Summary

Saga of Tanya the Evil subverts typical isekai tropes with an amoral protagonist in a brutal magical world.
The series challenges the "Chosen Hero" subtrope by featuring a heartless, ambitious salaryman reincarnated as a little girl.
Tanya's actions, depicted as "evil", contrast her innocent appearance, making her a unique and complex isekai character.

The isekai subgenre/trope, often touted to be oversaturated due to the sheer number of light novel, manga, and anime titles that employ it as a storytelling device, has seen flashes of game-changing expressions of the age-old concept.

Titles like KonoSuba: God's Blessing on This Wonderful World! Created a permanent connection between isekai and comedy, effectively changing the general way in which the trope was employed after its airing, and Saga of Tanya the Evil explored the concept through the perspective of an amoral protagonist engaged in a battle of will against an entity claiming to be god.

Here's what makes Saga of Tanya the Evil stand out from other isekai titles.

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By David Heath

Plot and Background

A Salarryman Reincarnates as a Little Girl in a War-Torn Magic World

Yōjo Senki, known in English as Saga of Tanya the Evil, is a light novel series written by Carlo Zen and illustrated by Shinobu Shinotsuki. It began serialization online in 2010, on the user-generated novel publishing website Arcadia, before being acquired by Enterbrain in 2013 and publishing fourteen volumes as of 2023. A manga adaptation of Saga of Tanya the Evil, with art by Chika Tōjō, began serialization in Kadokawa Shoten's Comp Ace magazine from April 2016.

The anime adaptation, produced by NUT (Deca-Dence), aired from January to March 2017, running for 12 episodes. A theatrical release titled Saga of Tanya the Evil: The Movie, which is set after the events of the anime, was released in Japanese theatres in February 2019, and a second season of the television anime has been announced.

She is a monster in the form of a little girl.

The story of Saga of Tanya the Evil follows nine-year-old Tanya Degurechaff, an orphaned girl in an alternate-universe version of Imperial Germany where magic has been incorporated into military warfare and the First World War takes place in the 1920s. It turns out that her true identity is that of an atheist Japanese salaryman who was murdered by an unhappy employee and is confronted by a being he calls "X", one which claims to be God. It condemns his faithless life, and his disbelief in its existence.

The entity forces the salaryman to reincarnate into an existence with circumstances so difficult that he'll turn to God for help. In this new world, he retains his previous memories and rapidly climbs the ranks of the military at an impossibly young age in order to one day reach a rank at which battle on the front lines is no longer necessary, because the conditions of her reincarnation are that she must either believe in the existence of God, or die of natural causes, a feat that is near-impossible in this accursed reality.

The Brilliance of Saga of Tanya the Evil

A Chosen Villain

saga of tanya the evil episode 2 protagonist dying

For the most part, a lot of the growth of the isekai trope lies with the subversion of expectations related to fantasy settings, the concept of reincarnating or being spirited to another world and the developments surrounding the main circumstances. Saga of Tanya the Evil tells the story of a sociopathic man being reincarnated as a little girl in a desolate magical world similar to the 1920s, With war brewing and the brutality of the time, the being, which called itself one that presides over the cycle of death and reincarnation, believes that in putting the salaryman through circumstances this horrible, that it would elicit faith in the man.

The unique circumstances of the man's reincarnation as Tanya, as well as his genuine lack of regard for human life make his reincarnation a subversion of the "Chosen Hero" subtrope found in isekai in which the protagonist is spirited away or reincarnated because of some kind of immutable heroic quality necessary for the continued prosperity of the alternate world.

Tanya is reincarnated because of her lack of compassion and empathy, overwhelming ambition, and unnaturally calm collection of the situation surrounding his death and supposedly divine encounter. There's also the fact that this salaryman remains unidentified even in the scene of his death, adding an eerieness to the description of Tanya as a "monster in the form of a little girl", as the true form of this monster is not known.

Tanya's actions and decisions can be seen as "evil", especially with how casually she can cast away the lives of those she does not deem worth anything without a thought. Usually, isekai protagonists are some variation of the same aesthetic and design choices as a means of making them easier self-inserts for the main demographic of a large part of this media, but this is elevated in Saga of Tanya the Evil by the fact that he's a faceless, nameless salaryman who is reincarnated as someone who is the furthest thing from the average isekai protagonist. Perhaps Tanya being a little girl further drives home the sadistic, sociopathic deeds by contrasting those immensely destructive actions with the frailty and innocence of a little girl.

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