The Cutest Damn Midseason Review: Saga of Tanya the Evil

This show has been doing a fantastic job of entertaining me through to the midseason. While the war is in full swing, Tanya is doing her thing being a college student (in the body of a 10-year-old mind you but still) while still being manipulative as imaginable and super competent. While researching up on military tactics, she bumps into General Zettour who is the business equivalent of the director of business strategy. We as the audience are aware that he has been manipulated by Being X into creating a fast response Mage unit with plans of putting our dear Tanya into the midst of this. Although Tanya carries on carrying on thinking she’s on the fast track to easy street and showing that she truly has evil intent:

So, enter a one on one with Tanya correctly assessing that this multisided conflict will erupt into a “World War” and describes in detail a concept as foreign to this general as a flying pig farm. It’s something we can comprehend theoretically but in practice makes no sense. Tanya then authors a fascinating military assessment sending Rerugen (the guy who just absolutely hates Tanya and recognizes her as absolutely fething insane) into a tizzy over her making such a crazy but logical claim. Especially when told she would be given Battalion level command.

Jumping to a fascinating moment, we see Tanya eating breakfast in a café when a colleague, Captain Uger, approaches her and they begin an interesting conversation. After touching on the fact that Uger would be selected as one of the school’s twelve knights, their equivalent to an honor roll, Uger explains he’s a new father and asks why Tanya’s a soldier. I was very confused as she gave an explanation of how her father was a soldier who died and her mother abandoned her to an orphanage leaving her the only option of joining the military. Then it all makes sense when she caps the story with a cautionary statement to live and not have his daughter grow up like her. This, of course, was just a giant mind game to get a competitor out of the promotion track and get herself up the ranks.

Things are going just as planned, or so Tanya thinks. Upon meeting with General Zettour for dinner, she is given a number of graduation posts options with a two-year plan to work at Strategic Command afterward. While ecstatic, Tanya then sees the trap is sprung when given a new plan to command a 48-mage battalion to act as a fast response unit, more dangerous than being on a single front line. Her only protestation that a fresh First Lieutenant can’t command a battalion, Zettour outlines how she will be promoted to Captain upon graduation, made an “organizer” (which he even admits is an antiquated bullshit term they used to get this approved) to set up the battalion and then promoted to Major to command the battalion, jumping about a decade of experience to be placed in charge of the country’s suicide squad equivalent. Yay. And here is Tanya with hundreds of applications to sift through and is about to comment how it’s an impossible task for one person when best girl “Second Lieutenant” Viktoriya Serebryakov shows up and lets Tanya know not only is she great at admin work, they’re getting all of the off-duty staff to help sort this out. Double yay.

And so, Tanya begins her process of rooting out potential candidates utilizing a simple mage test to detect a false image and generated voice. As only a dozen passed the exam, command tells her to lower her standards and asks for a month. Some officers scoff saying it takes two years to train a new soldier. Tanya channels her inner Full Metal Jacket by going full on insane DI. She orders the new recruits to survive 36 hours of bombardment from an artillery unit as a warm up. Then they are ordered to march through cold environments without the utilization of defensive or flight magic. One individual breaks and causes an avalanche when cursing Tanya out. When this happens, she comes through berating them and actually saving one by flight kicking his back, making him vomit out all the snow and bringing him back from near death. While the intent was to force them to drop out, Tanya instilled fear that “oh dear god, if I drop out I’ll suffer a fate worse than death.” Now she had a graduating force of competent and well-disciplined mages, treated to a modified speech by Gunnery Sergeant Hartman of how they are now no longer maggots, but United States Marines Empire Mages.

The first combat scenario of the rapid response battalion can be summed up best as a slaughter. Due to lack of modern thinking, Tanya is able to out maneuver and out gun the Dakians to a complete rout. Air superiority and mage utilization leads to her massacring the three Divisions of infantry and she pushes her luck by deciding to assault the Dakia capital. Back in the day, people were not allowed to just attack cities and centers full of citizens without giving due notice, spoiling surprise attacks. Upon giving her unit a description of how she’s going to warn them, her battalion is left almost speechless expecting her ruthlessness to win out and violate international law. Tanya’s response is to put on the cutest damn voice she can and yell through the speakers “Teacher! We will conduct a fair war in accordance with international law!” and then proceeds to give the lawful warning and intent of attack per the equivalent of the Geneva Convention. Of course, since it’s an adorable little girl’s voice everyone laughs thinking it’s a prank. Until they get blown up and the capital is set ablaze by secondary explosions. All in all, I’m still eager and waiting to see how hubris and Being X try to out play Tanya. So go watch this or Tanya will adorably destroy your home and everything you love!