Girls
Und Panzer: This Is The Real Anzio Battle! OVA (2014/Sentai
Blu-ray w/DVD Set)
Picture:
C+/C Sound: B/B- Extras: C Episodes: C+
Girls
Und Panzer (2014) takes place in a world where girls train in
tank warfare in community sized Academy carrier ships and compete
against other schools, in the WWII mode (an opposing team is in the
Italian Fascist mode, but its hard to read if the protagonists
represent U.S. and/or Japanese interests, or something else). The
girls of Ooral Girls' Academy face their rivals from Anzio High in a
'friendly' match but can team Usagi (Rabbit) find a way to beat their
rivals who have faster and newer tanks?
Thus,
this series (aka Girls and Tanks) is about cute girls that learn how
to drive and shoot tanks in friendly school matches. Team Usagi does
represent a fresh new batch of recruits who have been given older
tanks (which were leftover from the last war), but how can they
compete with the other schools with their faster and newer tanks?
They will have to work together show they may be in older tanks but
don't count them out.
This
was an anime OVA (an extra episode to the series) and all about cute
girls who can literally blow you away (so don't piss off any girl
lol). While tanks are powerful and were a changing point in warfare,
they were not known for speed. On the battlefield strategy, skill,
knowledge and teamwork is sometimes more important than gear or tech.
Not bad overall, but there's only so much here at a total running
time of 38 minutes.
The
1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image on all the episodes look
a bit weak throughout, though the anamorphically enhanced DVD
versions are softer still. The transfers are not awful, yet not
great; then neither is the very basic animation. Color is a bit
better than detail. Both the Japanese & English DTS-HD MA
(Master Audio) 4.1 lossless sound presentations on the Blu-ray make
this easier to handle, but the English disappoints a bit in
comparison and the better Japanese presentation (more detailed and
accurate) with their odd mixes. 4.1 was what Dolby used for 70mm
(usually blow-ups of 35mm-shot films) movie sound on
magnetically-striped film prints that Dolby used before 5.1 arrived &
became standard in the digital era, so enjoy the monophonic
surrounds. The DVD has lossy Japanese & English Dolby Digital
4.1 mixes that are both a step down, as expected.
Extras
include clean closing animation and trailers.
-
Ricky Chiang
