Girls und Panzer/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

• Why is Yukari the main character of the manga, and Miho the main character of the anime? Part of Yukari's character is that she's very withdrawn because nobody else likes tanks the way that she does (until the tankery club starts up). Internal monologue is all well and good for written works, but the slightly more social Miho makes an easier way to introduce the characters (especially since, like the audience, she's new to Oarai, so we get to meet her classmates for the first time along with her).

Fridge Horror

• Nobody's shown getting hurt, but with the heavy machinery and weapons, serious injuries and deaths are inevitable in the sport. During her last mission at Kuromorimine, one of Miho's tanks foundered in the water, and its crew would have drowned had she not left her own tank to rescue them. What about the tanks with commanders who are less caring, or simply unlucky? We never did learn why Oarai shut down their tankery club all those years ago...
  • In the anime, we can empirically see that some tankery competitors suffer psychological injury, just like real soldiers. Miho is shown to suffer from nightmares and flashbacks to that final mission, the stress of which caused her to transfer to a school which didn't have a tankery club.
  • Speaking of Miho's final mission, what about the psychological state of the girls she rescued? How did it feel to hear that their lives are worth less than Kuromorimine's record? (Notably, Erika and Koume, two of the rescued crew, get along just fine at the Christmas party, even though they felt very differently about Miho, so it may be that the pressure on Miho came less from fellow students and more from Shiho herself...but she's still a high-ranking tankery official with a lot of influence. Could it be that Erika's turn for the worse came from her starting to agree with Shiho's philosophy?)
  • This is a bit of a reach (though not wild enough for a WMG), but we know that Shiho Nishizumi disapproves of her daughter's decision...what happened if and when she was in that position herself? Were some of her teammates injured or killed because she chose to abandon them for the sake of victory? (If so, this might cast her behavior towards Miho in a new light -- that it may be in part a defense against her own guilt, if she convinces herself that abandoning teammates in trouble is the "right" thing to do.)
• It's established in the light novels that Maho plays the part of the perfect Nishizumi heiress to leave Miho free to pursue her own path. However, after the friendly match with St. Gloriana, Commander Darjeeling expresses surprise that Miho is much more pleasant and friendly than her sister. In other words, Maho may have inadvertently contributed to Miho's Friendless Background by playing the part so well that people thought Miho would be just the same way.
• The Nishizumi style's stern aloofness seems to have stunted Maho's social skills. She has little or no notion of how to make friends or deal with people on any other basis than that of a tankery officer. If she were to be cast out of the Nishizumi house, she'd have no way of making a living except maybe in the actual JGSDF — and it's debatable whether someone so socially inept could do well in a real military, either.
• "Horror" is putting it rather too strongly — "dismay" would be more accurate — but Turtle Team won't be back next school year, due to graduating. The same for all but one of Leopon Team. Mallard Team and Anteater Team will each lose a member as well.

Fridge Logic

• In Episode 2, Yukari takes her new friends to a "tank accessory" store, which she's apparently visited often before. Among other things, she plays a tank battle Arcade Game there, and has done it enough that, in Episode 3, she's shown to be a really good gunner. Wait, why is this store on the Oarai school ship when there hasn't been a tankery program there for twenty years?
• The "hidden talent" competition in OVA 6, "Banquet War," is with no advance warning. Where did Hippo Team get all the American 1860s props for their production of Little Women on such short notice? Where did Anglerfish Team get the Sentai costumes which fit them perfectly? And where, too, did "the Evil Student Council" get their aquatic-villain costumes? Only Rule of Funny can save them now!

---

Back to Girls und Panzer