“If we hit it, we win. If we give up, we lose.”
Summary
Miho continues to radio a fake transmission, leading the majority of the Saunders tanks away to a remote location. An Ooarai tank finds the Saunders flag tank, and they act as bait until the entire Ooarai force have remobilised, chasing after the sole flag tank as it attempts to both escape and shoot down the enemy. It manages to hold out until reinforcements arrive, but to Miho’s surprise Saunders have matched their tank numbers with Ooarai in an attempt for a fair match, instead of crushing them with their entire force.
Impression
After a painful one-week hiatus (replaced by a much frowned upon recap episode 5.5) I was actually really hyped up for the end of the battle against Saunders. These Panzerfahren battles are actually really interesting, and it becomes even more so against a team which has an obvious advantage and so stack the odds against Ooarai. It’s good to know that the Saunders commander didn’t know about the radio interception balloon at all, and was just going along with what she thought was intuition – in fact she’s against foul play, and it was pretty damn decent of her to only use five of her tanks in the final face-off with Ooarai, because that was how many tanks they had. Anyway, Ooarai made full use of their fake radio transmissions to lead the majority of the Saunders team away to some random area, finding their flag tank in the process. Was the shock really too great to stop Ooarai from just firing at their flag tank at point-blank range?
It was quite a tense climax to the battle, with one Saunders flag tank getting chased by all five Ooarai tanks at one point. It was hilarious how the Ooarai tanks are poor quality and small due to them not being able to afford shiny Fireflies, but because of that they’re harder to hit as they’re small but still retain manoeuvrability. I’m actually surprised that Ooarai managed to dodge all the shots pretty well (apart from the two teams that got taken out) because over time, Saunders will inevitably take down the lower-grade tanks that Ooarai have because of their superior machinery. But, yeah, the moments leading up to that final shot made by Hana were full of suspense. Miho looked really serious throughout the whole battle and not like her usual self, though it was her strategies and thinking that managed to net Ooarai the victory.
We’ve seen what the 1st round of this tournament is kinda like – then we get a glimpse of onee-chan’s Black Forest Peak Girls’ Academy, which both looks and sounds terrifying. If the stern faces of Maho and her sub-commander weren’t enough, the bombed wasteland that is the end result of a match with Maho’s school left me completely speechless. I don’t think they lost any tanks at all, and there was one surrendered tank that was so beaten up that it was struggling to raise its white flag – oh man, I hope Ooarai will never go up against them. It’s St. Gloriana’s that’s more likely given the match-up list, and I think they have some history with Nishizumi Maho to sort out anyway.
The other impending issue was Mako’s grandma hospitalised back in Ooarai (the area, not the school) and she’s stuck on what seems to be the mainland. It was really nice of Maho (why so cold~) to take her there in her helicopter (maybe as a reward to Miho for winning, albeit in a roundabout way?) though I wonder if more trouble will arise from this – either Mako’s grandma’s condition greatly worsening, or her inability to return back for her next match. Panzer vor!
