A Japanese businessman fires an employee from his company, who in turn pushes him in front of a speeding train at a station. While falling to his death, a divine being appears and talks, but the businessman refuses to recognize that God exists, calling it being X, so the divine being has the man reincarnated as a blond girl, Tanya, in an alternate history Europe of the early 20th century, claiming that hardship in life will make him more religiously devout. At 10, Tanya discovers she has magical powers, and is drafted in a huge war of its homeland, the Empire. Tanya and a dozen other soldiers with magical powers fly and use machine guns to kill enemies. Tanya is ruthless and cruel, and thus climbs up the military hierarchy, followed by her friend Viktoriya. Despite victories, more countries join forces against the Empire, fearing its growth of power, leading to a world war.
Anime series "The Saga of Tanya the Evil" is the darnedest thing. It has a fascinating plot tangle—but it treats it as a subplot on the margins, even though it should be the center point of the story—and for some reason pushes the far less interesting (and questionable), standard war and battlefront story as the main segment. This uneven decision in the construction of the storyline which gives undue weight to the lesser story ultimately hinders "Tanya". One isn't quite sure what the point is, at least from this first season. This better plot tangle revolves around a nameless Japanese businessman who is pushed in front of a speeding train, but just then time stops—and an invisible divine being speaks through the mouths of "frozen" people around him, and even through the beak of a pigeon (!), but the businessman is an atheist and refuses to believe in God ("Are you unfamiliar with the 'duty of disclosure?' If you claim to be God, you should put more thought into your decisions." - "Administering 7 billion people is already beyond my capacity." - "Overwork is the sign of a failed business model."), defiantly calling it being X, as if his powerless, mortal status only leaves him with mental rebellion and critical wit at his disposal. The sequence is sheer genius, a fascinating contemplation on the problem of evil and satirical take on religion, but for some reason the authors stubbornly refuse to simply continue this story.
Instead, they just focus 90% of the rest of the story on the businessman reincarnated as a punishment as a 10-year old girl Tanya, who is mobilized due to her magical powers to fight in an Empire in a big war. The allegory isn't well conjured up: the country is only named "Empire", but the maps of Europe clearly show Germany during World War I. Then why not just simply say so? What is the point of a militaristic fundamentalism and warmongering in Tanya who enjoys being cruel to get to the next promotion? Why is Tanya only a 10-year old, when she could have been a grown up (the 10-year old mobster in "RoboCop 2" fallacy), as it would have been more logical for such a war-themed plot? A lot was not that well thought-out or well written in the story. A rare critical distance is taken in episode #8 where Tanya orders the artillery shooting of rebellious Republican remnants retreating from a city, including civilians, even though a military colonel refuses to do so—because it is a clear war crime. A few post-credit jokes have charm, such as in episode #9 where Tanya writes to a family about a soldier who was injured and relieved of duty, but decorated with honors—only to comment that this is the first time she lost a soldier because he ate rotten potatoes. However, one simply cannot get engaged with the obscure sight of dozen soldiers flying in the sky, "Harry Potter"-style, shooting with machine guns at the battlefront. The viewers simply long for the confrontation with the divine being from the start, but this happens only three times (besides the said first encounter, it appears speaking through a toy soldier and through the corpse of a killed pilot in a war plane), which consolidates "Tanya's" lost opportunities.
Grade:++
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