The Saga of Tanya the Evil, known in Japan as Yōjo Senki (幼女戦記, literally "The Military Chronicles of a Little Girl"), is a Japanese light novel series written by Carlo Zen and illustrated by Shinobu Shinotsuki. It began serialization online in 2012 on the user-generated novel publishing website Arcadia. Enterbrain acquired the series and since then has published twelve volumes since October 31, 2013. A manga adaptation with art by Chika Tōjō began serialization in Kadokawa Shoten's Comp Ace magazine from April 26, 2016. An anime television series adaptation by NUT aired from January 6, 2017 to March 31, 2017. A theatrical film taking place after the events of the TV anime series premiered on February 8, 2019.

Synopsis[edit]

An unnamed atheist Japanese salaryman, in the moment of being murdered by a disgruntled subordinate who he had fired due to poor performance at work, is confronted by an entity that declares itself to be God who condemns the salaryman for not having 'faith'. The salaryman disbelieves in its existence, criticises its various statements from his perspective as an atheist and mockingly terms it as 'Being X'. The entity decides to reincarnate the salaryman into a world where he would face sufficiently difficult circumstances to turn to Being X for help.

The salaryman is reborn as Tanya Degurechaff, an orphaned girl in an alternate reality's equivalent of Imperial Germany, known as the Empire. According to Being X, if Tanya either does not die a natural death or refuses to have faith in it, her soul will leave the cycle of reincarnation and will be sent to hell for the countless sins that Tanya has committed in her previous life. In search for an escape, Tanya decides to join the Empire's Mage Corps and fight in the war, hoping to reach a high enough rank as fast as possible to remain far from the battlefield, and in this way avoid the risk of being killed. Even if she's now forced to speak with a young girl's lips, Tanya soon turns into a ruthless soldier who prioritizes efficiency and her own career over anything else, even the lives of those beneath her, especially those that get on her bad side.

Empire[edit]

Tanya von Degurechaff (ターニャ・フォン・デグレチャフ, Tānya fon Degurechafu)

Voiced by: Aoi Yūki^[3] (Japanese); Monica Rial^[4] (English)

Tanya is a young blonde, blue-eyed girl who is the reincarnation of a cold-hearted, atheistic, and social-darwinistic Japanese salaryman (briefly voiced by Kōsuke Toriumi in Japanese, and Josh Grelle in English). She is a mage with magical powers that enable her to fly and fire explosive bullets from guns. Compared to others, Tanya has a high latent magical ability, and is the only one capable of using an experimental Type-95 operation orb due to Being X's interference. She controls a battalion of elite mages whose main purpose is to overwhelm enemy forces while also remaining highly mobile and relatively small. Tanya is quite ruthless and intolerant of failings in others, much the same as in her previous life, and employs several extreme punishments and training methods. After she graduated from the War College as one of the Twelve Knights, she was granted the title of von. By the end of TV series her rank is Major. At the end of the movie, she finally gets her dream job working with an office job in the rear for 2 months with a promotion to Lieutenant Colonel, much to her joy and triumph against her hated enemy, Being X. But that joy was short lived when she received a phone call from General Zettour, who informed her that he had put her proposal, titled "Unit Usage and Operational Maneuvers in the Current War" to use and organized a Kampfgruppe codenamed "Salamander", which consisted of infantry, armor and artillery, gave her command of the special army and wanted to see her research in action by having her and the 203rd mage battalion return to the front lines once more, much to her shock and horror.