GIRLS und PANZER - Episode 9

The Ooarai School girls and their exuberance managed to get themselves into rather a tight spot last week, surrounded as they were on all sides and left sheltering within an abandoned church.  Perhaps not the best time to inform Miho that defeat would literally spell the end of their school....

Of course, that revelation changes things substantially - an honourable surrender is no longer on the cards, which means that Miho has to make the most of the temporary stalemate to formulate a plan to somehow break out of their current proverbial cage and turn the match around, while simultaneously raising the morale of her team-mates as they succumb to cold, hunger and the possibility that this could be the end of their school.  If nothing else, I hope that Miho's tactics are better than her motivational gambit...

Ultimately, there's no more time for prevarication, and having performed some sneaky reconnaissance it's time to break through the barrier that is Pravda's massed forces - cue half an episode of non-stop Tankery action complete with explosions and power slides aplenty, as Ooarai fight against the odds with everything on the line all the way through to an incredibly tense cliffhanger to end the episode.

In other words, this is another demonstration of everything that GIRLS und Panzer does well - it has no shortage of laugh out loud moments, its action is superbly realised and occassionally edge of the seat stuff, and even when its characters threaten to grate on you (we get it volleyball club, you're the volleyball club!) there's enough going on to ensure that the broader experience is a huge amount of fun - and fun is quite clearly the name of the game with this series.