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Saga of Tanya the Evil Episode 7 – The War Against the World

Quick Summary of Saga of Tanya the Evil Episode 7

In Saga of Tanya the Evil episode 7, “The Battle of the Fjord,” a mage with the Legadonia Federation sends his wife and daughter — who’s about Tanya’s age — to the United States for their safety. Tanya Degurechaff shares her best strategic advice with the generals, but one of them reacts violently to her critique. She later learned she was missing one key detail — until she figured it out and made someone else on the general staff angry. Tanya leads her battalion against the Norden Orse Fjord in a high-risk sneak attack. And who does she meet on this incursion? Does she even remember who he is?

Note: This post may include spoilers, so be cautious!

What’s In This Post

Quick Episode Summary
What Happened in this Episode
What I Liked in this Episode
What I Liked Not so Much in this Episode
Thoughts about the Episode
Related Posts

What Happened in Saga of Tanya the Evil Episode 7

Sioux’s Daughter Knows Her Father’s Choice of Presents

Saga of Tanya the Evil Episode 7: Tanya still has not learned when to remain silent.
If you enumerated Tanya’s skills, you probably wouldn’t see magnanimity on the list! Capture from the Crunchyroll stream.

Knowing war is coming to his country, Colonel Anson Sioux, a mage from the Legadonia Federation, sends his daughter Mary to the United States. She leaves a Christmas present with him: the latest model submachine gun. She even had his initials engraved on it.

Tanya presents a plan to beef up their supply lines in the northern theater.  Kurt von Rudersdorf thinks the plan is interesting, but the northern theater commander, Heinrich Schreise, thinks it will extend a conflict that he thinks should be over by now. While maintaining a thin veneer of courtesy, Tanya rips his ideas apart, leading to her expulsion from the meeting. Later, she asks Kurt and Erich von Rerugen why command is so fixated on executing this mission. Their vague answers lead her to realize that the operation’s really a diversion for an attack from the sea. To reward her realization, Kurt assigns her 203rd mage battalion to the operation. Her destination? Orse Fjord in the Entente Alliance.

Saga of Tanya the Evil Episode 7: Tanya orders her battalion to engage the enemy
After Viktoriya Ivanovna Serebryakov warns her about the incoming defenders, Tanya orders her company to take them on. Capture from the Crunchyroll stream.

Colonel Sioux commands the mage battalion guarding the anti-ship guns stationed at Orse Fjord. As he and his second in command muse on the futility of war, Tanya’s battalion begins their paradrop over the target. Orse Fjord begins to suspect a problem when they lose contact with their patrol ships. They know there’s a problem when their guns start exploding. Though their initial strikes go well for the empire’s mages, they’re under significant time constraints, which only gets more pressing when Colonel Sioux’s mages attack. Tanya takes company 1 to engage them while her other companies continue the attack on the guns.

Tanya’s Mages’ Training Shows

Tanya’s company proves their superior abilities by killing the defenders until only a few of Sioux’s mages are left. That’s when he sees Tanya and remembers her from when he faced her in battle in episode 2. Enraged, he charges after her. She turns and is about to fire when she receives word that her people have destroyed the last gun. Her job complete, she tries to leave without killing the Colonel. When the empire’s fleet arrives and begins bombarding the fortress, he despairs and begs God to help him kill “that devil.” Unfortunately, Tanya sees him charging and utters her prayers, too. She stabs him through the heart and takes his new submachine gun as a trophy. Orse Fjord’s fortress falls to the empire.

Tanya takes the dead Sioux's machine gun.
Tanya celebrates an early Christmas present. Capture from the Crunchyroll stream.

At their headquarters, Kurt, Erich, and Hans von Zettour celebrate a decisive victory. In the United States, Mary and her mother weep at the news reports that Orse Fjord’s defenders were “wiped out.”

What I Liked about Saga of Tanya the Evil Episode 7

Tanya is Honest to a Fault — At the Wrong Times

Tanya sure hasn’t learn her lesson from her candid speech to Hans in previous episodes, where he “rewarded” her with a battalion. She hasn’t dampened her sense of sarcasm, either. When Heinrich asked her why she wanted to extend the conflict, she answered, “We’re under no obligation to please the enemy by wasting supplies and troops.” The old Salaryman wouldn’t have said something so bold.

Tanya’s military mind’s come a long way from her Salaryman days, too. Kurt couldn’t directly answer her questions about why the operation was going forward in spite of her observations, but the operation itself gave her enough hints to guess that the operation was only a diversion. It was fun seeing Erich’s shocked reaction when she figured it out.

Saga of Tanya the Evil Episode 7: Tanya understands her battalion is to be a diversion.
Tanya figured out the operation she thought was doomed was only a diversion — and she had very few hints to do so! Capture from the Crunchyroll stream.

Tanya’s so short that she had to stretch to reach when she pointed at some locations on the wall map. Given how she talks, it sometimes hard to remember she’s in a little girl’s body, even if she’s right there in front of me. Little reminders like that show me how good a job the writers are doing when it comes to immersing me in the show.

Sioux In Over His Head

It’s sad to see an honorable and upright man like Anson Sioux placed in this situation. He wants to be a good father and husband, but he has to fight in a war simply because his country’s ordered him to. He watches new recruits board a train that just minutes later gets blown apart, and that sets the stage for his suicidal attack on Tanya. Poor guy. At least he got his wife and daughter to safety.

The banter in the aircraft just before Tanya and her battalion jumped out showed just how well-knit that team’s become. They picked up on Tanya’s off-hand remark about being a canary in a mine and wondered what kind of song a canary sang. Even Tanya joined in, saying, “I don’t want to hear you guys sing.” Before, she would have either sneered at them or ignored them. Now, she’s joining in the conversation. There’s a lot of subtle development in this episode.

Saga of Tanya the Evil Episode 7: Tanya enjoys her role as battalion commander.
Tanya’s really warming up to her role as battalion commander. Capture from the Crunchyroll stream.

In the 203rd’s first “battle,” they slaughtered the Dakian army, who was utterly unprepared for their tactics and abilities. In a later battle, they went up against mages with better training and equipment, and they still won with relative ease. This time, they were against two foes: the experienced mages under Anson Sioux and time. If they weren’t able to destroy the guns in time, their navy would have to turn back, and the operational would have been a failure. It was interesting to see how far the 203rd has come in terms of their resolve and creativity. The show’s done such a great job of developing character and situations that it’s a treat to watch.

There is No Glory in Battle

It’s hard to effectively communicate just how terrible combat really is. Not only has the news desensitized us, we’ve gotten used to movies like Saving Private Ryan with its chilling depictions of war. There was a single shot in this episode, though, that caught me off guard. Around 15:25, we see a shot of three or four dead mages raining from the sky. It’s not gratuitous, which would have made it ineffective. Instead, it showed the logical outcome of the kind of fighting we’d seen all through the series. We’d just never seen it from this angle. I thought it was powerful.

What I Liked Less about Saga of Tanya the Evil Episode 7

Some of the art lacked the detail and color depth of previous episodes. Still, I can’t call it bad by any stretch. Capture from the Crunchyroll stream.

Last week’s recap episode put me on guard, so I scrutinized the production values. Episodes 1 through 6 impressed the heck out of me, ranging in visual quality from A- to A+ and audio quality a solid A. This week, I could see the visuals slip a bit, down to the B to B+ range. That’s still not bad, but it’s a little disappointing after the stellar showing for the first half of the season. Fortunately, the audio quality seemed to remain high, and I have to say that the sky visuals like clouds were still beautiful. So this isn’t terrible news, but I lament any dip in quality. Maybe things will get better next week!

Thoughts about Saga of Tanya the Evil Episode 7

Translation Is Not Easy

I thought Crunchyroll’s spelling for the Colonel’s last name was interesting. There’s a discussion about it in the comment section for Anson Sioux’s Wikia page. I’ve gone with Sioux in my post because that’s what was in Crunchyroll’s subtitles. The Wikipedia page shows the spelling as Sue. But I suspect Sue’s correct.

No matter how you slice it, Being X is morally responsible for this scene. After all, Salaryman would have been perfectly happy to climb the corporate ladder in 2013. All of this could have been avoided if it weren’t for the “Crusade.” Capture from the Crunchyroll stream.

Remember Being X speaking in episode 6 of a Crusade against the unbelieving Tanya? Well, this episode puts a spotlight on the cost of that Crusade. We’ve seen soldiers, both magical and otherwise, dying in mass. I keep thinking of those poor Dakians and their complaint that Tanya’s troops weren’t being fair by attacking from the sky. But this episode gave us a glimpse into the wider cost through the eyes of Mary, Anson Sioux’s daughter. This conflict, with apparently exists in no small part to teach Tanya to have faith in Being X, is killing people, ripping up families, and destroying entire countries.

Being X: God or Devil?

What kind of monster is Being X?

If that’s not enough to cast doubt on Being X as a benevolent god, we get another angle in this episode. Anson Sioux prays for the strength to protect his country against the devil that is Tanya. We see how well that ended for him! Again, what kind of monster does that?

I’m beginning to think that Tanya can only be considered evil from Being X’s twisted point of view.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments!

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6 thoughts on “Saga of Tanya the Evil Episode 7 – The War Against the World

  1. In Wikipedia, his name is shown as アンソン・スー, and transliterated as Anson Sū. His daughter’s loving Christmas gift of a submachinegun has his last name engraved on the stock as Su.

    The battle of Orse Fjord appears to be modeled on the battle of Narvik, in WWII, where the RN force sailed into Ofotfjord and engaged the German fleet, except that Narvik had more ships, fewer coastal defense batteries, and no special forces.

    The Empire’s overall strategy is reminiscent of the UN landings at Inchon, Korea, during the Korean War. This was well behind the NK lines, which caused the entire NK campaign to collapse. And, as with Tanya’s war, the US/UN high command proceeded to conquer the entire country, which brought other nations into the war. If the UN forces had, just for e.g., stopped a few miles north of Pyongyang, the likelyhood of a Chinese intervention would have been low.

    More indications that salaryman/Tanya really isn’t evil. Her sarcastic attack on a plan which she sees as being wasteful of lives to no good purpose. The fact that, in the best airborne tradition, she’s first out the door when they jump.

    1. I really need to study more history!

      Since I haven’t, I’m really glad you stopped by to deepen my appreciation of this series.

      Your comment about US/UN high command makes me wish I had the time to perform the research and write an alternate history where the UN forces had stopped. How would the world now be different? Maybe not a lot, because China would still harbor hatred of the colonial west. Still, it’s an interesting thought exercise.

      1. Of course, It helps to have lived during some those times.

        WRT alt.history, China might still hate us (despite the fact that we essentially forced Japan to start the Pacific War because of them), but NK would be much less of a threat. If, just for e.g., we stopped at the 39th parallel instead of the 38th, NK would find themselves confined to a relatively small mountain redoubt with 1/3 the agricultural land and few useful ports, and their capitol within artillery range of the ROK.

  2. I don’t imagine that the entire world was made up just to test Tanya or that the war was created for that purpose. That would be a lot of effort just for one recalcitrant person out of billions. It looks like this is a multiverse sort of thing and in that case Being X would just pick a universe/world that suited their needs. There’s always wars going on somewhere.

    I wouldn’t put it beyond X to subtly manipulate local conditions. For that matter, the entire affair could be going on in Salaryman’s head as he lay dying somewhere.

    1. That’s the aspect of this show I enjoyed the most — how it supports discussion of multiple theories of what’s really going on! It doesn’t info-dump on us; it just presents the facts of the world that can be interpreted various ways.

      I like that intentional ambiguity.

  3. “This conflict, with apparently exists in no small part to teach Tanya to have faith in Being X, is killing people, ripping up families, and destroying entire countries.”
    Interesting. I never realised, but through their interactions we can figure that yes, this conflict seems to be really closely related to Tanya’s radical atheism.

    But I believe it is only so on the surface. The series shows everything through Tanya’s point of view, but I’m sure God (well, Being X) has many other plans.

Please let me know what you think!

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