YMMV / The Saga of Tanya the Evil

• Adorkable: Make no mistake, Tanya is anything but a nice person typically, but her severe misinterpretations of others and her incapability to approach conversations as anything other than an officer leads to a number of incidents bordering on shame, awkwardness, and internal turmoil laid bare to the audience; she clearly never took the time to properly figure out casual social interactions and it shows with everyone that isn't her own personal unit. And in the rare cases where Tanya just lets herself go and actually acts like a child, they can be quite adorable and yet are utterly embarrassing for her while utterly enamoring onlookers.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: The series is rife with this, but none more so than for Tanya herself. Is she genuinely a person with a Lack of Empathy and a monster beneath the surface, or is she an excessive Combat Pragmatist in an attempt to end the conflict as soon as possible under Technical Pacifist standards? While the series does encourage the idea that she's got some Ax-Crazy tendencies and a Blood Knight behavior when it comes to combat, she also vies to be as far away from battles as possible. And isn't exactly diving for violence at first sight without a solid battle's reason to such as invasions or her self-proclaimed attempt to prevent a Cycle of Revenge through a Well-Intentioned Extremist approach.
• Angst? What Angst?: It seems that the protagonist has no problems with the fact that now he is forced to live a life in the body of a girl, keeping his mind almost from infancy. Moreover, at the time of the second encounter with God, he already has a distinct feminine gender.
• Awesome Music:
  • The opening theme, "Jingo Jungle" by MYTH & ROID, is an intense, hardcore techno piece that will surely rile up the viewer and set the tone for the anime.
  • "Los! Los! Los!" ^note German for "Go! Go! Go!", the first ending theme, continues the heavy and militaristic musical theme. Bonus points for having Aoi Yūki herself, the voice of Tanya, singing this anthem.
  • "Young Girl's War," Tanya's leitmotif, which is filled with Ominous Latin Chanting and lets the listener feel both the horror and thrill that Tanya feels when she's on the battlefield.
• Broken Base: Whether the anime sells to you depends on whether you like an overpowered heroine that pretty much dominates any opponent, either militarily or philosophically. To her main fanbase, Tanya is a badass heroine that is fun to watch as she takes no shit from anyone and ruthlessly crushes anyone in her way. To detractors, she is a boring jerk that gets away with exploiting certain rules of logic while very clearly ignoring others. To them, the anime's constant focus on her ruins an otherwise interesting setting.
• Designated Hero: Anson's hatred of Tanya in particular is actually rather unjustified. He is ultimately right, but for the wrong reasons - yes, Tanya is a nasty person, but Anson hates her for killing his men - while the two of them are in the middle of a war, furthermore, Anson's country was the one that started the war, and Anson's unit was the one to attack Tanya, not the opposite, so she could not have been more justified in defending herself. However, if not more heroic, Anson is undoubtedly more human than Tanya is, as his rage at the deaths of so many comrades to this one seemingly unstoppable mage is, while perhaps not justifiable, at least understandable, and certainly easier for most viewers to identify with than Tanya's cold and calculated mind that views humans as resources and tools, kills foes with dispassion at best (or sadistic glee at worst), and coldly dismisses Anson's actions as illogical.
• Designated Villain:
  • Make no mistake, Tanya is not, by any means, a good person, but the people facing the Empire regard her not as a person, but as an actual devil due to the amount of people she killed. Of course said people were soldiers that were enemies to Tanya, so a soldier killing enemy soldiers in a war should be expected.
  • Anson Sue hates Tanya for killing his squadron. Said squadron attempted to kill Tanya, who was not only a mere observer but a child, with no visible hesitation and Tanya was forced to defend herself. Not only that, this only occured because Anson's army violated the Entente-Empire border, a clear act of war.
  • The Republic also despise Tanya, even giving her the nickname The Devil of the Rhine for her kill count. Like the Entente Alliance, the Republic attacked the Empire first. They also hate her for her bombing Arene, which was situated in a position that could lead to the destruction of the line in the Rhine, and the civilians living there, civilians that the Republic refused to evacuate in order to be used as basically human shields in a last resort.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: The constant focus on how badass Tanya is in any situation undermines any message the anime makes that War Is Hell, especially considering Tanya suffers no traumatic experiences, major casualties (that she cares about), or unredeemable losses.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Tanya is already portrayed as an extremely cynical and hypocritical careerist, driven by personal gain, but even in such conditions, many viewers rated her as a steep and sweet Moe character. Moreover, it is precisely these character traits that do primarily help her to win either idealistic opponents or those who are too stupid.
• Evil Is Cool: One of the main selling points of the series is that the main character is an adorable Villain Protagonist with no restraints and gets away with being remorseless.
• Fanfic Fuel: Tanya being reincarnated in a different world other than the show's setting when she first meets Being X or even after her death in this one.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Calling Tanya a Nazi or saying that the Empire is based off of Nazi Germany will do this. Many fans will point out that the Empire is based off of World War I-era Germany.
• Fan Nickname: Tanya has picked up several, many of which are tongue-in-cheek, such as Loli Hitler, Nazi Loli, Vampire Loli and of course Killer Loli. Some of those are slightly puzzling, considering that the period seems to be representing World War I.
• Just Here for Godzilla: There are a lot of people who watch this series simply for the copious amounts of ass-kicking Tanya hands out.
• Les Yay:
  • In one of the bonus scenes, Serebryakova begins to undress before Tanya, and in response to the surprise of the latter, says "If It's You, It's Okay" making the situation extremely ambiguous.
  • There is also the manga bit, were Being-X, to torment Tanya, shown her a vision of a happy life he could have had if he didn't die. With Tanya's previous life having a wife who looks exactly like Visha. Especially notable, as this seems to be more of a vision of a perfect life, based on Tanya's desires.
• Memetic Mutation: "Good luck, little duck!"^ExplanationTanya's anime design puts heavy emphasis on her lips, making her face appear vaguely duck-like
• Moe: Tanya is an eccentric little girl, commanding a magical detachment in the Kaiser's army. Even the name of the series refers to this.
• Narm Charm: It comes to this level due to Tanya's eccentricity and an unusual amount of cruelty on her part that some viewers were eventually surprised that this show is not positioned as a black comedy.
• Shocking Moments:
  • Episode 8, where Tanya uses the cadres of how the rebels kill the imperial hostage and orders to begin a blind bombardment of the city, using a hole in the traditions of warfare. And although she claims that this was an order from above, at the end of the episode we understand that it was Tanya who taught the generals how to exploit this loophole to circumvent the ban on killing civilians. She actually wrote a thesis on the subject.
  • Taken even higher in episode 11. Anson Sioux appears once again, to take down Tanya and her battalion for good. When Sioux finds himself outmatched, he attempts the same maneuver Tanya makes in episode 2 and blows himself up - Tanya survives the blast, unlike Sioux (his second in command even mentions it's useless to try and collect his remains).
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Because the anime rather crudely changed the original character designs, many people initially refused to watch the adaptation, considering the new faces of the main characters quite repulsive.
  • Carlo Zen was actually behind this change, as he didn't want people to waifu-fy Tanya. Naturally, it failed, as there is a group within the fanbase that considers the anime designs superior to both the manga and LN.
  • The Manga receives the same treatment from some fans who in the opposite way of anime's design, they find it too pretty for a story like this. It also didn't help the manga's art shift to too many parodies, and sometimes the author shifts the art to Mood Whiplash level. One could assume the mangaka is cutting corners with the cartoon animal art.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Depending on how you look at the conflict between Being X and Tanya, it's possible for neither of them to come off very well, with Being X being a petty asshole and Tanya being herself. Being X operating on Blue-and-Orange Morality adds wrinkles to this, however.
• Woolseyism: The English translation of the movie did a slight name change to the capital of the Rus Union, Moscou: Since "Moscou" sounds the same as the English name of the capital of Russia, its real life counterpart, the English version changed its name to "Moskva", the Russian spelling used for the same city.