Summary
Miho assumes control and turns around the practice battle to her advantage, using a bridge to turn her team’s Panzer to take out the rest of the teams from all sides. After recruiting Reizei Mako as the tank driver, the Student Council President assigns her a commander role, and they are informed of a friendly match to be held on the mainland between them and a Panzer-reputable girls school.
Impression
Those tanks are definitely pretty durable despite their age – a few hits from cannon balls didn’t exactly do loads of damage to them, and instead took the teams in opposition to Miho and her group out quite safely without any bodily harm. While I doubt that would happen in real life, for the sake of this show let’s just assume that when the Panzer tanks are hit, the girls inside suffer no damage ^^ I’m also sceptical about the rickety wooden bridge Miho’s team drove their tank out onto, as it seems like one of the ones destined to snap and fall right when lots of pressure is placed on it. It was a great location to target the enemy from though, and all it took was for some reorientating for the rest of the groups to drop like flies, as they were all around Miho due to wanting to take her and the Panzer IV out first. She definitely knows what she’s doing even though she’s a bit frail and weak-willed right now, which makes me hope that she’ll gain some self-confidence over the course of the series.
We were also properly introduced to the last member of the main cast – Reizei Mako, the girl who always shows up late for a reason we can now identify as her strong desire to prefer sleeping in to getting up early in the morning. I can sympathise with Mako fully for this as I’m exactly the same; I’m not a morning person at all, and someone waking me up before it’s the absolute latest time I have to get up will piss me off, a lot. I absolutely agree that I have no idea how some people can have so much control over their internal clocks to wake up at an absurd time like 5am, though to be honest that’s partly my fault since I hardly ever sleep before midnight at least these days xD Anyway, she’s clearly more afraid of either her grandma or the thought of calling Saori her senpai, so she’ll manage to pull through all the same.
So the massive gigantic ship finally docks on what seems to be a mainland, and I’m still quite amused by the whole concept, even more so when the girls talk about it like its normal, and that they’d love to see what it’s like to go to school on land instead. Much like how we instantly got a mock battle between the various groups, we’ve been catapulted into a friendly match with another school, St. Gloriana Girls Academy. Like the fancy name, these girls really do give off a bad first impression – that they’re prissy, stuck-up people who seem to have money and may go to many lengths to win, despite this just being a friendly. Get out there, Miho, and kill them all.
PS. Also, the fanservice was…appreciated, but yeah, this show can’t hold a candle to Strike Witches, whose movie is turning up tomorrow! /shameless advertising