History Headscratchers / GirlsUndPanzer

** HandWave

** The creators were more than certain anyone who was interested in a show about high school girls driving tanks would probably not give a shit about their WillingSuspensionofDisbelief. It's just some good silly action with a good coating of comedy and sprinkling of drama and slice of life.

*** In the Japanese, Darjeeling actually said ''gehin no tatakai-kata''. This is literally "low-class way of fighting" and is a bit different from "dirty tactics" ''per se''. It might mean nothing more than the fact she matched numbers from the start while Saunders and Pravda both used their numerical superiority. Certainly Orange Pekoe and Darjeeling discussed Saunders' using their numbers in a disparaging manner.

** To you, perhaps. There is a distinction between actually taking lives (you might notice they are allowed to get quite close, though) and putting the rescue of them second. In the show's zeigeist, the latter is clearly an acceptable attitude. The zeitgeist in an anime does not have to be the same as ours.

** Because standardized rosters are boring. Imagine how much fun it'll be if everyone has to use only Shermans. However, you might note that it is really only KMM that's completely over the top. Saunders could probably afford at least a few Pershings but all we actually see in show are Shermans. St. Glorianna uses Matildas and Churchills. Even Pravda (which supposedly has something to do with KMM re-equipping with heavier equipment) has a set of T-34/76s to go along with its IS-2 and -85s. I'll say that in addition to finances, everyone (except for KMM) does get what Tankery is supposed to be all about, so they exercise self-restraint in equipment.
*** Certainly you might notice that for a school that dominated for 10 years, insiders are not necessarily awed by it. Perhaps they decided if KMM wants to win that way, then we let them win, send them perfunctory congratulations and then politely ignore them.
*** Finally, you would also note that in the end, KMM wound up paying the karma - after long years of dominating the field with its equipment, its skills had deteoriated to the extent in essence it not only lost to a bunch of total beginners, but made themselves look like complete rookies next to veterans doing it. If Oarai didn't do it this year, another team might get the honor in a year or two. Maybe the organizers decided to let natural selection run its course rather than impose fun-robbing restrictions.
** Well, consider this: we've only seen two types of tank battle: Total Annihilation (the Gloriana battle) and Flag (all the others). In the Total Annihilation battle, the two teams ''did'' have equal numbers of tanks, presumably because having excessive numbers would be too much of an advantage, but in Flag they don't. The League could simply take the view that having low numbers is simply a circumstance that requires a different set of tactics than having large numbers, and that's something the tankists should adapt to, as IRL tank commanders have had to throughout history. I mean, the KMM game is a good example. Oarai uses what are basically the equivalent of tank guerilla tactics to outsmart their adversary, relying on mobility rather than firepower against a technically superior and larger force who have difficulty co-ordinating due to their size. To respond to the poster above; I wouldn't say KMM look like amateurs - aside from Erika's charge, they don't display any marked incompetence - but what they do look like is a large, unwieldy force that is ultimately stopped by its difficulty in responding to small, spearing attacks from a more mobile and co-ordinated adversary. Notice how KMM needs a "sub-commander" (Miho, replaced by Erika), whilst Oarai don't bother. What happened in the KMM fight was the same thing that Oarai did in the Saunders and Pravda fights: against a superior force, they hid, used their mobility, and lured the enemy flag-tank into an ambush. Historically speaking, a lack of numbers is not necessarily a disadvantage.
*** KMM did a very bad job of utilizing their assets. They gave up initiative pretty badly by simply bunching up their tanks into a single formation (with better than 2-1 numbers in addition to a mass and armor advantage they could have easily split into two groups to better respond to Oarai and limit their ability to maneuver. On the hill, KMM deployed its forces too close together in a single line and really, failing to watch for the Hetzer and being completely unable to deal with it. And finally, they deployed the Maus completely unsupported (The Panzer III doesn't count since all it did was hide behind the thing) in a city, where the tank's sheer size inhibited its movements and effectiveness and Oarai was able to evade it and come up with a plan to deal with it. If it had had even a couple of tanks actually working with it to block off Oarai's ability to retreat it would have been a much shorter match. They'd obviously trained for high individual skill in gunnery and driving, but their tactical ability was the weakest of any of the schools.

** Probably because she was only dozing - she was awake when the match started and went into the lightest of slumbers - her brainwaves are likely still in Alpha rather than those deeper stages.

*** Japan's military budget is the 5th largest in the world, slightly ahead of France.[[note]]The "Self Defense Forces" may be constitutionally prohibited from waging aggressive war, but they sure as hell aren't pushovers[[/note]] If the writers really don't understand military expenditure, it definitely isn't because Japan is too pacifist to understand how much tanks cost. More likely they have the money because this is a setting where the government pumps enough cash into the education system to afford city-sized aircraft carriers just for high schools. Buying a dozen decommissioned WW2 tanks for their national sport isn't exactly reaching.

* I'm sorry, but if the Anzio OVA is canon, how exactly was Duce planning to win? Her tankettes could not have done any damage at all since they only had machine guns. Even assuming that her ruse had w corked, her guns are too light to take out Ooarai's tanks before they rallied. Was she just hoping to rush everything at the enemy flag tank?

* I'm sorry, but if the Anzio OVA is canon, how exactly was Duce planning to win? Her tankettes could not have done any damage at all since they only had machine guns. Even assuming that her ruse had worked, her guns are too light to take out Ooarai's tanks before they rallied. Was she just hoping to rush everything at the enemy flag tank?

* Why did Ooarai play all their oficcial battles as visitors?