Smithnikov said:
Neverhoodian said:
First MLP, then Lord of the Rings and now anime. Do you view all mediums that happen to have some skinhead fans/interpretations Nazi propaganda?
If it's speaking to them on some level, clearly.
Anime's not being very damn subtle about it though.
Ballad of Evil Tonya. Need I say more?
Sage of Tanya the Evil is quite literally not the Third Reich and not WWII though. Why? Because it is pretty much literally the Imperial German Empire around the WWI-era. There are a handful of technological advances to late 1930s/early 1940s levels but geopolitically, in terms of ethos and tactically its entirely parallel to the 1910s.
Smithnikov said:
And how comically inept everyone EXCEPT the Empire is at warfare. I had to shut it off at seeing infantrymen firing on mages for the umpteenth time and having the balls to look surprised when their bullets do nothing. Again.
Sounds a bit like you're referring to the Dakia parts a little before half way through. Dakia is a parallel to 1910s Romania and is pretty explicitly supposed to be a couple of DECADES of military development behind any of the other nations.
In the anime the Empire fights only three other nations outright. And concentrates their efforts on defeating them one at a time. Dakia (as mentioned above), the Legadonia Federation (aka Legadonia Entente Alliance) which is the equivalent of a grouping of Norway, Sweden, Greenland and Finland, and the Republic which is equivalent to France. There are some skirmishes also with 'volunteers' from the Allied Kingdom (the UK) but its fairly explicit that none of the AK, the Unified States (i.e. the USA) or the Russy Federation (i.e. Russian Empire and, later in the war, Soviet Russia) are actively getting involved as yet. Both of the former are supplying the Empire's enemies and the AK is providing some military support (in the form of intelligence and volunteer troops on occasion) but that's it.
In short? The World War hasn't actually properly kicked off for most of the anime and it is individually stronger than any of the three it fights (in two cases much stronger). Instead the Empire is throwing its weight around and trying to become the biggest nation in Europe. At risk of providing spoilers: World War I DOES kick off at the very end of it. Fairly explicitly. I won't give more details for the sake of anyone else reading.
The character that's the heroine of the story, yes.
Protagonist =/= hero/heroine. Not all stories are the same, and not all stories have their focal character being a good, or even likeable, person.
Light Yagami is the protagonist of Death Note. He's a murderer with a god complex. He's a villain, but still the protagonist.
Alucard is one of the protagonists of Hellsing. He's an absolute vicious bloodthirsty monster. Given that his opponents are even worse you might charitably raise him up to be classed as an anti-hero...but he's not a hero.
Hell, Spec Ops: The Line used this as the focal point of the entire game. "Do you feel like a hero yet?" And yet, your character is still the protagonist.
Tanya is, by any measure, a violent, self-obsessed, egotistical, maniacal monster whose every move is a cynical calculation to advance her own position and she cares very little for literally anyone else. Or did you miss the part in the very first episode where she deliberately sent two subordinates to somewhere she knew they would be killed because they were guilty of insubordination in her eyes?
The (totally not German) Empire are brilliant strategists, honorable soldiers, have the cute Moe girls, and are not only possessed of technical and tactical acumen, but GOD IT'SELF blesses their prototype weapons to work beyond their expectations.
If my eyes rolled any harder, they'd have fallen out of my head.
For one: again, not Nazis. Wrong era parallel.
For two: they are fighting two relatively unsupported and objectively inferior enemies and one which comes somewhat closer to their own capabilities. And they pick them off one-by-one. The first enemy they beat is Dakia, as above it is decades out of date technologically and tactically and has no mages of its own. The second the Legadonia Entente which has somewhat more foreign support (in the form of imported supplies and small amounts of intelligence personnel and mages); they beat this nation through a surprise attack through a heavily defended area, only made possible by Tanya's unit taking out the defenses in a lightning strike. Tanya's unit consisting entirely of hand-picked mages put through absolutely brutal training by Tanya herself and thus being superior to basically any unit that could be fielded against them. The third is the Republic which they beat by drawing the Republic troops forward into a trap and then severing their lines of command by using Tanya's unit again combined with experimental rocket technology.
Most of these strategic plans involved Tanya or her ideas. Which are a direct result of her retained knowledge about the parallel WWI from her previous life in another world. Which is something of an advantage strategically, hence why they tended to do fairly well.
As far as God "blessing" their weapons...if you really think that then you have entirely missed the point of that entire aspect of the series. So its probably best that you stopped watching honestly, because without understanding this its a waste of time to watch.
The core point of the series is the antagonistic relationship between Tanya and "Being X"/God. She has only been reborn in an attempt to make her bow down to X's power. To do this, X is manipulating everything around her in order to put her into a situation where she has no other option but to truly put her absolute faith in God; which she refuses to do so.
I'm assuming that what you're specifically referring to is the prototype computation jewel that she was ordered to test. In that case she was unhappy with it in the extreme after repeated tests and refused to do more as it was dangerous to push it any further. As a result X manipulated the lead engineer on the project to make him FORCE her to go up one more time and then push to the jewel to overload. Then he came to her and basically offered that she could either die (and subsequently have her soul go to hell) or to have faith and pray for help and it would be "graciously" granted by X and she would be saved.
She ended up giving in on this point, and praying for help, and lo-and-behold X stabilised the jewel for her. But from now on if she ever wants to use it to its full capacity she must pray to God to allow her to do so (or it'll explode and kill her).
Its got absolutely nothing to do with God/X helping the Empire and EVERYTHING to do with X's obsession to get Tanya to bow to its will. For the same reason X later inspires and empowers other people in an attempt to either kill Tanya or get her to pray for help and put more faith in it.
