Fanfic / Always Advancing

"I'm like a tank, I always advance forward."

— Yukari Akiyama

Always Advancing is a Girls und Panzer Alternate Universe Fic where Yukari Akiyama mysteriously finds herself waking up just before the events of GuP proper would have taken place, and that she is starting her first day at Saunders University High School, Oarai apparently having shut down earlier and the remaining student body moved to other school ships. Completely lost and separated from friends and events she clearly remembers, Yukari continues on with her new life as a student of Saunders, all the while still making new friends though Sensha-do, rediscovering old ones and the revelation that the old life she remembers may not be a delusion after all....

The fic can be found here.

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This work contains examples of:

• Adaptation Expansion: The Saunders trio and the St. Gloriana girls get more screen time than in the original anime. It's a given especially for the former as much of the story takes place there. Rosehip and Klara each get an honorable mention as they show up before their canon introduction in Der Film.
• Adaptational Villainy: Renta Tsuji, the MEXT official was merely the Obstructive Bureaucrat villain in the original series due to sheer pettiness and It's Personal attitude to the Oarai student council resisting him, but in this story he is hell-bent on destroying the entire Japanese Sensha-do high school league in an elaborate embezzlement scheme and had abused his authority by bribing officials to help him.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: In Chapter 30, the Kami (God) of Tankery himself appears to Yukari in a Dream Sequence taking the forms of various historical tank legends as well as people she had interacted with in her life. He also shifts the dream environment to Yukari's mental images of the various battles the respective tank commanders had fought in during their discussion.
• Alliterative Title: Referencing:
  "I'm like a tank, I always advance forward."

  — Yukari Akiyama
• Amnesiac Resonance: A sign that the character is starting to remember their old life at Oarai, or remembers a specific incident relating to the events of the anime for non-Oarai students.
• Bizarre Taste in Food: The now-Anzio History Club members are apparently into cooking horrifyingly impossible dish combinations, in stark contrast to the rest of Anzio's reputation for good Italian food.
  Erwin: "YOU! You look like someone that could use a History Club Special"
  Alisa (going green): "What is the History Club Special?"
  Erwin: "Sashimi and Spätzle over Yakisoba on top a bed of croutons, Parmesan cheese, egg, anchovies and romaine lettuce."
  Alisa: "Okay, I've definitely lost my appetite."
  • Apparently Darjeeling is the only person in the story to somehow appreciate the History Club Special.
• Blatant Lies: Kay calls the town of Oarai "completely unimportant" to feign ignorance over Yukari's background, as well as her knowledge of Oarai being a perfect spot for urban combat. Naomi, who was with her when Yukari pitched the idea of holding the match there, rolled her eyes.
  Kay: There's an old Tankery competition area that is still on the register as a valid field, and the locals were excited to see it used again for the chance to make some money from the spectators. We will be playing at the completely unimportant town of Oarai.
• Bookends: Both Yukari's first battle and her final showdown with Kuromorimine, led by Miho, both takes place at the town of Oarai; the difference being that the first was a practice match with St. Gloriana, while the latter is an all-out match with all the schools Saunders faced in this story going up against Kuromorimine.
• Broken Bird: Miho's fate in this continuity, as she continued studying in Kuromorimine under the strict Nishizumi-style and living relatively friendless and lonely as a result.
• Chase Scene: An epic one happens in Chapter 18 when Yukari and Alisa are outed as spies by Saori during the infiltration at Anzio. It spirals out of control the moment Yukari decides to hijack an Anzio CV L3/33 tankette and the rest of the Anzio tankers (including the History Club Members in a commandeered Semovente assault gun) give chase. This causes complete havoc and untold destruction of public property to Anzio and almost jeopardised their qualification for the tournament due to the sheer amount of damage done to their tank fleet. It also skyrockets Yukari's reputation within the tankery circuit when footage of the chase gets uploaded to the internet.
• Clipboard of Authority: Alisa uses one in the Anzio spying mission briefly to enter the Anzio drama club's preparation room, pretending to be part of the Student Council demanding budget paperwork. It works and Yukari gets a close-up footage of Anzio's 3D decoy tank models.
• Cool Car: The Nishizumis show up at MEXT in a Mercedes-Benz G4 at one point in the story.
• Cool Plane: Aside from Saunders' Lockheed C5M Super Galaxy cargo plane as seen in Der Film, a Douglas C-47 Skytrain also serves as personal transport for the Saunders team whenever they need to transport Yukari to her rendezvous point for her various infiltration missions.
  • St. Gloriana also gets in on the fun as they make use of a Short Sunderland, a British flying boat from WWII.
• Demoted to Extra: Shimada Alice, who would have faced Miho during Der Film's final battle, is only mentioned twice, one of which was by her mother as a suggestion that maybe she should get her and Miho to meet up and go on a play date after it was brought up that Miho had no friends at Kuromorimine.
  • Alice's subordinates doesn't fare any better. Out of the Bermuda Trio, only Megumi is mentioned in passing and that's only because she was Kei's sempai.
• Flanderization: Renta Tsuji somehow manages to one-up his Jerkass portrayal in the original movie and series in this fic. Namely managing to successfully shut down Oarai and then setting his sights on shutting down the Sensha-do programs of every other high school save for Kuromorimine. Which he only did just to help line his pockets in a elaborate embezzlement scheme.
  • Anzio Academy manages to purchase better tanks and enjoy an overall budget increase thanks to Momo Kawashima taking the reigns of being the school's financial manager when she was transferred there.
  • Nonna is the current Pravda commander, with Klara as her vice-commander while Katuysha is demoted to a regular squad leader, due to Katuysha failing to score the winning shot at Miho's Tiger the previous year. The two of them still keep Katuysha in close proximity for her hidden tactical genius, all the while playfully teasing her due to her small stature and childish attitude.
  • Instead of Miho taking blame for causing defeat in the 62nd Sensha-do Tournament, Erika is thrown under the bus for nearly causing the defeat in this timeline. See The Scapegoat entry below.
• Fruit Cart: Yukari and Alisa's stolen CV33 runs into a number of these during their initial escape, alongside the other Italian food stalls including the History Club's, prompting their participation. Justified, as the duo were driving a tankette, compared to real life where the cars that do this would normally be rendered inoperable after attempting such a feat.
• Game Changer: The Kami of Tankery himself appearing in Chapter 30 before Yukari in a coma-induced dream to admit to her about his mistake of changing the timeline, and that the very future of Tankery (as well as his own existence) is at stake.
• Genre Savvy: Most of the plot advances initially due to Kay and Darjeeling's surprisingly quick acceptance of Yukari and friends incredulous claims of remembering the alternate timeline while taking full advantage of it. Them displaying excellent tankery skills and knowing things or people that they shouldn't certainly helps, and as the series progresses more and more people begin to remember the original timeline which forces the most skeptical of characters to start believing.
• God Is Flawed: At least the God of Tankery is, by not predicting his original timeline interference to help the Nishizumi family name would spell doom for Sensha-do in the long run.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: Training Company B and their supervising commander, tasked by Kay to test out the newly-sought-out volunteers, went into a practice match against seeming novices in outdated tanks expecting a Curb-Stomp Battle. Unfortunately for them the volunteers in question were the Duck Team and Rabbit Team of Oarai in the original timeline. It ultimately took all 20 Shermans of both Training Company B and A to bring them down.
• Heroic BSoD: Yukari has a major one after hearing that Miho Nishizumi in this timeline is the current commander of Kuromorimine, rendering she and her friends' work to develop Miho's own confidence in her own Sensha-do All for Nothing in their original timeline.
• How We Got Here: Just like in the original story with her and Miho, the first part shows Yukari and Kay doing recon and later starting to engage the St. Gloriana tanks that they are having a match with.
• In-Series Nickname: Yukari goes by her "Oddball" callsign in Saunders, her "Guderian" soul name to the History club and after her infiltration shenanigans, "Agent Akiyama, Super Spy".
• Insistent Terminology: The Saunders students refer to the art of Sensha-do as 'Tankery', keeping with their American tradition. Outside school formality, the term 'Sensha-do' is still used by everyone regularly but Kay using the original Japanese term is a sign of her rare moments of seriousness.
• In Spite of a Nail: St. Gloriana still goes on a practice match at Oarai before the tournaments. Only this time the opponent is Saunders, at the suggestion of Yukari.
  • Nonna and Klara still keep Katyusha around and even have a soft side on her despite her being demoted from the Pravda commander.
  • Everyone who would have been part of Oarai's Sensha-do team end up coming back to do Sensha-do in some form, despite being in different schools.
  • The final showdown between the United High School Alliance and Kuromorimine has a similar set-up to the Oarai vs. University match in Der Film, although Miho and Maho would be opposing everyone else unlike in the original timeline.
• Irony: One that may veer straight in to Harsher in Hindsight territory in comparison to the canon timeline: In the supplementary material of Der Film, it's been stated that the real reason why Tsuji and the MEXT at large wanted to shut Oarai down was so they could disperse the Oarai Sensha-do members to different schools to strengthen their respective schools' Sensha-do programs. Considering how All of Oarai's members are now dispersed to different schools and have contributed greatly to their schools' Sensha-do programs, it's safe to say that their objectives were completed, albeit in a different timeline.
• Living Legend: Yukari becomes one when her infiltration antics with Alisa at Anzio gets posted all over the internet mere hours after the incident. Even students from rival schools (especially Klara) are eager to get her autograph and to pose for pictures with her in their school uniforms.
• Monumental Damage: Sorta. A CV33 chasing the hijacked CV33 falls into the replica Fontana della Baraccia and damages it.
• Mundane Utility: After Anzio manages to purchase enough Carro Armato M14/41 medium tanks and Semovente tank destroyers to boost their team lineup, the comparatively useless (offensive capability-wise) CV33 tankettes are then regulated to delivering pizza around Anzio.
• Mythology Gag: The author enjoys making references to Motto Love Love Sakusen Desu and other less-known GuP media.
  • Alisa once again tries to cheat by using a radio intercept balloon during Yukari and the Saunders freshmen's first training exercise. Her moments from Motto Love Love Sakusen Desu includes trying to disguise herself with fake sunglasses and her bad reputation with the Sensha-do Federation judges.
  • Alisa mentions that they had a M22 Locust in their inventory, but have lead-leased it out to a certain tankathalon group, as per Ribbon Warrior. St. Gloriana also shows off their previously unseen Cromwell tanks as well as a Comet in dire need of parts.
  • Yukari is given her Saunders team nickname of "Oddball" after her official indoctrination. She also continues her habit of infiltrating other schools before their matches, this time with official approval from the Saunders commanders.
  • Klara's dad is portrayed as a Russian defence ministry official, similar to Nonna's claims in the Drama CD - Klara's Secret ^note Although in the Drama CD, she mentions Klara's father was merely a corporal in a 'foreign' army.
  • Momo becoming Momochovy.
  • The Anglerfish Team may have ended up where they did based on where each member visited in the 3rd Drama CD (Yukari to Saunders, Hana to St. Gloriana, Saori to Anzio, Mako to Pravda, and Miho to Kuromorimine).
• Nom de Guerre: Several characters receive their 'war names' after proving themselves to their respective schools.
  • Yukari gets her official "Oddball" callsign after being indoctrinated into the Saunders University tankery team.
  • Hana and Yuzu receive their exclusively Japanese 'tea names' from Darjeeling herself, despite protests from the St. Gloriana traditionalist alumni: "Sencha" and "Gyokuro" respectively.
• Oh, Crap!: Yukari and Alisa have one when Saori reveals them as spies to the entire student body gathering at the Anzio Colosseum.
  Yukari: Run.
• Original Character: Yukari initially interacts with a few former-Oarai and Saunders characters original to the story before being drafted into Kay's inner circle and starts bumping into her old friends and rivals in the original timeline. Chouno's superior also appears as a named character here despite not even being mentioned in the original story.
  • The Kami of Sensha-do also qualifies.
• Outdated by Canon
  • None of the characters that make their first appearance in ''Das Finale'' is acklowledged in this story. That being said, as the timeline reset would have happened before those characters interacted with Yukari and Miho in OTL, those characters would not have been able to recognize them even if Amnesiac Resonance kicked in.
  • Nakajima's name was retconned from Satoko to Rera prior to Das Finale 3 for unknown reasons. As this fic was written around the time Das Finale 1 and 2 was coming out, Nakajima's first name is still Satoko.
• Point of Divergence: The alternate history aspect of this fic stems from Oarai failing to produce a winning Sensha-do team and eventually closing down, splitting up their former students to the other major schools seen throughout the original series. More specifically, Miho Nishizumi not losing Kuromorimine's 10th consecutive win and then never transferring over to Oarai from the guilt/shame.
• Putting the Band Back Together: Yukari's ultimate goal is this, to reunite all the friends she made in the Oarai timeline as well as liberating Miho Nishizumi from her shackles in Kuromorimine.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Kay takes the time to listen to Yukari's theory about alternate timelines when everyone else found it hard to believe. Darjeeling also lends a quick ear to Hana regarding her 'delusions'.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Yukari in the beginning believes she is the only one that has somehow remembered her previous life, until she meets Hana in St. Gloriana who reveals she also somehow managed to remember bits of her life on her own. As the chapters progress, the 'awakened' Oorai students begin to learn how to jog the memories of the rest of their friends by replicating events of the anime or forcing them back into Sensha-do situations. The Kami of Tankery suggests that Yukari's strong connection to Tankery and its history was a major factor in anchoring her memories to the 'correct' timeline.
  • Turns out that Maho was in a similar situation all along, with her connection to Tankery and also to Miho.
• Running Gag: Yukari prepping for an infiltration mission at the back of Saunders C47 plane, listing out her usual inventory to which she will always add a different tank history book that no one else shows any interest in, then asking someone will ask, "Whose brilliant idea was this?" (Answer: Usually Yukari herself.)
• The Scapegoat Erika becomes this and forced out of the Kuromorimine Sensha-do team after the team nearly lost to Pravda during last year's tournament.

  "Still, a mistake was made, and they weren't going to blame a Nishizumi," Erika said, emphasizing the family name.

• Shout-Out:
  • Some chapter titles include, You Can't Handle the Truth, The Anzio Job, Band of Sisters, A Fistful of Shermans and Fight the Power.
  • Characters aware of the 'alternate timeline dreams' comment that the current predicament resembles that of "The Disappearance Of Suzumiya Haruka"
  • The tank scene in GoldenEye is referenced by Klara when she and Nonna were discussing how they should let Yukari go after they apprehended her trying to find Mako.
    Klara: (In Russian) We could allow her to escape by stealing a tank. That would give everyone something to film. It would be like that British spy movie.
• Spanner in the Works: The Anzio recon would have gone smoothly, had Hana not mischievously tipped off Saori about the possibility of Saunders spies infiltrating her school, along with photo identification of Yukari.
• Spotting the Thread: Kay notices the holes in Yukari's explanation on why she's so good at tankery despite being a newbie on record; namely the fact that she defends a tankery friend who was into Boko the Bear during her Oorai tenure despite Oorai never having a Sensha-do elective again in this continuity, that her intuition is on par with someone who had been Taught by Experience. This provides the first steps for the Saunders team to believe that there might be a grain of truth in Yukari's 'alternate timeline' theory.
• Teen Superspy: Yukari takes her spy skills to cinematic levels, including a James Bond - like chase through the streets of Anzio, and even introducing herself as "Akiyama Yukari, Super Spy."
• Tempting Fate: Training Company A insisting that they can do better than Training Company B at fighting the volunteers from the volleyball team and movie club who just demolished B's 10 Shermans.
• Theme Naming: As per their American military-like tradition, the Saunders Tankery Team officially assigns callsigns to their members before every match, usually with a American-related subject. They even assign their enemy tanks Reporting Names.
  • Chapter 9: Baseball - Shortstop as the Flag tank, with Pitchers as the 76mm Shermans, Catcher as rear guard and Infielders with Outfielders as the main Sherman force. St. Gloriana's flag tank (the Churchill,) is designated as Slugger, the Matildas as Batters and Crusaders as Runners.
  • Chapter 20: Westerns - Sheriff as Kay's lead Sherman, Schoolmarm as Alisa's flag tank, Gunslinger as Naomi's Sherman Firefly, Deputy as the 76mm Sherman and the Cowboys with Posse as the main force. Anzio's P40 flag tank is Outlaw, CV33s as Varmit, any variant of Fiat-Ansaldo medium tank as Rustlers, Semovente tank destroyers as Bandit and the heavier calibre Semoventes as Undertaker.
  • Chapter 29: Circus - The flag tank is Ringmaster, other Jumbo Shermans as Strongman, the two 76mm Shermans are Juggler and Daredevil, Naomi's Firefly as Tamer and the Acrobats with Clowns as the regular force. Pravda's flag tank is 'Elephant', their T34/76s as Dogs, T34/85s as Ponies, their KV-2 is Bear and Nonna's IS-2 is Lion.
  • Chapter 42: Animals - The United Alliance names each of their individual tanks after a predator (save for Katuysha, who demanded Giraffe for her KV-2), to match against Kuromorimine's animal-themed German tanks.
• Villainous Breakdown: In Chapter 46, Renta Tsuji promtly loses it after his embezzlement scheme is revealed by Momo in front of all the event officials, even so far as to grab Momo's Anzio ceremonial knife in an attempt to stab her.
• Walking Spoiler: The author outright stated this was why Itsumi Erika was never even mentioned up until the end despite being a more important character in the series proper. Anteater Team, who is MIA for most of this story, also qualifies as well.
  • Koume's fate isn't brought up until the very end. She survives, although with crippling claustrophobia that made her unable to be in a tank.
• Weight Woe: Yukari's quip to Alisa about Momo gaining weight gets misheard by a offended Saori who assumes they were referring to herself. Her immediate response was to blurt out to the entire Anzio mob that she would not take that shit from Saunders spies.
• Wham Line: After Alisa mentions to Yukari about Kuromorimine's 10th-year consecutive win, with the implications that follow. Yukari is immediately reduced to tears and goes into Heroic BSoD for a entire night.
  • In Chapter 30, Kay informs Yukari after she recovers from her mid-match knockout that Saunders had lost to Pravda in the semi-finals.

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