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Anime You Should Be Watching: Saga of Tanya the Evil (Yōjo Senki)

Posted on by Arleigh

“I’m afraid, sir, I don’t believe God loves me at all.” — Tanya Degurechaff

Saga of Tanya the Evil (Yōjo Senki) sounds like a gimmick until its strange ingredients start working together. A ruthless Japanese salaryman gets reincarnated as a little girl, joins the military in an alternate European world, and ends up fighting a war involving rifles, artillery, and airborne magic. Somehow, this becomes both an entertaining action series and a nasty joke about corporate ambition. Across its two seasons and full-length film, the central irony never loses its bite: Tanya wants security, but everything she does to earn it makes her more useful on the battlefield. Being exceptional turns out to be a terrible career move.

It also stands out as one of the better isekai properties because reincarnation actually matters to the story. Where much of the genre uses another world as a shortcut to wish fulfillment, Saga of Tanya the Evil turns a second life into an argument about identity, faith, and survival. Tanya’s previous existence is not background information discarded after the opening episode. Her corporate mindset shapes her decisions, while her confrontation with Being X gives her new life a personal conflict. Remove the reincarnation premise, and you lose the machinery that makes the series interesting.

Adapted from Carlo Zen’s light novel series The Saga of Tanya the Evil, illustrated by Shinobu Shinotsuki, the anime began with a twelve-episode season in 2017. Saga of Tanya the Evil: The Movie followed in 2019, continuing the story rather than offering a disposable side adventure. The second season, Saga of Tanya the Evil II, followed in 2026. The viewing order is straightforward: first season, movie, second season. Together, they expand one soldier’s survival scheme into a wider examination of a war that keeps growing beyond anyone’s control.

The salaryman’s new identity is Tanya Degurechaff, an orphaned girl living in the Empire, an alternate-world counterpart to Imperial Germany. Instead of a familiar fantasy kingdom, her new home resembles early twentieth-century Europe, where a World War I–style conflict unfolds in the 1920s and magic has been incorporated into military operations. Trenches, artillery, and bureaucratic command structures exist alongside flying soldiers who turn magical ability into another weapon of industrial warfare. The setting gives Tanya a system she thinks she understands and a conflict she cannot simply outsmart.

At heart, Tanya is pretty much a black-hearted upper-management executive reincarnated into the body of a young girl. The new appearance does not come with a softer personality or a sudden appreciation for human connection. Behind that small face is the same calculating adult who judges people by productivity, obedience, and usefulness. She approaches military service like a corporate ladder, hoping excellent performance will earn her a comfortable position away from danger. The contrast goes beyond appearances: she brings the cold logic of the boardroom into a world where a bad performance review can become a death sentence.

Crucially, the series does not try to sell Tanya as a hero. She is the protagonist, absolutely, but being the person whose story we follow does not make her morally admirable. If anything, her ruthlessness, manipulation, and willingness to treat people as expendable give her more villainous traits than heroic ones. The writing’s real achievement is making us root for her without hiding those red flags. We understand her goals, enjoy her ingenuity, and want to see how she escapes the next impossible situation, even when her methods make us uncomfortable. The series earns our investment without requiring our approval.

The first season establishes where that personality comes from. Before reincarnation, the salaryman was an efficiency-obsessed manager whose treatment of a fired employee ended with that employee murdering him. A confrontation with a self-proclaimed god, whom he labels Being X, turns death into an argument about faith. Being X apparently believes hardship will produce religious devotion; Tanya treats the arrangement like an unfair workplace dispute. It is a wonderfully petty foundation for such a violent story. Neither side seems interested in understanding the other, and ordinary people get caught inside their cosmic disagreement.

Tanya’s career supplies another layer of comedy. Her logic is recognizable: work hard, impress management, secure a comfortable position. Unfortunately, her superiors interpret every achievement as evidence that she belongs somewhere more dangerous. The military sees a dedicated prodigy where Tanya sees an employee trying to qualify for a better assignment. That gap between intention and reputation keeps the story entertaining while exposing her biggest blind spot. She can calculate battlefield risks with frightening precision and still misjudge how other people will interpret her behavior.

Unlike many isekai protagonists, Tanya does not arrive with modern knowledge and coast toward a better life. Her experience gives her advantages, but it also reinforces her limitations. She expects rational behavior to produce rational outcomes, even when the people around her operate through patriotism, fear, ambition, or wounded pride. Watching someone who considers herself exceptionally practical repeatedly misread the human side of her situation is darkly funny. Her old worldview survives reincarnation intact; the new world keeps demonstrating why it was never as foolproof as she believed.

Season one also makes its military structure matter. Promotions, command decisions, and strategic misunderstandings shape what Tanya can accomplish. The aerial mage battles provide immediate excitement, but the larger attraction is watching individual cleverness collide with a huge organization. Briefings occasionally slow the momentum, particularly when another stretch of terminology separates the audience from the next confrontation. Still, that administrative texture belongs here. Without it, Tanya’s managerial personality would have much less to push against, and the series would become a more ordinary superpowered-warrior story.

Visually, the anime embraces an abrasive personality. Tanya’s exaggerated expressions make her look less like an adorable mascot than a miniature officer whose customer-service smile has completely collapsed. Some character designs take getting used to, but the battlefield presentation is easier to appreciate. Airborne movement, magical attacks, and conventional weapons create an energetic mixture, while gunfire and explosions give the combat physical weight. Beneath the ridiculous premise, the fighting needs to feel dangerous, and the production generally understands that assignment.

Saga of Tanya the Evil: The Movie takes that foundation and pushes the spectacle harder. It functions as a direct continuation, so newcomers should not expect a patient introduction. Its strongest dramatic addition is Mary, the daughter of a man Tanya killed. Her hatred gives the conflict a personal dimension that military reports cannot contain. Tanya understands killing through operational necessity; Mary experiences its aftermath as grief and revenge. That contrast punctures the comfortable distance created by Tanya’s narration. What looks like another successful operation from her perspective can be a life-shattering tragedy from someone else’s.

The movie’s climactic confrontation provides an especially strong action showcase, although the road there can feel crowded. Characters and military developments compete for attention, and dialogue sometimes interrupts battles that already communicate their stakes. The film works better as the next substantial chapter than as an independent feature. Still, Mary’s furious directness makes a useful counterweight to Tanya’s calculations. Their conflict sharpens the distinction between following Tanya and endorsing her: we may want her to survive, but the story gives us reasons to understand why someone else desperately wants her stopped.

The second season shifts attention toward Tanya’s Salamander combat group and the increasingly punishing demands of the Eastern Front. Shortages, winter, guerrilla attacks, and repeated operations complicate the promise that one brilliant maneuver might solve everything. Season one establishes why Tanya excels at fighting; the continuation asks what that excellence is worth when the larger conflict resists a clean solution. Training a new unit also returns to an enjoyable tension: Tanya treats people as organizational components while remaining responsible for keeping them functional. Her managerial instincts help, but they cannot make the battlefield behave like a well-run department.

That broader scope brings a trade-off. Peace efforts involving neutral Ildoa and competing priorities within Imperial leadership deepen the political picture but make the story less immediately accessible than its original survival hook. Enjoyment increasingly depends on an appetite for logistics, negotiations, and the gap between tactical success and strategic progress. For the right audience, that is an upgrade. Tanya becomes trapped within institutions that reward effective violence without knowing how to stop needing it. Another battlefield victory does not necessarily bring her closer to peace.

Taken together, the two seasons and film offer dark comedy, military fantasy, and a central character who is fascinating precisely because she is not a conventional hero. The franchise can be talky, its designs can be off-putting, and Tanya’s behavior frequently deserves condemnation rather than applause. Yet the writing keeps us invested in her struggle without pretending those problems disappear because she gets top billing. For viewers new to anime, Saga of Tanya the Evildeserves a place on their must-see list, especially if dark humor, military strategy, and morally complicated protagonists sound appealing. It makes excellent use of its reincarnation premise and turns an alarming collection of red flags into someone we cannot stop watching.

Anime You Should Be Watching

Anime You Should Be Watching: Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

Posted on by Arleigh

“Don’t forget. Believe in yourself. Not in the you who believes in me. Not the me who believes in you. Believe in the you who believes in yourself.” — Kamina

Gurren Lagann is one of those anime that seems to announce itself at maximum volume before the opening theme has even finished. It is loud, ridiculous, earnest, aggressively stylish, and so emotionally committed to its own escalation that it somehow transforms drills, sunglasses, tiny robots, and increasingly impossible acts of defiance into a genuinely moving epic. Produced by Gainax and originally broadcast in 2007, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann begins underground with a timid boy named Simon and ends in a place so cosmically huge that describing it risks making the show sound like parody. But that journey—from cramped tunnels beneath the earth to a battle for humanity’s future among the stars—is exactly why it still lands so hard.

The premise starts simply. Simon lives in an underground village where people have been conditioned to accept a small, confined existence beneath a hostile surface world. He spends his days digging tunnels, largely ignored by the others around him, until his life is upended by Kamina, a reckless older boy who insists that the surface exists and that humans belong there. Kamina’s conviction is less a coherent philosophy than a full-force personality trait: he believes in breaking through walls because walls are there to be broken. When Simon discovers a small drill-shaped device and a miniature mecha called Lagann, the pair’s ambitions become suddenly possible. Their escape to the surface introduces Yoko, the series’ sharp-shooting, level-headed third lead, and kicks off a war against the Beastmen and their towering Gunmen.

On paper, that sounds like a standard mecha adventure. In practice, Gurren Lagann uses that foundation as a launchpad for a story about grief, courage, self-definition, and the strange process of becoming the person you need to be after the person you depended on is gone. Its early episodes are especially effective because Simon is not immediately framed as a hidden hero. He is anxious, withdrawn, and clearly accustomed to having Kamina speak for him. Kamina may be the show’s loudest presence, but Simon is its emotional center. The series understands that confidence is not just something a character “gets” after a training montage. It has to be built through failure, fear, loss, responsibility, and the gradual realization that admiration is not the same thing as identity.

Kamina is still the character most people remember first, and it is easy to see why. His dialogue is endlessly quotable, his poses are absurdly theatrical, and his belief in Simon is powerful precisely because it is so unconditional. Kamina does not believe Simon is capable because Simon has proven himself; he believes Simon will prove himself because he already sees something in him. That relationship gives the early part of Gurren Lagann its heart. Kamina is not merely a mentor figure or a source of comic bravado. He is the force that makes Simon look upward. The show’s famous “believe in the me that believes in you” idea could have been corny in another context, but here it becomes a sincere expression of what it means to lend someone confidence until they can create their own.

The series’ willingness to change after its major emotional turning point is what elevates it beyond a very good action show. Gurren Lagann understands that inspirational speeches cannot erase trauma. Simon does not simply inherit Kamina’s confidence; he has to confront the fact that trying to imitate Kamina leaves him hollow. His eventual growth is about accepting Kamina’s influence without becoming trapped inside it. That distinction gives the show surprising maturity beneath all the bombast. Simon’s ultimate strength comes not from copying another person’s legend, but from finding a voice and resolve that belong to him alone.

Yoko is also more important than the usual “female lead in a shōnen-style action series” label would suggest. She has to serve as both a capable fighter and one of the few people who can puncture the boys’ more reckless impulses, but Gurren Lagann gives her a real emotional presence beyond that function. Her grief, her resilience, and her continued movement through a world that keeps changing around her make her feel essential to the story’s broader ideas about survival. The show’s presentation of Yoko can be very much of its mid-2000s anime era, and some of its fanservice has not aged particularly gracefully. Still, she is never reduced entirely to that material, and the series repeatedly reminds the audience that she is a veteran combatant and a person carrying losses of her own.

Visually, Gurren Lagann remains an absolute blast. Its art style is dynamic in a way that feels almost physically restless. The animation stretches bodies, machines, perspective, and scale for emotional effect rather than strict mechanical realism. Characters lean into poses so hard they feel like they might burst through the frame. Mecha do not merely move; they lunge, twist, slam, and spiral forward with a sense of weight and raw momentum. The show frequently uses exaggerated proportions, thick expressive linework, explosive color, and wild camera angles to make every confrontation feel bigger than the last. Even its stillness has energy, because the designs and compositions are always angled toward motion.

That visual approach has had a real influence on anime in the years since its release. You can see echoes of Gurren Lagann’s expressive exaggeration, bold color blocking, elastic action, and preference for emotional impact over restrained realism in much of the work associated with former Gainax talent and Studio Trigger, particularly Kill la Kill, Promare, Little Witch Academia, and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. Its influence is broader than any one studio, though. The show helped solidify a modern appetite for animation that can be rough-edged, hyperactive, and knowingly excessive without sacrificing sincerity. A lot of later anime have chased its surface energy—the crazy transformations, the screaming declarations, the impossible scale—but fewer have replicated how carefully Gurren Lagann ties that escalation to character growth.

The mecha designs deserve special credit because they capture the show’s philosophy better than any speech could. Lagann starts as a small, almost toy-like machine, while Gurren is clunky, hot-blooded, and visually associated with Kamina’s swagger. When they combine into Gurren Lagann, the result is not sleek or conventionally elegant. It looks improvised, rebellious, and barely interested in obeying the normal rules of robotics. That is exactly the point. In Gurren Lagann, machines become expressions of willpower. They are not military hardware treated with sterile technical reverence; they are emotional extensions of the people piloting them. The more the characters believe they can surpass a limitation, the more absurdly grand their machines become.

The escalation is famously outrageous, but it is not random. The series moves from village-scale conflict to planetary stakes and eventually to something far beyond that, while preserving the same central question: what do people do when someone or something tells them that they have reached their limit? The antagonistic force behind the story, particularly through the Anti-Spiral, represents stagnation disguised as protection. The Anti-Spiral’s logic has a certain bleak rationality: humanity’s capacity to grow is dangerous, so it must be contained. Simon and the rest of Team Dai-Gurren respond with the series’ central rebuttal—that the risk of moving forward is inseparable from being alive. It is a simple message, but the show sells it with such conviction that it feels almost mythic.

This is also where Gurren Lagann separates itself from pure power fantasy. The characters win because they keep pushing forward, but the series does not pretend that forward movement makes pain disappear. People die. Dreams change. The ending, for all its spectacle, is not a cheap promise that determination guarantees a perfect reward. It recognizes that growing up often means accepting the cost of the choices that define you. Simon’s final arc is compelling because he becomes powerful enough to reshape the universe, yet the story still asks him to live with restraint, loss, and the knowledge that not every desire should be fulfilled simply because it can be.

The soundtrack is equally crucial to the experience. Taku Iwasaki’s score knows exactly when to go huge, mixing orchestral intensity, dramatic choral material, rock energy, and hip-hop-inflected momentum. “Libera Me From Hell” is the obvious standout, and it remains one of the most gloriously over-the-top climactic tracks in anime. It should not work as well as it does. The blend of opera and rap sounds like something invented as a joke, but in the context of Gurren Lagann, it feels completely natural. The song captures the entire show’s spirit: dramatic, strange, sincere, and unwilling to accept the idea that two seemingly incompatible things cannot be fused into something incredible.

There are flaws, of course. The first few episodes can feel especially frantic, and the humor occasionally leans into juvenile territory in ways that may test a new viewer’s patience. Some supporting characters get less development than they deserve, especially once the plot begins accelerating toward its larger conflicts. The fanservice is the element most likely to feel dated, since it can interrupt scenes that are otherwise focused on emotional gravity or visual spectacle. Yet even with those issues, Gurren Lagann never loses its sense of purpose. It is too alive, too earnest, and too committed to its own vision to feel disposable.

More than anything, Gurren Lagann endures because it understands the appeal of impossible optimism. It does not tell viewers that the world will always reward them, or that bravery means never being afraid. Instead, it argues that fear, grief, and uncertainty are not final states. You can carry them with you and still move forward. You can outgrow the person you used to be without betraying them. You can take inspiration from someone else without surrendering your own identity. And if the wall in front of you seems impossible to break, maybe the answer is not to wait for permission. Maybe you pick up a drill and start spinning.

Anime You Should Be Watching

Anime You Should Be Watching: Vinland Saga (Vinrando Saga)

Posted on by Arleigh

“A true warrior doesn’t need a sword.” — Thors Snorresson

When people talk about the greatest historical fiction in anime, Vinland Saga usually storms the conversation like a Viking longship breaking through a thick morning fog. Adapting Makoto Yukimura’s sweeping manga masterpiece, Wit Studio and later Studio MAPPA created something that transcends the typical boundaries of the shonen and seinen demographics. It starts out looking like a brutal, blood-drenched revenge thriller set during the 11th-century Danish invasion of England, but it morphs into a profoundly moving philosophical epic about pacifism, trauma, systemic violence, and what it truly means to be a warrior. If you came for the hyper-violent axe fights, you will stay for the agonizing, beautiful deconstruction of why those fights shouldn’t happen in the first place.

To understand why Vinland Saga hits so hard, you have to look at how it builds its protagonist, Thorfinn. When we first meet him as a young boy in Iceland, he is bright-eyed, energetic, and eager to prove his worth. His world is shattered when his father, Thors—a legendary warrior who abandoned the Jomsvikings to live a peaceful life—is foully assassinated by a mercenary leader named Askeladd. Driven by blind rage, Thorfinn joins Askeladd’s crew, surviving in the harsh wilds of war-torn Europe for a decade just to earn formal duels against his father’s killer. For the entirety of the first season, Thorfinn is a feral, screaming ball of spite. He doesn’t care about politics, the crown of England, or the suffering of the villages he helps raid. He only cares about revenge. It is a brilliant, uncomfortable framing because the narrative doesn’t glorify his skill; it treats his obsession as a tragic wasting of his youth.

But as great as Thorfinn is, the first season is utterly stolen by Askeladd. He is easily one of the most complex, magnetic antagonists in all of anime. Askeladd is a cynical, brilliant tactician who loathes the very Vikings he leads. He is a man caught between his secret royal Welsh heritage and his current reality as a ruthless mercenary captain. His relationship with Thorfinn is deeply twisted—he is simultaneously the boy’s mortal enemy, employer, and twisted surrogate father figure. Watching Askeladd manipulate kings, generals, and his own men like chess pieces is a masterclass in writing. When the first season reaches its shocking, chaotic climax, Askeladd’s actions fundamentally break Thorfinn’s entire reality, setting the stage for one of the greatest tonal shifts in anime history.

That shift happens in the second season, often referred to by fans as the Slave Arc. If the first season is a roaring fire, the second season is the slow, aching process of clearing away the ash. Stripped of his purpose after the events of the season one finale, Thorfinn is sold into slavery and ends up clearing forests on a massive farm owned by a man named Ketil. Here, the show sheds its battle-shonen pacing entirely and becomes a slow-burning character study. Thorfinn is hollowed out, plagued by nightmarish visions of the people he slaughtered during his mercenary days. Alongside a fellow slave named Einar, Thorfinn has to learn how to farm, how to connect with other human beings, and how to carry the crushing weight of his sins without letting them destroy him.

This second season is where Vinland Saga cements itself as a masterpiece. It takes incredible narrative bravery to take a show known for jaw-dropping action animation and turn it into a quiet drama about crop yields and emotional vulnerability. The bond that grows between Thorfinn and Einar is incredibly moving, built on shared grief and mutual labor. The series uses the micro-cosmos of Ketil’s farm to explore how the violence of the Viking age wasn’t just a problem for kings and warriors on battlefields, but a systemic rot that trickled down to affect slaves, farmers, and women. When Thorfinn finally makes his vow to never hurt anyone again unless absolutely necessary, it feels earned in a way few anime character developments ever do. His realization that a true warrior needs no sword is a direct echo of his father’s words from the very first episode, bringing the emotional arc full circle.

The production values across both seasons are nothing short of stellar, despite a studio handoff. Wit Studio handled the first season with their trademark cinematic flair, giving the action sequences an incredible sense of weight, momentum, and visceral impact. Every swing of an axe or spray of blood feels heavy and dangerous. When Studio MAPPA took over for the second season, they seamlessly maintained the visual continuity while leaning heavily into the quiet, rustic beauty of the agricultural setting. The changing of the seasons on the farm, the play of light through the trees, and the hauntingly expressive close-ups of characters experiencing profound grief or joy are animated with breathtaking care. The soundtracks, composed by Yutaka Yamada, are equally phenomenal, mixing booming, Norse-inspired war chants with melancholic strings that will absolutely tear at your heartstrings during the show’s more tender moments.

It is also worth praising how the show handles its historical setting. While Vinland Saga takes plenty of dramatic liberties, it weaves its fictional narrative into real history with remarkable skill. Real-world historical figures like King Canute the Great, Thorkell the Tall, and Leif Erikson are major players in the plot. Canute, in particular, undergoes a fascinating parallel development to Thorfinn. While Thorfinn goes from a violent warrior to a peaceful farmer, Canute goes from a timid, deeply religious prince to a cold, calculating king willing to stain his hands with blood to build a peaceful utopia on earth. The philosophical clashes between Thorfinn’s personal pacifism and Canute’s grand political ambitions create an incredible, intellectual tension that elevates the final acts of the story far above standard good-versus-evil narratives.

Ultimately, Vinland Saga is an unforgettable experience because it asks incredibly difficult questions and refuses to give cheap answers. It asks how a person can find redemption after doing terrible things, and whether true peace can ever exist in a world built on conquest and subjugation. It is a rare story that respects its audience’s intelligence and emotional maturity, delivering a narrative that is as intellectually stimulating as it is emotionally devastating. Whether you are a die-hard anime fan or someone who usually sticks to prestige live-action television, this series demands your time. It is a monumental achievement in storytelling, an epic that starts with a roar of vengeance and ends with a quiet, beautiful plea for peace.

The only real sting left for fans is the agonizing wait for the next chapter of Thorfinn’s journey. Makoto Yukimura, the brilliant creator of the original manga, has openly expressed how much he looks forward to a third season of the adaptation, fully sharing the audience’s enthusiasm to see the Eastern Expedition arc brought to life. Unfortunately, the anime adaptation and the studio haven’t officially confirmed a third season yet, leaving passionate fans clamoring for news into silence. It is important to note that this delay isn’t because the studio dislikes the property or lacks interest in continuing it. Rather, it comes down to a massive, heavily stacked backlog of massive projects that the studio has to completely finish and clear out before they can even realistically allocate the core creative team to begin working on a third season of Vinland Saga. Until then, the community holds onto the hope that the patient wait will mirror the slow, rewarding pacing of the story itself.

Anime You Should Be Watching

Trailer: Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Crystal

Posted on by Arleigh

sailor-moon-crystal

“Mūn Purizumu Pawā, Meikuappu!”

When it was announced in the summer of 2012 that a new Sailor Moon anime series was in production the anime fandom was all a-twitter about the news. Whether one was male or female, Sailor Moon was a major part of the viewing regimen of anime fans young and old.

It’s now two year since that announcement and we finally have the first trailer of the return of Sailor Moon back on the airwaves. The series title will be Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Crystal, but it will most likely be shortened to just Sailor Moon Crystal to keep it simple. Toei Animation will be the studio doing the animation work while the series will premiere on the network Niconico in Japan while it will also stream on the website streaming service Crunchyroll.

It’s been over 20 years since the original Sailor Moon series went off-the-air and to say it’s back with a brand new season has made anime fans ecstatic (grumblings about the change in animation style notwithstanding) the world over.

Sailor Moon Crystal to premiere on July 5, 2014.