Director: Tsutomu Mizushima
Starring: Ai Kayano, Jessica Calvello, Ikumi Nakagami, Rebekah Stevens, Mai Fuchigami, Meg McDonald, Mami Ozaki, Caitlynn French, Yuka Iguchi, Molly Searcy
Running Time: 72 minutes
Certificate: 12
The girls in tanks return for a bizarre mixture of OVA episodes that may fun, but are completely unnecessary. These episodes range from between 13 minutes down to 3 minutes and although a few connect together for a lengthier story, there’s not too much actually going on.
We start off with some swimsuit shopping, which puts the characters into skimpy clothing and we see the shy ones being bashful and the buxom ones being confident. A drinking game could be played to go along with the sound effects for bouncing boobs here, even though the show tries to keep it as innocent as possible. We’re also treated to a camping episode and a fascination with Spam. Each of these individual moments adds up to a few laughs, but nothing more. One episode is merely the characters dressed as lobsters doing a strange dance for a few minutes and then the credits roll. Considering each episode is given the full opening titles, if you trim those away along with the end credits and the English language credits, you’re probably left with little over 50 minutes of actual story footage.
The animation remains okay and the voice work from both Japanese and English vocal casts once again remains strong. Unfortunately though, there is a distinct lack of tanks. This just seems more to do with the girls in a series of nonrelated adventures that may have been pulled from a hat. It also feels like a series of deleted scenes, which is reinforced by the lack of a consistent running time. The only time this collection really connects to the show is when it goes into the history of why schools are on gigantic ships. That’s interesting and adds some back story but the rest is just fluff.
Girls Und Panzer OVA Collection is only worth owning if you are a true fan, but even then the limited amount of material will have you questioning the price tag. As an extra disc of features to support the wonderful show, this would have been a delight, as i is, it just seems like a quick money grab.
[usr=2]Girls Und Panzer Complete OVA Series is released on DVD 0n 16th June and on Blu-ray on 30th June via MVM.
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