(L) Girls und Panzer

[Magewolf]

Originally Posted by Xeiros

Oh and then there's the issue of the series having already used the whole multicultural approach with the various foreign influenced Japanese school ships. How will they characterize the actual American, British, Italian, Russian etc world tournament teams and differentiate them from Saunders, St. Gloriana, Anzio, Pravda etc respectively without either being redundant or giving them no discernible identity at all? In a silly sort of way, we've already gotten the WT with the first season or at least a simplified version of what it might be like. We've already seen teams based on different nationalities with their respective real world tanks both going head to head and in the movie joining forces against a common foe.

The more you think about how they could possibly continue the series in a worthwhile manner, the more you realize how challenging it must have been just to get this far.

Actually that is not so hard at all. Just have the other nation's schools act like normal people instead of stereotypes. So they would end up being more like Oarai then any of the focused schools.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by Magewolf

Actually that is not so hard at all. Just have the other nation's schools act like normal people instead of stereotypes. So they would end up being more like Oarai then any of the focused schools.

Then there might as well not be an international tournament. What you suggest would be realistic, but narratively meaningless. The whole point of themed schools is to give them strong personalities and culture. Removing that and you get the equivalent of highschool football teams where the only distinguishing feature is the colour of their jerseys.

[RX-78GP04G Gerbera]

Originally Posted by Obelisk ze Tormentor

Have the actual foreign school students speaking and talking in their own language most of the times? I know it’s challenging, but it’s not impossible. They already kinda tried that with Clara.

Btw, for those who know Russian, how was Clara & Nonna’s Russian-speaking in the movie? Is it good? Does it sound natural?

As for the tanks, did the show already used all the notable types from their respective countries? No more room for something new?

I don't think the Super Pershing was used by University unless I missed it.

The KV-1 was never used (though it wasn't really needed given GuP already has its IS-2 and KV-2 replacements). Maybe the T-44A?

The British Cromwell and Comet were never used that I recall. And Darjeeling mentioned the Tortoise Super Heavy Tank too.

Too bad it falls out of the time table allowed or it'd be cool to see a French ARL-44 Heavy Tank.

Most of the more notable German stuff was used by Kuromorimine outside of the StUG III. Would the E-100 fit in the time table rules? And no way to really know if the Ratte could've ever been made either... (though it was awesome to see that ride in the movie modeled after it, lol)

Japan still could use the Type 4 Chi-To or Type 5 Chi-Ri, I think.

[skaianDestiny]

Originally Posted by Obelisk ze Tormentor

Btw, for those who know Russian, how was Clara & Nonna’s Russian-speaking in the movie? Is it good? Does it sound natural?

Clara's VA is a natural Russian speaker while Nonna's VA is a Russiaboo. The former had perfect Russian while the latter was still pretty good.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Originally Posted by RX-78GP04G Gerbera

I don't think the Super Pershing was used by University unless I missed it.

The KV-1 was never used (though it wasn't really needed given GuP already has its IS-2 and KV-2 replacements). Maybe the T-44A?

The British Cromwell and Comet were never used that I recall. And Darjeeling mentioned the Tortoise Super Heavy Tank too.

Too bad it falls out of the time table allowed or it'd be cool to see a French ARL-44 Heavy Tank.

Most of the more notable German stuff was used by Kuromorimine outside of the StUG III. Would the E-100 fit in the time table rules? And no way to really know if the Ratte could've ever been made either... (though it was awesome to see that ride in the movie modeled after it, lol)

Japan still could use the Type 4 Chi-To or Type 5 Chi-Ri, I think.

Originally Posted by skaianDestiny

Clara's VA is a natural Russian speaker while Nonna's VA is a Russiaboo. The former had perfect Russian while the latter was still pretty good.

Ah, good to know. Thanks for the replies .

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

Then there might as well not be an international tournament. What you suggest would be realistic, but narratively meaningless. The whole point of themed schools is to give them strong personalities and culture. Removing that and you get the equivalent of highschool football teams where the only distinguishing feature is the colour of their jerseys.

Another thing is that a single team can only create so many really distinct personalities without using some stereotyping or grouping. That's why Girls und Panzer characters are formed off hubs - the normal hub, kohai hub, student council hub, volleyball hub and so on with 3 to 6 characters off each hub. One thing that impressed me about Hai-Furi is that they actually greatly reduced the "hubbing" with Harekaze's characters.

[Brother Coa]

About these points:

Originally Posted by Xeiros

I just don't see how there can any sort of direct furthering of the story without being highly redundant.

Easy - you just raise the stakes. Like "Japan's honor lies in winning this tournament" or "we made a deal with Americans and we will lose a lot of money if you cannot win this for us".

So instead of school this time they might save their country. With stakes raised liek this the show can avoid being redundant.

The question becomes is it worth experiencing? Do they have a worthwhile tale to tell?

Yes as there are a lot of other interesting schools and we only touched few of them.

Taking the World Tournament approach, that's in two years time and follows elimination rules. Disregarding redundancy for now, I have no clue how one could write convicting victories for Oorai without destroying the whole shtick of small highly inexperienced rag tag team of novices crewing tanks of questionable merit beat the far more experienced teams that possess both superior numbers and better tanks. The main reason Oorai is able to win in the first season despite the odds heavily stacked against them is in large part thanks to the Flag Tank rules and save for Anzio they still only barely win at that.

First - they are far from "inexperienced rag tag team of novices crewing tanks of questionable merit" right now.
Secondly - their WT team can have members from other schools. Since it is Japan as a whole it is all schools + university. And all can join them in fight.

Since all the stakes at that point would be what I already mentioned, in order for any sort of victory to feel earned/cathartic they can't write the opposing team as being incompetent or inferior to the protagonist team. I don't see see how Oorai could believably have won any one of its matches except for Anzio and the University the latter of which being an obvious exception had they been played under elimination rules either and this World Tournament would arguably have teams many times stronger in all respects.

As explained in the show - reason why national tournament is rigged like that is to give everyone a fair chance. WT rules are nonexistent so far, for all we know you cannot take a match if you don't have 30 tanks.
And they never said that only one school can participate as a team.

The kind of team that could convincingly win the World Tournament is nothing at all what we know Oorai from the series to be. Should they even the playing field by introducing a good number of new tanks and crews that only opens up the additional challenge of balancing an over bloated cast of characters. There's a reason why every other school in the series including the Shimada style team is represented by three or four what you could maybe argue are actual characters.

True, but look how much they grew in anime and became better. Imagine them now in 2 years time.

Don't even get me started on how you'd write each of the actual tank battles and avoid any of the aforementioned issues. Avoid redundancy, write believable victory scenarios that feel properly earned, balance, continue to flesh out and develop an every growing large cast of characters, etc. I would love to see more, but man I really hope they don't continue it unless they've got a damn good story that doesn't throw away what's been established up to this point. That again doesn't feel like a product first and a worthwhile piece of creative expression that uses what's already there as a springboard to leap to new and thrilling heights never.

We pretty much established that this show kicked physics in behind and throw it out from the house. xD
And I agree, the story must be good if it will have final conclusion for everyone. But judging them from anime and movie they can write good story and exiting battles.
And this will be perfect - one more anime before Miho graduates and move on together with everyone. Like K-ON!, and that worked as well.

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Brother Coa

Easy - you just raise the stakes. Like "Japan's honor lies in winning this tournament" or "we made a deal with Americans and we will lose a lot of money if you cannot win this for us".

Are you seriously proposing that Japan's "honor" or some state money to the Americans (how did that happen anway?) is higher stakes than defending their homes from the excesses and brutality of the State?

In fact, after how the "State" treated them, if I were them I'll laugh at any entreaties from the State of Japan to this effect.

Secondly - their WT team can have members from other schools. Since it is Japan as a whole it is all schools + university. And all can join them in fight.

That is an acceptable idea for a movie, but for a Season 2 we expect some character development and to expand the number of regulars to above the 30 or so will mean no one gets satisfactory development.

True, but look how much they grew in anime and became better. Imagine them now in 2 years time.

Xeiros' concern, which is perfectly valid is about not making the enemy team look too incompetent in relation.

We pretty much established that this show kicked physics in behind and throw it out from the house. xD

What you are telling me is that you have pretty low standards. In my mind, der Film already took a balanced act and tilted it too much for momentary impulses. While it did not stop (in fact may have helped) it from becoming a success, how much more low-realism can everyone take before they remember they were supposed to be watching Girls und Panzer and not Girls und Sci-Fi tanks?

[Brother Coa]

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

Are you seriously proposing that Japan's "honor" or some state money to the Americans (how did that happen anway?) is higher stakes than defending their homes from the excesses and brutality of the State?

Yeah because GuP is alternate universe and many relations toward our universe can be disregarded for the sake of anime. They can also say that Japan invested a lot of money into WT and they need to win or they will face economic recess.

One of the effects of the recess could be closing down school for good as the "state" will no longer have money to sustain it. Oorai and many other schools to that.

In fact, after how the "State" treated them, if I were them I'll laugh at any entreaties from the State of Japan to this effect.

True, but you are not Miho and if Miho is able to do something it is to forgive when evil deed is done upon her. Same goes for her friends.

Xeiros' concern, which is perfectly valid is about not making the enemy team look too incompetent in relation.

You really think that after everything that was done and filmed, and all the development they have undergo until now they will make WT players ( which is suppose to be elite of the elite ) too incompetent?

I think they will make them completely opposite. Cunning and smart and forcing Miho to change tactics every few minutes to compensate. I think they might even top that a little where every small tiny mistake can mean defeat for them.

What you are telling me is that you have pretty low standards.

You expect me to have high standards in this age?
I was burned once because of Aliens:Colonial Marines, I will never get burned again.
Better start with low standards and be surprised than get hyped and ending up in depression because of how bad someone manage the franchise you love.

But I do have high standards for GuP and I will explain that bellow.

In my mind, der Film already took a balanced act and tilted it too much for momentary impulses. While it did not stop (in fact may have helped) it from becoming a success, how much more low-realism can everyone take before they remember they were supposed to be watching Girls und Panzer and not Girls und Sci-Fi tanks?

About that - people do no care that much.

Take for example Maus scene from episode 12 - Maus should have totally crush down Hetzer and kill everyone in it. Yes, people saw it; yes, they know it is impossible; no, they didn't care.

Why is that - because of rule of cool.

Take [I]Independence Day[/U] for example.

I highly doubt that simple PC virus uploaded via MAC would work against highly advanced alien race. Never-mind that they supposedly don't have any kind of scanning equipment or IFF to tell them that their ship is infested with humans.

Did people care about that? No, because the scene was awesome. We infected them and left a nuke as a good buy present. Many manly tears of joy were shed when the public saw that mothership exploded in space, feeling proud to be human deep down in their hearts.

GuP is the same, it is show full of rule of cool. And it uses that trope just enough to be awesome and now break so much that it would be boring to watch. They might have kicked psychics out more than once but I do not care because tank battles are awesome and deserve to be stretched as much as they can.

With that said I expect nothing more than satisfactory second season.
I mean, they now need to step forward and give us solid conclusion with a full series.
Especially after 20 million dollars they earned with the movie, I expect nothing less after that.

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Brother Coa

Yeah because GuP is alternate universe and many relations toward our universe can be disregarded for the sake of anime. They can also say that Japan invested a lot of money into WT and they need to win or they will face economic recess.

In fact, Japan is already demonstrated to be overinvesting into the World Tournament if perfectly good schools have to be closed for weak reasons, but the idea that economic recession can be avoided just because they win is rather implausible.

Besides, even if such a scenario is forced through - the stakes ... losing their school, is still not really higher than what had already happened. In fact, since they probably won't be evicted in one night this time and they are not being singled out, it actually LOWERS the stakes.

True, but you are not Miho and if Miho is able to do something it is to forgive when evil deed is done upon her. Same goes for her friends.

They might forgive, but that's not the same than feeling special motivation to work hard for such a "State". And us, the audience, will not be rooting as hard, simply because we also aren't as into the cause.

You really think that after everything that was done and filmed, and all the development they have undergo until now they will make WT players ( which is suppose to be elite of the elite ) too incompetent?

You do realize they've already done that to KMM which is supposed to be the elite of the high school teams, and the UST is also not really of the standard I would expect for being the best university level players. Ironically, though KMM was the dumber of the two, I found it less annoying because it was so much fun. I laugh at their inadequacies all the time, but am very happy to watch the sequence. The atmosphere was much grimmer in der Film and that caused me to mind the UST's flaws much more.

Take for example Maus scene from episode 12 - Maus should have totally crush down Hetzer and kill everyone in it. Yes, people saw it; yes, they know it is impossible; no, they didn't care.

There are a few conditions for Rule of Cool to work, and they include in-world plausibility (which is to say consistency with what has been written) as well as a degree of Necessity.

The Maus scene had in-world plausibility. In fact, it turned out to be the one scene so far showing Carbon isn't quite invulnerable after all. It also had necessity - people have said they had alternate methods for taking down Maus that are more realistic and yet still fun. I must have missed the part where said method is actually written out for debate. The solid alternate that was offered was to leave it alone and work around it, but the tactical difficulty of that aside, there is thematic value in actually defeating that symbol of KMM (and Nishizumi-school)'s mistaken path.

An example where Rule of Cool did not help at least by my rating, was the equivalent scene against the Karl-Gerat. Even Japanese fans who liked der Film wondered if it was necessary. The film didn't establish an adequate "ring" around the Karl-Gerat (it's only a few hundred meters away) and everyone is aware that Karl Gerat is actually very thinly armored. As depicted and given previous performance, having Anzu just shoot it would be the far more sensible method.

Thus there was no necessity and in effect a cool scene was put on for its own sake and its most useful, unsubstitutable function was to get Mika out of the way, which I thought was pretty shabby treatment though I didn't even particularly like Mika!

[Brother Coa]

Glad to see that we agree on most parts.

Whatever the case I do have faith in creators, they didn't fail now and I doubt they will fail in the future.

In the end both of us are fans and we will always find little things to complain. And that is why creators and companies are not listening to us and create what they think is good ( but it is a good thing that creators listen to fans occasionally to know in what areas they should be careful - unlike certain US game production house that ruins franchise after franchise by not listening to the fans ).

[tjalorak]

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

You do realize they've already done that to KMM which is supposed to be the elite of the high school teams, and the UST is also not really of the standard I would expect for being the best university level players.

Just as a side note re: KMM -

We sort of know. Desert terrain, Maho alone on the hill, and the British have a firing range disadvantage. Black Forest bombarded from 2.4 km away as the Brits approached and many of the 11 Matildas got taken out first. At that point the Crusaders were scouting to find the flag tank, and the Cromwell was responsible to generate as much dust as it can to obscure them from the eyes of the enemy. But as the Brit forces were approaching the main enemy force that they could see, Maho had a separate force that ambushed the Brits from their backline, and it turned into a close range brawl after that that had the Brits surrounded.

But Darjeeling, knowing Maho is alone, went alone herself around the back of the sand dunes and took Maho on one on one. She reached the top of the dunes and both sides missed their first shot. Orange Pekoe was a loading speed demon and reloaded first, and the Churchil fired its AP shell at the front armour of the Tiger. But it did not penetrate, After that the returning Black Forest forces surrounded her and took her out.

One thing I didn't translate was that Darjeeling knew in advance that Miho the Vice Commander transferred away, and she was the one who used to coordinate the tank teams to carry out Maho's orders. The tactic Darjeeling used assumed that Black Forest would have coordination problems after losing Miho, as Maho is not that good a communicator herself.

It's also been said that Miho was apparently the glue of the team and that morale crashed when she left. Maho had to spend time rebuilding the morale of KMM. (That was also part of why Erika was mad at Miho in the manga apparently.)

KMM losing Miho was a big blow and helps to explain their coordination problems in the final (see: Miho and Co. escaping from the top of the mountain using a Hetzer to cause chaos). They're a weaker team than last year.

[arkhangelsk]

We sort of know. Desert terrain, Maho alone on the hill, and the British have a firing range disadvantage. Black Forest bombarded from 2.4 km away as the Brits approached and many of the 11 Matildas got taken out first.

Gekkan Senshado 5-6 actually cover the fight in more detail. What seems to have happened is that Darjeeling stupidly placed her tanks in a closed company column. Black Forest aimed at that huge target and got a few hits (the final score was 1 tank definitely killed, 1 tank tracked and 2 tanks with unknown damage for a total of 4 tanks that didn't follow Darjeeling.)

Images

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[I guess what the author is doing here is trying to raise Black Forest's reputation from the dirt, but he knows if he goes too far, such as writing the 2.4km bit for a correctly dispersed formation, it'll clearly contradict the anime and it'll be his source that gts thrown out. So he does this to allow for a saving interpretation.]

Maho had a separate force that ambushed the Brits from their backline, and it turned into a close range brawl after that that had the Brits surrounded.

Actually, they were hit from the front, and her escorting Matildas in essence charged the Panthers.

as Maho is not that good a communicator herself.

That's not exactly what was said. The problem actually seems to be more with Erika being unable to 臨機応変な行動を選択出来たり、指示に対し即応出来る..., so it is more Erika being unable to comprehend the orders on as high a level. At least, that's Darjeeling explanation (and by extention Gekkan Senshado's rationalization).

But it still doesn't fully explain the "jelly" Black Forest became.

[c933103]

So... about Senshado history, Is http://girls-und-panzer.affvistory7.net/history.html fanon or canon?

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by c933103

So... about Senshado history, Is http://girls-und-panzer.affvistory7.net/history.html fanon or canon?

I do see this on the bottom so probably fanon:
ガールズアンドパンツァー非公式サイト

[c933103]

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

I do see this on the bottom so probably fanon:
ガールズアンドパンツァー非公式サイト

Well, there are two possibility for being unofficial, 1. is fanfic and 2. is information collector

[arkhangelsk]

Look at the main page then:
http://girls-und-panzer.affvictory7.net/index.html
大半は管理人の創作です。

[c933103]

oh i see, thanks

[LoweGear]

Something interesting someone spotted regarding the movie:



LGear's Conclusion: Sodoko x Mako OTP

[arkhangelsk]

Yes, it's nice to see they remembered