Reviews FanficRecs / Azumanga Und Panzer

Less Than The Sum of Its Parts

The fic, a crossover between Girls und Panzer and Azumanga Daioh, is one that has a fairly decent concept, but ultimately fumbles in its execution.

The fic begins when the girls from "Azu" come to Oarai after their town and school are destroyed by a tsunami. This would seem to make it much Darker and Edgier than either series, but since the tsunami is never mentioned again after the first chapter, it comes off as a wasted plot element. From there, the story begins with Oarai facing all of its old foes (with one exception, which anticlimactically gets swept under the rug in about a paragraph), before progressing to a national tournament, making it little different from most other GuP fics.

Characterization is not the author's strong suit. Miho comes off as overly confident and almost arrogant, boasting about being a Nishizumi despite having spent the entire series trying to find her own style of tankery independent from her family. On the "Azu" side, the narration oversells Sakaki's qualities to be commander, since she's canonically a bit shy, and not as smart as Yomi or Chiyo (who gets barred from tankery because she's under 15, a rule that contradicts Little Army's entire story). Newcomer Maria Tanaka comes off as little more than a Smug Snake who looks down on the Nishizumis, making it difficult to respect her as an adversary.

There are various other minor problems. For example, no one is surprised when Saki speaks, and Maho's decision to give Mako a helicopter ride to see her grandmother is treated as a point in favor of the Nishizumi style, rather than Maho as an individual (the fic essentially treats her as almost identical to her mother). These aren't the only such cases, and all of them detract from the overall quality and fidelity to. It doesn't help that there's relatively little Character Development in this fic, and most of the characters (except for Miho and Maho) seem to be Out of Focus most of the time.

The tank battles are decent, albeit fairly short. It's nice to see characters like Anteater Team get a chance to shine, although, as the author points out, "Team Kitty Cat" (the Azu characters) ends up doing the lion's share of the work in the early battles.

Unfortunately, fans of Azumanga Daioh might be disappointed when they find that there isn't all that much humor in this fic, apart from a few incidents that are primarily told about rather than shown, making them less amusing in the process.

All in all, Azumanga und Panzer, a mix of passable tank combat scenes, scarce humor and less than faithful characterization, doesn't quite live up to the potential that a GuP and Azumanga Daioh crossover has.