After the Tsunami, Oarai Needed Visitors. Then the Tanks Rolled In

On March 11, 2011, a tsunami up to 4.2 meters high reached Oarai, a beach and fishing town on the Ibaraki coast, and flooded about a tenth of it. Visitor numbers fell from 5.54 million in 2010 to 2.98 million in 2011.

In October 2012, Girls und Panzer premiered. It's about high-school girls who compete in sensha-do, tank warfare treated as a traditional martial art, and their school ship calls Oarai home. The show recreated the town almost faithfully: streets, shops, facilities and transport, some under their real names.

The town said yes

Oarai's visitor numbers climbed back to 4.08 million in 2012 and 4.29 million in 2013. Some of that was the town recovering from the disaster. Some of it was tanks.

The clearest signal came at the Oarai Ankou Festival, the town's monkfish festival. In November 2012, the voice cast of the show's Ankou Team (ankou means monkfish) appeared, and about 60,000 people came. The festival set a record of about 140,000 in 2019.

The shops joined in, too. On March 24, 2013, at the spring Kairaku Festa, the local commerce association placed 54 life-size character panels in shops around town, a project called "Garupan Machinaka Kakurenbo," or hide-and-seek around town. The panels are still listed as on display, and separate panels of all 45 tanks from the anime are scattered around Oarai.

What a visit looks like now

The town has its own GuP landmarks: the free Garupan Gallery shop and exhibit at the Oarai Seaside Station shopping complex, and Panzer Vor, a free-entry GuP cafe inside the 60-meter Oarai Marine Tower, open since 2015. Official stamp rallies have paired characters with places like the Marine Tower and Oarai Isosaki Shrine, whose torii stands on the rocks at the edge of the sea.

This year's Ankou Festival is set for November 15, 2026, at the Marine Tower plaza, with a voice-cast talk show. The franchise isn't finished either: part 5 of Das Finale was announced in November 2025 for a 2026 release.

The rules that keep it working

Oarai's welcome comes with rules, and they're worth knowing:

• The character panels are fragile. Don't touch them, step into the road to shoot them, or park on the street.
• At town events, there's no cosplay of present-day military, police or fire uniforms (GuP costumes are fine), no realistic replica weapons, and no tripods, selfie sticks or drones.
• The rocks beneath the Kamiiso torii are sacred and off limits, and people have drowned there.
• No overnight camping or place-holding at the Ankou Festival venue.

Read our Oarai guide for getting there. Then buy something from a shop with a panel in the window. That's how the town knows the deal is still working.