Saga of Tanya the Evil II

Episode 5

Things on the Eastern front are now as bad as they could be—and I don't just mean for Tanya. At this point, both the Empire and Russy Federation are being led by the inept—though with starkly different goals.

On the Russy side of things, Loria is using his position within the party to pursue his own goals. He has something he wants even more than victory: Tanya herself. Because of this, the Russy offensive is being handled extremely recklessly. There are the normal military orders, and those clash with Loria's orders—likely creating the scene of Russy artillery firing on their own advancing troops as we see in this episode.

And on the other side of the conflict, as was evident last week, the Empire's issue is that those in power care only about staying in power. They're more than willing to throw bodies at the problem to secure some fabled idea of “victory”—even if the reality is that this will gain little besides dragging out the war.

But the real issue with the Empire is that the leadership only wants to hear opinions that support their goals. This means that the most competent—those who can see the situation without bias and are willing to speak truth to power—are being removed from positions of power. This, of course, includes Zettour.

He has long been the strategic powerhouse of this war, and with him shipped off to the eastern front—tasked with holding the front lines during the Empire's foolish new military push—the military command back in the capitol is in chaos. Zettour acted as far more than his rank and title would imply. He was a fixer and a politician in addition to being a military man.

Now, he's a man tasked with being the scapegoat should the upcoming offensive fail—which it almost certainly will. And so Zettour faces an impossible challenge: to use a defensive front to win an offensive battle. With his forces already stretched far too thin, he has only one card left in his arsenal: Tanya.

As far as tactics go, Tanya is the only person we've seen on par with Zettour—and she sees things exactly as he does. The best plan they can come up with is to use Tanya's forces as bait—to draw the Russy forces in and smash them.

Of course, the problem is that Tanya's troops have to act as both bait and rescuer, leaving both forces far undermanned. And now that both Mary's squad and Loria's machinations have also focused on Tanya in addition to the main army—well, it looks like this might be the end for both Tanya and Zettour.

Rating:

Saga of Tanya the Evil II is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

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