Girls und Panzer WMG

[DHBirr]

I'm planning to put this on ATT as soon as it's back up, but I felt like bouncing it off any GuP watchers here anyway:

The tank battles are actually all in virtual reality.  This is why no one gets broken bones or worse when their tanks are flipped upside down and set on fire.  The girls Miho rescued from drowning in her character-defining moment were in no real danger at all.  This makes her mother — and Erika — not quite as dickish as they'd seemed.

On the other hand, as Maho pointed out, Miho's determination not to yield her subordinates even to simulated death breeds an esprit de corps and devotion to their leader that lets a pack of newbies defeat veteran players and overwhelming odds ... so this hypothesis does NOT mean Miho's the idiot Shiho and Erika call her.  Rather, she's deliberately playing at a higher level of difficulty than they are.  And beating the odds anyway.

Virtual reality also mitigates the apparent wastefulness of the whole program.  That shopkeeper wasn't talking about remodeling with insurance money after his shop was wrecked, but remodeling with profits from people visiting the shop because it featured so prominently in the broadcast.  Free advertising, yay!  And those impossibly large ships?  Hey, the computer simulates those, too.  Everything's really all taking place on land at Oarai.

The simulation is so good that people, especially young people, often lose track of the fact that this isn't the real world.  That's why Mako, flaking out, thought she had to swim to get to her ailing grandmother, rather than simply logging out of the simulation and catching a taxi. 

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Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.

[hazard]

A nice thought, but the GuP background information goes into some detail about all the safety equipment. Everything that happens actually happens in reality.

[DHBirr]

Ah, yes; the dreaded "all there in the manual"!  But I still find it difficult to accept the proposition that, without so much as a seat belt or padded clothing, no one ever gets really injured inside a tank abruptly knocked onto its side or upside down.
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Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.

[hazard]

Well okay, that is pretty much a setting conceit from a setting that just wants to do cute girls in tanks doing cute and awesome things. Several of the events shown in the series should have resulted in injuries at the minimum, possibly severe ones.

[ECSNorway]

DHBirr wrote:

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Ah, yes; the dreaded "all there in the manual"!  But I still find it difficult to accept the proposition that, without so much as a seat belt or padded clothing, no one ever gets really injured inside a tank abruptly knocked onto its side or upside down.

That's one thing High School Fleet (aka Girls und Panzerschiffs, in my headcanon) does better - they actually show the airbags and such that protect the kids on a couple of occasions, like when the destroyer takes a turret hit from a big gun.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Star Ranger4]

ECSNorway wrote:

High School Fleet (aka Girls und Panzerschiffs, in my headcanon) 

*googles*  HA!!!  Finally a good reason for sailor suited schoolgirlzzzzz!!!!
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

[DHBirr]

A tank filled with holes.
For that is what we shall be.
Boom we go, goodbye.

A "parting haiku" composed in a dire situation in GuP episode 6.  In fact, that panzer didn't even get disabled, but it's the thought that counts.Edit:  Oops, used wrong episode number at first.-----
"The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that this was some killer weed."
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Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.