High School Fleet

So the show has been fairly standard. Nothing particularly great or terrible comes to mind. The plot was intriguing, and the characters are developed enough that I can partially invest myself.

Up until this point there have been hints of something sinister and nefarious running in the background, driving the plot. We've had some build up in tension, and we get a boat-fight as the climax of each episode. Doesn't really break conventions at all, but it doesn't drive us away. The third episode ends with a ray of hope that the protagonists might have some external allies

And then episode 4 rolls out. We start the ... episode by completely dissolving all the dramatic tension. We are alerted that the school, where they can hopefully solve the conflict, is only 26 hours of sailing away. Just over a day's journey. That leaves a large window for something to go wrong, but gives the impression that they are close to success.

And then the entire crew falls into disarray because they're out of spare toilet paper. Further dialogue suggests that they are not right out, indicating that there is likely some in the bathrooms currently. They suddenly break into worry over their dwindling supplies, and there is talk about stopping in a nearby town to restock, despite the current ban on their ship from entering all ports other than the schools. This is the premise of the episode

On its own, the shopping subplot isn't terrible. What makes it so, is that they just affirmed with the audience that they'll arrive at the school (where the ship would normally restock) in 26 hours time. That means that at this time tomorrow, the girls will be 2 hours away from salvation.

Why on earth would they go on a shopping excursion!? Surely they have enough toilet paper to last them a day if they all choose to be as conservative as possible. They already indicated they have plenty of food, and even if they didn't, 26 hours is less than the 30 hour famine that many people take on in support of starving communities! If they'll be at the school soon, why would they risk stalling their journey for another couple hours just so that they can wipe with as much as they want?

The first five minutes of episode 4 just absolutely shatter the suspension of disbelief. There is no reason why these girls would make such a stupid decision. I can't even finish the episode now, but I'm fairly certain that attempting this risky excursion gets them caught, they enter into another sea battle (as that seems to be how every episode ends) to fend off the pursuers who found them, and the entire sequence makes it harder to return to the school (because solving a conflict before the end of cour would illustrate just how little content there is).

If this is how they're going to try and keep things dramatic, it's not something I can watch. There is nothing more to keep me invested in the series, unless I just want to watch cute girls pilot a ship.

I largely knew what I was getting into when I watched this and I knew it wasn't going to be anything great, but a friend wanted to try it. It was pretty much exactly what I expected it to be, and it's probably exactly what you expect it to be as well. So lets get into this.

Story: Whatever, the plot is stupid, who cares, it just serves as a vehicle for having the ship and crew do things. There are many major plot conveniences that don't really make sense, a number of threads and implications that go nowhere and ultimately the plot is kinda silly ... and not well explained. But we know who's going to win from the start anyway. The plot does it's job just about, it's not so horrendous as to particularly offend me but it doesn't really stand up to much scrutiny and it's ultimately not that interesting. It makes the girls go places and do things in their ship and get into fights.

Art: The character designs are all very cute, I just wish they'd had more chance to shine but we'll get to that later. The animation is pretty good and the 3D for the ships doesn't look bad. All in all the show looks pretty nice and is well presented with some nice details. On the other hand we're not talking really exceptional art on par with the best, but I think the show looks very solid. It's never really ugly and the main point, the cute girls, are very cute.

Sound: I don't really remember much in the way of the music and I didn't find the other sounds in the show to be overall very impressive. I don't really remember how the voice acting was, which I assume means it was at least ok, possibly solid. The guns could have done with a little more oomph to them. Realistic or not, they just didn't sound that impressive especially in the big battle where lots of guns are going off.

Characters: Oh boy, the characters. There are a lot of them. And few of them get any character development and for those that do it seems... a little incoherent. Aside from the captain and vice captain, they all really only get handfuls of screentime each and I never felt like I got to know any. It's a shame because I actually think a lot of these girls have potential. Which actually surprised me. But I think if there were some sort of spinoff shows that focused more tightly on sections of the cast (and gave them due respect), that could be a thing that I would actually like. I ended up wanting to like a number of these girls but a total lack of screentime and character exploration meant that I just didn't really end up caring. It says a lot that 7 episodes in to the show my friend and I had this exchange:
17:16 - Person012345: what's the main character's name?
17:16 - [XXXXXXXXXX]: i cant remember

The main characters that really got any development were the captain and her vice captain. I feel like they were trying to show the captain becoming more mature and respectful, by learning that her place is at the bridge and not running off on crazy adventures whilst leaving the crew to handle themselves, but I wasn't really feeling the development, it felt kind of forced and then it also got contradicted by the main person pushing for it towards the end. I suppose that was to show her becoming more relaxed, but overall it felt conflicted and neither of these really felt like natural progressions of the characters. It again may be because they couldn't even explore their characters in any real depth so we didn't feel it. Also, everyone on the ship sort of felt like they bumbled into everything and the only character who was having appropriate reactions to everything happening was the girl who cried about everything (who I came to end up wanting to learn more of, but alas). Everyone else seemed more concerned that they might run out of toilet paper than the fact that they were wanted fugitives who faced god knows how long in prison, or a cold watery death.

For me the characters are the core of any show, but especially one like this that is character focused and I feel like the ball was dropped. They tried to cram too many girls into the picture so that everyone could have a waifu and as a result, really couldn't do anything with any of them in adequate detail despite the characters actually having potential. I also didn't feel like they treated the characters with as much respect as they routinely had them dressing up in swimsuits or other outfits so we could gawp and when coupled with the lack of actual exploration of who they are as people, it leaves them feeling like objects to be fapped to rather than beloved characters who we're meant to care about.

Enjoyment: Well, I mean, I managed to get through it. Though if I had been watching alone I would have dropped it without a doubt. It wasn't absolutely terrible, but I don't really consider it worth watching. Again, the show is what it is and if you're here you probably understand what it is and what it's trying to be.

Overall, I'm feeling a little generous and it did have it's moments, so this show is a low 5 for me. On another day I might give it a high 4 but I think it solidly straddles the 5 line. Not really worth the time, but it also didn't ruin my week.

Story: 3/10
The story was all over the place. I thought it was going to be a typical schoolgirl anime with ships and they would go on missions, but then they have to fight a virus?? It felt like they were making it up as the story progressed and they were trying to drag it out.
Art: 9/10
I loved the art. It was consistent and the ocean looked very realistic, which was a nice touch. I also liked the designs of the ships, although some of them looked very similar.
Sound: 6/10
I liked the opening song and the battle music, but that was it.
Character: 3/10
Too many characters. I ... felt like they tried to focus on too many at once. I didn't like Misaki as a main character. She was too indecisive and only cared about saving Moeka. I'll give her a pass, though because it didn't make sense how the school made first-year students the captains of some of the ships. How would the higher-ups know if they're ready to be leaders or not? It's obvious that she wasn't fit to be captain of the Harekaze.
Enjoyment: 5/10
I only enjoyed the action scenes.
Overall: 5/10
It was okay. That's all I can say. The anime tried too hard to be a moe and action anime at the same time and it didn't really work. Honestly, I would've liked it more if they focused solely on the action. There's also some drama that I wished could've been more explored upon, but it's either quickly resolved or never developed. For example, there are a few students that questioned Misaki's leadership and there were times where I seriously thought they were gonna mutiny. That would've made the anime so much better. But they didn't and that's disappointing. I would recommend this to people who like action as long as you ignore the stupid parts of the anime.

Okay, so I don't know much about boats apart from what I learned from Kantai Collection (Which was still literally nothing) but I'm pretty sure it isn't ideal to have an entire crew comprised of fifteen-year-old girls. That being said, High School Fleet dives (Pun intended) into a world in which roughly 75% of the Japanese navy isn't even old enough to buy cigarettes. The result from this isn't an economical boom in the naval industry or increased maritime production, it's a complete, utter mess in which no one really has any idea what the hell they're even doing on a ship in the first ... place. But that's fine as long as you throw in scattered fan service, right?

Wrong. High School Fleet (Or Hai-Furi if you're that guy) seems to have no idea what it's trying to do throughout its entire 12-episode voyage (Pun intended Part. 2). What starts off as an interesting concept (That totally wasn't piggybacking off the success of KanColle), quickly becomes a jumbled battle or friendly-fire and some girl with twintails that was completely misplaced in an aptitude test and should never be driving (Piloting?) a boat ever in a billion years. Oh, and it's all caused by an alien rat or something. Yup.

Allow me to elaborate on that last sentence...Oh wait, I can't! High School Fleet never even attempts to clarify why there are weird alien rat creatures that are able to infect and consume the minds of Japanese schoolgirls and force them into attacking literally everything that they see. Instead, the mature doctor-type fifteen-year-old is just like, "Hey guys, I figured it out. It was the rats, lol" and everyone else is just like, "Ohhh yeah, that makes sense" and they just leave it at that. WHAT?! You can't just throw in a plot device like that and not ever explain anything about it! Did they leave that episode out or something? Or were the alien rats simply just a means of forcing teenage girls into naval combat with actual boats instead of just cute girls with cannons on their backs in order to tailor to the twenty-five people in the anime industry that are actually interested in that.

If there is anything High School Fleet succeeds in, it's making naval combat look like a complete cakewalk. Misaki Akeno, the "captain" of the Harekaze, has literally no idea what she's doing and her entire crew knows it. Hell, even Akeno knows it and, at various points throughout the series, is just like, "Hey can someone else do this please?" but none of the others girls ever step up -- probably because, I don't know, they're teenage girls?! Instead of actually commanding her ship, Akeno just yells, "Hard right rudder!" over and over again until the series ends and the Harekaze still somehow manages to come out on top of every battle -- further proving that teenage girls shouldn't be in command of the navy.

What High School Fleet should have done instead of relying so heavily on boring naval skirmishes would be to focus more on its characters because, in all honesty, most of them were pretty great. The Harekaze had an incredibly lovable roster with tons of unique, cute girls that could even compete with Kancolle in many aspects. This, of course, brings me to the question of, "Would I have liked this series more if it was just a straight up slice-of-life?" Strangely enough, the answer to that question would probably be "yes". The fact of the matter is that everything in High School Fleet apart from the characters is just flat-out bad. I think the real sin is that the writers actually knew this and threw in swimsuit-filler any chance they could get before reluctantly saying, "Okay, time for another battle," and begrudgingly getting back to work.

When the screen isn't completely taken over by the ocean (So probably around 30% of the series), the artwork is actually nice and refreshing. Character designs are clear, vivid, and overflowing with moe. The diversity of the girls is a huge plus and, I hate to keep making this comparison but you literally have to, harkens back to Kancolle and how its different artists were able to design different, specific types of boat girls. The only problem with this is that the majority of the girls in High School Fleet should have never set foot on a boat in the first place.

In Summary:
High School Fleet is essentially what happens when you try and turn Kantai Collection fanart into a full-blown anime series. While the characters are endearing and absolutely adorable, everything else (Particularly the naval skirmishes) falls flat. When you get down to it, this entire series is built on a plot that is not only confusing but straight-up stupid and inexplicable. If you take away the alien rat things, High School Fleet would have just been a bunch of teenage girls sailing around on boats all day which, in all honesty, would have been better than what it actually was. Even the niche fans that watched this show for all the boat-stuff will easily be able to decode how hard this series tried to cater to them. But when all you know about boats is the term "Hard right rudder," it's probably best to stick to slice-of-life.

Caution! My first review! Also I am Finnish so not the most perfect English! so Excuse me please.

The story was something I didn't really care off when I watched this anime, as I found out about it when I started playing a lot of World of Warships. I just wanted to see some sweet naval action. But the story altough I didn't care about it, it was pretty bad. This is one anime I like to refer to as Girls und Panzerish anime, where bunch of loli-ihs girls take control of Ships, Tank etc. And like GuP, the story is odd. I didn't catch up ... why do they train these girls in naval warfare and stuff but the main characters want to be these Blue mermaids who do some naval missions.

Art was fine, it looked satisfying especially when the warfare was at hand. But otherwise it looked very, Dull. Thats the best word I can define it.

Sound, well I don't remember a single track from the OST as it was the typical goofy anime music most of the time, and the Opening and the Ending I skipped. They were boring.

Characters are the worst part by far, No enjoyment out of the characters what so ever. For me they might have even ruined the anime for me. I know its not actual military or anything like that but I think key to succesful crew (or one of them) is discipline, wich the ship Harekaze has none. The crew memebers can pretty much do anything and the Cpt doesn't care. And many characters were annoying overall. Only redeeming character was Munetani Mashiro who had some sort of idea how command structure works. (Also the German girl... The German naturally was awfull)

Enjoyment overall I would rate 6 as the characters were shit, Story was boring, animation when there were no battles was dull, But when battles came along the anime became enjoyable. Or atleast when the Cpt wasn't jerking around.

So the overall rating would be 5. As that is the average.

So you come in, you sit down, and you see an anime about cute girls doing cute things on some sort of warship. Girls und Panzer but with boats instead of tanks, right? Well, not quite. In this series, the warships are actually used for patrol and defense of the now-flooded world and their now-flooded and now-ship-based islands. Neat concept right? Where's the story going to go?

The story starts off as the previously mentioned cute girls doing cute things on the Harekaze, a Kagerou-class Japanese destroyer, a ship that was never made. By the end of the first episode, the tone shifts to a more ... serious tone, throwing out really strong Hunt for the Red October vibes, but then by the next episode everything is cheery once more. Near the end of almost every episode, the tone gets darker, the episode ends with a cliffhanger, and the next episode starts off cheery. It's a common theme.

Unfortunately, the vibes go from Hunt for the Red October: cute girls edition to a much less serious, much less intriguing, and infinitely more infuriating plotline that completely killed the series for me. Surely there was some sort of saving grace, right?

There was. In the form of naval battles. The naval battles in the show were actually pretty enjoyable, even if they were completely CG and almost completely without any danger to the main characters. They were still cool, though!

The 2D portions of the series, which consisted of everything that wasn't the outside of a ship, really, were actually pretty well animated. The ship designs and some of the other designs were interesting as well, but the goofy speedboat looked dumb.

The music, however, was awful. It was almost entirely unenjoyable and completely forgettable.

The characters were relatively well designed and some of them were pretty interesting, but there are 2 main problems in this series. First, a destroyer crew would require a LOT more people than there are on the Harekaze. Second, almost everyone wears the same outfit and the only way to tell characters apart is by their hair and voice, and even then, sometimes you have to try and remember who exactly they were.

I actually almost dropped the show because of how boring and bland it seemed, and the CG was incredibly jarring for me. Then the plot started, and I figured, what the hell, one more episode. Eventually the cool plot dropped in favor of the much less cooler plot and I figured I'll stick around until the end. In the end, I did sort of enjoy it but honestly felt a little disappointed that, at no point, American ships showed up. Just German and Japanese with a couple of generic modern destroyers and trimarans.


Overall, I'd say that the series was a bit of wasted potential. If you're looking for The Hunt for the Red October: Cute Girls Edition with any solution to the plot that stays with the theme, this isn't your anime. If you just want to see cute girls doing cute things on naval warships, then this is probably your anime.

The anime has so much potential but it felt that watching this series had too much filler and didn't get to the main point. The theme of this anime is action : Action, Military, School yet this anime is much more focus on comedy.

When compared to "war theme" anime such as Girls Und Panzer, it has a better balanced of action to comedy. Therefore, Haifuri has such dissapointment despite the fact it had its potential.

Considering the fact that you can't afford to mess around with only 12 episodes, you have to get straight to the point. The equator event arc was not needed for the ... anime version as it serve as a filler like previously mentioned.

"Spoilers alert"
Don't understand how this anime gets so many high rating reviews. That navigation girl's voice is one of the single most annoying thing going on. She's on a military training personal position for god's sake yet she squeaking like a mouse. While we are on the topic of mouse who would pick an unknown mouse and put it on their cheeks? Putting something on your face just because it's cute is a very bad example to present it to an anime that suppose to be kids friendly and might give them some bad ideas somewhere down the line.

I watched High School Fleet, also known as Haifuri. I watched the TV anime, OVAs, and the movie. Here are my thoughts:

This is basically the maritime clone of Girls und Panzer, which I didn't enjoy enough to watch more than the first season of. It's been years since then, but I think one of the main reasons I dropped GuP was because of the crappy characters. I remember also thinking that the battles were very drawn-out and often boring. Anyway, enough about GuP — I only bring it up because the comparison is so common.

High School Fleet involves battleships which are operated by crews of ... cute girls. This is a winning combination, in my view. Watching the girls working together in their various naval roles is entertaining. The girls are enrolled in a naval academy for training to join a military organization called the Blue Mermaids (Blue-Mers LOL). It's unreasonable of me to expect this, but it would have been nice if a bit more attention was given to the technical aspects of the battleships. Although, anime is probably the wrong medium for that. Regardless, if you like military stuff then there's an okay amount of that here. Admittedly, I'm kind of a military dork so I'm probably a little biased in this regard. The ships featured in the anime resemble WW2-era battleships.

In terms of animation, CGI is frequently used to animate the battleships. The CGI can sometimes appear crude, even by anime CGI standards. However, the character animation is often surprisingly good (although inconsistent). I'm fine with this resource allocation as the high-quality character animation does enhance the cuteness appeal of the show. Both the art style and character designs are fairly generic. Although I will say that a disproportionate degree of attention is paid to the characters' hair, both in terms of design and animation. I enjoyed this subtle aspect of the show since I just really like hair (OMG I'm such a weirdo) and think it's an important feature. There are lots of cute hairstyles among the cast! Anyway, it's not really the character designs themselves that evoke the feeling of moe within me, it's the 'gap moe' of the girls operating warships that really amplifies the cuteness.

The cast is very tropey, unsurprisingly. Some of the characters are pretty funny though. I don't have any significant complaints about the cast; this isn't the kind of show that requires character development. The cast is enormous, making it difficult to implement individual character arcs anyway. None of the characters are annoying, thankfully.

In terms of voice acting, there's a fair bit of variety. Some of the VAs do an exceptional job (ex. Rin), although they are diluted by the enormous size of the cast. As for music, I liked the OP song (the vocals are pretty good). The OST was nothing special. I would have liked to have seen a more military-like soundtrack for this. Could you imagine a well-produced military-inspired OST with lots of brass instruments used in a show like this? That would be awesome. There was a mild military theme to the music, but I would have preferred it be stronger (I realize this is kind of a silly complaint). Regardless, a more creative and talented OST composer could benefit this anime a lot, especially considering that there are plenty of moments without any dialogue. However, I will say that the sound effects during battle scenes were pretty nice.

There was a healthy mix of plot and lighthearted silly scenes. It was sometimes a fun show to watch. However, one of my biggest issues with this anime was the plot itself. The battle scenes were usually fun and entertaining, but many other plot-related scenes were tiresome. Without giving too much away, the story involves a dumb mystery. A lot of screentime gets wasted on eyeroll-inducing scenes related to this mystery phenomenon. Just know that it was really dumb, and not in an enjoyable way — I sometimes felt like I was watching a one-star horror movie. Even beyond the mystery, the writing in general is just poor. The plot doesn't completely dominate the show, so I don't want to overstate its impact on my viewing experience. Still, it was pretty bad and I would have preferred a completely different story or, better yet, no plot at all. Seriously, I even would have preferred that everyone just sat around painting their nails and drinking milkshakes, while occasionally firing some torpedoes and 400mm cannons. In any case, for maximum enjoyment of this anime, I think the best thing to do is shut your brain off.


My overall rating for the TV anime: 6/10
I pretty much got what I expected. It was fun and cute, but there was room for improvement. It felt like this anime 'played it safe' in a lot of respects. Aside from the naval setting and the sometimes-strange plot, it was a fairly stereotypical moe show. I actually would have liked to have seen the maritime theme embraced more than it was. Meaning, a greater emphasis on naval operations, naval warfare, and general seamanship (I realize this is an unrealistic expectation for anime). As opposed to tropey character interactions that we've already seen play out in countless other settings. Due to its setting, High School Fleet had a chance to be truly unique. This chance was somewhat squandered. I also think that this show would have really benefited from a higher animation budget. There was tons of opportunity here for gorgeous visuals that would have enhanced the viewing experience, but this wasn't fully capitalized upon.

I'm not sure if it had any effect on this anime production, but apparently the studio went bankrupt not long after it aired (the movie was made by a different studio). Maybe there's a story behind that.


I'll also include my opinion of the two OVA episodes: they were bad. The plot was bad and they didn't even take place on the ships, which removed a significant driver of my enjoyment of the show. The OVAs were considerably worse than the TV anime, in my opinion (OVA rating: 4/10). I wouldn't recommend watching them unless you adored the TV anime.


As for the 2020 movie, here are my comments on it:
- the same crude jarring CGI is used to animate the ships, unfortunately. In fact, the visuals in general are barely a step above the TV anime, which is disappointing. As I already said, this anime could benefit a lot from better visuals.
- again, not enough focus on the maritime theme of the show. Not nearly enough cool battleship content. To my stark disappointment, the first ~50 (FIFTY) minutes of the movie did not have a single battleship scene (so, basically half the runtime). High School Fleet continues to squander its potential by not focusing on the things that make it unique and entertaining. It still continues to be "Generic School Anime but Sometimes On a Boat This Time" (which unfortunately isn't unexpected).
- again, another ridiculously bad plot that feels like it came out of a grade-school creative writing class. Literally the kind of thing I'd expect in a one-star movie. Not that I care that much about the plot anyway. Please just show me some cool battleship stuff and accompanying gap moe; at this point I don't even care what storyline you need to justify it.
- when the battle scenes did finally arrive, they were pretty underwhelming, particularly for a movie. Sound effects were alright but could have been better. I was also disappointed by the lack of any ship-vs-ship skirmishes.
- the sense of novelty that kept me interested in the TV anime has since worn out. I've already seen 14 episodes of this anime, and the movie isn't really bringing anything new to the table.
- the characters are still just as cute as they were during the TV series. This is one thing that High School Fleet consistently does an okay job of.
- overall I simply didn't enjoy the movie as much as the TV series. Spending ~half the screentime onshore was a major reason for this. It's called High School FLEET, okay?! FLEET. As in, on ships at sea in the flipping water! That's all I'm asking for!

My overall rating for the 2020 movie: 4/10

Rin and Tama are the cutest!!


There's another thing I want to say about modern anime more generally, even though this review might not be the best place for it, and I'm probably stating the obvious anyway. A lot of modern 'moe' CGDCT shows will add a theme to their story or change the setting or do something to try to distinguish themselves from all the other similar shows. So many of these anime will, in concept, have a totally unique and interesting theme that could make for a memorable show. Upon implementation though, the show will squander this unique potential by deferring to the same tired formulaic CGDCT material — the same tired character interactions, the same stale comedy, the same character types and tropes. High School Fleet is yet another example of this (and hardly the most egregious). It doesn't fully commit to the elements that make it unique, and instead plays it safe, so what you end up with is Generic School Anime (sometimes on a boat this time!). Admittedly, High School Fleet has a unique plot (and unfortunately it's quite bad), so it's not even an ideal example of this phenomenon.