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| Anglerfish team, the shows' principle characters, sitting atop the turret of their Panzer 4. L-R: Mako Reizei, Saori Takebe, Commander Miho Nishizumi, Yukari Akiyama, and Hana Isuzu. |
by
Jay Agan
My Christmas present to myself FINALLY arrived on the day after: The Uninvited, a ghost story from 1944 starring Ray Milland, and the anime series Girls und Panzer. And something of a mixed bag it is.
Particularly Girls und Panzer. I had been waiting over a year to have this one in my hot little hands. I was initially attracted to this series as I'm something of a history buff and was always into the vehicles of World War II. The silly premise of "Tankery" (Tinkery, tankery, tock, the Maus ran up the clock ... Good Grief! Call it Sensha-do or Panzerfahren. Anything but THAT!) as part of a schools' athletic program screams ANIME(!) all the way. Having watched the show (Twice!) on Crunchyroll and viewed clips on You Tube countless times, I was ready for Sentai Filmworks to come out with the English dub here.
I'm somewhat disappointed with the English dub. Except for some of the minor characters, I didn't think the voices matched the characters well (Though I thought Hilary Haag, Yui in Angel Beats, was pretty good as Katyusha.). The "old pros" in the cast, (Monica Rial, Brittney Karbowski, Luci Christian, Tiffany Grant etc.) were definitely under used.
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| Riko "Erwin" Matsumoto: One of the series' more interesting character designs |
In Angel Beats, Sentai avoided substituting the original Japanese singing (Girldemo performances and the graduation song.) with English renditions. Here they didn't. The Anko dance singing in episode 9, sounded half hearted and clumsy as did the "snow march". The substitution of the Pravda girls singing the Katyusha in episode 8 with some kind of Russian "folk polka" music (I guess some copyright issues or something were involved.) didn't help the show either.
Being an old white guy who speaks English, I'm usually all for English dubs. In this case though, the original Japanese is far superior and I'll watch it in that in the future.
All in all I'm glad I now have this series on my shelf. Due to the "poor" English dub, I'm even gladder I got this at a reduced price through Deep Discount DVD (By way of Amazon.).
Article (only) copyright © 12-27-13 Jay Agan
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| Page 3, Chapter 3 from the manga. The characters seem out of scale. Should be twice the size they are. Makes the Panzer 4 look like an absolute monster! |
Wikipedia review of The Uninvited here.
Wikipedia article of Ray Milland here.
Wikipedia review of Girls und Panzer here.
Crunchyroll anime streaming website here.
Sentai Filmworks website here.
Wikipedia article on Hilary Haag here.
Wikipedia article on Monica Rial here.
Wikipedia article on Brittney Karbowski here.
Wikipedia article on Luci Christian here.
Wikipedia article on Tiffany Grant here.
Wikipedia article on Angel Beats here.
Deep Discount DVD website here.
Amazon.com website here.
The "switched out" Katyusha Girls und Panzer segment here.
Same as above but "full" version with extra footage here.
The Japanese dub "snow march" here.
Japanese Snow March here.
Girls und Panzerlied fanfiction story by C V Ford here.
Girls und Panzer "That Stupid Dance!" fanfiction story by C V Ford here.
C V Fords' profile page with list of stories on fanfiction.net here.
Two of my Girls und Panzer blog articles: 1, 2.
Go to Jays' Tee Vee blog main page here.
