Ravioli Ravioli beware the evil nazi loli - the movie.
(The Saga of Tanya the Evil: The Movie)
In lieu of a second season, Tanya gets a movie. It's much on par with the first season, though it suffers from a few problems.
First and foremost is the inconsistency of the art quality. The standout feature of the series was the beautiful backdrops and animation, but while they are sometimes present in the movie, those artistically vibrant parts definitely serve to draw big red circles around the parts where CGI is overused, where framerates dip to 2 or 3 frames per second, or sometimes just flat turn into a clearly rushed, crudely drawn effort.
Second, the mask slips even more. Just like MASH took place during the Korean war but was really about the Vietnam war, SoTtE is ostensibly about an analogous WW1 in a parallel (but extremely similar) reality. However, it's clear that the writing for it wanted it SO BADLY to be WW2, and simply swapped some uniforms and symbology around so they wouldn't have to deal with the discomfiting scrutiny brought on by wanting your protagonists to be Nazis. Despite purporting to take place in the middle of the 1920s, there are WW2 era artillery pieces, fighter and bomber aircraft, and other such gaffes as making the "Empire's" general of the "southern front" (which is a desert area) named, and I shit you not, Romel. A major plot development in the movie is a Stalin-led USSR-in-literally-all-but-name entering the war against
Germany The Empire, favoring swarming with mass numbers of inferior troops, and having a war effort crippled by political officers refusing to report anything but good news to the higher ups, for fear of being purged.
But probably most irritating of all is the Hero-Antagonist of the movie is a literal, in everything AND name, Mary Sue. No shit, that's the character's actual name, and that's what she is. It doesn't count as
hanging a lampshade if she's also
exactly what it says on the tin. She's a passionate, naive wunderkid with unprecedented magic power and a burning desire to avenge her father Anson Sue, the Finnish antagonist of series 1, and literally the chosen of "God" to oppose and counterbalance Villain-Protagonist Tanya Degurechaff. She's infuriating. She literally never obeys a single order, instead acting only selfishly in the name of personal revenge, but naturally faces no consequences (because she IS a Mary Sue). Her personality is the most generic shonen garbage, and every moment she is on screen induces nausea.
And all the problems from season 1 are still there. Tanya's soldiers still have no character development or depth apart from being "the blonde one, the fat one, the one that is clearly Japanese, and several dozen forgettable NPCs who are there to occupy screen space." Naturally, Lieutenant Serebryakov continues to be the exception to the rule, managing to continue being both sweet and competent, AND getting some backstory filled in as well.
I only watched this because time and hype dulled my memory of the first season, thinking that I had perhaps judged it too harshly. But no, this continues to be one of the weaker properties in the Kadokawa stable - and they've really been pumping out the mediocrity in the last couple years, apart from Season 2 of Re:Zero. Makes me nervous for Overlord season 4, if indeed it ever actually comes out, at this rate.