(L) Girls und Panzer

[Sumeragi]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

Well, if the situation was so... safe, there was no harm in having one more body in the water, was there?

Needless rescue in exchange for victory? It was certainly a bad decision. In fact, an incompetent decision.

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

Except that Shiho didn't blame Miho for being an incompetent rescuer. Or even for allegedly losing her cool. She blames her for not placing her name above the lives of her comrades. For being unwilling to sacrifice them if it came down to it. Considering the circumstances, and I'm sorry if you find it offensive, but yeah, that's a viewpoint that sounds pretty sociopathic to me.

Now, that's where things go into potentially invalid interpretation. Has Shiho said anything about lives? Sacrifices do not mean that someone needs to die, yet we're seeing people jumping the gun to that conclusion with even less leeway for interpretation than whether the rescue itself was needed or not. Basically, this whole "one needs to sacrifice lives for victory" idea is itself so ill-conceived I'm not sure why people stick to it.

[Ithekro]

So this still comes down to the idea on whether the tank crew of the Panzer III was in danger or not.

It is clear that Miho thought they were in danger (and Yukari agrees with her, but that isn't unusual). I can't tell if it is a quirk of the translation, but Shiho's statement after the battle about sacrifices are needed for a great victory, suggests those girls were in danger.

Erika's statements don't provide any clue as to what happened as far as I can tell. She thinks poorly of Miho and her style of things, but never really provides anyting useful in terms of information. Maho doesn't say anything at all on the matter. So all we have is some brief flashbacks, Yukari telling the story, and one of the girls Miho rescued thanking her for it in episode 10.

Those flashbacks do include Miho swimming underwater (which was the basis for early thoughs that she was in that tank and had PTSD from it, but those were put down). We see the tank sinking vertically with a corner of the tank in the air as Miho is coming down the cliff face.

We know the trailing Panzer started moving almost immediately to cover the flag tank. It just did not arrive in time. This suggests that there was little Miho could do in her tank to gain victory anyway. The best they might have done is backup after the trailing tank got around them, or knock out the Pravda tank with the 88mm cannon (which the gunner is suppose to handle anyway reguardless if the commander is there or not). How long for the trailing tank to get in front of the flag Tiger? Ten seconds?

Any other analysis on the situation as we can see it?

[Top Sergeant]

Originally Posted by Sumeragi

Needless rescue in exchange for victory? It was certainly a bad decision. In fact, an incompetent decision.

Miho going to the rescue of her comrades, who were in that tank underwater, was an incompetent decision?

Or am I misunderstanding your statement?

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by Sumeragi

Needless rescue in exchange for victory? It was certainly a bad decision. In fact, an incompetent decision.

What victory? They were fish in a barrel. She didn't precisely throw away an advantageous position, there.

Now, that's where things go into invalid interpretation. Has Shiho said anything about lives? Sacrifices do not mean that someone needs to die, yet we're seeing people jumping the gun to that conclusion with even less leeway for interpretation than whether the rescue itself was needed or not. Basically, this whole "one needs to sacrifice lives for victory" idea is itself so ill-conceived I'm not sure why people stick to it.

She may not have gone into the details, but that is the implication of her "advance no matter what" comments. I don't remember her trying to argue that what Miho did was unnecessary to save her comrades - just that she shouldn't have concerned herself with it in the first place because doctrine dictates she should have advanced.

[Sumeragi]

Originally Posted by Top Sergeant

Miho going to the rescue of her comrades, who were in that tank underwater, was an incompetent decision?

Or am I misunderstanding your statement?

I'm operating under the assumption that the situation was not a dire life-or-death one, given the limited details and historical truths (escaping from a sinking WW2 tank itself was never as difficult as escaping from current-day cars or tanks).

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

What victory? They were fish in a barrel. She didn't precisely throw away an advantageous position, there.

Putting oneself in a position to be defeated without attempting a response is in itself throwing away victory.

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

She may not have gone into the details, but that is the implication of her "advance no matter what" comments. I don't remember her trying to argue that what Miho did was unnecessary to save her comrades - just that she shouldn't have concerned herself with it in the first place because doctrine dictates she should have advanced.

Your implication. That's the core of this.

[Ithekro]

I know...lets send someone to try it. Escaping a Panzer III sinking in a river. The myth would be that one can't get out I suppose and someone would prove one way or another?

It would help to quell the varied notions of if said tank crew could escape, or would require help. Or could even get help at all. Assuing the crew is conscious anyway.

[Sumeragi]

Not sure why we need to do that when soldiers in worse conditions and worse tanks (Sherman DDs at Normandy) were able to do the actual escape just fine unless they were already too deep (not the situation in GuP).

[Anh_Minh]

They had breathing apparatuses. And they knew they were going to be underwater, so they trained for it.

[Sumeragi]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

They had breathing apparatuses. And they knew they were going to be underwater, so they trained for it.

Which has nothing to do with actually getting out of the tank itself, especially given the split hatches.

[Anh_Minh]

It has everything to do with it. It allows them to survive long enough for the pressure to equalize. Then, they can open the hatches.

(How big is a tank hatch anyway?)

[Infinite Zenith]

It would seem that the episode is set to release in not more than four days, raising my curiosity to hear from everyone as to what would constitute as a reasonable ending (with respect to both the outcome of the battle between Black Forest and Ooarai).

From a personal standpoint, I believe that the numerical and mechanical advantages that Black Forest possesses might not make the outcome a foregone conclusion: this match clearly exhibits characteristics from asymmetrical. If Miho is able to adapt guerrilla tactics, Ooarai would be able to level out the playing field to some extent. Thus, the outcome would now be dependent on the respective teams' commander to assess appropriate response. From the looks of it, Maho is most at home with symmetrical warfare. Recalling the difficulties encountered by traditional armies against guerrillas, I anticipate a fair fight that will be close.

Ergo, I do not particularly believe that specifics behind that last battle will have any bearing on the outcome of this upcoming showdown, as it was an expository element to explain why Miho transferred to Ooarai.

[Sumeragi]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

It has everything to do with it. It allows them to survive long enough for the pressure to equalize. Then, they can open the hatches.

(How big is a tank hatch anyway?)

It was because of the driver/radio operators, who had to deal with these hatches:

[Random Wanderer]

I would like to preface all of this by stating that I am not atempting to be confrontational with anyone. However, it seems that I am not very good at portraying my tone through my posts themselves, so they sometimes sound harsher than I intend them. This is me trying to approach this whole issue from a somewhat different angle than we mostly seem to have been discussing so far. I am not trying to attack anyone.

Originally Posted by Ithekro

So this still comes down to the idea on whether the tank crew of the Panzer III was in danger or not.

It is clear that Miho thought they were in danger (and Yukari agrees with her, but that isn't unusual). I can't tell if it is a quirk of the translation, but Shiho's statement after the battle about sacrifices are needed for a great victory, suggests those girls were in danger.

Erika's statements don't provide any clue as to what happened as far as I can tell. She thinks poorly of Miho and her style of things, but never really provides anyting useful in terms of information. Maho doesn't say anything at all on the matter. So all we have is some brief flashbacks, Yukari telling the story, and one of the girls Miho rescued thanking her for it in episode 10.

These various things are also dramatic and logical clues used by the writers. Along with the tone of the scene where the Panzer III fell into the water, and the fact that a number of characters that we veiwers are supposed to like approve of Miho's action. All of these are clues the writers are using to tell us a number of things. Among these things is the fact that the crew of the tank was in danger. How much danger requires us to use external logic to determine, and I'm sick of going there so I won't, but simply looking at this in a meta sense, the creators of the series are telling us that the crew of the Panzer III was in some degree of danger.

Likewise, those same clues, especially the girl from the rescued crew coming to thank Miho in episode 10, let us know that the creators of the series intend for us to believe that Miho's actions were indeed necessary, effective, and successful. That she did in fact "rescue" them from a situation they were unable to escape from by themselves, and that her efforts to do so were not wasted.

Some of you may insist on apply other reasoning to it, and decide on your own that the writers are wrong. However, these are messages the series is trying to convey to us, so when you try to argue against them, you will find yourselves facing opposition. This is simply because the writers have done their jobs.

By the same token, ignoring the logical reasons people dislike Shiho (because those have been argued plenty of times), there are meta ones as well. Shiho has been deliberately written in a fashion to make viewers dislike her. She was introduced being extremely cold and antagonistic towards a character that we are supposed to like and sympathize with. Soon thereafter she chose to disown that same character for what she perceived as an offense without attempting to gain any understanding of the situation. None of her appearances have shown her to be any more sympathetic since, and in fact one has even brought in to question her skill at senshado; the one thing she's supposed to be good at; as Maho had to explain to her the nature of the tactics behind Miho's victory over Pravda. Her representation in the Little Army manga seems to be even more damning.

Leaving entirely aside whether or not she believes people should be allowed to die in order to win a senshado match, she has been deliberately written to make people not like her. The writers intend for people to dislike her. So people are going to speak out agianst her. It will happen. It's supposed to happen. And if someone speaks up saying they support her, we're going to get an argument like we have.

[RX-78GP04G Gerbera]

Both sides' arguments are based on their own assumptions that there was/wasn't a life-or-death situation.

As I mentioned before, for me anyway, unless we can get concrete proof otherwise from the material itself, the anime gives nothing but the belief that the crew were in a life-or-death situation that warranted some kind of rescue attempt and, so far, nothing was shown to the contrary nor did any of the creators/writers say anything (that I'm aware of) differently.

[Gravitas Free Zone]

I was going to reply to this question:

Originally Posted by Sumeragi

Food for thought: Why does Shiho have such a strict view of Senshado? She is probably related to Nishizumi Kojiro (or this world's equivalent), a tank hero of the Sino-Japanese war, but that doesn't really explain why she is as "ruthless" as she is portrayed to be. Anyone have thoughts on this?

...but I think Random Wanderer did a much more eloquent job about it than I was going to.

Originally Posted by Random Wanderer

Leaving entirely aside whether or not she believes people should be allowed to die in order to win a senshado match, she has been deliberately written to make people not like her. The writers intend for people to dislike her. So people are going to speak out agianst her. It will happen. It's supposed to happen. And if someone speaks up saying they support her, we're going to get an argument like we have.

It's difficult to determine, without having to resort to blind guessing and historical invention, why a character with relatively little background is behaving in the way they do. The simplest explanation is that Shiho has become this person because the writers needed to give Miho an antagonist.

Also, notably, the writing has had Miho/the main characters win over all of their opponents, ranging from their competition (which, aside from the running joke of Anchovy, have treated Ooarai with respect both before and after, or at least after (Katyusha) their matches) to secondary challenges such as Hana's mother. Even Maho doesn't seem to hate her sister at heart. This leaves the question of Shiho and the old style (with Maho as a proxy for the moment), versus, well, The Main Characters.

On another note, Crunchyroll announced that they would be airing the final two episodes together on March 28, which is an astoundingly long delay for those of us who aren't using the wink-wink-nudge-nudge method of viewing the series, particularly for Episode 11. Once again, the contractual obligations of the US stream bemuse me.

[Midonin]

Originally Posted by Endless Knackwurst

On another note, Crunchyroll announced that they would be airing the final two episodes together on March 28, which is an astoundingly long delay for those of us who aren't using the wink-wink-nudge-nudge method of viewing the series, particularly for Episode 11. Once again, the contractual obligations of the US stream bemuse me.

I think they've always been on the TV Osaka airing schedule. It's where they get their sources from instead of Tokyo MX, most likely.

Also, I don't mind the delay. It'll give me some time to get my thoughts together, because I have a lot I want to say when the time comes for final reviews.

[Infinite Zenith]

We've already waited this long: I'm sure an extra week won't be too problematic

[Random Wanderer]

Since the Crunchyroll version can't be trusted to be complete anyway (yes I know it's not their fault, but that doesn't change it, does it?), I have no reason to bother waiting for them.

[Ithekro]

Just waiting for "Panzerlied".

[Top Sergeant]

Originally Posted by Sumeragi

I'm operating under the assumption that the situation was not a dire life-or-death one, given the limited details and historical truths (escaping from a sinking WW2 tank itself was never as difficult as escaping from current-day cars or tanks).

It is never easy to get out of a tank if you are in a hurry. Murphy really has it in for tankers.