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- "It all rests upon your shoulders, Nishizumi-chan!"
- ―Anzu Kadotani
Episode 5 "The Veterans: Sherman Corps!" "Kyõgõ Shaman Gundan Desu!" ( 強豪 : シャーマン軍団です ! ); English dub: "Veterans Of Their Trade: Sherman Corps!", is the fifth episode of Girls und Panzer. It originally aired on November 5, 2012.
Plot[]
Miho Nishizumi and her friends gather in the Leclerc Tank Café to discuss the upcoming first match of the tournament against Saunders University High School, predicted to be difficult due to Saunders' significant materiel advantage that allows them to field ten tanks to Ooarai's five. Whilst there, the girls are chanced upon by the Kuromorimine Vice-Commander, the rude and condescending Erika Itsumi, and the Commander, the aloof Maho Nishizumi, who turns out to be the big sister of Miho. The meeting badly undermines Miho's confidence, and her morale is further damaged when the Student Council exerts additional pressure in expectation of an entire tournament win. That the Student Council seems to be hiding something only adds to her worries. Yukari does her best to encourage Miho, standing up to Maho and Erika at the Tank Café and reassuring Miho after their encounter with the Student Council, listening as Miho tries to think through the challenge of planning for the impending match.
The next day, Yukari Akiyama is absent from class and training and out of mobile range. The rest of Team A visit her house, which turns out to be a barbershop run by her parents. Her parents are overjoyed to discover that Yukari has made friends: Yukari was a loner through primary school since she knew nobody else who shared her passion for sensha-dō. The girls wait in Yukari's bedroom upstairs —when, to their astonishment, she enters through the window wearing a convenience store uniform.
Saunders' Sensha-Dõ vehicles
Yukari displays a video recording made during a daring infiltration of the Saunders Girls High School. Inspired by Miho's questions about what Saunders might be planning, she stowed away on a cargo vessel to gain access to Saunders' campus ship, then posed as a Saunders student to obtain footage of the M4, M4A1, and M4A6 Sherman tanks, along with a recording of the match briefing, including the entire Saunders battle-lineup, strategy, and flag tank. Though she is caught out after asking too many suspicious questions, she manages to escape before being apprehended.
Back in Ooarai, training continues, with Team A putting in extra hours to hone their skills. The tanks are repainted in monotone camouflage schemes and assigned new designations: Team A becomes Anglerfish Team, with a pink anglerfish as their logo, Team B becomes Duck Team with a logo of a white duck spreading its wings, Team C becomes Hippo Team, with a logo showing a blue hippo's backside, Team D becomes Rabbit Team, featuring a knife-wielding pink rabbit logo, and the student council becomes Turtle Team, with a logo of a two-legged turtle. The entire team gets new uniforms, and the tanks are made ready.
Kay commands her tank
The match is well attended, including by representatives from both St. Gloriana and Kuromorimine High Schools. The enormous wealth of Saunders is shown by their support team, which they invite the Ooarai team to enjoy the use of. To the bemusement of the others, student President Anzu Kadotani and the Saunders commander, Kay, recognize each other, and are well enough acquainted to share an in-joke, though how they know each other is left a mystery. Kay also recognizes Yukari, but rather than being angry, cheerfully takes her reconnaissance mission in stride.
Against Ooarai's five tanks, Saunders fields eight M4 Sherman tanks, one Sherman 'Firefly' and an M4A1 as their flag tank. Almost as soon as the match begins Rabbit Team, scouting alone, is ambushed by six of Saunders' ten tanks. Miho leads Anglerfish and Duck Teams to the rescue, but three more Shermans appear and all three Ooarai tanks are surrounded. With uncanny skill, Saunders continually predicts their movements, outmaneuvers them, and tightens the noose. At last Ooarai goes head-to-head with a pair of Shermans and breaks through the encirclement, narrowly avoiding both heavy fire and a head-on collision.
Suspicious of how well the Saunders attack predicted the Ooarai movements, Miho soon spots a radio balloon over the battlefield, revealing that Saunders is intercepting and listening in on Ooarai's radio transmissions. To counter the wire tapping, Miho has Saori communicate with the Ooarai Team through their mobile phones instead, whilst using their radios solely to plant false intelligence.
Saunders' Vice-Commander Alisa swallows the bait, and sends the entire Saunders force to an exposed crossroads. There, Duck Team drags a log behind their tank to creates a dust cloud, giving the illusion that it is the entire Ooarai Team in retreat. That leads the majority of the Saunders tanks away, whilst a fake radio signal supposedly disclosing the location of the exposed Ooarai flag tank (Turtle Team's Panzer 38(t)) lures two M4 Shermans into a trap. Ooarai's ambush knocks out one Sherman, and while the second Saunders tank manages to escape unharmed, just knocking out one Sherman is a success that shocks everyone —including the Ooarai Team.
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| Episode 4
"I'll Do My Best as Commander!" |
Episode 5.5
"Allow Me to Introduce You!" |
Characters Introduced[]
- Maho Nishizumi
- Erika Itsumi
- Jungorou Akiyama
- Yoshiko Akiyama
- Kay
- Alisa
- Naomi (Seen on screen, not named)
- Helmet-chan
Tanks Appearing[]
- M4 Sherman (75mm T6 variant)
- M4A1(W) Sherman (76mm M1 T23 variant)
- M4A4 VC Sherman "Firefly"
- M4A6 Sherman (Seen on screen, not deployed in combat)
- Fiat 2000 (Café tank model to summon waitress)
- M25 "Dragon Wagon" Tank Transporter (Café food delivery vehicle model)
Main Events[]
- The team meets Maho Nishizumi and Erika Itsumi.
- Yukari Akiyama infiltrates Saunders Girls High School.
- The match against Saunders Girls High School begins.
- Using radio interception equipment, Saunders gains an advantage early in the match.
- Ooarai finds out about transmissions being intercepted. They trick Saunders into an ambush, eliminating an M4 Sherman and drawing first blood.
Trivia[]
- In the Café a poster features one of Motofumi Kobayashi's 1993 manga Happy Tiger.
- The ship that Ooarai students use to return to their campus ship after the tournament draw is a Kasuga-class armored cruiser.
- When being fitted for their sensha-dō uniforms, Mako can be seen in the background touching Saori in a provocative way. The reason for her doing this is unknown, as neither of them mention it afterwards.
- When exposed, Yukari Akiyama claims to be 'Sergeant Oddball from the 6th Armoured Division', which is a reference to the character of the same name and unit from the movie "Kelly's Heroes". In supplementary material, it is revealed that Kay never learnt Yukari's true name and Saunders posted warnings to other schools of a spy named 'Sergeant Oddball'.
- In the spin-off manga Ribbon Warrior, it is revealed that Yukari has become notorious amongst the entire sensha-dō community for her infiltration missions and their effectiveness.
- In the spin-off manga Motto Love Love Sakusen Desu! Alisa attempts to get revenge on Ooarai for both the infiltration and the counterintelligence by performing her own infiltration of the Ooarai campus ship. She arrives in the middle of a club pool party, and her recon mission ends in shameful failure.
- It is revealed that in primary school Yukari had a punch perm.
- Stowing away on a convenience store ship is evidently a common means for sensha-dō recon infiltrations. In the spin-off manga Motto Love Love Sakusen Desu! it is revealed that the service ship crew do not oppose the action even if they are aware of the stowaways.
- The Leclerc Tank Café features a poster of a T28 Super-Heavy Tank on the wall. This foreshadows events in Girls und Panzer der Film.
- Yukari Akiyama's room is a temple dedicated to tanks and World War 2:
- On a shelf are a set of models of several tanks and military vehicles (from left to right, top to bottom):
Tank models in Yukari's room
- There is a poster with a realistic version of Oberleutnant Ernst Von Bauer, a major supporting character from Motofumi Kobayashi's 1985 manga The Black Knight Story (黒騎士物語).
- There's also a poster from novel Moeyo! Sensha Gakkou (萌えよ!戦車学校), created by Takeshi Nogami.
- Yukari shares the same surname with the novel's main character, Yoshika Akiyama; Yukari's mother, Yoshiko, also shares the same first name, albeit with a different final vowel.
- The drape hanging across her bedroom door is printed in pattern resembling the structure of a tank tread.
- There are also posters and models featuring many different tanks, including:
- Interestingly, all of these tanks will appear in later episodes, in Der Film and Das Finale.
- On a shelf are a set of models of several tanks and military vehicles (from left to right, top to bottom):
- Saunders Girls High School is the only school shown to have a cheerleading squad.
- On the title screen of Yukari's infiltration video, the backdrop is the silhouette of a Type 74 Main Battle Tank.
- The M4A6 Sherman tanks are painted a different color scheme (tan) to the rest of the Saunders tanks (green). They also do not have the Saunders school insignia on the side of the tank, unlike the rest of the vehicles.
- At least 36 Shermans are visible in the Saunders tank garage, during Yukari's reconnaissance.
- Yukari Akiyama states that the model in the café makes the sound of a Type 90, a JSDF main battle tank. However, the gun on the Type 90 is the same armament as used on other MBTs, such as the M1A1 Abrams or the Leopard 2, so it is unknown how she can distinguish the vehicle as a Type 90. It may simply be her familiarity with her own nation's tank that leads her to that identification.
- In the 1st OVA, it is revealed that Yukari memorized Miho's clothes sizes during this episode.
- In the spin-off manga Motto Love Love Sakusen Desu! it is implied that the Ooarai sensha-dō uniforms are of the same design as those used by the club before it was disbanded.
- In the TV version of Episode 5, on the tournament banner it was incorrectly written that it was the 74th Sensha-do Tournament instead of the 63rd. It has been corrected in the BD version.
- Rabbit Team has Yuuki Utsugi take care of and account for the M3 Lee's ammunition, even though Saki Maruyama is the team's loader.
- In Der Film, during the exhibition match, Yuuki is seen handling a 75mm shell, so in addition to being the radio operator she is also apparently the 75mm gun loader, meaning Saki is only the loader of the 37mm gun.
- The wire tapping could be a reference to the Allies intercepting and decoding the German 'Enigma Code' transmissions during WWII.
- Among the Saunders support train is a hair salon. The salon's sign, at first glance an open pair of scissors, is a reference to the crossed sabers of the US Cavalry's insignia.
- The ending chibi sequence features Hippo Team in the StuG III.
Gallery[]
| Girls und Panzer Anime | |
|---|---|
| First Anime Season Episodes | Episode 1 ♦ Episode 2 ♦ Episode 3 ♦ Episode 4 ♦ Episode 5 ♦ Episode 6 ♦ Episode 7 ♦ Episode 8 ♦ Episode 9 ♦ Episode 10 ♦ Episode 11 ♦ Episode 12 |
| Recap Episodes | Episode 5.5 ♦ Episode 10.5 |
| OVA Episodes | OVA 1 ♦ OVA 2 ♦ OVA 3 ♦ OVA 4 ♦ OVA 5 ♦ OVA 6 ♦ OVA 7 ♦ OVA 8 ♦ OVA 9 ♦ OVA 10 |
| Animated Movie | Girls und Panzer der Film |
| Final Chapter | Part 1 ♦ Part 2 ♦ Part 3 ♦ Part 4 ♦ Part 5 ♦ Part 6 |