Girls und Panzer Episode 9: Driven into a Corner

“The match is not over just yet. We haven’t lost yet.”

Summary

Ooarai remain completely surrounded by Pravda, and decide not to surrender as the match is not over yet, with Miho deciding to send out scouts so that a plan can be formulated. After some morale-boosting dancing, they head out and manage to break through the defence set up by Katyusha, and head out across the open field – chased by a large number of tanks of various descriptions, with Ooarai managing to take a few, but not enough down. Left with only the Anko team and the flag team, both opponents locate the other’s flag tank at the same time and shoot it, leaving the result of the match unclear.

Impression

Whew. That was…intense. Seriously, the Panzer battles seem to get better and better with each round, and I could actually feel the tension while watching it, rooting for an Ooarai victory of course. It was a fairly reckless manoeuvre to have all Ooarai’s tanks just move out in quick succession from the building in the centre, but on the other hand it’s still better than either surrendering or falling into Katyusha’s trap of purposefully leaving a weak spot open. From what we know of her prideful and cunning personality already, it was fairly obvious that it’d be a trap, and I think Miho realized that too. I’m actually pretty impressed with Ooarai and their abilities despite being merely a “beginner”school for Panzerfahren, as with such an overwhelming disadvantage it’s good that they’ve managed to even get this far while not on familiar home turf. Take the Student Council managing to take out two high-grade tanks by themselves and reckless driving, or perhaps the flag tank (Duck I think, which would make that the volleyball team) managing to dodge all the crazy shots Nonna is firing straight at them. In terms of tanks Pravda have the advantage too – that KV-2 would have dealt tons of damage had it not been taken out easily, despite its slow reloading speed.

We also learnt more about the actual situation with Ooarai – they’re an average, run-of-the-mill school with no particular outstanding achievement, and was thus selected to be dissolved so the budget allocated to that warship can be used for something else. I have to question how right it would be to just dissolve a school for such a shallow reason, and it’s not like they’ve done anything wrong or committed any grave offences. It was fairly uncalled for, which is why I’m supporting Ooarai’s willingness to not surrender and give up, and win the competition instead which would give them enough recognition to remain as a school. They were all pretty down with the exception of Miho right after the Student Council finally mustered the courage to spill the beans, so that Anko dance was something refreshing that was  fun watching again, especially with the entire team is doing it at once. Knowing that Miho did it voluntarily for the express purpose of boosting morale was selfless of her, especially when we know that she doesn’t like it. Mako is the still the best though – both at interacting with Sodoko as well as managing to survive this long – Miho’s Anko team have no flag tank this time round, and they’re the only current standing group aside from the flag group that’s fit for battle.

Things are really heating up, even more so if you thought last week was pretty intense. We have Maho-onee-chan of all people asking her mother to wait instead of walk out on Miho, and Darjeeling from St. Gloriana calmly just drinking tea in the freezing cold, confident of Ooarai’s success. I’m pretty sure that last hit managed to take out the Pravda flag tank, but didn’t Nonna hit Ooarai’s too?