Final Chapter: Nishizumi Miho: Purpose
In all our lives, there comes a time when we realize just how trivial abstract principles such as honor, winning at any cost, following one's ideology or so forth are compared to what is at stake at the moment. In many cases, those are situations in which we must weigh those principles against what we value most, when absolute adherence to those principles demands sacrifice. For me, the sacrifice demanded was the safety and well-being of several of my teammates and friends.
When I saw Team Drei's tank slide into the river during the finals of our high school's tankery tournament, I immediately realized what was at stake. There was no hesitation in my actions when I climbed out of my tank, half-ran, half-tumbled down the slope, and dove into the water to go after the tank. Everything else was pushed out of my mind- what Team Zwei would do without me, my and my sister's strategy, our team's chances of victory, and even concern for my own safety. I knew this had to be done, and I was in the best position to do it, so there was nothing to hinder my actions except the fear that I might be too late. But even that faded when I pried open the hatch and the crew of the tank emerged, quickly swimming to the surface. As I looked to the crew, who were gasping for breath but alive and conscious, I felt a sense of relief only surpassed by what they must have felt.
At the time, I had been certain my decision was the right one, even as I saw that my flag tank had been disabled in my absence, and immediately realized that I would be held accountable. Losing the tournament seemed to be an acceptable price for the safety of those girls who were my comrades and friends. Second place was an admirable result by most people's standards, especially for those who went up against Black Forest. My sister had another year to win the tournament, and I had two more, whereas if anything befell those girls, they would not have another chance to win the tournament or do anything else. Thus, while I was scared of facing my sister and Mother after what I had done, I believed that anything that happened to me would be outweighed by what I had saved those girls from.
Unfortunately, when I faced Mother after the match, my words failed me and I was unable to defend my decision against her. Perhaps I lacked Mother's confidence and iron will. Or perhaps I lacked the experience, the understanding of tankery and the proof to argue the validity of my way of doing tankery. How could I, a girl who had practiced tankery for a few years, make a successful rebuttal against the ideology of a school that had been in existence for almost a century, or out-debate Mother, one of the most experienced and respected practitioners in the field? One might have a good and noble idea, and may even be right about it, but without the evidence and insight to defend it against more skeptical and cynical individuals, it only comes off as pretty words, rather than something can be put into practice, made reality, and adopted by the initially unwilling.
Back at home, Mother spoke to me of the principles behind the Nishizumi family's practice of tankery, principles I had always heard were stricter than what most people followed. I then recalled how much we had stood out from others in our pursuit of our interest. Growing up, an interest in tankery from such a young age that would be considered standard for a Nishizumi would be seen as precocious at best and obsessive at worst, and I had difficulty making friends with similar interests because of that. Akiyama Yukari-san, who later became a close friend, said she had a similar experience before she met me and the rest of our team, having intently focused on tankery to the point at which she did not make any friends when she was young. There is little that is more frustrating and more disheartening than being unable to find people with whom you can do what you love most when what you love most can only be done with other people. But I did love tankery, and after some reassurance from my sister, I pledged not to give up.
In my last year of elementary school, I met Hitomi-chan, Chihiro-chan and Emi-chan, and we played with a tank for an entire summer. The summer was full of highs and lows, but in the end, I found that tankery was something that was fun, that required and encouraged building friendships, and that helped improve practitioners as people. Around this time, though, I realized that the Nishizumi School required me to do what was necessary for victory, even make sacrifices I was unwilling to make, but my sister encouraged me to find my own way of doing tankery.
Naturally, finding a way was difficult, since tankery was always something I had done, partly because my family expected it of me, and partly in order to imitate my sister, who was my greatest role model. I had never thought very deeply about why I was doing it, and coming up with a new reason for what one is already doing is counter-intuitive, to say the least. But even so, I found a reason to continue tankery; to gain and fight alongside comrades in the field, much like I had in that one summer. I believed that by doing so, I could seek the joy that I felt riding in a tank that summer with my friends without sacrificing my comrades or my happiness. As Emi-chan returned to Germany to find her own reasons for doing tankery, I promised to meet her again when I had found my own way, and promised the same to Chihiro-chan and Hitomi-chan when we went our separate ways after graduating.
I ended up going to the same school as my sister, doing tankery alongside her. Mother seemed to approve of my performance at first, since by winning, I had upheld my obligations, which were separate but not mutually exclusive from my personal goals. I had always put my full effort into winning, since by doing so, I could enjoy tankery the most, and I thought that level of commitment and effort was good enough for Mother if I won. I was successful until my first year of high school, when the incident happened and I made a choice that Mother deemed unacceptable.
In this confrontation, it seemed to me that everything I had done up until now was a game in the eyes of Mother, a relic of childhood that one had to set aside as they got older, like how children progress from reading picture books to seriously analyzing great works of literature instead of merely enjoying the story. She had not accepted my reasons, merely tolerated them so long as they had not interfered with obtaining victory at all costs. And now that there was a conflict between my way of tankery and the Nishizumi style, it seemed to both of us that either I would have to choose whether I would follow the Nishizumi style at whatever cost was demanded of me, or forsake tankery completely.
My sister sat across from me during the family meeting, completely silent, with a cold and serious expression that reminded me of a soldier on duty who had regularly risked his life and faced hardships that made ours seem trivial in comparison. I knew her reasons for doing so, but it still hurt to see her act in such a way, and my will crumbled as I realized I was alone against Mother. No one was supporting me or depending on me to persevere- not even the girls I had saved. Even when I was supported by my friends years ago, I could only ask a single question about whether my sister was expected to win at any cost, and was unprepared to respond to Mother's firm affirmation that she was.
I was hesitant to talk with my sister about what Mother had said after the match in the days before we returned home. I felt as though I knew what she would say- that I needed to find my own way of doing tankery. Ordinarily, such an answer would be the proper one, since one can rarely solve one's own problems with others doing the thinkng, which was the final lesson Emi-chan taught me before returning to Germany. This time, it seemed as though Mother allowed no room for individual thought and decisions. If I was not allowed to do even that, what was left for me?
I then thought about why my sister did tankery; she committed herself to fulfilling her obligations as Nishizumi heir so that I could live the way I wanted without being pressured to be her replacement. Possibly because of her motivation, or who she was, she was more willing to endure whatever it took and keep pushing herself forward than I was. She had succeeded in living up to Mother's standards, and yet I did not feel as though I had escaped the expectations associated with an inheritor of the Nishizumi School. Mother continued her lecture, telling me that I, too, was bound by the tenets of the school, yet another person who bore responsibility for the school's reputation from the moment I was born. Every time I went into tankery, I would be judged by how much I could live up to my family's reputation, both by my family and outsiders.
I had known this was coming since Mother had confronted me after the match. In retrospect, I should have anticipated something like this happening all along, but I chose to deny the possibility, to hope that I could reconcile my way of tankery with the Nishizumi family's expectations. It was only thanks to luck, my sister's skill and the strength of the teams we had served on that we had won every match until now, and I had avoided having to make such choices. The moment had come for me to announce my decision- to leave Black Forest and Tankery behind and go to Oarai Academy, a school I had chosen specifically because it had no tankery program. There, the name Nishizumi meant nothing and I could be whatever I wished to be.
Mother looked taken aback for a moment, one of the few times I'd seen her stern visage show any sign of vulnerability or surprise, as I had made a decision she had not anticipated. This was the first time I had managed to get in a point on my favor in this argument, and it was only after resorting to the tactic I had least wanted to do.
My sister caught up to me after my talk with Mother, and seemed quite surprised at my decision. Her surprise was understandable, since I had not discussed it with her. But I think she knew all along that I was never suited for the Nishizumi style of tankery, which is why she decided to bear that responsibility in my stead. For this reason, he had once said that if I hated it, it was fine if I chose to quit. Indeed, if there was nothing left for me in tankery but fighting and winning regardless of the cost, then I saw little point in continuing. She seemed somewhat disappointed as she realized she would never convince me. I wondered if she had also considered making the same choice at one point or another, but continued because she was expected to do so.
As I prepared to leave Black Forest, I decided to keep my departure as discreet and private as possible, saying it was due to a personal issue, and asking my sister to say it was a family matter if anyone from the team asked; I hoped Team Drei would not blame themselves for a decision I made on my own. I realized that I would leave behind tankery, the friends I had made in it, and even my sister. I then began to wonder- was this what Mother had meant when she said sacrifices were necessary? Was the only way for me to be happy to leave behind everything I knew and had gained through tankery? And had I truly made the right decision?
"Class, this year, we have a new transfer student," my new homeroom teacher at Oarai said. "Nishizumi-san, please introduce yourself to the class."
I had always found it interesting, and a bit unfortunate, that apart from those who earned the privilege of calling me by my given name- a small and selective group in our society- everyone knew me first as a Nishizumi. But no one appeared to react to my family name, and I took small relief in that.
"Hello, everyone, I'm Nishizumi Miho," I said to my new class. At this point, I would have mentioned hobbies- first among them, my interest in tankery- but now that I had forsaken it, and had nothing comparable to it, I decided to skip that part. "I look forward to working with you all!" After taking a bow, I then walked to my seat, as a normal schoolgirl seeking a purpose in life.
A small nagging feeling remained inside of me. Maybe I had given up too easily. Maybe I was running away. Maybe in trying to live without tankery, I was beginning to realize that being a tank commander was an integral part of who I was. Maybe I had forgotten that tankery was pleasant for me; even when we pursue the passions we enjoy most, there are times when we feel upset or frustrated, among a myriad of negative emotions that we feel when we're reminded that every rose has thorns. But while the feeling gave me some cause to doubt my decision, it did not give me enough insight to find a way to reconcile my tankery ideals with reality or accept the Nishizumi style.
It just so happened that when I transferred to Oarai, the school revived its tankery program, and the student council was especially desperate to have me in Tankery, as one of the few people with prior experience. But Takebe Saori-san and Isuzu Hana-san, my first friends at the school, were willing to forgo tankery in spite of their interest so that they could take the same elective as I did, and were willing to defy the Student Council and risk incurring their wrath to defend my decision. At that moment, I realized that I had found the friends I had hoped for, who respected and chose to defend my decisions. I then chose to go into Tankery, with the hope that I could put my ideals into practice and enjoy tankery once again.
I met many people with different approaches to tankery, and learned more about their approaches to it. Darjeeling-san's team defeated us in a practice match, but she said she enjoyed fighting against my team more than my sister's stronger team, making it among the first times I was favorably compared to my sister and heard strength was not everything. Kay-san, by withholding some of her forces after learning of her subordinate's intercepting our radio transmissions- not illegal but hardly sportsmanlike- and talking with me after the match, showed it was possible to not only enjoy tankery but do it for fun. Anchovy-san valued victory above all else, but in her own way, seemed to see it as a goal shared by the entire team; something to which all members, especially the leader, contributed, and all members shared once it was attained. Katyusha-san was similarly determined to win, but also able to respect her opponent's capabilities, realize when she was bested and accept defeat from a worthy foe. In seeing people who enjoyed winning and losing, and who competed because they wanted to, rather than because they had to, I remembered that I could choose my own reason for doing tankery.
Unfortunately, the tournament had higher stakes than I had imagined- Oarai's very existence was on the line. According to the student council during the lowest point of the match with Pravda, the school could only remain in operation by winning the tournament, and nothing less than first place could achieve that goal. Before, it was easy enough to throw away victory to avoid one of my friends getting hurt, but if I did that in this tournament, I would be betraying the hopes of the entire Oarai student body, not just my teammates, and I would be separated from my friends and uprooted once again. At that point, however, I realized that while there were times when failure was not an option, sacrifice was not always a necessity, and I was able to help my team to escape the church and defeat Pravda without anyone getting hurt.
Knowing the cost of defeat seemingly meant I had no choice but to win at all costs- but it also meant I had something to protect, and a reason to fight. I wanted to preserve the bonds I had formed with everyone this year, and hoped to continue in the next year. Hearing about what was at stake gave me reason to fear what would happen if we lost, but it also inspired me. The student council had been counting on me all along, believing I could rise to the occasion and save the school, but they also gave their all in the tournament. All those students, from the volleyball club that was likely a victim of budget cuts, to history and auto enthusiasts, to freshmen hoping to return to the school next year and the year after, to girls from the Disciplinary Committee's Mallard Team fighting alongside the chronically tardy Reizei Mako-san, to girls meeting each other for the first time in real life, all came from many backgrounds and were united for a common cause.
It was for that cause that Rabbit Team asked me to go on without them when their engine stalled in the river, even though they were in very real danger in the water. They had remembered a time when they had panicked and fled, and had felt guilty over causing me trouble back then. With the school on the line, they did not wish to get in the way again, at any cost. But I was also pursuing victory for their sake, and refused to leave them behind or give up, managing to tow them to safety long enough for them to restart their engine. I did not see it as a case of choosing between saving them and winning the match, not when their help was vital for our success. With their covering fire, and the assistance of the others, I was able to immobilize the Maus' turret long enough for Hana-san to disable it, they eliminated the Elefant, and they sacrificed their own tank to defeat the Jagdpanther, proving instrumental in removing some of my sister's trump cards.
In my final confrontation with my sister, everyone was counting on me winning where I had once lost in the past. My Anglerfish team planned and carried out one last desperate effort to end the duel, defeating my sister and securing our school's future. Before she left, my sister congratulated me, and told me my way of tankery was different from the Nishizumi school, but worthy on its own merits. At that moment, I realized that I had found what I had been looking for since I had first started tankery as a young girl, and what I thought had been beyond my reach since the finals of the last tournament. I could now do tankery on my own terms, not following anyone else's, as my sister had advised me to do all those years ago, and as we returned to our schools, we both did so pleased with my new sense of purpose.
Mother might see my determination as inadequate, but I had reasons to not give up. She might see me as fighting for the wrong reasons, but for those reasons, I put everything I have into winning. And even if she sees my skill and resolve as inferior to my sister, I had what it took to win against her. Whatever happens from here on out, I will continue forward in tankery, on the path I have chosen for myself, along with those who have chosen to walk it with me.
Author's Note: Thank you for reading this story and for the reviews.
IcyBlaze4545: Little Army played a significant role in this work; not only does it reveal quite a bit about Maho, making her a more interesting and likeable character than in the early anime (she's my favorite character from Girls Und Panzer), but it's also a story about Miho finding a reason why to do tankery, and taking the first steps from seeing it as something that she just did to something she wants to do for her own reasons. The incident at the center of this fic was a setback, but as the ending of Little Army indicates, Miho returned to tankery, and as the anime's ending shows, found her own way of tankery.
Silver-Eyed-Rukia: Yes, that was a typo on my part. Thank you for pointing it out; it has been fixed.
BF110C4: That's an apt way of putting Shiho's (lack of) perspective. I recall that some of those discussing Miho's decision argued that if it had been a real battle to the death, Miho should have left the tank behind and concentrated on winning instead of risking more lives to save them.
This last chapter was meant to tie together Little Army, the events before and during the show, and this incident in order to chronicle the evolution of Miho's ideals about tankery; the closest thing to "the whole story". While it's not revealed what happened between when the Miho-Chihiro-Hitomi-Emi tankery group disbanded and the incident in the finals that this fic is based around, it can be assumed that things went, for the most part, without problems, and that event was the first time since Little Army that Miho had difficulty reconciling her own personal style of tankery with her family's. Her time at Oarai helped her to rekindle her love of tankery, as well as find her reasons to continue.
Based on my interpretation, while Miho says she was following the Nishizumi way, it seems that she had her own priorities, and hoped to do tankery for her own reasons as long as she could. Essentially, the incident with Team Drei in the finals was the first time Miho, by doing what she wanted, was unable to live up to the Nishizumi School's expectations. Believing that she could only continue to do tankery the Nishizumi way, Miho quit and transferred to Oarai, leading to the events of the show.
Miho seems to be somewhat on the self-deprecating side, as she says to Yukari after Aoi thanked her that she still doesn't know if her decision was correct, but at the time, she wanted to save her friends. It's thus possible that she believed wholeheartedly that she was right at the time, but after facing so much criticism, she began to doubt herself.
I alluded to a brief shot in the family meeting in Episode 7, in which, after Shiho tells Miho that she cannot win without sacrifice, Maho looks up with a cold look on her face, and Miho looks like she's about to cry. I decided to explore that in light of Maho's real reasons for pursuing her status as Nishizumi heir, and the true nature of her relationship with Miho; it's possible Miho knows that the Maho who acts cold to her isn't the real Maho, but understandably finds it painful to see her sister act that way.
The winning next year part is similar to reasons the Freshman team gives in Episode 8 before the match with Pravda. Momo is fairly upset by hearing this, so much that she almost discloses the part about the school being shut down, but in her case, there are consequences for all of Oarai if they lose.
Anchovy's sentence comes from the manga, which shows the match against Anzio at the expense of only showing the last moments of the match against Saunders. Before the match, Anchovy taunts Miho by saying that her way of tankery is weak, and having watched the last tournament, has resolved not to lose on the one who turned her back on tankery. After the match, Anchovy is a sore loser and rages against Miho, accusing her of throwing away a victory back then. When Miho expresses her reasons for doing tankery, Anchovy says that a commander's responsibility is to bring victory to the subordinates, and as she's leaving, apologizes to Carpaccio, possibly for losing. Interestingly enough, Miho seems to see her approach to tankery as a valid one, and says at the end of Little Army that she hopes to meet people with different styles of tankery, an idea I incorporated into that paragraph.
I had planned a second chapter with Aoi at one point and an epilogue that looks at all the individual perspectives again, but I decided to cut these out because they didn't fit as well with the flow of the story (Aoi's personality after the finals, for example, is best dealt with when she goes to speak to Miho in Episode 10).