That’s three hundred seventy two million dollars right there. World of Tanks is an extremely popular online game with seventy five million players registered and microtransaction revenue ranking fourth highest in the online gaming community. Also, the tanks look pretty nice despite all of them being CG.Īdditionally, the popularity of tank games such as World of Tanks and War Thunder: Ground Forces is something that should be mentioned. Despite the fact that yes, there are girls in these tanks, the characters take this pretty seriously as if it were an actual sport with fame and glory on the line. This is a show about tactics/strategy and it’s also about pseudo-military dominance. These are metal monsters weighing at least forty tons that historically fired shells that could rip grown men apart like it’s an afterthought. The two opponents can defeat each other in a single shot if given the chance, so it’s all about skill to create said chance. A tank vs tank fight in this show is essentially the same as that of two powerful characters getting ready to do battle. Tanks are often used as symbols of military might and while the tank wasn’t particularly useful when it was first used in World War I, it has since become a staple of modern armies. There’s also something inherently intimidating about the tank.
![girl und panzer gif girl und panzer gif](https://megalomaniacslair.co.uk/assets/images/posts/2017/03/girlsundpanzerseries_featured.jpg)
By cutting out the fanservice and relying on the interesting idea of fighting in tanks being considered a sport, the show can reach pretty much everyone, from those who love tanks like me to those who don’t really know anything about tanks or generally don’t enjoy shows where cute girls do cute things but are interested enough in the premise to give it a shot. Tank matches rely on both the tank and the crew working together to achieve victory and the whole thing is presented like a semi-serious sports anime rather than a traditional “cute girls doing cute things” kind of show. Tigers, Shermans, Panzers, Panthers, P-40, Type 89, Ch-Nu, StuG III, Hetzer (Jagdpanzer 38t if you want to get technical), T-34, KV-2, the list goes on and on. The girls are never sexualized and they’re all rather stereotypical with the British girls drinking tea, the Italian girls being lazy/obsessed with food, the Russian girls like to sing and dance by the fire, the American girls are loud and intrusive, and the German girls are, well, Nazi-like? In order to compensate for this, the show bombards you with tankporn and gives the battle scenes the love and care they deserve. GuP subverts this by presenting characters that aren’t really moe girls and also by being almost completely devoid of fanservice. That can be an instant turn off for a lot of people watching these shows because let’s be honest, if you were some filthy normal and you saw an animated girl’s panties you’d be pretty damn freaked out. And because the shows focus on the girls, you get a lot of fanservice/pandering. Usually, shows would put the focus directly on the girls doing the activities in order to capitalize on the fact that the girls are, well, cute. GuP, however, puts a spin on this by completely changing the subject of said indulgence. They provide viewers with a way to indulge in their fantasies by watching cute girls doing things. GuP falls into a weird niche of shows that employ girls doing some activity. This will be a real quick post so let’s not waste any time.īefore I actually dive into what makes this show so accessible, let me say that GuP is very indulgent. Now, a lot of people describe GuP as a “sleeper hit” but I haven’t seen many people (if any) talk about what factors actually helped it to become a sleeper hit and reach such a huge audience. To be completely honest, watching the finale of GuP was one of the most satisfying things that I have ever experienced in anime which instantly puts it on my “greatest of all time” list. Since its debut in the Fall season of 2012, the show has gained a massive following and I even attended a panel about it at Ohayocon this year! The success of the show was so overwhelming that Actas actually had to push back the release of the last two episodes of the show to March 2013. Actas is rather small, having only around thirty shows under its belt, but GuP was their claim to fame. Girls und Panzer (called GuP from this point on) was animated by Actas, a studio that not a lot of people have heard of before. Girls und Panzer is widely considered to be a sleeper hit and it’s easy to see how popular the show has become.
![girl und panzer gif girl und panzer gif](https://64.media.tumblr.com/7ef72d01e0b6ae5bc44ead4550fa5f93/8743246d1a970da5-0e/s500x750/583246b6206600f48ce87cd7ffe433bcee578107.gif)
If you have epilepsy I suggest you stay away from the bottom of this post.
![girl und panzer gif girl und panzer gif](https://c.tenor.com/WL6fatauVpYAAAAd/girl-und-panzer.gif)
NOTE: there’s a gif at the end that has flashing colors.