Girls und Panzer's First Episode: How To Establish A Series

 Girls und Panzer is a rather strange anime, about a world in which students go to school on massive carriers, and in which tank combat is a high school sport. Naturally, the first episode has to establish the concept fairly quickly, and Girls und Panzer's first episode a good example of how to do so in an efficient manner.

The Prologue

The series begins in medias res, with a flash forward to the exhibition match with St. Gloriana. The particulars of the match aren't important, but it does give a sample of the tankery combat in the series.

The entire scene serves a crucial purpose, because otherwise, the first tank battle would happen at the end of the second episode. The first two episodes serve an important purpose in establishing the setting and the character, and for the team to do the necessary prep work to get the tankery team going again, but this prologue provides a necessary hook.

Introducing Miho

The series goes back some time and shows Miho frantically waking up, before realizing that she isn't at her old school anymore. She crashes into a signpost while distracted by the smell of bread, and accidentally drops her pencil and eraser when her class goes onto lunch break. Other girls chat with each other, having long since formed their own circles of friends. This establishes that Miho is a bit of a klutz, and still feels out of place at her new school.

Miho then meets Saori and Hana, her classmates, who invite her to lunch. Miho reveals that she's already memorized their names, signifying how much she wants friends. Luckily, Saori and Hana are just as receptive, since Saori immediately asks Miho for permission to call her by her first name, something that only close friends or family do in Japan. Both Saori and Hana know Miho is a transfer student, but decide not to press her on it, even when Miho self-deprecatingly relates that people found her "unreliable" at her old school. Throughout the early scenes, hints of Saori and Hana's personalities and interests are dropped, but they're ultimately secondary to Miho.

Tankery's Return

During a class break, the student council tracks Miho down, revealing that they started the tankery team up again, and want her to take tankery as her elective. Miho protests that she chose the school because it didn't have tankery, but not only will they not take no for an answer, but they don't even offer Miho the opportunity to say no.

Shell-shocked by the recent news, Miho goes to the nurse office, and Saori and Hana fake being sick to follow her there. They learn that Miho is from a distinguished family, but doesn't want to do tankery, and encourage her to say no to the stuent council.

At the end of the day, the student council shows a film strip that provides some exposition on tankery as a feminine martial art. Some people find this rather ridiculous, since the series has a mostly male fanbase, and this is more telling than showing, but it helps establish the in-universe history of tankery. If you look closely, you can see some of the audience members excited over the film strip, while Miho is uncomfortable.

The student council then reveals that there's an international tournament coming up (which, unfortunately, is a bit of trivia that doesn't mean much to the story). They then offer plenty of incentives to join, such as 200 tardiness passes, which gets the lethargic Mako's attention, foreshadowing her being in danger of being held back.

Saori and Hana become rather enthusiastic for tankery, much to Miho's dismay. That night, Miho has a flashback to a tank sinking into a river, foreshadowing a past incident that is brought up six episodes later.

Miho Joins Tankery

The next day, Miho chooses Incense- her choice is probably irrelevant, save for the fact that it's not tankery. At that point, Saori and Hana then change their choices from tankery to incense, since they want to do tankery with Miho. The fact that they actually wanted to do tankery, but changed their minds for Miho's sake speaks volumes of how selfless they are.

Unfortunately, the student council isn't willing to let Miho off the hook, and summons her to their office during lunch. Yuzu melodramatically wails that the school's "finished," foreshadowing their real reason for wanting to participate, while Anzu vaguely threatens to expel Miho and her friends. Saori and Hana then get angry and argue in Miho's defense.

Miho realizes how much her friends are sticking up for her, and chooses to do tankery for their sake, much to everyone's surprise. She explains that no one had ever stuck up for her that way before, and remarks that her way of tankery is different from that of her mother and her older sister. 

At the end of the episode, Miho and the new recruits for the tankery team find a Panzer IV in a shed, in poor but workable condition. Viewers may recognize it as the tank Miho and her friends were driving at the start of the episode. The other four tanks are missing, though, so the new tankery team sets out to find them.

The episode ends with the camera zooming out and revealing that the school, the campus and the town they're in are all on a large carrier out at sea. Some series would go for lengthy exposition about this, as happens in some Girls und Panzer fanfic fanfics, but the anime shows a lot with one camera motion, while leaving the finer details about the school ship system for an OVA.

Analysis

This episode shows a lot while telling relatively little, and generally sticks to the basics. The conflict is relatively simple- the student council wants Miho to do tankery again, Miho doesn't want to and Miho's friends support whatever decision she's willing to make. Apart from the brief prologue sequence, this is relatively self-contained.

The first episode is also rather easy to follow, due to the simple plot and small cast size. There are only six significant characters in the episode(which can be boiled down to Miho, her friends and the student council), although some of the other cast members make brief cameos that foreshadow the later story. Contrast this with Shirobako, which introduces well over 20 characters in the first episode, to the point at which onscreen subtitles are required to help the viewer remember everyone's names and job titles.

The episode also does a good job of gradually introducing later plot elements, while keeping them oblique for the moment. It's shown that Miho didn't have fond memories of her previous school and doesn't want to do tankery anymore, but no details are given on either. It's easy to guess that those two are related, all the viewers need to know at the moment is that she has a reason not to do tankery despite the student council employing both the carrot and the stick.

Of course, providing a strong introduction is only half the battle, as the series must also provide reason for viewers to keep watching. It does so by hinting at plot threads that will be explored more later, as well as the promise of exciting tankery action, which future episodes deliver on. As such, the first episode of Girls und Panzer is a good example of a way to begin an anime with a strong opening, so as to keep viewers engaged.