May 28, 2016

Girls und Panzer Movie

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Miho's secret weapon!

A torrent for the movie just showed up. It's a raw and the torrent is a whopping 15G. It's three files, one MKV and two MKA files, and it turns out you don't need the MKA files. They're alternate soundtracks; but the MKV has one that works just fine.

It is a BD rip, which surprised me; I didn't think the BD was going to be out until like August.

So how is it? Awesome! Tremendous! It doesn't feel like "been there, done that". It's enough similar to not feel like a stranger but enough different to not feel like a guest that's worn out its welcome. Even though I don't speak Japanese, it wasn't too difficult to figure out what was going on.

There are two major battles in it. The first is about half an hour long, and the trailer from last year is all taken from it. What's going on is an exhibition battle with two teams on each side. One side is St. Gloriana and Pravda; the other side is Ooarai and some team I never identified.

Their tanks were crap and they had spirit but no brains and got themselves slaughtered. I thought for a while that their equipment was Italian, but the theme music played for them sounded oriental. Maybe they were using Japanese tanks? Actually, I think they really were supposed to be another Italian team.

So that battle ended after half an hour, and it was so well done and so absorbing that I thought the movie was over. Instead we get about half an hour of plot, and then a second battle which ran fully an hour.

Huge spoiler:

It's a BD rip, ultra high quality, and it has Japanese subtitles. (Which should be particularly helpful because in a couple of scenes two of the girls from Pravda speak Russian to each other.) I suspect it won't be long before we get an English sub, but you never know.

Assorted frame grabs below the fold.


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St. Gloriana has its Churchill and three Matildas, but it also has a bunch of these guys. I don't know what they are.

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Part of the first battle is fought in the town, and they really trash it. (And that golf course will never be the same.) It gets pretty crazy.

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Fortunately she doesn't do a lot of damage to this shrine. And this hotel won't ever be the same, either.

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This is pretty much the only fan service in the movie.

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This obviously isn't period. It belongs to Pravda so I assume it's Russian, though I have no idea what it might be. There's a lot of non-period equipment that shows up during non-battle portions of the film. For instance, Saunders shows up one time with a C5 Galaxy.

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Pre-battle briefing by Miho to all her sub-commanders.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 08:04 PM | Comments (19) | Add Comment
Post contains 480 words, total size 5 kb.

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zubr-class_LCAC

Posted by: BigD at May 28, 2016 08:23 PM (VKO9N)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 28, 2016 08:25 PM (+rSRq)

3

Two of the other mysterious weapons in the movie:

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 28, 2016 08:29 PM (+rSRq)

4 That was fast. There's a sub of the movie out now. More later after I finish downoading it.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 29, 2016 05:18 AM (+rSRq)

5

An excellent job of subbing, and the movie makes more sense once you know what they're saying.

The best single line of dialogue in the movie is, "Hey, taxi!" There is a lot of fun dialogue in it, and I'm sure that the voice talent had a blast.

Another nice thing: Ardvaark team wasn't a joke this time. Well, they were, but they weren't worthless. The Type 3 made at least two kills, which is definitely a good score in a battle like this.

The team that partnered with Ooarai in the first battle was Chihatan high school, and their tanks were early-war Japanese. The theme music that sounded to me like it was Oriental was "Marching in the Snow", the one that Yukari and Caesar were singing when they were scouting during the battle against Pravda in the regular series. (I thought it sounded familiar.)

Yet another awesome thing: Anzio did really well in the last battle. Genuinely awesome.

The sub is 3G (compared to 10G for the raw) and that's small enough to be practical but large enough to be gorgeous. Much recommended!

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 29, 2016 12:30 PM (+rSRq)

6 Oh, and I was wrong about the Sturmtiger. It was something else.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 29, 2016 12:30 PM (+rSRq)

7

That is not much of a secret weapon:

Posted by: cxt217 at May 29, 2016 12:33 PM (O59Br)

8 I loved the level of detail, especially in the callbacks to earlier in the series.

For me, the line that left me laughing the longest is "Idiot!  I won't fall for it again!", once the resulting Hilarity Ensues. 

I also liked some of the little details in the ending:


There's also an OAV which goes after the movie in terms of story, which is a pretty funny bonus episode.

Posted by: Civilis at May 29, 2016 04:58 PM (KlrGc)

9 I think the Anzio girls were singing. Which definitely was awesome.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 29, 2016 05:17 PM (+rSRq)

10 Another secret pleasure:

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 29, 2016 05:43 PM (+rSRq)

11 The final two "Yukari's Tank Corner" episodes have also been translated.

The second girl from the bottom right in the last picture is Kinuyo Nishi, commander of the Chihatan team.

Posted by: muon at May 30, 2016 12:10 AM (IUHrD)

12 I've been rewatching the original series and OVA's, and the number of little things that were turned into Chekov's Guns has continued to astound me.

After the first practice match with St. Gloriana in the series, there's a shot of Darjeeling and crew in front of a couple of tanks in the shadows, one of which is very clearly a Crusader, even though they only used the Matilda's and the Churchill in the match.

In OVA 3, when they're touring the ship, Miho and friends pass in front of a bunch of plaques with the logos of the other school ships.  Included are Chihatan and the Finnish-themed Continuation High School.

Some spoilers:


Major spoiler regarding the ending of the movie:

Posted by: Civilis at May 30, 2016 07:17 AM (KlrGc)

13 About the ending:

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 30, 2016 07:39 AM (+rSRq)

14 Another Checkhov's gun is Miho's bandaged bears. I have always wondered what that was about, and the film and the film's OVA finally explain that.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 30, 2016 01:39 PM (+rSRq)

15

I finally watched the 15 minute OVA that came with the movie, and it's a really nice closing chapter. Very well handled.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 30, 2016 03:02 PM (+rSRq)

16 ...and the OVA came oh so close to getting me to close up The Pond for good. 

Posted by: Wonderduck at June 06, 2016 08:53 PM (X/kQu)

17

Why would that be, Wonderduck? I thought the OVA was really good but I can't see why it would inspire that reaction.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 06, 2016 10:42 PM (+rSRq)

18 Why would that be, Wonderduck?

I have a long-standing ultimatum over at The Pond: when there is an episode of anime that contains both Formula 1 and rubber ducks, I will finish the series, complete a writeup about it, then shut down The Pond.  If the episode has a rubber duck either driving a F1 car, or has a rubber duck in a F1 car, I will put up one final "Ducks in Anime" post and close down immediately.

The OVA had the F1 cars, and while it had a duck-like substance in the tank, it was just a disguise, not a real rubber duck.  So, very close, but...

Posted by: Wonderduck at June 07, 2016 10:02 PM (Hdexn)

19 What happens if the duck-in-an-F1-car occurs in an OVA of Rio: Rainbow Gate?  Log off for good, and spend the rest of your life in monastic study of solipsism?

Posted by: Mikeski at June 07, 2016 11:20 PM (vBu7I)

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