Out of the 6 final movies, 2 aren’t even out yet, despite the project being announced almost 8 years ago.
Summary:
- Girls & Panzer is being released as a series of 6 short movies.
- The movies come out every year and a half or so, prompting many fans to stop caring.
- Fans wonder what might cause the studio to decide on this release format.
Girls & Panzer is something that can only exist in anime. Seriously, girls engaging in senshadou — a made-up sport which is basically tank warfare — and reconstructing actual historical events? That’s not something that could exist in any other medium.
While it doesn’t have much mainstream appeal, it’s still a series otaku are aware of — it was highly praised when it initially came out.
A movie released later cemented it as a cult classic, and fans were initially happy to hear that the anime was going to be released in a 6-movie sequel series. Only that happiness turned into disappointment when they realized what was actually happening.
How does this format even work?
The so called 6 movies, which are dubbed “das Finale”, are supposed to be the final part of the series. Only they aren’t really movies in a traditional sense — each of them is around 50 minutes long. And if you think that’s just a double-length episode, yes, it is.
Essentially, the studio is turning what could have been just a TV season of the anime into a series of short movies. There can be many reasons for why that’s actually happening, but the reality is this is extremely disappointing. The franchise is no longer talked about, and this release format is partly to blame.
The studio releases one of these “movies” every 20 or so months, meaning more than a year and a half breaks between the movies. It can be very hard to care about a series going on like this, especially when not much happens in each of these.
Some also just forget what was going on at this point, especially considering that the TV anime came out in 2012. To give you some perspective, the first das Finale movie came out in 2017, the fourth came out in 2023 and is still not out on Blu-Ray, and there are two more to come.
Another example like that
This isn’t even the only project by studio Actas that is getting this treatment. Princess Principal releases its Crown Handler movie series in the same way. Out of 6 planned movies, only 3 are out at the moment — and these movies are also short.
Many potential reasons for this
Fans bring many potential reasons why that might be a thing. The most obvious one is money — these franchises are decently popular, and the viewers would pay to see them in theaters anyways.
Another possibility is the fact that Actas might simply not have enough resources to produce the anime continuously, and requires such a bizarre production schedule. Regardless of the truth, this is not the kind of release format fans would ever want to see again.