So I finally got change to watch the first episode of the new Tanya live action series and honestly I was impressed. Anime adaptations are almost always shit and I haven’t really watched a live action series for a long time but they did an amazing job with this one. I can’t say how faithful it is to the source material. I’ve only watched the anime and this series seems to be set a few years later, so it’s possible that they are just adapting some of the later LN volumes after a time skip or maybe they just had to do some change for the new live action format.
They did some good choices with the main cast. I didn’t recognize any of the actors but they do a good job portraying their characters. It’s worth noting that despite this being a Japanese production, almost all the actors are Caucasian.
Tanya is a bit older in this series, she seems to be about fourteen. Apparently she got promoted and has even more authority within the military. Her uniform also changed, it looks a bit more like the black uniforms of the SS now. I can’t say much about the rest of her troops. I couldn’t recall their names and none of her men left that much of an impression on me, neither in the anime nor this version. I didn’t see her second in command girl either, I wonder what became of her.
The series starts off with Tanya and her troops flying to some meeting in a snow covered forest region. During this flight she recalls her recent inspection to some prison camp. That Professor who designed Tanya’s improved magic crystal also makes shows up again. It seems like he might have a bigger role from now on. He’s also the only character so far that was portrayed by a Japanese actor. He’s the leader of this camp and currently performing human experiments in order to find out more about psychic powers, which are explicitly different from the magic we see so far.
Tanya even watches an experiment in which one of the test subjects manages to push a metal coffee cup with his mind alone. She is impressed but then states that at this stage it would sadly still be more effective to simply throw the cup.
It then changes to a scene about the enemy troops. Apparently the daughter of that angry sky ski dude that blew himself up in the final episode makes a return as the main antagonist. She leads her own troops now and has become rather ruthless, being to torture and execute prisoners to obtain information. Her flight gear looks unlike anything seen before. She and her soldier have some new type of magic jetpacks. She also has a wakizashi-looking blade on her belt. It might come up when she fights Tanya later, judging by how many shots focused on it.
When then get back to Tanya’s party who’s arrived at their destination: an almost castle like manor. Again, I was really impressed how good the series looks. The sets of the manor’s interior were especially well made. The meeting is just about to start up when some frantic massager catches up with her. She addresses him with “Well you found me, soldier. So what is it?” when the scene changes again.