Anime_Freak's Review: Saga of Tanya the Evil

Saga of Tanya the Evil, or Youjo Senki, is an interesting anime. It's a tale about a young girl joining the military, climbing the ladder and becoming a high-ranking officer and one of the military's best soldiers. Sounds kind of interesting at first. Now, what if I said that she's was originally a modern-day salaryman reincarnated as this little girl by a petty God after saying he was an Atheist. Wait, what?

Isn't that cute, she just wants to devour your soul

First off, I'm not entirely sure why this is a thing in the first place, but Tanya was originally male. In her previous life, she was a modern-day salaryman, working your standard 9-5 desk job. He was pretty ruthless at that, basically the guy that the brass go to when they want someone fired. Well, one of those guys he fired wasn't really happy about it, pushing him in front of an oncoming subway and cutting his life short. Upon death, he meets God, although he refuses to believe it's God, instead referring him as Being X. The fact that he doesn't believe in God kind of pisses off God, so the guy is punished by being reincarnated in an alternate world as a little girl, retaining his knowledge and memories of his previous life. Being born in the alternate universe equivalent of World War 1, this world has magic. Tanya grows up in this universe's version of Germany, showing signs of high aptitude for magic. Seeing that being in the military is the quickest way to a successful life in this world, Tanya quickly joins the military at a young age, using her knowledge of World War 1 to help with tactics and predict certain events. With that knowledge, the with the fact that she's still cold and ruthless as she was in her old life, she quickly climbs the ranks in the military. However, she wants a cushy life, the life of those high ranking officers that never leave the strategy room. This new life is suppose to be a punishment though, and God is going to do everything in his power to make sure Tanya goes through endless trials until she's forced to believe in him, good and bad. Man, God is kind of a petty asshole.

Tanya herself is quite the interesting character. You quickly forget the fact that she was once a grown man, and see her as the psychotic little girl that she really is. In most shows, you'd hate this character. She would normally be seen as the villain that uses her cuteness to deceive everyone around her. Instead, she's your hero (I guess you call her that), and her levels of villainy reach levels that you'd normally find a cartoon villain, you can't help but laugh sometimes at how ridiculous it gets. The first episode, she decides to nuke the enemy squad because she wants to hurry up and go home to a decent cup of coffee. And the fact that she's a little girl doesn't really slow down her progress. In fact, it often helps her sometimes. Deceiving her rivals in the military, making them think she's just a sweet little girl. She also scares the crap out of the new recruits when they try to get cocky around her because she's a little girl. Also, since she was a bit of a bookworm in her previous life, she studies up on military law, finding all kinds of loopholes to commit all sorts of ruthless acts while still technically not committing war crimes. Taunting rebel civilians into attacking soldiers so that she can legally attack them, she's forced to announce a sneak attack so she uses her childish voice to make the announcement sound like a child's prank (this world has some weird chivalry rules to war). It's kind of interesting to see how ruthless this little girl can go. And another thing that makes Tanya enjoyable, she never really wins in the end. All Tanya wants is to settle down and live a cushy life, she wants to live peacefully in these tough times. However, everyone, including God himself, refuses to let her get what she wants. This little girl can never catch a break.

How can this be the face of a war criminal?

While Tanya is the main character of the series, there's a few other characters that tag along in Tanya's misadventures. Probably the most notable person would be her second-in-command, Visha (I am not going to bother trying to spell or pronounce her name). Now the first thing you might notice about this person is, "Holy crap those eyes are massive and creepy looking", and you'd be right. To be honest, Visha looks like a character that was suppose to be in another anime, but somehow ended up on this show. She's a sweet and loving girl that always sees the good in Tanya, despite how evil that little girl is. And her eyes are massive, they look take up half her face. It's to the point where promotional material released a sexy picture of her, and all I could look at was her eyes. Still, she's an interesting character, especially when paired up with a character like Tanya. It's hard to tell whether Tanya actually cares about her or not, but this moe-faced soldier definitely looks up to Tanya as a war hero.

I know I should be looking elsewhere, but all I see are those eyes

Well, that kind of wraps most of this review up. There's not all that much to this particular show. It's 12 episodes long, there's a chibi short that goes along with each episode that gives some comedic details to certain events in the corresponding episode, and a movie was just announced to be in production. I would personally recommend the sub, with Aoi Yuuki providing the voice of Tanya (Hibiki from Symphogear, Madoka from Madoka Magica), but the dub is still pretty decent if you prefer to not read subtitles. It's a dumb action anime with entertaining characters, and many of my reviews will be a lot of that, I watch what I like, dumb action shows and comedies. And with that, I'll leave you all with Tanya giving a prayer. Thanks for reading. :D