Live-ammunition tank combat as a school sport is exactly the kind of wild idea that one expects from anime, but there’s more to love aboutGirls und Panzerthan just the tankery. Even if what first draws most viewers to the series is the explosive action and detailed machinery, it’s the friendships, eccentric worldbuilding, and military minutia that keep many coming back.
RELATED:Best Isekai Anime That Are Not Set In Medieval Fantasy Worlds
Given its unique premise, there may never be another anime exactly likeGirls und Panzer,but that’s not to say that its best qualities can’t be found elsewhere. With a little bit of digging and an open mind, fans of the series can find all manner of anime as surprising and delightful in their own way.
Girls und Panzeris currently halfway through a six-film run calledDas Finale.
10Joker Game
The words “military anime” bring to mind soldiers hunkered down in trenches, fleets of aircraft, and explosions galore.Joker Gameis a reminder that blood and steel are only half of every battle. The other half is intelligence,theclandestine shadow war where deception and intrigue replace bullets and bombs.
It’s that half of war thatJoker Gameexplores, with a plot that revolves around a team of WWII intelligence operatives for Japan. WhatGirls und Panzerdoes for tanks,Joker Gamedoes for military intelligence, taking what would be a side note in any other anime and promoting it to the main stage. It might not bethe funniest anime,but the series doesn’t disappoint.
9Drifters
InDrifters,Oda Nobunaga and other famous warriors from history are thrown together in the ultimate battle.Where this anime distinguishes itself from others is with its mixture ofgenuine, historical figures and fantastical plot.Stellar animation, music, and plot development makeDriftersanunderrated supernatural anime.
RELATED:Best Anime Villains Of All Time
Managing to squeeze authentic historical detail into a story that’s essentially an afterlife battle royale is no small feat, but that’s whatDriftersdoes. Despite a few tonal missteps early on, the series is a must-watch for fans of military and historical anime alike, and it doesn’t hurt that it looks so good.
8Jormungand
Many anime struggle with nuance. Either they’re incapable of weaving themes with depth and substance or they aren’t even interested in trying.Jormungandis a show about Jonah Mar,a child soldier with no taste for war who nonetheless ends up working as an arms dealer’s bodyguard.
Jonah is an interesting character, but it’s arms dealing Koko who deserves most of the praise. She’s complex, andJormungandlets her stay that way. Comedicanime likeGintamaare wonderful, but sometimes it’s nice to be thrown off the cinematic deep end, and that’s the itch thatJormungandscratches.
7Macross F
Intense battles interspersed amongst compelling relationship drama is the recipe that led toGirls undPanzer’s success, and it works just as well inMacross F. The alien Vajra threaten humanity’s survival, and it’s up to Alto Saotome and the rest of Skull Platoon to stop them.
This space opera series alternates between intrigue, combat, and characterization, as slick and stylish as one would hope a mecha anime would be. Mecha series die if the gargantuan machines their heroes pilot aren’t worthy of adoration, and hereMacross Fdoesn’t disappoint. Alto’s VF-25F Messiah is a joy to watch, even if somedislike the series’s ending.
6Berserk
The vision of warfare presented byGirls und Panzeris a happy one. Warfare has been reduced to a school sport. Military tactics and the equipment of death are taken seriously, but for different reasons than in almost any other anime. Not so inBerserk.WhatBerserkshares withGirls und Panzeris the deification of warfare.
Both anime, in their own way, reimaginearmed conflict as the holy grail of human behavior.The differences in their setting are superficial. Instead, their most significant difference is what an obsession with warfare means for the characters involved. InBerserk,from its lowliest footsoldier toits strongest villain,war means inescapable misery and pain.
5Youjo Senki (The Saga Of Tanya The Evil)
An amoral, 21st-century salaryman dies, has the poor sense to lecture God, and is reincarnated as a girl named Tanya in an alt-history WWI Austria-Hungary where magic exists. That’s only episode one ofYoujo Senki (The Saga of Tanya the Evil),one of thewildest isekai anime out there.
RELATED:Akira Toriyama’s Best Works That Aren’t Dragon Ball, Ranked
The chief pleasure of the series is watching Tanya, with her modern, cynical viewpoint, contend with those in the military around her. The portrayal of war is unglamorous, as it should be. Its violence is hard-nosed. Its deaths are sudden. For unique worldbuilding with a military focus,Youjo Senki (The Saga of Tanya the Evil)stands above the rest.
4Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team
Nowhere is the bond between pilot and machine better demonstrated than in mecha anime.Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Teamtakes the urban and space warfare that theGundamfranchise specializes in and replaces it with a jungle-based guerilla campaign, but that shift of setting only accentuates the importance of the machines.
What the series nails is the sense of weight in its lumbering war machines. These mobile suits, in their own way, feel like the exaggerated tanks they are: cumbersome, huge, and liable to obliterate an entire base by accident. Likea good isekai,it’s the world that’s worth the price of admission.
3Code Geass
There are plenty of superficial anime that offer a gorgeous wrapping but no actual present underneath.Code Geassisn’t one of them. There’s plenty going on in the series: military conquest, family tragedy, and supernatural happenings.
RELATED:Sports Anime That Are Underrated
Code Geassenjoys posing hard questions, and the character of Lelouch Lamperouge is the perfect focal point for them. Multidimensional and fascinating,seeing the world through Lelouch’s eyes is a pleasure,and despite its brief episode count,Code Geassis an unmitigated thrill from start to finish. Lelouch might not be a wonderful person, but the series couldn’t have a more fitting protagonist.
2Girls' Last Tour
Girls' Last Touris about girls and military vehicles.Girls und Panzeris about girls and military vehicles. Both series are about friendship, albeit friendship in very different worlds. As strange as the reimagined earth of the latter series might seem with tank combat a school sport, in many ways it feels familiar.
Girls' Last Touris the story of two best friends, wandering a world that has already ended. Half the reason their friendship feels so vivid and impactful is thatthere’s hardly anyone else they could possibly be friends with anyway.Human connection is special when they are so few humans left. Unlike86 Eighty-Sixandsimilar anime about the complexities of war,Girls' Last Touris about the simplicity of war’s aftermath.
1Attack on Titan
From ODM Gear to the rules dictating titan transformations,Attack on Titanhas no shortage of military equipment and tactics to familiarize oneself with. In fact,few other series take military action so seriously.Infantry tactics, technological improvements, weapon maintenance, grand strategy, the horrors of war, and the bonds between soldiers all receive their time in the spotlight.
No one would claim thatAttack on Titanis a cheery, feel-good series, but few rival the intensity of its combat or the heart demonstrated by its soldiers, even during desperate last-stands that no amount of training can salvage.
