Overview

Now, here's an admittedly less than original idea on the outset. What happens if you take a naval battleship 'manned' entirely by women... and drop a single, quiet young man on it? And, being that this is an anime crew, it's a given that the girls aren't going to be your average rank and file members of the navy - especially given that this is actually what amounts to a mercenary ship. Thus we have the crew of the Pascal Magi, including their newest member, Hyousuke. A heavy, though outdated by the standards of Tactical Roar's world, destroyer class vessel hired out by the Haru-Nico Insurance Agency. So why, you might ask, does an insurance agency have a need for a heavy destroyer? Things are a little different in the world of Tactical Roar, with the major problem being a massive hurricane over the Pacific called the Grand Roar. This hurricane is so large that it is self-supporting and stationary. The power it displays has altered wind and pressure currents on a global scale, making air travel considerably more difficult, and so a second naval age has begun.

Review

Anybody who's seen any sea-related show or movie should know exactly what that means: Pirates! And so the Pascal Magi, along with other mercenary ships, act as escort vessels for the booming sea trade. The Magi is something of a fluke among the Civilian Navy, though, partly because of its age - Hyousuke describes it as being 'so outdated' upon first sight - and because it is entirely staffed by women. This latter reason makes the Magi something of a target for ridicule among the rest of the Navy, who call her by the name Alice Brand because she 'hasn't earned her real name' yet. And wow, is her crew ever varied - with just about every female anime character cliche in the book. I'll get back to that a little later.

The story proper is good, what there has been of it thus far. The problem is, it's buried under fanservice. That shouldn't come as any surprise, considering the series premise, but I have a feeling that a lot of people will be turned off by the first fifteen minutes or so of the first episode, which, despite being the typical character introductory phase of any anime, is so laden by fanservice that a lot of the introductions get lost in it. The writers could have done a far, far better job of this and still gotten nearly as much fanservice in. Once - if? - you get past that, however, Tactical Roar does show itself to have the beginnings of a good story to it. After how shallow the first fifteen minutes are, the multi-layered plot that starts getting setup in over the next couple of episodes came as a fair bit of a surprise - I honestly wasn't expecting all that much out of it, after the beginning.

In part that's because of the characters. The crew of the Pascal Magi, despite being incredibly cliche on the outset, manage to be interesting. Besides Hyousuke, there's the captain of this floating insane asylum, Nanaha Misaki. She and Hyousuke, naturally, were childhood friends before she'd left to join the navy. Now though, she barely acknowledges him, until the third episode when she finally comes off duty. The rest of the main cast consists of the CIC ops staff and the first mate. I have to warn you - if 90% of the cast isn't outright lesbian, then they're at the very least extremely bi. This isn't a complaint on my part, it's a warning for the close minded. You can avoid the series here and now if you don't like it. Beyond that, as I said, the crew covers just about every anime female cliche there is, from the man-hating semi-tomboy to the real operator nurse and the child-much-too-young-to-be-there-but-there-anyway-because-she-is-a-prodigy. And yet despite their cliche-ness, I've found myself rather liking them by the end of the second episode. They're flawed, and actually don't quite settle into their apparent stereotypes as I'd have expected them to.

The animation is solid, one of the series's highest points. Character design sticks to the lines of the character's archetypes, but then so far the ships have been almost as much of a draw as the girls. The Pascal Magi looks to be a modified modern missile destroyer, with a VTOL pad and mini-maintenance bay for the Magi's combat jet. More 'modern' ships have interesting designs too, though I'll not claim to have any knowledge of seaworthiness.

Overall

In all honesty, I have to admit that most people probably won't like Tactical Roar at the surface level. Even at the time of this review, with only three episodes in, I'm still a little on the fence about it myself. There is a lot of fanservice to be found - too much, I think, and rare that I'd say that. The writers really needed to do a better job of introducing the characters, and hopefully the trend I've seen toward story-telling over blatant fanservicism will continue. I'd also like to see more time spent on the history of the Pascal Magi. There's already hints of harem-ism showing up that would be good to go away too, but as long as the writers focus on a solid story and drop some of the fanservice, this could be an excellent series.