seen on the show, and could only afford 1 at most of the obvious "Payton Manning" caliber players that have a strong reputation like Maho?

[arkhangelsk]

Well, I'm still thinking, but quite frankly I see no reason to pick Maho. Her reputation aside and the fact she's supposed to be selected by the nation for "strengthening", onscreen her only accomplishments were:

a) She won against the German team several years back - OK, I'll admit that's a start and if the German team is national-level I have to assume it has some good equipment as well so it is in theory a fair win. But it goes downhill from here.

b) Despite having an apparently veteran crew, she manages to nearly lose to a bunch of primary schoolers, half of which are complete newbies.

c) She was apparently responsible for one victory in High School, but since Kuromorimine's lineup is apparently superior to any on screen team, it could have meant no more than basic competence.

d) She was responsible for one defeat in her second year. Just to make it clear how I interpret the limited information in Ep7, it goes like:

Spoiler for Space:

They were probably ambushed by Pravda (this explain's Miho's caution in Ep 8), and were put into such dire straits they were forced to put their flagtank and two escorts onto an narrow mountain road under heavy enemy pressure, so they didn't have time to send out a vehicle for security (I don't see them doing much more than 10-12km/h on that crummy path, maybe even less, and at that speed it'll take 5 minutes for the lead Panzer to achieve a 1km security spacing, which I suspect was 5 minutes they did not have), much less pre-reconnoiter the whole route. Their move was read and countered.

Heck, the rescue/no-rescue thing was almost a non-issue tactically once Pravda swept the lead tank off the road (I've seen one guy argue the shell shouldn't have that much blast effect, and I am inclined to agree, but the scene allows no other conclusion.)

Any chance they had was to pre-empt both oncoming T-34s (since both clearly have good gunners, we have to assume either of them could bring down the Tiger). Given the average Tankery gunner's skill, this would be a fairly long shot, and given their actual performance (neither tank even attempted a shot), I have to conclude that this was out of their reach.

If not for Shiho's inability to analyze the real cause of defeat, it might well be Maho that was kicked out of Kuromorimine.

e) And we have this year. Everyone seems very impressed by Maho leading her tanks boldly to take up an ambush position faster than Miho thought they could have done, but the fact is that the ambush was poorly located. The range was too long for most of their gunners and they manage only one hit.

OK they would have hit Flagtank but for luck but it doesn't seem like that was Erika's first shot either (note that she was going to hit the rear, which suggests by the time she could get Miho's tank, Ooarai already passed the CPA to the ambush), so with another dice roll they might have hit nothing at all. Either way, if they had done the ambush correctly, such luck would be a non-factor since Oarai should have been annihilated... at least the Pravdans had an excuse that they were trying to chase Oarai into that church.

They would have been better off just putting their tanks into Oarai's line of advance and going for a close to medium range gunfight where hopefully they could actually hit things.

We then have the Ep 11 PV, where for some reason they manage to lose two tanks without inflicting further loss on their inferior opposition.

Well, that's Maho, nationally-selected for special strengthening. Are you going to pick her? Is it any wonder the Japanese government is desperate to sponsor tankery and find more skilled tankers so they won't be completely p3wned in the international competition to be held in their homeland?
=
And another person I have no particular interest in picking is Katyusha. Some people here (around P.53 or so) suggest she's a better tactician than Miho. To be blunt she isn't that good. She either planned the whole fight with the objective to show off by outsmarting Oarai as many times as possible, or she never really understood why the last Pravda commander set up an ambush (to counter enemy qualitative superiority).

Either way the whole Ep8 setup was a mistake. Considering their fire superiority (if we assume that the Pravdans can be competent hitters, and if they don't have some competent hitters it'll still be Katyusha's fault as captain for not training at least some gunners other than Nonna to shoot well), all they had to do was put their tanks into an antitank firing line where the Oarai tanks are headed - as determined by reconaissance (that part was right), hide them better and start hitting them at close range, first concentrating on the only two tanks that are real threats (by gunpower and accuracy) - the Panzer IV and the Stug. After that they can live up to their boast of killing them one by one and leaving flagtank for last.

But no, apparently the need for a dogeza outweighs all other considerations. As a result, 3 tanks were lost, arguably needlessly.

As for the Ep9's failure to organize counter-reconaissance measures - they could have had teams ready to ambush anyone trying to leave the church during the cease fire, thus leading for more of her formation to be exposed than expected (some say Katyusha deliberately let them learn her formation, but it is clear that she did not expect her KV-2 to be plotted onto a Oarai map and in fact I think she expects them to only have as much information as was on Oarai's map before their reconaissance). Did anybody even have the opportunity to report about the reconaissance attempt, since Katyusha was Eating-then-Sleeping?

The apparent failure to ensure everyone was off the bonfires in good time (this would help explain the relative lack of accuracy if they can't see very well due to wiped out night-vision). The dubious selection of a two-echelon formation (I guess the 2nd echelon was intended to achieve parallel pursuit, but a frontal pursuit with more firepower would have worked as well), leading to insufficient firepower. The lousy choice of the security tank (a slow firing KV-2) and the failure to send anybody back to chase down the missing tanks were only yet more misses.

So we are not picking her either.

[rocket]

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

Well, I'm still thinking, but quite frankly I see no reason to pick Maho. Her reputation aside and the fact she's supposed to be selected by the nation for "strengthening", onscreen her only accomplishments were:

Well I'm not sure Maho would be my top pick either, as it would sink most of my recruiting capacity into a single super star, but I have to completely disagree with your assessment.

a) She won against the German team several years back - OK, I'll admit that's a start and if the German team is national-level I have to assume it has some good equipment as well so it is in theory a fair win. But it goes downhill from here.

She starts by being established as a young prodigy. Which is not just about tactics mind you, it's all around leadership.

b) Despite having an apparently veteran crew, she manages to nearly lose to a bunch of primary schoolers, half of which are complete newbies.

Despite having a crew that was overconfident, highly distracted, and not used to working with her, she still won in a duel in an assault gun vs a Tank. Oh, and it wouldn't have even been any kind of contest if Miho hadn't gotten incredibly lucky with the tree taking the first killing shot. DOn't see how that reflects badly on her.

c) She was apparently responsible for one victory in High School, but since Kuromorimine's lineup is apparently superior to any on screen team, it could have meant no more than basic competence.

Actually since she's the captain, and the school is the undefeated champion until the next year I think that means she's responsible for at least four victories.

d) She was responsible for one defeat in her second year. Just to make it clear how I interpret the limited information in Ep7, it goes like:

Spoiler for Space:

They were probably ambushed by Pravda (this explain's Miho's caution in Ep 8), and were put into such dire straits they were forced to put their flagtank and two escorts onto an narrow mountain road under heavy enemy pressure, so they didn't have time to send out a vehicle for security (I don't see them doing much more than 10-12km/h on that crummy path, maybe even less, and at that speed it'll take 5 minutes for the lead Panzer to achieve a 1km security spacing, which I suspect was 5 minutes they did not have), much less pre-reconnoiter the whole route. Their move was read and countered.

Heck, the rescue/no-rescue thing was almost a non-issue tactically once Pravda swept the lead tank off the road (I've seen one guy argue the shell shouldn't have that much blast effect, and I am inclined to agree, but the scene allows no other conclusion.)

Any chance they had was to pre-empt both oncoming T-34s (since both clearly have good gunners, we have to assume either of them could bring down the Tiger). Given the average Tankery gunner's skill, this would be a fairly long shot, and given their actual performance (neither tank even attempted a shot), I have to conclude that this was out of their reach.

If not for Shiho's inability to analyze the real cause of defeat, it might well be Maho that was kicked out of Kuromorimine.

I'm not sure we have enough information on the entire situation to disagree, but again this was the championship so the captain's got to get credit for at least three wins leading up to it. Since she remains as captain "this" year and racks up enough wins again to make it to the final battle it seems enough of her team still believes in her for her to be effective, leading me to doubt that the situation was such a predetermined debacle.

e) And we have this year. Everyone seems very impressed by Maho leading her tanks boldly to take up an ambush position faster than Miho thought they could have done, but the fact is that the ambush was poorly located. The range was too long for most of their gunners and they manage only one hit.

OK they would have hit Flagtank but for luck but it doesn't seem like that was Erika's first shot either [...]

Again, there's the wins leading up to the finale, and in the finale she would have engineered a knock-out opening blow if it wasn't for Ooari's incredible dumb luck.

Fact is Maho's got the most wins to her record of *any* character we've seen. That's enough for me to justify her reputation. In addition whenever we do see her in action she seems not just competent but downright imaginative which so far has been a trait reserved for Miho.

We then have the Ep 11 PV, where for some reason they manage to lose two tanks without inflicting further loss on their inferior opposition.

Oh I fully expect Ooarai's plot armor to protect them from Black Forest's obvious material superiority, but if Miho out smarts her sister that's proof of Miho's uniquely flexible genius not a flaw in her sister's proven track record.

And another person I have no particular interest in picking is Katyusha. Some people here (around P.53 or so) suggest she's a better tactician than Miho. To be blunt she isn't that good. She either planned the whole fight with the objective to show off by outsmarting Oarai as many times as possible, or she never really understood why the last Pravda commander set up an ambush (to counter enemy qualitative superiority).

Oh I dunno, I see Katyusha as a good tactician, who's so used to dealing with opponents who's morale will break at the first setback that she's grown over-confident.

I think she'd make a good pick as second in command if only she wasn't so proud. She might work for Miho, but that pair would be too expensive to recruit away from their respective schools I think.

[Ithekro]

One of out biggest problems when it comes to Maho and Miho is that we don't know what was going on in the Finals between Black Forest and Pravda. One assumes that both teams had 20 tanks, yet we only know were about 5 of the 40 tanks in the battle were at the end when Miho jumped tank to save her classmates. We have absolutely no idea where Maho was during this battle.

We know that Maho has been MVP at least once or twice the last six years. We know she's found in the international circuit in middle school. We also know she is ruthless and will shoot a tank in trouble to win the match.

[RRW]

[Gravitas Free Zone]

I was wondering when someone (other than me) would post that.

As far as context goes, the scene itself is from Vividred Operation, in case anyone needed to know...

[4Tran]

Originally Posted by rocket

Oh I dunno, I see Katyusha as a good tactician, who's so used to dealing with opponents who's morale will break at the first setback that she's grown over-confident.

It's more that Ooarai's morale did break. They were going to surrender outright - and her tactics up to the point were excellent. All Katyusha really needs is a bit of ruthlessness and killer instinct, and Pravda would have won easily.

[Top Sergeant]

Originally Posted by rocket

T-34s are going to give you your best bang for your buck!

If you can find one with decent welding.

[Julio C]

So the next episode is finally coming out soon? When?

[Gravitas Free Zone]

Originally Posted by Julio C

So the next episode is finally coming out soon? When?

March 18, March 25.

[tomexe]

Finished Little Army today.

Spoiler for spoilering info from manga:

Maho is quite the coward isn't she? And with such a well developed martyr complex.
Clearly I was wrong about Miho being the favorite child in spite of her age. And Shiho ranks up there with Precia Testarossa for worst mom of all time.

[tomexe]

Originally Posted by Top Sergeant

If you can find one with decent welding.

And a radio. Only 1 in 3 were fitted with one.

[Gravitas Free Zone]

"Please, Azusa, can we free XP to the M4 Sherman?"

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[Nork22]

Life immitating art? In this case, the flower arrangement.

[John117xCortana]

Thats a Tiger I chassis....