Sentai Filmworks brings Girls und Panzer der Film back into print on blu-ray after the original release of this film back in 2017, this time as just a blu-ray rather than the original blu-ray + DVD combo pack, with those scrappy girls of Ooarai Academy and their ridiculous physics-defying tanks returning for the big screen treatment with battles that are fiercer, more polished and more epic than ever before!
After the end of the previous season, the girls believe they have successfully saved Ooarai Academy from being shut down after winning the big Sensha-dou Tournament. However due to a technicality in the original agreement, they discover that the original contract to save the school wasn’t valid. As such, the students must rally together in a final ditch effort to save the school once again in another of Girls und Panzer’s bread ‘n’ butter, those wonderfully kinetic and kooky Capture the Tank battles. Unfortunately the odds are stacked against them more than ever, as this tournament pits the students of Ooarai Academy against an All-Star team of the best of the best from schools all over the country.
Right out of the gate, it should be stated that if you watch Girls und Panzer for the tanks, you will be in heaven here. The budget is obviously higher than the prior TV series with the tank battles being much more epic in scope and significantly longer (the film has a two-hour run time and a good 3/4 of the movie is dedicated to those frisky tanks doing their thing). The battles are also brilliantly storyboarded and directed. The opening shot of girls drinking tea with the camera pulling out through the barrel of a gun all the way to the face of one of our heroines is a great way to start the film, and the POV shots from the front of the tanks racing through streets diving in and out of the frenzied chaos are exhilarating. The actual plot is a little light (it’s basically the same as the series but with more threatening opposition), but I don’t think many people are watching Girls und Panzer for the plot. The film does a solid job though of giving the viewer a baseline on the primary characters we’ll be following, giving you a sense of each of them just in the way they act in battle and work with each other. It’s an economical but effective means of character development that allows the film to focus on the big action it wants to bring to the table.
On the technical side, the image is very crisp and clear, presenting the high-octane action with a nice level of clarity expected of modern anime. The DTS-HD 5.1 audio track (provided in both an English dub and original Japanese subtitles) is nice and immersive, and this is definitely a film that benefits from it with the bombastic battle sequences in particular making full use of the surround sound. On the extras front, we have the standard Clean Opening and Ending animations and a group of Sentai Filmworks trailers. One extra unique to this release is Girls und Panzer in (about) 3 Minutes which gives a nice little brief overview of the characters and tanks for those who may not have seen the TV series that leads up to this film.
Overall this is a release well worth checking out for fans of the TV series, and really even if you haven’t seen the series, the film gives enough context to get you pumped and rooting for those perennial underdogs at Ooarai Academy, so maybe check it out anyway if you dig the idea of watching crazy tank battles. I personally thought it was a whole lot of fun and genuinely thrilling to watch.