Characters / The Saga of Tanya the Evil: Tanya von Degurechaff

Tanya von Degurechaff

Tanya in Anime

^{Tanya in Manga} 

Voiced by (as Tanya): Aoi Yūki (Japanese), Monica Rial (English), Jocelyn Robles (Latin American Spanish)

Voiced by (pre-reincarnation): Kosuke Toriumi (Japanese), Josh Grelle (English), José Gilberto Vilchis (Latin American Spanish)

Ranks held: Warrant Officer -> Second Lieutenant -> First Lieutenant -> Captain -> Major -> Lieutenant Colonel

Affiliation: Empire

Profession: Aerial Mage/Wing Commander and First Company Commander, Imperial Army 203rd Air Mage Battalion.

"We're soldiers. If the brass tells us to do something, we do it."

The main protagonist. Tanya is an 11-year old blonde, azure-eyed girl who is the reincarnation of a cold-hearted, ruthless, career-obsessed salaryman from modern Japan. Tanya has a high latent magical ability, and is the only one capable of using the Type-95 jewel due to Being X's interference. Tanya is quite ruthless and intolerant of failings in others—much the same as in her previous life, and employs several extreme punishments and training methods. She also introduces modern approach to warfare and military training into the Imperial army and finds loopholes in the international wartime law for such things as city artillery bombardment in Arene and urban night raid in Dacia.

---

A — E

• The Ace: Of the Imperial Aerial Mage force and since Norden, technically of the Air Force for her feat against bomber planes. To put things into context, by the time of her reassignment from Norden Tanya had already accumulated over 40 confirmed kills and over 60 assists. It is noted that Tanya's long-distance sniping often results in unconfirmed kills and her bombardment spells tend to make counting difficult due to mass casualties. Officially Tanya has single-handedly killed more than an entire wing of enemy mages. In practice, she has a kill count that can be measured in air groups.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: Her appearance in the manga is cuter than both in the light novel and anime.
• Adaptational Jerkass: In the anime, alongside Adaptational Villainy. Tanya acts, most of the time, as a strict and stern commander with zero humor, or at least light-hearted humor. In the light novel/manga Tanya displays a more relaxed and, sometimes, even comical side of hers whenever the environment isn't serious. While this most likely is all just an act from Tanya to improve her image, she should be credited for at least making the effort to not come off as the cold-hearted pragmatist she deep down is. Her relationship with Visha, her greatest Morality Pet, and her squadron are also significantly colder, an example being when she wished to have left Visha in the Rhine front, whereas in the original source she is actually happy to see her again.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • Tanya, and the salaryman who would be reincarnated as her, are portrayed in a significantly more villainous manner for each and every adaptation. In the original light novel, the unnamed HR agent did everything in his power to try and save the job of the man who would later find himself fired, but the drug addict stubbornly refused to cooperate. In the manga, the HR agent hates firing people, but not only did he have a quota to meet so as to keep the company itself afloat, but the man who would be fired was habitually tardy, absent without cause or permission, and a major drain on the morale of fellow employees by deliberately performing poorly when he was at work. In the anime, the HR agent is even more callous and is only interested in advancing his career, with his only saving grace being that the man he fires had the previously mentioned poor work ethic, despite repeated warnings.
  • Tanya gets this in the anime. The anime mostly focuses on displaying her cold and manipulative side, but even makes her come off as more callous than in the light novel and manga, not to mention it doesn't show the parts that made Tanya more complex and sympathetic as a character. She practically sent two insubordinate soldiers to their deaths, whereas in the original source she simply sent them away (while they did die too, there are no indications that Tanya did this move expecting them to die).
• Ambiguous Gender Identity: There are some hints that she still prefers to see herself as a man. Her military uniforms give her some degree of masculinity and she felt humiliated when she had to wear a dress for a propaganda photo.
• Ambition Is Evil: There is almost nothing Tanya won't do to advance her position in order to accomplish her goals of personal safety and power. While this is partially motivated by her desire to spite Being X, she has always felt the need to rise in a hierarchy by any means necessary, as seen in her previous life.
• The Anti-Nihilist: Surprisingly enough, her Image Song paints her as this. In it, she very much tells the men under her how worthless humanity truly is before encouraging those same men to go forth and show everyone that they can still blossom despite their lives being overall fruitless.
• Anti-Villain: By given definition of a villain, as the story technically coins her as one despite the fact that Tanya is personally just looking to get out of all the war surrounding her, and failing that attempting to end the ongoing war as swiftly and efficiently as possible. Any cruelty or technically-legal war crimes aren't the objective, they're a pragmatic decision to cut to the heart of a problem, and a major element of her ideology is that she wants to stop the "eye for an eye" mentality the various nations keep driving, including her own superiors. It's to the point that Tanya would rather aid Zettour in a Military Coup to end an otherwise Hopeless War, than try to carry on more pointless death and destruction in the Empire's name that would lead to a total and crushing defeat anyway.
• Arch-Enemy: To Mary Sue who, after seeing her father's weapon in Tanya's hands, sees Tanya as her sworn enemy for killing her father. This isn't reciprocated, as while Mary Sue embodies everything Tanya hates in any human, her greatest foe will always be Being X.
• Armor-Piercing Response: Tanya has a flair for it, as Being X, the Norden front commander and Erich von Lehrgen would be loath to admit.
  • In the Light Novel, "Being X" is unhappy when the salaryman gives justified reasons on why he doesn't believe in God and where "Being X" went wrong with his business management. Which landed him to his current fate, a life under peril as the salaryman said and completely missing the point.
  • When the North front commander rejects her suggestion for halting their winter offensive move, refuses to see reason and furiously tells her to Get Out! of Norden. Tanya delivers this trope in full, technically respectful Sarcasm Mode that she has a legal duty to inform him that they have no obligation to send their own men on an obvious suicide mission with their strained supplies to please their enemies, excuses herself for overdosing her coffee with milk since Norden has no worries about supply unlike every other front she has served in, then reminds him in a roundabout way that he has no actual authority to dismiss her, one who is loaned to Norden by Strategic Command for Rudersdorf's use.
• Artifact of Doom: Tanya's opinion regarding her Type-95 jewel, as not only does it corrupt her soul every time she uses it, it can potentially wipe her and the battlefield out with it if she doesn't follow the rules imposed by "Being X" in regards how to handle it properly. She is not amused about this.
• At Least I Admit It: Tanya is well aware that she's a not a good person, and has issues. The (chronologically) first episode even has an internal monologue, "I have every complex known to man." It's one of her major differences from Mary Sue, who myopically believes that she is a just person while racking up a colossal body count in the name of revenge.
• Ax-Crazy: She is definitely less than sane. It isn't quite as evident in the anime, but in the manga it is stated very clearly that she just wants to be in the rear or, failing that, to have the best possible meat shields around her. Coupled with her Lack of Empathy, this often leads to her acting with excessive violence and subjecting those around her to Training from Hell so they can "serve the Empire better" (i.e. protect her better).
• Badass Bookworm: Tanya fosters this reputation during her days as an officer cadet and, to a much larger extent, during her training in the Imperial Military College. She displays tactical acumen, strategic planning, logistical vision, and has insights far ahead of her age and her time. Tanya is known for spending a lot of time reading in her spare time and in the various libraries available to her. This is partially justified by her early 21st-century knowledge from her previous incarnation. From his narration, not only did he go to university but he was apparently very well-read before his death. Thus, Tanya has the benefit of two university educations. The badass part, of course, comes from using this fantastic knowledge and mental ability to fuel the spectacular performance in combat that earned her the rank of Major in less than three years in military service.
• Becoming the Mask: Her rather overzealous demeanor in combat starts off as a facade that she puts on to impress the higher-ups, the better to climb the ranks of the army. However, over time, she does start genuinely enjoying herself in battle a little too much.
• Berserk Button:
  • She does not tolerate insubordination lightly. Of the last three who tried, one nearly gets his head split open with her magically-enhanced rifle bayonet, and the latter two who refuse her direct orders to withdraw from an enemy artillery position, saving soldiers' lives as an accidental by-product, went on to then refuse their honorable discharge, which even she admits is very lenient in the world setting in spite of their insubordination, because they were actually glory hounds; she sets it up so they die by enemy artillery fire, in ignominy. This was true even back in Tanya's original life as a salaryman, no matter the adaptation. While firing an employee, she is clearly rather annoyed by the man's failure to follow company policies.
  • She especially hates Communism and anyone who follows it, seeing its policies as antithetical to her free will ideology.
  • As is made repeatedly clear with her numerous clashes with Being X, Blind Obedience to any cause really makes her blood boil. This is especially true if it is religious. Tanya is a creature of logic and reason, so anyone who puts stock in causes entirely based upon emotion or faith is antithetical to her.
• Blasphemous Boast: She ends the stinger of episode 12 with one. See Rage Against the Heavens below.
• Blood Knight: Early into the series, Tanya chastises herself not to indulge in bloodlust, though she frequently spots bloodthirsty grins in order to appeal to her war-hawk superiors such as Lehrgen and intimidate her enemies into fleeing from her. However, despite her self-admonishments she genuinely starts enjoying combat. In the web-novel finds the monotony of everyday life following the war's end too dull to bear, and ends up becoming a freelance mercenary.
• Born in the Wrong Century: Literally. Having once been a modern human resources manager in life and still fully aware of her previous incarnation, Tanya suffers from this. Whereas most Imperial soldiers believe in glory, she retains the general modern belief that War Is Hell, resulting her in making constant miscalculations when trying to predict others' behavior. Tanya's knowledge and past life experiences, while more or less normal in the modern world, have resulted in nigh-revolutionary ideas within the Empire. She also misses the food she ate and drank during the modern Japanese era and dislikes most of the German food she has to eat. Her modern approach to warfare is from literally decades into the future, and while it gives her a clear advantage, it also makes everyone terrified of its cold, calculated, evil ways.
• Bullying a Dragon: On the receiving end in episode 11. The episode reaches its end with a gunnery sergeant, drunk on his authority as the regional governor of the Republic capital, being obstructive and petty when Tanya requests his aid to stop the fleeing Republic soldiers before they become a menace on the high seas, since Tanya saw on a map that the "armistice" literally led to the Empire putting a noose around its neck. When he refuses to see reason, Tanya reminds him that she is a Major and has the authority to go around him if she has to, which she then does, with the warning that if she fails due to his obstruction, history won't look on him kindly. She only fails because of a higher authority stopping her mission.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Tanya's basic response to an overzealous reaction to her presence, as at most point of the story she is completely unaware of her epithet as "Devil of the Rhine" and how much their enemies are aware of her as the Empire's big gun. This reaction is justified on Tanya's part, as she kills anyone close enough to fight her so she is under the impression that she is still an unknown to their enemies. So far, the Republic has only one recording of Tanya in action, and that's the first time they ever saw what she looks like.
  • Although she's aware that she met Anson Sue before, she has a hard time remembering where when the two clash in the Osjd Fjord. Of course, since she turns him into a corpse because he foolishly charges her, after she spares him (due to having completed her mission) and having no actual grudge, she ultimately decides it doesn't matter.
• But Not Too Evil: Tanya's uniforms, combined with her eye color, her nasty disposition and the fact that she fights for a nation that obviously parallels Germany in a war often mistaken to be World War 2 (it's actually a different war brought about by a different course of events in the parallel world, which amalgamates elements from World War 1 and World War 2 alike) all earned Tanya the unsavory nickname "Nazi Loli" in the anime community, have caused cosplays of her to be banned at many events as "Nazi fetishism", and probably turned quite a few people off even giving the story a shot. In reality, Tanya - while a nasty piece of work in her own right - has very little to do with Those Wacky Nazis' delusions and displays nothing even remotely resembling antisemitism or any form of Fantastic Racism (while she does display nationalistic tendencies in line with the general sentiments in the Empire, those seem to be mostly part of the mask she puts on to get promoted). The author has gone on record that he hates the Nazis unconditionally and hates the nickname "Nazi Loli" for Tanya, insisting that making her into a Nazi would have instantly robbed the story of all possible nuance and complexity as it is impossible to portray Nazis as anything other than pure evil. Interestingly, Tanya does make one reference to Hitler with what seems to be a bit of admiration, calling him a "demonic genius", though she seems to be referencing his unquestionable skills as an orator and a demagogue rather than justifying his horrific policies.
• Cast from Sanity: In order to use her highly unstable Type-95 jewel, she has to pray. Problem is, every time she does so, her Atheist-persona gradually erodes away in favor for a more "Being X-friendly" personality in its place with more and more severe memory-blackouts as a consequence.
• Chest of Medals: At such a young age, Tanya is a massively decorated soldier and field officer that even some officers of the Empire questioned the authenticity of her achievements^note One officer of the Eastern Front even states that maybe the results are inflated, much to Zettour and Lehrgen's chagrin..
• Child Prodigy: What the Empire sees her as. This trope is subverted and zigzagged in that while Tanya IS a child and has repeatedly demonstrated skills, knowledge, and mental development far beyond what someone her age should have, she is also a reincarnated male human adult who is fully aware of her previous incarnation. Even Tanya herself admits that she was never a genius of any sort during her previous life and she simply has the benefit of a lifetime's worth of experiences.
• A Child Shall Lead Them: She fulfills this trope whenever she gets a commanding position, especially once she becomes a battalion commander at the tender age of 11. Zig-zagged in that the only thing about her that is child-like is her body.
• Child Soldiers: Nine years old in her first engagement. The irregularity of this is noted, but as Tanya points out, she doesn't really have any other options, being an orphan in an impoverished nunnery (and because, due to her innate magical ability, she'd be drafted anyway later).
• The Chosen One: Despite not wanting to be, she is the only thing "God" / Being X is interested in on her current version of Earth, to the point she actually gains incredible power from her magic equipment when she prays to him, which it all but outright forces her to do. Deconstructed in her battle with Anson Sue, where both end up praying to God for the power to strike down their enemies. Despite Anson being a loving man with a family, it's only the sadistic, orphan Tanya's prayer that gets answered (quite literally), allowing her to easily kill him. Although "Being X" does backhandedly grant his prayer in the anime, animating his corpse and trying to kill Tanya.
• Colonel Badass: Tanya is regarded highly by both Empire and enemy forces alike.
• Combat Pragmatist: Played with, she will follow the rules and laws of International War to the letter, but she also emphasizes those are "open to interpretation" and she is an expert at exploiting loopholes to win. Her strategic thinking also de-emphasizes glory in favor of victory by any means necessary, a virtually unique trait in the Empire.
• The Corrupter: Although unintentional on Tanya's part, her proposed ideas, strategies, and philosophies based on modern warfare (written during her time at the Imperial military academy) gradually start being adopted by many Imperial officers. These new methods are practical and efficient, enabling the Imperial army to recover and strike back at its enemies effectively after being on the verge of defeat. However, because these same methods encourage a cold, calculating mindset like Tanya's, Imperial officers like General von Zettour are slowly becoming more ruthless than before. This is one of the reasons why Lt. Col. Erich von Lehrgen fears Tanya's influence over the Imperial army.
• The Confidant: Due to Tanya's professionalism, she can be trusted to keep any sensitive official and/or private conversation with various military personnel on herself alone.
• Cosmic Plaything: Being X is determined to break Tanya's resolve and force her to worship it, treating everything around her as a sadistic game while doing so.
• Cowardly Lion: Off the battlefield, we can observe Tanya's attempts to weasel out of active duty and get herself a cushy job as far away from the frontlines as possible, reacting with shock and horror, or at least significant displeasure, when these inevitably fail. However, on the battlefield, we practically never see Tanya demonstrating even a shred of fear despite the very real danger and the grim consequences that await her if she were to die, in fact, she always comes off as a Blood Knight. This is likely an affected demeanor to some extent but it's clearly not all there is to it.
• Creepy Child: She's only 11 years old, and is utterly batshit insane.
  • In-Universe, many adults find her at the very least disconcerting if not outright terrifying. Mainly because while Tanya looks adorable, she does not act, think, or speak like a child. There is a certain degree of creepiness to see a young child act completely like an adult.
• Custom Uniform: Light Novel vol. 5 bonus pages reveals that Tanya has to order all her uniforms out of pocket because obviously there are no child-sized uniforms. Even her first uniforms were docked from her pay.
• Cute and Psycho: Watch her for one moment pretending to act like the adorable little child she looks like and then watch her the next brutally wiping out enemy forces with the fiendishly calculating mindset of the human resources manager she used to be.
• Cute Bruiser: While she didn't follow traditional example of this trope, she is pretty proficient in using her rifle to knock down opponents much bigger than herself, and has more than once kicked adult men hard enough to knock them off. In the manga, she even faces off against Colonel Drake, an experienced man that's at least twice her size, in a brutal brawl in midair.
• Cute Is Evil: Tanya is a pre-pubescent girl with an almost cherubic doll-like appearance. Starkly contrasted by her cold ruthlessness, completely sociopathic personality, and the blatant enjoyment she takes while killing her enemies.
• Cute Witch: She may be sociopathic and use copious amounts of destructive magic, but Tanya is adorable, and said cuteness seems to increase with every adaptation.
• Dance Battler: Lampshaded in the Light Novel and manga by a Republican that the way Tanya dodges continuous fire is like dancing. It's noted that Tanya has only medium accuracy in shooting, but is unmatched in aerial acrobatic-like movement that gives her an edge even prior to gaining the Elenium-95 computation orb, as she has no problems shooting while upside-down, thus gaining better momentum than her opponent as shown in her first real battle against Entente's mages.
• Dark Action Girl: During her life as a soldier, Tanya has singlehandedly decimated or completely destroyed entire armies and mage squadrons. This is due to her powerful magical abilities and her unique Elenium-95 jewel, which gives her an edge over her opponents by allowing her to fly at an altitude unachievable to most mages. This trope is played with given that Tanya is an 11-year old girl with the mind of a ruthless male adult.
• Declining Promotion: In the later volumes, both Zettour and Rudesdorf offers her a position within the Imperial High Command but the situation of the war had deteriorated too much she declines it.
• Did Not Think This Through: Defied. Tanya clearly thinks through her words and actions very, very carefully. Unfortunately, when he, as the Japanese salaryman, first encounters "Being X", the entity engages in borderline Mind Rape, not only reading the salaryman's thoughts without permission, but basing its reactions and judgements of him purely based on the very first thoughts that popped into his head as a direct result of its provocations. If "Being X" was subjected to human laws and courts, it would be heavily guilty of entrapment.
• Did Not See That Coming: While Tanya is intelligent enough to fully comprehend why unexpected things, and unintended consequences, happen to her, her unique worldview does give a glaring blind spot that causes her to suffer frequent unexpected setbacks, some of which are completely avoidable in hindsight. For example, Tanya does realize, in the seconds before impact with the train, that a man who is fired for rampant drug abuse and deliberately poor work performance is someone who runs purely on emotion, and would prioritize immediate gratification while completely ignoring long-term consequences. I.e. he will happily push a man to his death in front of a train, just because it makes him feel good at the moment, but completely ignore how he's now guilty of murder, before numerous witnesses and security cameras, and how that is going to affect him and his family.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: In the moments before his death, the salaryman that would be reborn as Tanya disses God something fierce when He talks to him. This has led to his current predicament of being a child soldier in a magical world war...
• Digging Yourself Deeper: Tanya has an unfortunate habit of doing this without intending to. From explaining why people's faith in God has dwindled (to said God's metaphorical face), leading her to becoming Tanya in the first place, all the way to how explaining to a Brigadier General how the world could be going into a World War and what the Empire would need in order to be able to fight in it, which in turns leads her to being promoted into a Major and leading her own battalion, when all she wanted was to be a rear echelon.
• The Dreaded: In both the light novels and manga, Tanya is regarded as one of their greatest threats by the enemy countries. She is a "Named Ace of Aces" (noted enemy ace with over 50 kills in aerial combat) who is only recognized by her recorded magical signature, as every opponent that encounters her does not survive to see what she actually looks like and report back. There is only one chance that the Republic gets to look at Tanya's face.
  • One of the officers from her own military regards her as this due to her abnormal mentality and proposition of Total War as a doctrine. He was even more disturbed when he found a work dealing with loopholes in international military law to legalize city artillery bombardment with a civilian population.
  • Tanya alone is even considered a strategic level threat by the enemy nations, until she creates her own elite unit. It is often noted in the series that their policy is, when encountering her without any sort of significant advantage, is to recognize it's a futile task to fight her and should retreat as quickly as possible. In the later volumes, despite Allied Nations fighting the Empire in a multi-front war, various officers and commanders note that the Empire will only bend their knees down and surrender if they managed to take Tanya and her elite units down.
  • By volume 11, the Allies has already crowned her as the "Queen of all Named" that has wrecked havoc everywhere she goes and sunk even the mightiest of their ships.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: Accidentally bordering on Sergeant Rock. Tanya does not pull punches while training soldiers because she wants the entire battalion to drop out and give her more time off the front line, which accidentally means that she's exactly the right kind of drill sergeant for a Badass Army. She's tougher on them than the enemy could ever be, and they thank her for it because they all know she has gone through worse than they ever will, and does look out for their well being, though they're not aware that she's just using them to protect herself.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: In the manga at least, Tanya's former life as a male usually looks fairly defined and obviously, well, male. However, when a flashback of his childhood is shown, he pretty much is Tanya with short hair and glasses. Hilariously, when the topic of a beach trip comes up, she remembers her male body as basically a muscular paragon of manliness she would not have felt the slightest amount of shame in showing off, contrasting with her current appearance.
• Enslaved Tongue: She is forced to subconsciously pray to Being X every time she activates her "blessed" Type-95 jewel.
• Entertainingly Wrong: She frequently attempts to stand out so she can have be comfortably assigned to the rear, however everything she does only makes her superiors see her as a model soldier who wants to fight on the front lines.
  • Though in volume 4, Tanya would've been a General Staff officer in 10 years as Zettour has been preparing a position for her, but the Empire has lost by then due to being surrounded by all fronts.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • In the light novel, when the salaryman analyses himself he claims that he has always honored his parents, that he is pro-animals' rights, never stole anything, never borne false witness against another and never committed adultery.
  • While she is clearly ruthless and lacks empathy (and admits it), she constantly states that every action of her has a purpose and if a vicious act doesn't have meaning and a rationale, she refuses to do it.
  • While she has little to no empathy for her fellow soldiers, she loathes superiors and peers who endanger them needlessly. She hates wasteful military spending. And the extreme Moral Myopia from the surrounding enemy nations really serve to piss her off, the same myopia that gets the Empire labeled a threat to the world purely for defending itself from its neighbors that invade the Empire first.
  • Seeing civilian militias beat, torture, and shoot unarmed and bound Imperial soldiers, for nothing but self-righteous "fun", makes her so furious that she loses all hesitation in exterminating them, man, woman, or child, even though she takes no joy from it.
• Evil Orphan: While the audience knows that her family status has nothing to do with her sinister nature, no one in the series other than Being X is aware of anything other than Tanya's origin as one of many war orphans.
• Evil Virtues: Ambition (it helps that her goal is quite down-to-earth rather than something like assuming control over her nation or Take Over the World), Determination (especially admirable considering that her main opponent is God), Resourcefulness and Valor. If it wasn't mostly due to her Lack of Empathy, Tanya could have actually be the paragon others see her as.
• Expressive Hair: In the anime, her idiot hair twitches when her emotions change, or she's deep in thought.

F — Q

• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: Tanya fills this in spades. Quite a number of people are taken aback by her cute stature, not aware of her pragmatic and ruthless nature.
• The Fake Cutie: Tanya is more than willing to act like an innocent little girl as a psychological tactic, whether by ramping up a puppy dog stare as the finishing blow in convincing a rival officer with a daughter to retire early, or as a means of Exact Words when she is required by law to warn an enemy position of an incoming attack... and does so in the cutest voice possible, ensuring no one listening takes the warning seriously.
• Fatal Flaw: Adherence to logic and reason over emotions - Tanya absolutely detests people who rely on emotions and faith over reason and logic, which contributes greatly to why she is seen as so bloodthirsty by others. It's also a factor in why she can't quite get a grip on how others will react to her decisions - in particular, while many of her actions technically adhere to the letter of The Laws and Customs of War, the fact she gets around them via Loophole Abuse is understandably viewed as underhanded by everyone else, something she never cottons on to.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: The salaryman who would become Tanya doesn't believe that "God" is... well, God, as he doesn't believe the world could possibly be as screwed up as it is, if an all-powerful, benevolent being actually existed. And since it doesn't identify as the Devil, he therefore decides to refer to it as "Being X".
• Gender Bender Angst: She doesn't let being reincarnated as the opposite sex bother her most of the time, since she prefers to focus more on building her military career, but she's definitely not happy with it. In an omake anime episode, she is disgusted at the prospect of having sex as a woman.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: If you see Tanya's normally blue eyes gain a golden glow, you are probably seconds away from getting blasted to kingdom come as it's a sign that she is about to cast a spell.
• Goblin Face: She's prone to scrunching up her face. Especially when she's in battle or giving a speech.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: Subverted in her first life, played straight as Tanya. The first life as an HR manager was, in his own words, not a member of the genius elite, and who had to claw his way up to where he was before his death, which is why people who don't pull their weight piss Tanya off. As Tanya, she plays it straight by being made extremely magically adept and, when combined with her adult consciousness, elevates her to the rank of Major months before her 12th birthday.
• Hates Wearing Dresses: She doesn’t seem to be fond of wearing dresses when she had dress up and act as a girl her age for a propaganda-stunt and Victoria giving her a dress meant for an adult woman. Justified that she is a man in past life.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Tanya's excellence in combat, overt loyalty to her country, and demonstrated successes have all contributed to her not achieving her goal of a rear-echelon posting. Her superiors see her as so reliable that they purposefully send her into the thick of the fighting, as their trump card against the enemy. After feats such as training an elite mage wing in a month, routing a division with a battalion-sized formation (i.e. a minimum of 6x difference in ostensible combat power), and defending a vital supply depot against a bomber squadron and three wings of enemy mages (blowing up most of those bombers singlehandedly), HQ is convinced that she would be wasted in a desk job. If you have a problem, you can solve it by throwing the 203rd Imperial Mage Wing at it.
  • This is also how her previous life ended: shoved into the path of an oncoming train by a worker whom he, as a salaryman, had callously fired earlier that very day.
• Hope Spot: In episode 10, the Suicide Mission is a success, and the Republic's Suicidal Overconfidence has led them into a trap where attempting to flee just invites death faster, thus meaning the end of the war is near. Then Anson Sue shows up with a wing of mages and shoots down 2nd Lieutenant Granz.
  • It happens again in episode 11. After winning a major and extremely risky victory, where none of her mage company comes out unscathed, her superiors and country's government, drunk on the spoils, settles on an armistice instead of a formal surrender; a temporary ceasefire that allows the Republic to regroup, rearm, and rise again, to strike back at a later time. What's worse is that, when Tanya warns them of the consequences, they yell at her to shut up and stand down.
• Hypocrisy Nod: In the light novel, she herself states that while she is capable of violating others' freedom, though she states that this would only be made if truly necessary, as she hates Being X for violating hers.
• Hypocritical Humor: After volunteering for the military at the tender age of 9 and distinguishing herself in her first combat engagement, Tanya wonders if there is some sort of child protection agency she can turn to when she realizes her exploits would probably get her a front-line posting.
• Icy Blue Eyes: If you are close enough to see the two shards of ice in her eye sockets then you are either A.) already dead (if you are an enemy), B.) likely subjected to training from hell, (if you are a subordinate) or C.) subject to a cold calculation of your value as a resource (everyone else).
• I Did What I Had to Do: Even Tanya was hesitant to lead an artillery attack on the city of Arene, if for no other reason than there's no sport in attacking civilians. When she sees said civilians attack Imperial soldiers who are bound, unarmed, and showing no resistance, even shooting and killing one who ran away In the Back, all her hesitation vanishes, she orders Viktoriya to send the recording of the civilians executing the soldier to Strategic Command to let them know of the atrocity, and she carries out her orders to exterminate them with a grim resolve, and absolutely no joy in her actions.
• Idiot Hair: One that is just as crooked as she is mentally.
• Ignored Expert: Despite proving her keen strategic insight repeatedly, and overcoming one Impossible Task after another, most of the top military brass chooses to outright ignore her (at best) whenever her opinion, accounts, or firsthand observations fly in the face of their preconceived notions. This comes to a truly heartbreaking head in episode 11, where her superiors pass up the chance for complete victory in favor of an armistice, after a very costly campaign, and completely order her to stand down, or be executed by firing squad!
• I Like Those Odds: Tanya often said variation of this line in front of her superiors in earnest voice she could muster, of course... it's just for show.
• Improbable Age: While the audience knows the reasons behind it, almost all the brass of the Empire's military are in awe that a little girl of 9 earned the Silver Wings Assault Badge and again when she is promoted to Major^note This was forcibly done in order for the reinforced wing unit, which has 47 other people under her command, to be formed, made into the de facto commander of a rapid-response wing unit, and gains the prestige of being one of the military college's Twelve Knights, most of which are later granted lesser nobility status, at the age of 11.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: There are some hints throughout the story that Tanya's drive to succeed in life is motivated by a need to prove herself superior to others and to cover up her own deeply disturbed mind. Although her current goal is to find personal safety through a rear-line military position, she is also deeply insecure on the inside and is constantly afraid about how others perceive her, driving her to do whatever she can to maintain her good public image. This is also one of the reasons why she is not a coward despite her fear of death on the battlefield. In an omake anime episode, Tanya expressed appreciation for Viktoriya's respect (behind her back), demonstrating her need for others' respect.
• Inner Monologue: Tanya often has these when she is assessing a situation, explaining her own strategies to herself and expressing her true feelings from within.
• It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: From Tanya's point of view, all of her problems in the new world are Being X's fault, and is all too happy to stick it to the guy in whatever way possible. Justified in that Being X wants her to worship him, and believes throwing her into increasingly desperate situations will ultimately force her to submit.
• It's Up to You: She leads an autonomous unit, so the brass wouldn't interfere in how they complete their mission as long as they get the job done. While Tanya enjoys the autonomy of her position to an extent, she didn't appreciate the escalating difficulty of their missions because the brass seems to think she and her battalion are the solution for all the Empire's troubles.
• Jeanne d'Archétype: Hilariously enough, Being X and and her own machinations make her into a model soldier, known as an Ace among Aces, leading her own battalion, who's even featured in internal military propaganda and is literally blessed by "God", despite being a preteen girl. In the manga and Light Novel, her subordinates think of themselves as Vanguard for the Apostle of God. It didn't help that at one point, she started to wear a rosary she doesn't remember buying, and her need to pray before deploying large-scale spell with her Elenium-95.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • In the last day of Tanya's previous life, he fires a man despite his pleas. Said man repeatedly misses work without permission or reasonable excuses, and has poor work performance despite multiple warnings. He is completely justified in firing the man and it is his job as an human resources manager to do so, and the man himself is completely in the wrong for killing Tanya.
  • In her current life, Tanya punishes two subordinates for disobeying a direct ethical order from a superior officer, ostensibly in order to save lives from enemy artillery. While the men make a moral choice, insubordination should never be encouraged in a military institution. When they make her aware that they are actually glory hounds, she's right to assign them to a rear bunker, even if doing it in a way where they would be killed by enemy fire is overkill. If they were on the frontline any longer, they would inevitably jeopardize their assigned area by reckless actions if they saw any chance at glory.
  • On an early training detail where she is the training instructor, a cocky teen soldier does everything in his power to undermine her authority, including insulting her age, and actively endangers the rest of the class by deliberately disobeying her orders. Even Imperial law officially sanctions her attempt to execute him by cutting his skull open with her combat knife, and she would have done it if an officer superior to her didn't just happen to pass through and stop her.
  • When confronted by a subordinate about slaughtering retreating militia, she calmly beats the crap out of him and points out that they are soldiers and they must follow their orders, shooting everyone until told otherwise. In addition, she also points out that these particular civilians contain the same ones that tried to kill the 203 earlier, that they are the same ones executing captured Imperial soldiers just because they can, they will not show mercy to the Empire at a later date if the tables are turned, and even the children will inevitably grow up to become enemy combatants one day; if they survive the day, the grudges over their killed families would motivate them to oppose the Empire at every turn out of spite. Every enemy life spared means more Imperial lives lost, either now or later.
  • Finally, she points out to Erich von Lehrgen that while the Empire has the right to logically conclude that the war has been won, people as a whole are not entirely logical creatures. Those that the Empire defeat but do not completely destroy will definitely come back and fight again, even if there's no logical point in doing so, for no other reason than because they want revenge. Tanya wants to continue the war to ensure that their enemies are completely crushed in order to put an end to the Cycle of Revenge caused by the war. Sure enough, the armistice just gives their enemies time to regather and restart the war, purely out of spite and hatred for the Empire.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Tanya is definitely willing to give her underlings a shoulder, but only as long as it is promotes her goals. She does fake the comradry convincingly, though.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: In the web novels, the Unified States officially declares war on the Empire during the final year of the World War. Upon learning this, Tanya realizes that the Empire's ultimate defeat had become inevitable. Remembering Germany's ignoble fate in the aftermath of World War II on her former world, Tanya proposed a plan to the Imperial military leadership that would enable the Empire to retain its territory and dignity. The plan's first stage involves the commencement of all-out, near-suicidal attacks on the Empire's enemies in order to exhaust their soldiers and resources as much as possible and a scorched earth strategy to prevent valuable Imperial resources from being captured. This would eventually give the Empire's enemies a Pyrrhic Victory, making them more receptive to the plan's second stage, which is when the Empire will sue for peace and several concessions, rather than being forced to accept a humiliating unconditional surrender. In addition, a top-ranking military official would take responsibility for the Empire's "war crimes", giving many other Imperial officers a chance to survive. With this plan, the blow of the Empire's inevitable defeat would be softened. The Imperial leaders accept this plan, allowing the Empire to survive as a country in the future despite its overwhelming defeat.
• Lack of Empathy: Tanya is incapable of thinking of others and everything she does is for her own selfish goals.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: After some amount of time, Tanya realizes gaps in her current memory are starting to show. It turns out using the power of God through her Type-95 is causing gradual mental corruption that threatening to overwrite her original, atheist personality with a much more pious one that acts out of her control. She takes drastic measures to try to ensure it doesn't occur again.
• Laughing Mad: She does this very often. The first time, chronologically, is when she's told to hold off a squad by herself for ten minutes; note that this was her first combat situation, and to prepare for a fight to the death she magically dopes herself with stimulants and painkillers.
• Leitmotif: "Young Girl's War".
• Leonine Contract: She is a victim of one. In both the manga and light novel adaptations, "Being X" goes into exquisite detail regarding the use of the Type-95 jewel, and tells her that "using the jewel is not mandatory", but every time she does, it will require her to voice a "prayer" to itself that it chooses by momentarily taking control of her consciousness. In the light novel, Tanya goes on to compare her end of the bargain to that of a kidnapped man who is summarily dumped in a desert, but then told "it's not mandatory" to drink water from the well right next to him.
• Limited Wardrobe: She is rarely seen out of her military uniforms, which is justified. Given her workaholic traits, it is unlikely that she would feel the need for civilian clothes. It is also possible that she uses her uniforms to remind herself of her former masculinity and the legal authority she wielded in her previous life.
• Living Legend: Silver Wings medals are usually awarded posthumously, so the fact that Tanya survived the encounter that would earn her this award, at such a young age, makes it quite the feat. From then on, she builds a reputation as a fearsome soldier known to her allies as "Argent" and "The Devil of Rhine" to her enemies.
• Loophole Abuse: Part of why Tanya is seen as a ruthless but effective soldier is that she has no problems taking advantage of loopholes in military doctrine and international rules of war. She even wrote a thesis about how to legalize artillery attacks in cities by going around the international laws. This thesis was implemented in the Battle of Arene.
• Magical Incantation: In order to use more powerful spells, Tanya says a short prayer to Being X. Justified as Being X made it so that her Type-95 jewel won't produce the required power output she needs if she didn't pray first. Tanya considers the jewel to be cursed because of this.

• Mask of Sanity: Tanya is capable of pretending to be a capable and loyal, if brutal, officer as well as a sympathetic human being who cares for others. Only Lehrgen and those unfortunate enough to end up as her subordinates have been able to see past her mask thus far (some enemy soldiers also, but they don't really count, since their lifespan from the time they see her can be counted in minutes on one hand at most).
• Military Mage: This is Tanya's function within the Imperial Army. She has performed several roles as a mage including observation, artillery and dogfighting. Later, she becomes the commander of her own battalion of mages. Tanya is also powerful enough to decimate entire military units alone.
• Morality Pet: Surprisingly, she is this to various military officers like General Romel, General Zettour and Colonel Lehrgen himself. As the rise of discontent of officers and soldiers from the front for the Imperial subject and military stationed only in Berun increases, she tries to disconnect them from their discontent for pragmatic reasons due to Tanya's past life experiences with World War Military Coup. Even with the planning of the assassination of General Rudersdorf, Tanya hatched it as a Commonwealth Commando plan via a leak rather than directly killing him as per Zettour for the primary reason of avoiding discord and infighting in the Empire^note Tanya notes that due to Rudesdorf's military connections and earning the favor of the bureaucracy and the Imperial Family, they can and will directly investigate Zettour and, by extension, herself on the direct assassination, promoting infighting in a time of crisis .
• Moral Sociopathy: Combined with Jerkass Has a Point, she does have reasonably firm moral lines and displays significant contempt for those who breach them. She hates war and fighting, considering them a waste of resources, endeavors to always obey the rules, despises laziness, and views Honor Before Reason attitudes as pure selfish pride.
• Morton's Fork:
  • Even before she becomes aware that over-performing on the battlefield leads to her being sent to the front lines, where she clearly does not want to be, she lampshades in her internal monologue that the Empire punishes "cowardice" and "dereliction of duty" with death, so she really has no choice but to obviously over-perform, even if she knows that it just makes her superiors more likely to send her to the front lines. Ironically, the one time she is given a rear-echelon job, she is in an even more dangerous situation, i.e. testing the Type-95 jewel under the dictates of the Empire's top Mad Scientist.
  • In the later volumes, she finally gets her wish to be promoted into the rear, as both Rudesdorf and Zettour offers her position within the General Staff. But the situation has deteriorated and the Imperial defeat is imminent that her choices would be potentially death by trial on war crimes or die trying as a soldier in the frontlines. She chooses the latter option.
• A Mother to Her Men: True, she is rather brutal and ruthless when it comes to discipline, but she does genuinely treat her subordinates the way a mother treats her children. Praise them when they do well. Discipline them when they do wrong. Most importantly, she does provide for and protect them when they're in trouble. She also does everything in her power to make certain they don't get into trouble in the first place.
• Narcissist: Tanya's defining character trait; as mentioned in Inferiority Superiority Complex above, she demonstrates constant concern about how other people see her and as a result constantly tries to showcase her superiority to others. In addition, Tanya has repeatedly demonstrated the extremely self-centered mindset typically associated with narcissists in her inner monologues and outright admits that she has absolutely zero empathy towards other people.
• Nay-Theist: Even after becoming aware of the existence of an entity that claims to be God and displays powers comparable to those one would expect God to have, our main character refuses to acknowledge this entity as a deity worthy of worship and adamantly refuses to pray except when essentially strong-armed into it, and only when she's about to die.
• Never Grew Up: Tanya is worried that at eleven, she is still short and hasn't even had her first menarche and suspects Being X is at fault. A female medical staff officer assures her that it's most likely due to being malnourished during her younger years, along with the strenuous life of a soldier.
• Nightmare Face: Her Slasher Smiles shows this impression a lot.
• Nominal Hero: Tanya is amoral, has a cynical outlook on life, and has no real concern for the people around her aside from how she can use them to her advantage. She does what she does for purely pragmatic reasons, in stark contrast to the ideal hero the Empire sees her as.
• No Name Given: We never learn the name of Tanya's previous incarnation.
• Not Distracted by the Sexy: She notes in an omake short that she's spent long enough in her new life to think of herself as a female and not have a reaction out of other nude women. Though she is also eleven, so she could simply not yet have the hormones for a proper sex drive.
• Occult Blue Eyes: Tanya has frigid blue eyes and frightening magical power, and so some people have compared her to a devil or witch. Or worse, a vampire, as Viktoriya sees her.
• Oh, Crap!: More than a few combat encounters illicit this, seeing as Tanya is still very much mortal despite her prodigious mage abilities. But what really, really sets her off is an internal realization that with the capture of the Francois Republic, the war seems all but over, and as a result the entirety of the Imperial forces have let their guard down, the ultimate arrogance in a world that's looking at the Empire with great trepidation and hostility. Tanya's paranoia ends up right on the money, as this subsequently gets followed up by multiple war declarations from all angles, which starts the Empire's downward spiral from a Hopeless War.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: Her Leitmotif consists of a spine-tingly church chorus, which is ironic given who her nemesis is (or claims to be).
• One-Man Army: Tanya has singlehandedly taken out entire mage platoons all by herself before getting to lead her own battalion.
• Order Versus Chaos: Chapter 19 of the manga reveals that Tanya is neutral in this debate, acknowledging that freedom without regulation leads to destructive chaos; while regulation without freedom leads to tyranny and totalitarianism.
• Orphan's Ordeal: Invoked and discussed, Tanya uses this as her excuse for joining the military at her ridiculously young age. She tells a classmate from the military college that, as an orphan, she didn't have much choice in employment despite her talent and intelligence.
• Pacifism Backfire: All her attempts to give her enemies a chance to peaceful surrender, which are either sincere, pragmatic, or simple formality usually fail to be peaceful. Though to be fair, she does so with confidence that she could deal with the fire, and more often than not will have set precautions.
• The Paragon: On the surface, Tanya is every bit what an Imperial soldier should strive to be. A harsh disciplinarian that still cares about the lives and safety of her troops. A stupendously powerful and brutal warrior that still adheres to international laws. A person with a sharp tactical mind, unflinching courage, and unquestionable loyalty to her country. An officer that nevertheless remains humble and respectful to even non-commissioned officers. A devout believer in religion who often calls upon God to bless her country. All of these would make her an inspirational figure; the fact that she is a young girl as well, only makes the adults around her vow to work harder. The subversion, of course, is that the audience can hear her inner monologues and knows that much of her image is fake.
• Past-Life Memories: Tanya remains fully aware of her previous incarnation and carries over her experiences from that into her current life. Because of this, she has the skills, knowledge, drive, and personality of a ruthlessly efficient modern Japanese human resources manager, in addition to the military training and combat experience gained in her new world. At officer training school, Tanya used her knowledge about the Sengoku Period to develop answers to theoretical battle situations and wrote a thesis paper that demonstrated modern logistical streamlining. She has also used her knowledge about the first World War to propose the concept of "Total War" to defend the Empire. Tanya also occasionally lets slip references from her previous life such as comparing her life as a soldier to that of a salaryman under her breath and shouting "Tamaya!" when witnessing an exploding weapon factory (Tamaya was the name of an old Japanese fireworks maker and is a word that the Japanese people often use to express their thrill for fireworks). In an omake anime episode, Tanya admits to her subordinate Lt. Matheus Weiss that she once had a "by-the-book" attitude at work like he did, but she later grew out of it.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Visha claims that after the other drill sergeants treated her differently for being a conscript, Tanya treating her with respect was surprising to say at least. Unlike other moments where she acted nice to improve her reputation, this kind act of Tanya is 100% genuine, as she holds nothing more but respect towards Visha, who she deems not only competent but reliable as well.
  • She takes her second lieutenant's crisis of faith for the nervous breakdown it is, not as an act of insubordination, and gives him a rare moment of leniency, despite gaining nothing from it, and knowing it would be much easier to kill him and wipe out the fleeing "militia" and their mage bodyguards herself.
  • On Episode 11 she pushes one of her soldiers out of the way of an enemy attack and takes the hit. This is one of the most noticeable signs that she grew to care for her soldiers, even at the risk of her own life.
• Picky Eater: Although she has no choice, Tanya doesn't like most of the German food available to her now, especially sauerkraut. She misses the food she once ate in her previous life and particularly misses modern coffee.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Often happens to Tanya because of her petite body, especially when she's up against a full squadron of Mages from Entente in her first mission. Since then, she has taken a new level in fighting against enemies much bigger than herself both in body and number. In her first mission, she killed four and gravely injured two mages of Entente, then annihilating a full squadron of mages above the Rhine, and in her latest exploit in Norden, she shot down at least five bomber planes by herself.
• Power Gives You Wings: A strange example in the manga, as it's not Tanya who gets wings but her computation orb. Elenium Type-95 is originally shaped like a regular orb, but the blessing from Being X gives the orb three wings to emphasize its status as a holy relic. Although it does gives Tanya an ability boost to fly higher.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Tanya's basic approach in life: despite being actively sadistic, she constantly considers how her actions could affect her position in social organizations on a long-term basis. Tanya acts professionally and unselfishly when on the job, only because doing so would give her a better chance at career advancement. Having a job where she can be ruthless and be commended for it is just one of the perks. Also, Tanya dislikes war in general, but only because it's often a waste of productive lives and precious resources.
• Professional Butt-Kisser: She is basically never not thinking about career advancement, and every word from her lips is either a truth or a lie intended to help her advance. It's only when she finds a superior to be incompetent that she actually breaks, but only because she believes it'll help her pal up with the even higher-ups that will eventually get her incompetent boss removed.
• Punch a Wall: Tanya does this after the Empire decides to accept the armistice from the republic in Episode 11.

R — Y

• Rage Against the Heavens: Tanya goes from being an atheist to full-on misotheist with some maltheist philosophy after being forced to pray to God in order for her Elenium Type-95 to work (and not kill her like it did with its previous test subjects), calling Being X a "vile piece of shit". By the end of episode 12 Tanya is out to treat Being X the same way her previous incarnation did with the incompetent worker—fire it.
  We don't need a God! The battlefield's no place for that shit, so let's cut God out and take over His glorious work ourselves! We soldiers are going to take His place! We're going to put that arrogant asshole out of a job! Do you understand me, men?! ARE ALL OF YOU WITH ME?!
• Reality Is Unrealistic: Her existence and resume is regarded as either Empire's propaganda or Republican's figment of imagination by other allied countries prior to their personal confrontation with Tanya.
  • After receiving Intel on Tanya, the Entente's councilmen could hardly believe her resume^note which says she is a female officer that graduated from the Imperial Military College as its 11th ranked Honorable Knight, currently a major in rank with several medals. A pious girl around ten years old who attends church on weekends, yet has a kill count of over seventy, and registered as the "Devil of Rhine" in the Republican database, so they conclude that Tanya sounds like several things mixed together and likely just malicious propaganda from the Empire's part. So they decide to not inform their subordinates of her, because the intel is obviously unreliable, and send Anson's battalion on the rear as precaution.
  • In the light novel prior to confirming her mana signature, the Allied Kingdom thinks Tanya, The Devil of Rhine is a fictional Named Ace that the Republic made up. They largely ignore intel on her, but come to check it nevertheless with setting up a HQ for volunteers they send to help Entente. Even after they detect her mana signature, the officers still wonder if they are suffering from a mass hallucination before double-checking and confirming that The Devil of Rhine is indeed a real person. Even then, they're still skeptical about her resume and decide to keep watching. Upon detecting a artillery spell being invoked by Tanya, they are still in disbelief because Tanya is kilometers away... until said spell hit and blasts them along with their HQ.
• Reason Before Honor: Is a big believer in this but knows that the world she's reincarnated into works opposite to this paradigm, as it is in fact the whole reason she's the way she is in the first place; because the employee she fired wanted immediate vengeance against her previous incarnation, over realizing that he was fired for very good reasons. Actually, the Revenge Myopia of the nations against the Empire is one of her pet peeves.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: To a certain extent. While she has absolutely no sympathy for those who fail to meet her standards for a good soldier and refuse to follow her orders, she does make sure that those who prove themselves to be good soldiers get the recognition they deserve. This is, of course, purely pragmatic, as her inner monologues clearly shows she does this to look good to both her superiors and underlings.
• Red Baron: "Argent" ("Hakugin") by her own side. The "Devil of the Rhine" by her enemies. In the later volumes, she's widely known as "Rusted Silver".^note This is because when blood dries up, it gives a colour similar to silver oxide (silver rust) in solution.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Only happens once, but when Tanya unleashes enough mana to overload her 'standard' operation orb, her eyes turn red and she blows up half of a Mage Squadron in her first battle.
• Reincarnate in Another World: Tanya was a Japanese salaryman in her past life. In an attempt to make her a believer, Being X forced Tanya to be reborn in a war-torn world where magic is real.
• Reincarnated as the Opposite Sex: Tanya was a man in her previous incarnation.
• Religious Bruiser: An involuntary example; she is forced to "pray to God" by Being X every time she uses her Type-95.
• Salaryman: In her previous life, Tanya was a classical but ambitious Japanese workaholic, having reached a high position as a human resources manager and earned the Talented Employee Award from her company for establishing efficient business processes. She is still a workaholic, having no life outside her duties as a soldier. Because of this, Tanya appreciates hard work and has no patience for those who can't, or won't, pull their own weight.
• Sarcasm Mode: Tanya's chosen method to express her displeasure to her superiors as she can't go Drill Sergeant Nasty on them, usually overlapping with her flair in the Armor-Piercing Response.
  • One of the best examples is her emphasis on how much the Norden Theatre's commander underestimates the Empire's strained supplies. Since the commander is so sure the Norden Army has enough supplies to support his planned assault, Tanya observes that she can be excused for some Guilty Pleasure. So she pours a generous amount of milk to her coffee,^note Tanya drinks her coffee black, the milk most likely served to her under the assumption a young girl would like her drink sweet. Making this even more apparent to the watching Lehrgen who knows her taste. spilling it everywhere... then casually noting that every other theater she's served in didn't have any milk to waste for coffee. This implicitly slaps the commander with a rebuke that the Empire can't even afford to provide unrationed milk to its soldiery or even its upper echelons below the Generals, and that she knows what she's talking about since she's a Major that's been assigned to most of the Theatres.
• Schmuck Bait: In light novel, the Devil of Rhine is famous for fishing enemy mages by flying to an insane height by herself, thus fooling them in thinking she is a vulnerable lone mage separated from her squadron. Double as Bait the Dog as some Republican Mages thought she is doing a Last Stand to delay them with putting herself at vulnerable altitude, and they sympathize with her bravery. Then they find out how wrong they are.
• Self-Made Woman: Once she's born into her new life, Tanya has no one to turn to but herself. With her opportunistic nature and through sheer willpower, she raises herself to the upper echelons of a military institution. Although Being X has influenced events that enabled Tanya's rapid rise through the ranks, it did so only for its own selfish, sinister purpose. This is another element that enhances her reputation in the Empire, since it's a meritocracy and she's a child that claws her way up a famously strict military.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Comes across as this at the Academy, since she's constantly carrying and keeping her rifle in mint condition, which is seen as extremely weird by everyone else there. Once Tanya explains that she's doing it to always be ready for a fight, it stops being weird and more a forcibly-learned habit from her time at the front.
• Showy Invincible Hero: Despite being a Villain Protagonist, there is something just so overwhelmingly satisfying about seeing her utterly obliterate her enemies.
• Shrouded in Myth: In 1967, 40 years after the end of the World War, which the Empire lost, all official records of Tanya's existence are destroyed, encoded or classified, while the rest were lost in the chaotic aftermath of the World War. Former enemies of the "Devil of the Rhine" still consider her a monster while Imperial eyewitnesses from the war often give conflicting, fantastical and/or wildly inaccurate accounts of Tanya's accomplishments, giving her something of a mythic status to military historians. A team of journalists dedicated to uncovering an objective historical record of Tanya have named her the "Eleventh Goddess", in reference to the eleven X's used to classify her name (DEGURECHAFF) on recovered World War papers and connecting that to the eleventh card of the Major Arcana Tarot, Justice. At an annual remembrance ceremony for the Arene massacre, Tanya (whose name remained unknown) was known as the alleged "rational" leader of the mysterious Imperial battalion V-600 that committed the massacre. Despite having followed wartime protocols to the letter at the time, the battalion was remembered as the best (in combat ability), and the worst (in morality), of Imperial soldiers.
• Slasher Smile: Tanya has a habit of giving this whenever she's killing her enemies. Sometimes, she also gives this when punishing a subordinate. This may be because she enjoys displaying her "superiority" to those who are obviously "inferior". The manga and light novel reveal that she's just doped on both chemical and magical painkillers and stimulants.
• Sociopathic Hero: One interpretation of Tanya's character and what she arguably becomes by the end of the World War. Despite her lack of morals, Tanya is a ruthlessly pragmatic, logical and worldly-wise war veteran with a strong sense of order and ethics, who is genuinely committed to ending the war for good (albeit out of self interest). While she lacks empathy to others for the most part, she has a pragmatic understanding of social behavior, enabling her to predict the actions of others with unnerving accuracy. Because of these traits, as Erich von Lehrgen eventually realizes, Tanya could very well be the embodiment of how to survive and succeed in the madness that is war.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Due to her small body, agility and capability to reach altitude beyond standard of air mage, Tanya often appears out of nowhere to her enemies before they meet their demise. In the sixth episode, Tanya pulls this off on pilots of Entente's bomber planes. She drops by right in front of their cockpit when they're not looking, before dropping a live grenade to their cockpit.
  "Good day gentlemen, and goodbye."
• Straight Edge Evil: Tanya's one of only a handful of people in The Empire who doesn't like to smoke; made all the more apparent when she is brought to a meeting of the Brigadier Generals; and she reacts with muted visible disgust that Everyone present is Smoking.
• The So-Called Coward: In episode 7, after being explicitly asked, in her capacity as a renowned strategist with numerous war accomplishments, for her honest opinion regarding the offensive strategy being employed against a major Republic stronghold in Entente territory, and honestly pointing out its flaws, she openly gets called a coward because she doesn't support an obvious suicidal charge where the front lines have a very high probability of being cut off from their supplies and starving to death and/or running out of ammo. This makes her so angry she nearly crushes the crystal coffee cup she's drinking from with her bare hands.
• The Sociopath: Tanya displays many traits of a high-functional sociopath. The most noticeable is that she has a Lack of Empathy, being very prone of seeing others as mere pawns and her A Mother to Her Men attitude is mostly out of Pragmatic Villainy, such as ensuring that they remain loyal to her and that skilled soldiers don't die without need, and doesn't show remorse for her actions. She is a skilled manipulator that will use her knowledge and appearance to exploit others and hides her cold and calculating nature under a kind and cute façade. She is an ambitious narcissist that constantly seeks both the advancement of her career and the approval of others, though this is mostly out of compensation for her inferiority complex.
  • Zigzagged due to the fact that she has Visha and other soldiers as Morality Pet and that she actually feels guilty for troubling Lehrgen, implying that she might have a very low sense of empathy, rather than a complete lack of it.
• Soldiers at the Rear:
  • Most of Tanya's actions throughout the series are motivated by her desire to gain an easy and safe rear-echelon job. However, her own butt-kissing, as well as Being X's intervention, make this task pretty much impossible.
  • Though in volume 4, Zettour states that he's been preparing Tanya in the General Staff position so that in 10 years time, Tanya would've have been in the rear echelon.
    • In the later volumes, both Zettour and Rudesdorf offers her a position within the Imperial High Command but the situation has deteriorated at that point that she declines it.
• So Proud of You:
  • To Viktoriya. Tanya is both astounded and impressed at Viktoriya's superb work-ethic and dedication to duty, despite being conscripted to the front lines, against her will. At least in the light novel, this is something Tanya does not hesitate to tell her, and is another reason Viktoriya is so determined to be Tanya's adjutant, come hell or high water.
  • Tanya also express this to her squadron commanders and Grantz, she sees of how much they grow to be dependable subordinates and told them to grow further as soldiers.
• Split Personality: Tanya has started to develop one. In chapter 11, she reveals that during 601st training, she used the Type-95 so much her consciousness blacked out. She awoke to hear herself paraphrasing GSGT Heartman's speech. Later on, she found herself wearing a rosary she doesn't remember buying and there are hints that her prayers, at least on the enemies' side, that do make look like a Jeanne d'Archétype.
• Springtime for Hitler: Everything she does to wind up with a cushy rear-echelon job either doesn't help at all or worse, only convinces her superiors to send her back to the front lines.
  • Though in volume 4, she would've been in the rear echelon alongside the General Staff in 10 years as Zettour sees Tanya as an ideal officer. But the Empire has lost by then due to being surrounded in a multifront war.
• Stock Light-Novel Hero: Tanya Von Degurechaff is a very dark take on the genre that twists the cliches. It involves a cynical atheist Japanese HR manager who was a jerkass to his workers, leading one of them to murder him by pushing him in front of a train. The man is then confronted with a being who claims to be GOD, only for the bitter atheist to not only refuse to believe the God (who he dubs "Being X") but to challenge him on how the world didn't need any faith. Angered by this, Being X punished him by reincarnating him a world of magic and constant warfare, in the body of a little girl named Tanya Von Degurechaff, who finds herself as a powerful unstoppable sorceress fighting in what resembles World War I. While the Empire she serves sees her as a hero, Tanya is concerned for no one but herself and only seeks to further her own power and self preservation.
• Straight Edge Evil: She really hates smoking and even praised one of her lieutenants at the end of Episode 6 for his abstinence from smoking. Unfortunately for Tanya, she now lives in an era where Everybody Smokes and has to constantly deal with the heavy smoking that her superiors practice.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Quite literally. Her Icy Blue Eyes eyes turn gold when she uses her magic.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Tanya by herself is worth more than her entire unit as a One-Man Army, and in the right circumstances (and enough indignation or an urge to survive) is nigh unstoppable. She's also leading only a single squad in a massive multi-front war that seizes major tactical victories, but can't cover for the rest of the Empire, and is still taking orders from glory hound officers and generals that think people like her have won the war for them. Needless to say, once the rest of the surrounding nations really tear into the Empire all at once, it doesn't matter how powerful and intelligent Tanya is, the rest of the Empire cannot withstand such immense pressure and their chain of command collapses hard. She doesn't even have to be defeated for it to ultimately fall.
• Surrounded by Idiots: She does not think very well of both her immediate superiors, and their bosses at the very top of the chain of command. Her assertions actually tend to be proven correct far more often than not, as their own greed for military accomplishment and war technological superiority needlessly endanger her, her men, and the fate of the country as a whole on a repeated basis.
• Taking You with Me: In a calm, rational manner, she comes to the conclusion that this is the best ploy available to her in her first combat situation where she, alone, is set upon by a wing of enemy mages with superior equipment, and she's not only forbidden from retreating, but she's informed that reinforcement and rescue is at least 10 minutes away.
• Target Spotter: This was Tanya's first job as an Imperial mage soldier.
• Technical Pacifist: While the world views her as a Blood Knight, Tanya would like to think of herself as a pacifist reincarnation of a modern Japan salary-man. Though, Tanya's attempts at being a pacifist is rarely sincere, mostly pragmatic or formality because the international law said so. Once peaceful negotiation falls, she has no problems following orders to completely crush her enemy. However, this could be in an attempt to end the war as quickly and efficiently as possible, and though apathetic to the deaths of her enemies, she still considers war to be a vile thing, due to its unproductive nature.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill:
  • Tanya is a firm believer of this and with a good reason due to the nature of aerial mage combat, where becoming an ace with five recorded kills of enemy mages is already a tall ordeal. Mages are very tough to kill while fighting against a numbers advantage, which Tanya frequently struggles against. Her solution is large scale bombardment, which kills her target either by explosion, or the oxygen deprivation and carbon dioxide poisoning right after. In close combat, she usually mutilates her opponents to make sure they're dead.
  • This is also why she lead her battalion to Dacia's capital to destroy their weapon factory, after essentially wiping out Dacia's main army.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: Played for Laughs, Tanya gets this when she is forced to have a makeover for propaganda photos◊.
• To Be Lawful or Good: In episode 11 she is conflicted by this. She could go against her superiors' orders that demanded her to respect the armistice and destroy the Republic's fleet before they escaped, thus saving the Empire from a second war, though she most certainly would have been executed for this, or obey their orders and be forced to stand powerless as the Republic prepared to start another war. She decides to do the Lawful choice, but she is clearly enraged and on the verge of tears since peace is so close to being achieved.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The ruthlessly violent tomboy to Visha's gentle girly girl.
• Took a Level in Kindness: As time passes, she treats her battalion with genuine kindness, not as meat-shields, even when she would gain nothing from it, such as saving the life of Lt. Wiess, at considerable risk to herself. As such, she is genuinely shocked and outraged when 2nd Lt. Grantz is shot down by Anson Sue from behind in episode 10.
• Training from Hell: Tanya deliberately subjects her battalion recruits to this in an effort to discourage them from forming the new rapid-response battalion, thus allowing her to save face while giving herself more time and another chance to get a rear line position. Instead, the training instills a healthy amount of fear and respect in the recruits for Tanya, driving them to complete the training.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Zig-zagged since she is not an actual child, but most adults view her pragmatic tactics and ruthlessness in battle as this.
• Underestimating Badassery: On the receiving end of this by her superior by episode 12, being called an arrogant soldier who doesn't know when to stop. Tanya barely shows any emotion, except from when Lehrgen called her loved by the God of War she then calmly explains why he and the Command HQ were wrong, explaining that Humans Are Flawed and will continue to fight beyond rationality.
• Unperson: The constant threat that "Being X" has hanging over her head. If she dies in this alternate reality, she's gone from the wheel of reincarnation, forever, with nobody remembering she ever existed. Small wonder she wants to spite "it" at every opportunity.
• Unstoppable Rage: Alongside Roaring Rampage of Revenge in Volume 5; Tanya, after finally losing men in a military encounter due to Mary, decides to hunt down the RMS Queen of Anjou. The result is Tanya destroying most of the Federation and Unified States personnel guarding the Anjou in the encounter.^note Drake mentions massive amount of casualties in the Federation side and there are only 4 mages left capable of fighting, including Mary, in the Unified States voluntary forces.
• Unwillingly Girly Tomboy: To her dismay, she had to be dolled up for a propaganda-stunt.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: By being powerful and capable enough to be a tide-turning individual with her own squad in the war that shifts everything when they're on the scene, Tanya wittingly instigates the Empire's victories for her own success - and unwittingly pushes the continued hunt for glory and victory in the Empire heavier than ever before, which both causes them to grow arrogant thanks to their rising power and also rouses surrounding nations into a total war against the Empire on multiple fronts. This gradually undermines the Empire in the long term despite the constant success of Tanya's unit, as their vast momentum eventually runs out and they find themselves hammered down far more than they expected from the multi-front warfare.
  • Case in point in volume 7, her massive success in routing the Federation troops actually made the politicians and military subjects stationed at Berun more greedy and asked for more concessions. Lehrgen even wished that they should've been defeated in that encounter and the chapter was aptly named "Excessive Triumph".
    • In volume 8, this was actually pointed out by Zettour to Tanya in the aftermath of the Andromeda offensive in the eastern front, in which the Imperial Government and the Supreme High Command rejected the Ildoan Kingdom mediation efforts despite their already dwindling resources of both men and materiel. This also convinced Zettour to "correct" these mistakes of these people deluded from reality.
• Veteran Instructor: In Volume 2, Tanya is tasked in training recruits in the frontline^note since the General Staff is worried about the high casualty rate of the recruits at the front. in which she trains them in mundane tasks such as marching, digging etc. without the usage of magic. Then lets the punctual recruits participate in a raid behind enemy lines, a task noted to be of high casualty rate, and only lost 2 recruits in that raid.
• Villain Has a Point: Presuming prayer works like currency, the male salaryman is correct in that people generally won't offer something for nothing. Even people who donate to charity tend to do so in return for feeling good about seeing positive results. Since "Being X" was really offering nothing in exchange for devotion to itself, and that includes failing to acknowledge the prayers of its faithful, it's entirely responsible for the lack of faith that it is bemoaning. Unfortunately for the protagonist, and humanity in general, it prefers to drive people into praying to itself in fear and desperation, rather than making prayer attractive by actually offering something in exchange up-front.
• Villain Protagonist: It's right there in the title. She is arrogant, ruthless, egotistic and only interested in personal benefit. When it comes to achieving her goals, she is willing to do anything to achieve them.
• Villain Song: The ending theme, "Los! Los! Los!", is definitely this. Bonus points for having her own VA sing the same.
• Villainous Breakdown: Suffers a massive one near the end of Episode 11, when the Empire calls for a armistice with the Republic rather than finish them off for good.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Tanya is this to Lt. Colonel Erich von Lehrgen. Having once seen Tanya's ruthless nature, he sees her as a monster who could potentially lead the Empire to ruin one day. However, most of the Imperial upper military echelons are prepared to ignore Tanya's quirks due to her great abilities and deeds as a soldier. In addition, the Imperial army and the citizens of the Empire see Tanya as a national hero.
• Vocal Evolution: A subtle example. Over the course of the anime series, her voice gets progressively more mature, since she is still a growing young girl.
• The Von Trope Family: Earns the "von" prefix to her name by becoming one of the Twelve Knights of the Military College, giving her status as a minor nobility.
• War God: In the novels, Tanya has been regarded as this by both friend and foe. Both even describe her as the God of Death and the Empire's enemies spared no expense in taking her down.
• What You Are in the Dark: In the original light novel, Viktoriya's leg is broken as a direct result of the avalanche triggered by the careless shouting of one of the other soldiers that would go on to become the 601st flying battalion. While Tanya publicly chews her out for the broken leg, in private, Viktoriya is well aware that Tanya is directly responsible for saving her life, at great risk to herself. What's more, Tanya doesn't want anyone else to know about it, despite being well aware of how big a PR boost this would give her. This serves to make Viktoriya aware of how much she is a Morality Pet for Tanya, and makes her dedicate herself to being Tanya's conscience from that point on. Serving Tanya faithfully, regardless of the consequences.
• Write What You Know: An in-universe example, while in officer school, Tanya wrote a thesis for logistical streamlining based off modern distribution and inventory practices.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Tanya makes constant mistakes as she forms her mage wing due to this. For a rationalist born in pacifistic Japan, Tanya reckons that emphasizing War Is Hell would be enough to drive away all potential recruits to her wing. However the prevailing attitude among the military is that War Is Glorious and thus they see her harsh pamphlets as nothing more than an exhortation for them to display their patriotism. Tanya forgets that the "esprit de corps" of the Imperial Army is especially strong and the other armies are just itching to help out their comrades in the Northern and Western armies. Particularly egregious as Tanya should be aware that it was the First World War (which she is currently living through) that finally did in the notion of a glorious and honorable war.
• You Have Failed Me: In the first episode Tanya decides to send two of her subordinates back home for insubordination, which she admits was exceptionally lenient. They protest her decision, in the name of "glory" asking to return victorious or dead, so instead she has them reassigned to man a fortified pillbox knowing that such fortifications are prime targets for artillery barrages. She is counting on them being blown to smithereens by enemy battery fire, leaving her hands clean.

---