Youjo Senki: Saga of Tanya the Evil Episode 12: How to Use a Victory (Final Impression)

She is a monster in the form of a little girl.

We get left with a giant cliffhanger, wondering whether or not we’re going to get another season to continue with the show’s story. Not surprised, the war continues because everyone is a dumbass and no one listened to Tanya. Surprised, Mary is enlisting with the US Army? Holy shit.

To make the review of this episode quick, there was no action in this episode. It was basically a summary of all the events that happened in the war, Tanya’s viewpoints on humans and basically explaining why she thinks the war won’t end and whatnot. Everyone is celebrating except for Tanya. We knew what was going to happen and it happened, and now everyone is surprised and pissed that the Republic allied with the other nations, and that now other nations are going to get involved. And…well, duh. That’s what you idiots get for not listening to Tanya. The season ends with Tanya’s battalion off to battle, and Mary Sioux enlisting with the American army.

Atheist vs. Believer

Tanya vs. Mary

I was wanting a rival for Tanya and I think she might be it. We got her father but he barely put up a fight so whatever. But with their two speeches foiling each other, I think she might be it. She’s probably going to want revenge for her father, even though she doesn’t know (right now) that Tanya is the one that killed him. I just got worried seeing the glowing golden eyes. Dammit Being X.

What I loved the most in the end was their speeches. Mary, with her love of God, with God by her side she will protect others from the sadness she experiences. God is righteous, God is love, He is with her, and she believes that with her faith she will be able to bring peace to all. As for Tanya, God is a two-faced ugly son of a bitch that can kiss her baby ass and shut the fuck up, because SHE will be the one taking control and getting shit done. So, he can fuck off. The parallels of their speech related to religion and God was done so well. We see one viewpoint against the other, telling you all about who these girls are. How do these differing ideas affect these girls? What with the glowing gold eyes we saw on Mary, we know that Being X is being a petty bitch again and is involved and makes me wonder if he’s going to give Mary specials powers as well. Of course, this’ll be very bad for Tanya, and their meeting on the battle field will be inevitable. And that makes me excited.

If you’re reading this, Being X, Tanya has made it clear that she won’t bow down to you. 🙂

Final Impression

I remember that there were people a little upset at the adaptation of the anime, but I think a lot of people enjoyed this show, myself included. It had a strange but unique plot, with a grown Japanese man telling God to fuck off and getting reincarnated into a little German girl who then enlists in the military. That’s a very weird sentence but yes this is Youjo Senki. It was exciting, crazy, fun, and was pretty deep at times with the question toward religion and God.

Even though Youjo Senki had a character with unique circumstances, the show continued as your typical military anime. We had war meetings, fighting, soldiers dying, and all of that with a little magic mixed in to give it a twist. But scenes could never be boring when Tanya was involved and wow was Tanya a great character. Even after these 12 episodes, I can’t tell who is the biggest villain: Tanya or Being X? The show is called Saga of Tanya the Evil, and yes she is evil. She’s cruel, manipulative, brutal, blunt, and pretty heartless. She will do what she needs to do to succeed and move up in the ranks. She will do things her way and have others follow through and if they don’t, she won’t give them a passing glance. If you’re not strong enough, she’ll leave you to die. You cross her, you’ll get punished. To win this war, she’ll kill anyone she needs to kill. Annihilate them all. Basically, she’s a terrifying little girl. Like Rerugen said, she’s a monster in the form of a little girl. She’s got a shitty personality. Good things about her? She’s smart. I guess she does care about the people in her battalion, but if you ask me to list the good and bad things about Tanya, it’ll be easier for be to list the bad. Watching Tanya in this show was the best thing because of who she is. Like, you want to hate her because she’s a bad person, but even now I can’t because she’s so much fun to watch. I enjoy how smart and calculative she is, so that’s something. It’s just cool seeing a little girl take charge, I just like that. And Tanya herself is an interesting character, and it was entertaining seeing so many different sides of her. I don’t really know if we can say that Tanya had some development to her character, but she did gain a lot of experience in life from being in this war.

I can’t say I felt the same love for the other characters. Tanya was the one that mainly stole the show, while the other characters were just…there. I thought Visha would be a fun character but she kinda was forgettable. I mean she was cute, I still think her design in the anime looked dopey, but she was okay. The others in the Pixie Battalion had small moments to shine but nothing to really make me care for them. Characters like Zettour and Rerugen were fine, but again they only appeared for the meetings and things like that, so I didn’t care much for them. So the character department needs some work.

And while the story was fine with action, after awhile things got a little stale. We all know Tanya is a badass, but the fact that she hardly ever got hurt, or her battalion, with no deaths or anything, made things a little boring after awhile. Because we knew nothing bad was going to happen. We had success after success with hardly any obstacles, so most episodes would just be, meeting, make plan, send Tanya, Tanya and crew go, they succeed, end. Some episodes were better than others but that still affected the entertainment of the show.

While I had problems with Tanya and Visha’s designs looking weird, I got used to them. Of course I got upset when I saw the official LN art, wondering why the hell we couldn’t get quality like that, but…ahh. Either way, for the most part, the animation of the show looked really nice. Some actions scenes looked amazing in the aerial fights. And even though this show mostly had dark colors, fitting the mood, there were times the colors were very bright. I especially loved when the animators would decide to make the characters’ eyes glow during night scenes. They would be bright against the darkness and I just thought it looked so pretty. Yes, there were episodes where the animation looked particularly bad. We had a one week delay where got got a recap episode, my guess being because there were probably some production issues with animation.

Music in this show was fine. I usually don’t pay too much attention to the OST unless it really strikes me, but most of the time we get yelling and gunshots so we can’t hear the music. The OP and ED themes, however, were very good. You can never really go wrong with MYTH & ROID, and Aoi Yuuki is just talented. Still wasn’t a fan of her Tanya voice, but her yelling at the end of the finale was just….amazing.

Was this my favorite show of the Winter season? Nope. That goes to Rakugo season two. To which I say, please watch both seasons of Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu please. 😀 Sequels aside, was this my favorite new Winter season show? Yes. Since Little Witch isn’t done yet, and…I didn’t watch much else this season. Because nothing else interested me, and apparently I didn’t miss much. Youjo Senki was a very enjoyable show that started out very strong, but slowly got a little stale as the show went on, which is going to affect my score. Still, for Studio NUT’s (lol) first anime, they did a pretty damn good job.

7/10, more Tanya please.