T5W#337-Top 5 Girls und Panzer Commanders

While we still have one more piece of Girls und Panzer story to look at on Friday with Girls und Panzer der Film, I wanted to use today’s Top 5 Wednesday to talk about how entertaining and great the cast of this show is.  While all of the Tankery Schools are Japanese, each one bases its look and feel off of countries with extensive histories of tank usage. This was a pretty unique aspect to the show and gave us some of the biggest and best personalities for Ooarai Academy to go up against.  So today, I’ll be counting down the Top 5 Girls und Panzer Commanders, the leaders of the Tankery Teams who inspired their comrades and maybe made me laugh a little bit too.
 
#5-Darjeeling (St. Gloriana Girls Academy)

Based in British culture, Darjeeling is known for two things: elegance and a penchant for tea (she’s named after the stuff after all).  Darjeeling is one of the first indicators that Tankery isn’t as cutthroat as one would think (though there are some who take it way too seriously and we’ll talk about that later).  She’s always polite and comes to admire Ooarai’s spirit in spite of being out of the Tankery game for so long.  While I joked it seemed a bit creepy, Darjeeling makes it a point to attend all of Ooarai’s matches after their victory against St. Gloriana.  Goes to show that even rivals with more experience can cheer on the underdogs and hope to get a match against them again.

 
#4-Maho (Kuromorimine Girls High School)

Like her sister, Miho, Maho comes from a long line of Tankery tacticians…who take this sport more seriously than need be.  Maho comes off as incredibly stoic and posseses an outward exterior that screams efficient and ruthless.  However, that’s just on the outside.  Deep down, Maho might humor her super serious mothers rules to taking Tankery as serious as possible.  However, Maho isn’t without a heart as she offers aid to Mako when her grandmother is in the hospital.  She even shows her authority with her own squad mates when they try to belittle Miho in front of her.  Maho wants to see Miho succeed and succeed her way, not the family way.  Maho might be a good Commander, but she’s a better big sister.

 
#3-Miho (Ooarai Girls High School)

Our lead heroine of Girls und Panzer, Miho has a crappy family that practically disowned her when she risked her life to save students from drowning rather than let them die and win a Tankery match.  While it does haunt her, that she was punished for being a genuine human being, Miho grows because of it and proves Tankery isn’t supposed to be about life and death…but having fun in freaking tanks.  And while her Mother might think less of her for prioritizing human life over victory, Miho doesn’t need her approval to show how brilliant a tactician she is on the battlefield, often being the one to come up with the plan that will bring Ooarai to victory.  Simply put, without Miho, Ooarai doesn’t have a team.

 
#2-Kay (Saunders University High School)

Kay seems like the kind of Commander who could get someone to join Tankery with very little effort.  She just gives off an awesome and bad ass aura that could draw anyone to learn to drive a tank and fire a really big gun.  That’s kind of Kay’s MO: Win but never forget to have fun.  She’s also a Commander who isn’t too keen on cheating to get victory.  When she learns one of her teammates is listening in on Ooarai’s radio communications, she berates her and tells her to knock that mess off.  I get a real Gundam Mobile Suit Team Leader vibe off of Kay, an ace who loves what she does and can recognize skill and bravery when she sees it.  Overall, Kay is just awesome.
 

#1-Katyusha (Pravda High School)

Speaking of awesome, the moment Katyusha saw that Miho was taller than her and shouted for Noona, her Second in Command, to come over so she could sit on her shoulders and be the tallest one, I knew I was gonna love this girl.  Katyusha is loud and unrelenting with her demands but isn’t above letting the enemy have a chance to surrender.  She’s pretty confident in her Russian inspired tank squad so much that while Ooarai is trapped for a little while, she just hops out to take a name in a sled for like an hour.  Plus the whole riding someones shoulders to feel taller immediately brings back memories of Master Blaster from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, which I kind of came to call her.  Katyusha is just a fun character and a stand out in a series of tons of fun characters.  Girl deserves her own spin off series…then again, I could watch a short OVA series about each of the schools in this world.