Character Analysis: Tanya von Degurechaff

This post is similar to an anime review but more focus on the main character of the show “The Saga of Tanya the Evil”. Anyone who watched the show would instantly relate while the word evil can be associated with this little blonde girl. While a lot of negativity can be said about her personality, there are often overshadowed positive qualities about her that are shown in subtle ways in the show.

Note:
This analysis is based on the recent anime released. My opinions may change about her when a Season 2 is released. I have not read the light novels. All images here do not belong to me. This contains spoilers.

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Summary of the Post

Introduction to the Show
Tanya von Degurechaff
Character Strengths
Character Weaknesses
Relationship to Being X
Hypothesis
Conclusion
Reference Images

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Introduction:

Tanya is the rebirth persona of a murdered Japanese salaryman. Thanks to Being X (a.k.a. God), Tanya is reborn to a parallel world that resembles old Europe during World War. This world had magic in it. Back when she was a he in our world, he was known to be a cold and rational character insensitive to people’s emotions. That earned him the ire of a fired co-worker that led to his murder.

Tanya is an atheist and up to the moment death, she denies the existence of God and refers to the omnipotent being as “Being X”. Now it takes a lot of guts and resilient belief system to deny the omnipotent presence even after it has demonstrated abilities like freezing time and possessing multiple people to have a conversation with you in split seconds. Her complete arrogance and lack of faith led Being X to put her in dire conditions.

She must do everything she can to survive and die of old age. Otherwise, Being X removes her from the cycle of rebirth and send her soul to damnation for all eternity.

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Tanya von Degurechaff

Baby Tanya von Degurechaff was abandoned and taken in a poor nunnery. She was reborn in an infant form. She grew up retaining her consciousness as an adult from the other world. As a little blonde blue eyed girl in a cruel world, she relied on her wits to survive. She displayed affinity for magic making her a suitable candidate for recruitment in the military. She decided to aim for a high rank in the military to increase her chances of survival away from conflict areas.

She focused her efforts in building a career in the military. A high position would secure her safety. By a twist of fate, she often finds herself in situations that take her into the front lines. We can suspect Being X had something to do with most of these occasions and often not seen in the show.

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Character Strengths:

Anyone who ever encounters her for the first time would often be caught off guard by her looks. Tanya uses this to her advantage in several occasions in the show. Who would have thought this little girl would have exceptional leadership skills, excellent marksmanship, and a master manipulator? The show occasionally exemplifies this for people that encounter her for the first time. However, for people already familiar of her, she is viewed with respect and fear by those around her.

Tanya is good at critical thinking and foresight. She is able to maneuver in most combat situations and knows how to carry her unit. Even when anger wells up inside her, she understands these emotions and maintains a level headed approach to any circumstance.

She is the perfect role model soldier for the Empire she serves. She’s your standard genius with selfish intentions. As a cold and rational character, you can expect her priority to efficiency matters first over her subordinate’s welfare.

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Character Weaknesses:

Her weaknesses are not from lack of experience or technical skills. Her selfish, strict utilitarian, and ambitious outlook in life are the major drawbacks that prevent her from becoming a loved person by everyone. They view her with respect and fear. Tanya is difficult to convince especially when she knows she is right and most of the time she is.

The show has displayed how precise, and cold her thinking pattern can be especially during combat when ethical and moral dilemmas present. Her appearances definitely betray what she is capable of and she is capable of evil alright.

There were instances when she almost gave into her rage but maintained composure after rationalizing disobedience would only merit her a firing squad. It is difficult to trust her completely without you second guessing what’s her ulterior motives.

I think if she started showing a little compassionate towards her comrades while keeping a level of firmness, she would have achieved near perfection as a person. But that would end up being a boring character when we got nothing to hate about her right?

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Relationship to Being X

There are several cues about her treatment towards Being X that makes her lack of faith in the omnipotent being run deeper than what the show displays. Think about it? If a an omnipotent being magically forces your rebirth into another world, stops time, controls several worldly phenomena against your favor, would you still be rationally capable of denying Being X?

It’s obvious that the story has more to reveal about Tanya’s viewpoints and backstory on why her resilient belief came to be. She is already an established rational character and to deny Being X’s presence is already on an absurdity. But she still does.

Being X plays the role of a cosmic sadist trying to make it miserable for Tanya to survive. However, in the orchestration of Tanya’s sufferings, Being X also manages to make everyone else miserable including its faithful believers in the process. Tanya repeatedly kills the faithful and just brushes off whatever Being X throws in her way.

We can guess this is all just amusement for Being X given its omnipotence surpasses Tanya’s capabilities to counter. So what is Being X’s motivation for prolonging the conflict?

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Hypothesis:

It doesn’t matter at all whether Tanya succeeds or not. It is obvious that if Being X willed it, he could create circumstances that could lead to Tanya’s absolute death. Though I would suspect Being X is unable or chooses not to tamper with free will, but it can tamper with other worldly phenomena which is more than enough to end the conflict.

Being X seems like a cosmic sadist that enjoys Tanya’s struggle as a non-believer as it continues to flex fate’s muscles against her. There seem to be no conditions that could secure Tanya’s victory over Being X other than believing in Being X’s integrity to keep to its word. Between the two of them and everyone else caught up in the cross fire, it doesn’t really matter how many lives are lost. The cycle of rebirth continue anyway.

There are also elements about Tanya’s personality that help keep her somehow likeable by her subordinates. Beyond the respect and fear her subordinates feel, there is somewhat a tinged of loyalty and trust in her command. Normal people would talk behind other peoples back especially someone with the likes of Tanya, but we often see her subordinates talking neutral or positive stuff about their commanding officer.

We even saw some of her subordinates meeting and discussing about Tanya’s recent actions and welfare. I guess Tanya is doing something positive off cam to make her troops talk about her that way.

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Conclusion

Tanya will likely come to a point where she reveals the reason why her ironclad resistance against Being X is in place from. However, it might not be the reason the fans may expect in the first place. Maybe the reason is just as absurd as her insistent denial of Being X. She has all the necessary skills and cognitive capabilities to survive in any situation. Tanya is not necessary evil all the time.

She does what she thinks is rational and does not harm for pleasure unlike your standard evil. She’s just trying to survive with the way she only knows how but that’s not to say everything about her actions could be excused. I think her character build up in those 12 episodes had a good pacing.

I’d definitely like to see more of her if season 2 of the anime comes out.

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Reference Images: 12345678

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art and flair courtesy of @PegasusPhysics