After nearly a decade long absence, Saga of Tanya the Evil has finally returned with its Second Season.
I quite enjoyed the first season, with its solid action, fantastic sound design, and titular character’s constant hilarious misunderstandings.
Going into the first episode of this Second Season, “Salamander Combat Team”, I had my fingers crossed it would live up to the first.
If this premiere is any indication, Season Two should be just as enjoyable as the original and movie.
The episode begins by setting up our cast of characters.
Front and center, of course, is Tanya, whose personality and goals are spelled out by her intro.
We see her praying to Being X due to brainwashing, before she violently lashes out, shooting the statue representing her enemy.
As Tayna stands before the massive combat unit she was gifted at the end of the movie (much to her horror), we see various characters’ perspectives of her.
Loria views her as his “little fairy”, wanting her captured for depraved reasons.
I am all for seeing great animation, but witnessing Loria suck on his finger in such detail was not something any of us wanted.
I hope Loria gets the same pathetic end the real person he is based off received.
After Loria, we see Mary Sue, who seems not to have learned anything from her fight with Tanya in the movie.
Sure, she admits to acting recklessly, but she immediately justifies it by saying God is on her side.
Finally, we see Lergen, Rudersdorf and Zettour, the former of whom is, as per usual, concerned about Tanya, calling her “a monster in the form of a little girl,” just as he did all the way in Season One.
Zettour wants a monster for the war however, and he finishes Lergen’s sentence as Tanya’s theme kicks in and she addresses her new combat team, welcoming them and us to the front lines.
Unfortunately for Tanya, her Salamander Team prove to be wildly incompetent.
This forces Tanya to step in and hopefully the level of animation and sound design we see here will remain consistent throughout the season because what we got was a fantastic continuation of Season One’s.
To the tune of her theme, Tanya flies through storms and swerves to avoid fire, eventually even destroying one of the planes with her knife.
Over the top?
Definitely.
Cool?
Also, definitely.
There is time for humor as well in this battle, because Tanya’s allies almost kill her with friendly fire, causing her to throw out her fists like child because, well, she is one.
This does not save the last pilot, however, and neither do his prayers to God.
It must have been pretty confusing for him to hear Tanya denouncing God one moment and then praising him the next, due to brainwashing.
The pilot does not have time to ponder this contradiction, though, for he is quickly obliterated by a magic blast from Tanya.
Her job done, Tanya naturally follows this up by chewing her new troops out, before we get a look at what the other nations are up to.
We see Mary lost her friend from the movie sometime offscreen, so I wonder if we will get a flashback to how that happened?
More importantly, Loria seemingly convinces alternate universe Stalin to allow mages back into the army to up their chances of defeating the Empire.
We know this will be a big deal, considering we saw one of these Federation Mages wreck Tanya’s men in one of the trailers.
Not long after Tanya gives her men a dressing down, Visha arrives with news that two Federation infantry brigades are on the attack.
What follows is a tense scene, which constantly makes it feel like Tanya’s forces are about to fall into a trap.
I was half expecting the Federation mage from the trailers to ambush them.
Instead, we got a classic Youjo Senki rug pull, where it is revealed that the enemy forces have been just as poorly trained as Tanya’s and they are easily defeated.
Tanya’s surprised “Eh!?” upon learning this gave me my biggest laugh of the episode, closely followed by everyone’s terrified reactions when she falsely praises them with a childish voice and expression.
She does this in the hopes of building a good reputation with her new troops, just in case the Empire loses and she has to rely on their testimony to stay alive.
In typical Tanya fashion, however, this has pretty much the opposite effect, because everyone is left absolutely terrified of her.
Tanya saying she will have a missing captain executed if he deserted certainly does not help her case.
The final scene of the episode then shows the new captains looking at a propaganda poster of Tanya, freaked out by how much it diverges from their reality.
Overall, “Salamander Combat Team” is a great return for Saga of Tanya the Evil after so many years.
It brought back the classic Tanya misunderstandings, as well as a greatly animated action scene with terrific sound design.
I look forward to reviewing the rest of the season as it releases.
It is good to be back on the front lines… which is something I am sure no soldier would ever say.
Certainly not Tanya.