Girls und Panzer

""This is Tankery, not war. Your tank will cry if you're a bad person!""

Girls und Panzer is a 2012-13 manga (with several ongoing spin-offs, as well as a Twelve-Episode Anime adaptation, light novels, and a video game) about girls who operate tanks as a martial art.

Miho Nishizumi is a high-school student who has just transferred to Oarai Academy. On her first day at school, the student council recreates the tankery club, which has been defunct for several years. While she has tankery experience, and her new friends are interested in joining, she doesn't want any part of it. However, pressure from the student council causes her to reconsider, and with her new friends, she joins the tankery club.

"Hana: I don't want to forget that fierce feeling of numbness..."
 * Absurdly Powerful Student Council: Powerful enough to order tanks and ammunition.
 * A Mother to Her Girls: Miho. See My Greatest Failure and My Greatest Second Chance below for shining examples. And at Oarai, at least, they adore her for it.
 * A-Team Firing: All of the Oarai tanks at first (given their relative lack of practice), but Momo never really gets better.
 * Big Damn Heroes: In the match against St. Gloriana, the student council get their tread repaired and manage to get back into the fight just in time to save Team Anglerfish.
 * Bling of War: Oarai's tanks' first paint-jobs are rather spectacular. Hot pink, gold, flags...they quickly learn that it's not very practical in their match against St. Gloriana.
 * Chekhov's Skill: Saori is an extremely rapid texter, which gets her the job of Team Anglerfish's radio operator. It comes in handy when
 * Cool Ship: Each Academy appears to be a converted aircraft carrier. Except that no country ever built an aircraft carrier (or any other ship) as freakin' BIG as these; one of the smaller vessels is over seven kilometers long.
 * Germanic Depressives: All the characters are actually Japanese, but most of the schools have "national" themes and their students tend to play into stereotypes of those nations. The Saunders team is led by a representative of Eagle Land at its friendliest; St. Gloriana's leader does her best to be very much the English Rose; some of the girls from the "Russian" school, Pravda, are seen doing That Russian Squat Dance.... And the "German" school? That's the one Miho left because she couldn't stand their "Win at all costs" philosophy.
 * Gratuitous English: When a gunner on one of Saunders' tanks realizes (too late), she exclaims, "Jesus!"
 * Gratuitous German: The production company itself is called "Girls und Panzer Projekt", and the commands "Panzer Vor!" and "Panzer Halt!"
 * Gratuitous Latin: Takako Suzuki, one of the history-buff girls of Team Hippo, uses Latin phrases. She has the fitting nickname of "Caesar".
 * Hidden Heart of Gold: Maho has a severe, stoic demeanor, but she cares about Miho and her team in her own way. When she heard that Mako's grandmother was hospitalized on the mainland, she immediately offered the use of her school's helicopter.
 * Inadequate Inheritor: Hana's mother is distraught that her daughter is involved with tankery (which she views as the antithesis of the delicacy and femininity that Isuzu flower arrangement should embody), to the point of telling her to not come home until she quits.
 * Miho herself is viewed as the inadequate inheritor to her family's tankery legacy. Her mother is threatening to completely disown her because she's not ruthless enough.
 * Instant Win Condition: In the tournament, the goal is to immobilize the enemy's flag tank. This allows Oarai to defeat their numerically-superior opponents.
 * Lampshade Hanging: After the tankery club is announced, one of the girls in the background says "I wonder if any boys drive tanks? It's just so weird to think about, when only girls do it!"
 * Luminescent Blush: Hana gets one whenever she thinks about a tank firing. As she says when she asks to be the gunner:


 * Meaningful Name: Hana means "flower"; probably deliberately chosen by her mother, as the Isuzu family is known for their school of flower arrangements.
 * My Greatest Failure: Miho has an odd one. During her last mission (before joining Oarai), one of the tanks under her command slipped into a river and sank.  Miho jumped out of her tank to save the crew.  She succeeded, but without her leadership during that critical moment, her team lost the mission and broke their winning streak.  Most people (including Miho's friends at Oarai) would call that a fair trade, but to the Stoic Nishizumi philosophy, it's a failure, and the pressure caused her to leave tankery for a while.
 * My Greatest Second Chance: During the tournament final (against Kuromorimine, Miho's old school, commanded by Miho's big sister Maho), it happens again. Oarai is crossing a river with Kuromorimine in hot pursuit, and Rabbit Team's tank stalls.  Does Miho rescue them and allow her force to be caught, or abandon Rabbit to let the rest of Oarai get away?
 * Parting Words Regret: Mako and her mother had a big fight as their final conversation before Mako's parents died in an accident. After she learns this, Miho starts to think about the last conversation she had with her family...
 * Reasonable Authority Figure: The student council threatened Miho with having to publicly do the embarrassing "Anglerfish dance" if she, the council president said it was a collective responsibility -- so the student council danced, too.
 * Regional Riff: In the anime, all of the schools get musical themes associated with their tanks' countries of origin. Saunders gets The Battle Hymn of The Republic and Pravda gets Polyushko-polye (a.k.a. "the Tetris theme"), for example.
 * Serious Business: Tankery.
 * Tank Goodness: But of course.
 * Technician Versus Performer: Miho used to be a tankery technician (like her family) and came to hate it. The breaking point was when she abandoned her command tank to rescue the crew of a tank sinking in water; she rescued the crew, but was blamed for the loss of the match and breaking her team's winning streak.  Joining the new club at Oarai showed her the performance side of the sport, which let her get back into it.
 * Oarai as a whole is an academy of quirky, plucky performers up against technically superior opponents.
 * True Companions: Team Anglerfish. Miho is quickly befriended by Saori and Hana on her first day, and when the student council threatens to expel her for not joining the tankery club, they're willing to get expelled with her.  This is part of what causes her to change her mind.
 * When Miho is threatened with having to do the "sea devil dance" ("Anglerfish dance" in the anime) if, her teammates quickly reassure her that they'll dance with her in that case.
 * "Well Done, Little Sister / Daughter" Girl: Two of the five main characters.
 * Miho feels tremendous pressure from her mother and older sister to live up to the Nishizumi school of tankery. In fact, she initially transferred to Oarai Academy because they didn't have a tankery club, even though this required her to live alone. Impressing her family becomes part of her motivation in the tournament.  In the end, they acknowledge her strength.
 * Hana took up tankery because she wishes to become a stronger woman. Unfortunately, it didn't work; her mother thought delicacy is a more valuable trait.  Her tank-inspired flower arrangement turns things around.