Live-ammunition tank combat as a school sport is exactly the kind of wild idea that one expects from anime, but there's more to love about Girls und Panzer than just the tankery. Even if what first draws most viewers to the series is the explosive action and detailed machinery, it's the friendships, eccentric worldbuilding, and military minutia that keep many coming back.
Given its unique premise, there may never be another anime exactly like Girls und Panzer, but that's not to say that its best qualities can't be found elsewhere. With a little bit of digging and an open mind, fans of the series can find all manner of anime as surprising and delightful in their own way.
Girls und Panzer is currently halfway through a six-film run called Das Finale.
10 Joker Game
The words "military anime" bring to mind soldiers hunkered down in trenches, fleets of aircraft, and explosions galore. Joker Game is a reminder that blood and steel are only half of every battle. The other half is intelligence, theclandestine shadow war where deception and intrigue replace bullets and bombs.
It's that half of war that Joker Game explores, with a plot that revolves around a team of WWII intelligence operatives for Japan. What Girls und Panzer does for tanks, Joker Game does for military intelligence, taking what would be a side note in any other anime and promoting it to the main stage. It might not be the funniest anime, but the series doesn't disappoint.
9 Drifters
In Drifters, Oda Nobunaga and other famous warriors from history are thrown together in the ultimate battle. Where this anime distinguishes itself from others is with its mixture of genuine, historical figures and fantastical plot. Stellar animation, music, and plot development make Drifters an underrated supernatural anime.
Managing to squeeze authentic historical detail into a story that's essentially an afterlife battle royale is no small feat, but that's what Drifters does. Despite a few tonal missteps early on, the series is a must-watch for fans of military and historical anime alike, and it doesn't hurt that it looks so good.
8 Jormungand
Many anime struggle with nuance. Either they're incapable of weaving themes with depth and substance or they aren't even interested in trying. Jormungand is a show about Jonah Mar, a child soldier with no taste for war who nonetheless ends up working as an arms dealer's bodyguard.
Jonah is an interesting character, but it's arms dealing Koko who deserves most of the praise. She's complex, and Jormungand lets her stay that way. Comedic anime like Gintama are wonderful, but sometimes it's nice to be thrown off the cinematic deep end, and that's the itch that Jormungand scratches.
7 Macross F
Intense battles interspersed amongst compelling relationship drama is the recipe that led to Girls und Panzer's success, and it works just as well in Macross F. The alien Vajra threaten humanity's survival, and it's up to Alto Saotome and the rest of Skull Platoon to stop them.
This space opera series alternates between intrigue, combat, and characterization, as slick and stylish as one would hope a mecha anime would be. Mecha series die if the gargantuan machines their heroes pilot aren't worthy of adoration, and here Macross F doesn't disappoint. Alto's VF-25F Messiah is a joy to watch, even if some dislike the series's ending.
6 Berserk
The vision of warfare presented by Girls und Panzer is a happy one. Warfare has been reduced to a school sport. Military tactics and the equipment of death are taken seriously, but for different reasons than in almost any other anime. Not so in Berserk. What Berserk shares with Girls und Panzer is the deification of warfare.
Both anime, in their own way, reimagine armed conflict as the holy grail of human behavior. The differences in their setting are superficial. Instead, their most significant difference is what an obsession with warfare means for the characters involved. In Berserk, from its lowliest footsoldier to its strongest villain, war means inescapable misery and pain.
5 Youjo Senki (The Saga Of Tanya The Evil)
An amoral, 21st-century salaryman dies, has the poor sense to lecture God, and is reincarnated as a girl named Tanya in an alt-history WWI Austria-Hungary where magic exists. That's only episode one of Youjo Senki (The Saga of Tanya the Evil), one of the wildest isekai anime out there.
The chief pleasure of the series is watching Tanya, with her modern, cynical viewpoint, contend with those in the military around her. The portrayal of war is unglamorous, as it should be. Its violence is hard-nosed. Its deaths are sudden. For unique worldbuilding with a military focus, Youjo Senki (The Saga of Tanya the Evil) stands above the rest.
4 Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team
Nowhere is the bond between pilot and machine better demonstrated than in mecha anime. Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team takes the urban and space warfare that the Gundam franchise specializes in and replaces it with a jungle-based guerilla campaign, but that shift of setting only accentuates the importance of the machines.
What the series nails is the sense of weight in its lumbering war machines. These mobile suits, in their own way, feel like the exaggerated tanks they are: cumbersome, huge, and liable to obliterate an entire base by accident. Like a good isekai, it's the world that's worth the price of admission.
3 Code Geass
There are plenty of superficial anime that offer a gorgeous wrapping but no actual present underneath. Code Geass isn't one of them. There's plenty going on in the series: military conquest, family tragedy, and supernatural happenings.
Code Geass enjoys posing hard questions, and the character of Lelouch Lamperouge is the perfect focal point for them. Multidimensional and fascinating, seeing the world through Lelouch's eyes is a pleasure, and despite its brief episode count, Code Geass is an unmitigated thrill from start to finish. Lelouch might not be a wonderful person, but the series couldn't have a more fitting protagonist.
2 Girls' Last Tour
Girls' Last Tour is about girls and military vehicles. Girls und Panzer is about girls and military vehicles. Both series are about friendship, albeit friendship in very different worlds. As strange as the reimagined earth of the latter series might seem with tank combat a school sport, in many ways it feels familiar.
Girls' Last Tour is the story of two best friends, wandering a world that has already ended. Half the reason their friendship feels so vivid and impactful is that there's hardly anyone else they could possibly be friends with anyway. Human connection is special when they are so few humans left. Unlike 86 Eighty-Six and similar anime about the complexities of war,Girls' Last Tour is about the simplicity of war's aftermath.
1 Attack on Titan
From ODM Gear to the rules dictating titan transformations, Attack on Titan has no shortage of military equipment and tactics to familiarize oneself with. In fact, few other series take military action so seriously. Infantry tactics, technological improvements, weapon maintenance, grand strategy, the horrors of war, and the bonds between soldiers all receive their time in the spotlight.
No one would claim that Attack on Titan is a cheery, feel-good series, but few rival the intensity of its combat or the heart demonstrated by its soldiers, even during desperate last-stands that no amount of training can salvage.