Third Aerial Girls Squad: A One-Off Fighter Jet Anime That's Like Initial D in the Sky

This is Third Aerial Girls Squad, or TAGS, as we'll call it on and off. If you're unfamiliar with some of the more prevalent tropes in modern anime, you probably have some questions after just looking at the promotional poster. Why are multi-color-haired anime girls flying around in fighter jets? Why are they dressed the way they are? Wouldn't a G-suit be more pertinent? And, most of all, why are they flying jets as old as the hills? If you'd suspend your very keen disbelief for a little while, all will soon be clear.

The mythos of the TAGS universe is centered around an alternate reality to our own, with a divergence you definitely weren't expecting. In this universe, an ostensibly-contemporary human race is four years removed from the arrival of alien beings called the Builders. In a series of events mildly reminiscent of Will Smith's Independence Day, the Builders proceed to construct a series of massive crystalline structures called the Pillars. Despite the fact these aliens had the tech to travel thousands of light years to Earth, the Builders have a mystifying penchant for copying human technology.

The malevolent Builders happily commandeer, then reverse engineer the latest and greatest in human military hardware. Everything from American F-22 Raptors and F-35 Lightning IIs and even prototype fifth-gen fighters, even the ATD-X, Japan's design for their own future stealth jet, are mass-produced by the Builders to serve their own ends. But, in the most ironic twist of plot development this side of an HG Wells novel, the Builders appear to have a definite cutoff point where they stop taking an interest in human hardware. From the looks of it, this cutoff point is roughly around 1975. Or the period of transition between generation-III and gen-IV fighter jets.

In short, whatever airpower the anti-Builder resistance has left can only come from jets built before the point of their abrupt loss of interest, almost like an ADHD-stricken youngster losing interest in yesterday's TikTok video. So then, nothing but the classics. Suddenly this throwaway half-hour anime short is a hell of a lot more interesting. But people who don't watch anime regularly might have a hard time wrapping their heads around who's piloting these jets.

The bulk of the plot in this anime is centered around the human resistance's enigmatic 307th Aerial Squad, or "Hell's Alice." A scrappy five-aircraft-strong formation piloted by what appear to be young adult women, wearing a wider color palate between their respective outfits than your average JDM meetup. Admittedly, it's hard to get over the absurdity of specifics in this anime if you're not familiar with some of the more jarring tropes in semi-contemporary Japanese anime. But this is just one of a few recent anime known as Seinen. Where-in young women are inexplicably given the keys to deadly war machines for our entertainment. These shows are mainly geared towards high school to adult-aged men, though many also have large female fanbases, so this does make at least a little sense.

Other examples of such anime include Girls und, Panzer, based around tank warfare, and High School Fleet, for the Navy fans in the house. Such a bizarre cast of characters can be a hell of a culture shock if you're not used to it. It might even get you thinking about watching something else out of pure instinct. But if beautiful artistic depictions of military planes are your thing, those inhibitions vanish as Third Aerial Girls Squad opens to a breathtaking shot of an AWACS Grumman E-2 Hawkeye. From its spinning engine propellers to its trademark spinning radome, the detail to which each aircraft in this universe is depicted is nothing short of the top shelf.

This all-important opening shot sets the scene for what's to come. This AWACS plane is flying in support of the 307th, speeding like bats out of hell toward a Builder Pillar rapidly overrunning a human outpost called Midway Base. The squadron is spearheaded by the flight lead, a Japanese woman named Aria Hitotose, in her Mitsubishi F-1 twin-engine supersonic attack jet in its trademark JASDF camouflage. To her left is the American Catherine Weller, piloting a McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II wearing what looks similar to the decals of the USAF's 178th Attack Squadron.

The cast is rounded out by Israeli hotshot Noa Ashkenage in her IAI Kfir. Essentially a French Mirage 5 with a beefier American J79 turbojet engine, while native Swede Christine Waldegård pilots a gorgeous Saab JA 37 Viggen delta-wing strike fighter. Maybe the most interesting pairing of the trio is Tatiana Yakovlef, a girl of unknown Slavic origins, and her Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23 swing-wing interceptor. A plane Tatiana goes so far as to claim is "the most powerful swept-wing fighter on the planet." Yeah, I think the F-14 Tomcat wants a word with her.

Is your suspension of disbelief kicking in like V-Tec yet? Because once you get past the quirks, isn't this the most awesome basis for a military aviation-themed anime? It's like years worth of online message boards and Reddit threads debating whether X retired jet fighter could shoot down modern fifth-gen fighters were sent in one giant e-mail to be animated in Japan. In fairness, it's hard not to ponder such hypotheticals when you're into military aviation as a hobby. To be presented with such a premise in a genuinely interesting and engaging way is nothing short of a treat.

But for all its culturally ambivalent qualities for Western watchers native to anime in general, the dogfight sequences in TAGS are nothing short of sensational. Watching genuine relics of old warbirds clash toe-to-toe with F-22 Raptors and F-35 Lightning IIs decked out in menacing black paint makes for an exhilarating watching experience for any Ace Combat, War Thunder, or DCS World veterans in the audience. The fact these old hoopties absolutely shred modern stealth jets with neon-colored anime girls at the stick can only be jarring for so long before it just feels right somehow.

Being a Seinen anime, there are a few slightly less-than-safe-for-work aspects about itself we need not mention in this wholesome article about fighter jets. But hey, so did both Top Gun movies, and we don't hear anyone complaining about them. What matters when it comes to Third Aerial Girls Squad is that every moment of aerial combat looks and feels memorable. By striking a needle-precise balance between absurdity and the genuine beauty of the dogfight scenes in TAGS that we can't stop raving about.

It's to the point where by the end of the first episode, some av-geeks who aren't all that anime-inclined might even be tempted to watch another; I know I sure was. But there was just one problem with that. There isn't a second episode. The single almost half-hour episode was all that was ever made because Third Aerial Girl's Squad isn't actually a real anime. It exists in the universe of Shirobako, a 24-episode anime series published by ASCII Media Works in the mid-2010s about a group of artists and voice performers working together at a Japanese animation studio. TAGS is one of two separate projects depicted in Shirobako, with a whole episode-length feature dedicated to it.

If any of this made your brain short-circuit a bit, I'm right there with you. Why do you think I waited until the very end to tell you? But did I regret dedicating half an hour of my time to watching the one episode of Third Aerial Girls Squad? Honestly, I can't say that I did. Even if I haven't watched an anime without being forced to since Naruto and Bleach were still airing on Toonami, I can only say I genuinely hope they make it into a full series. That'd be some real fireworks. Check out the full episode down below.