Saga of Tanya the Evil

Episode 10

After ignoring his return for an episode, Anton Sioux is back on the scene, albeit only at the very beginning and end of the episode. The end of the episode involves him coming back into direct conflict with Tanya though, so it looks like things will get quite testy in the next episode.

That's fine, because things were going a little too smoothly for the Empire up until that point. The insane behind-the-lines launch from the previous episode proved to be a success, though Tanya's personal squad didn't get the glory target, interestingly enough; that leaves me wondering if what they missed will come back to bite them next episode, since it seems odd that the story would deprive its protagonist of such a sweet job without good reason. Regardless, the success of this mission allows the next mission to go forward, which involves the explosive we saw being set up in tunnels last episode. We learn that those were being set up to blow up the Republic's right flank, so that Empire forces led by tanks could complete the outflanking maneuver discussed last episode, essentially resulting in the Republican armies being wedged in this world's equivalent of Belgium. With no contactable command structure, things swiftly go bad for them, while Tanya and crew head for the battlefront from a submarine that picked them up after their behind-the-lines mission. And that's when Anton strikes.

With Tanya not actually having to do much, the episode instead focuses on the High Command dealing with nervous politicians and representatives of the Emperor while their plans are in motion, as well as the large-scale battle strategy being put into execution. In other words, this episode plays perfectly to the military enthusiasts in the target audience. The explosion that initiates the “blow up trenches” part of the plan is visually impressive, though I'm guessing that the tanks which came through afterwards are anachronisms; I'm not an expert on identifying tank designs, but those looked much more like WW2-era designs than WW1-era ones. (Of course, engaging in military equipment anachronisms has practically become a regular feature of the series.) Whether or not the submarine was in line with period designs is much harder to tell, since we don't get a good look at it, and the same could be said about the ships at the beginning of the episode.

Because most of the episode is taken up with all this, there's not much discussion-worthy content here compared to most other episodes of the series. The one other feature of note is that, for the second straight episode, we end on a humorous epilogue set up by an innocuous scene from before. This time around, Tanya makes a casual joke in the submarine about not perpetrating any “mischief” on Viktoriya as she slept, and at the end of the episode, we see that both the responses she gets about not wanting to see the sub sunk weren't necessarily idle jokes; Viktoriya may be at least as dangerous while she's sleeping as she is while awake. I rather like this approach and hope they keep doing it.

Rating: A-

Saga of Tanya the Evil is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.