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When the anime was first announced, I was generally sold on its concept and I am a big fan of both all-girls action anime and overlooked anime in general. Tappei Nagatsuki being the writer is also a plus so I had moderately high expectations of giving it a chance. After having watched its early episodes, there are some promises that the anime will certainly do well with its wholesome story that showed a lot of potential and I'm certain it'll have an actually encouraging message hidden somewhere. Unfortunately, almost all of my hope is lost and it heavily petered into a mixture of blood-boiling anger ... over how it turned out, sorrowful disappointment over many aspects not going the way I wanted, and slight disgust. There are many things the show did wrong with very few rights so I'll first start exploring my own issues about the show.

The characterization was my biggest problem: it was supposed to deal with how a socially withdrawn British pilot protagonist named Claudia Bruford struggles to fit in with others after being assigned to a special mission in Japan. The theme of blending a loner into society is pretty important to me for relatability because I myself had poor social communication skills that moderately only improved in the last few years and is always seeking for social attention in hope of being seen in a positive light and having a strong desire to talk with others more despite being conflicted over the meaning of why human are social creatures.
Unfortunately such theme was very poorly executed because we don't see much glimpse of how she interact with anybody beyond a few characters, and there's almost no attempt at having her explore her personal journey of self-discovery. Claudia herself doesn't get as much screentime and overall character development as intended of because hers was undeservedly stolen by three other main characters (Miyako, Azuzu and Sonoka) and the anime focused way too much on them (especially Miyako and Sonoka) at the expense of either her or anybody else, which is a shame because in my personal view the main cast's screentime and overall characterization should be evenly distributed for each of the main heroines. It's made worse with the fact that not only is she supposedly the official protagonist of the story, but has a plot importance greater than anyone else (except Odin the villain). Her relationship with Odin wasn't even expressed very well.

The side characters are also extremely poorly developed and their characterization just weren't very endearing as intended because so much of the interactions between the entire cast were either one-sided or had interesting character themes dealt rather terribly. The only character I feel like had any actual development was Sonoka but her character arc felt rushed. However she's a very relateable character not just for her ovewhelming kindness and her desire to treat everybody as equals but it also had to do in a time where I was self-absorbed in my own thoughts and had similar self-esteem and social communication issues as hers so seeing her having the courage to become a slightly better person made me envious.
I also like that there's not a single unlikeable character in the cast which is one of the kindest I have seen, and it's rare for me to empathize with an antagonist like Odin regarding his loneliness and social attention issues because I can also relate to it somehow, and it's quite rare to see an all-girls show dealing with actual female friendship with low-key to no yuri subtext these days which is a good thing to me but could have been handled so much better without the underdeveloped characterization of the cast.

Now come my own issues with the story (without spoilers of course): without having read the 4-volume LN prequel and a manga prequel set before it (as well a SoL manga spinoff but that's optional) which are required for extensive knowledge to truly understand the whole picture, the story sounds very interesting and even cool on paper even though I'm not big into the idea characters piloting military vehicles, but there are a lot of things that could have been showed that are either straight up missing or terribly done, on top of having a really bad pacing that should have gone for another cour if the story is the same as it is but stretched twice the length and rearranged completely to fill in the gaps for themes that should have gotten focus like I said before, namely more slice of life moments for better balance and more focus on Claudia and side characters. It's been a while I have watched the show since it finished airing, but the Pillars lacked actual backstory of their own and I don't know how and why Odin is going against humanity even though he's the one who granted Valkyries super-powered WW2-era planes to fly with.
There's so much they could do with the worldbuilding like taking an alternate history approach with romanized Norse mythology that's more than just an aesthetic, and how Claudia's origins tie into everything (which is somewhat delivered but still left a lot to answer). The concept of men supporting the Valkyries' path to victory sounds nice but I was disappointed that there is a serious lack of women supporting them as well (aside from the bridge bunny trio at the Tateyama base) because it could have painted a better picture of a scenario involving all of humanity (especially side pilots of both genders) wishing good luck for the girls to fight against the Pillars.

Contrary to what the premise told me, there's barely any focus on male characters as needed and while they're mostly handsome and all, they look way too old for my tastes. Aside from Odin, most are played solely for comic relief. There's also a serious lack of a male character that's around the girls' age, which is strange because the show likes to boasts over how Miyako dreams of becoming an housewife. The running gag of having side male pilots lusting after the girls isn't funny at all, I felt like it's their entire personality rather than being individual entities of their own. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind age gap but I seriously doubt the male pilots' take of romance and flirting with the girls are taken seriously at all and it feel more like one-sided teasing. Honestly they should have been depicted as more like big brother/father figures that would grant the girls comfort and advices of how to stand up (even in group because collectivism is one of the series' main themes) if needed.
In stories like these, I personally don't think romance should be THAT important (let alone necessary) but since I feel like it didn't mesh well with the rest, it might as well be taken off and nothing would've changed much.

The sexually-charged fanservice that's straight up in your face, overly detailed and racy in its approach is extremely out of place and outright doesn't fit the overall innocuous but slightly dark nature of the story. It doesn't work at all when it blends with the rest and the way it presented is so inappropriate to the point it might as well belong to some ecchi heavy title. I cringed hard at the unnecessary beach episode and the bath scenes are even worse and a total disappointment for being too unrealistically sexualized, it didn't help that I didn't even get a tame scene involving all four main girls bathing together onscreen either due to how underdeveloped in the characterization department they mostly are.

On a more positive note, its visuals and technical aspects are generally decent. I love how expressive the character designs can be and the atmosphere for some dramatic scenes can be quite intense at times. The way its animation is conveyed is a reflective extension of it, even if it's off-model pretty often. It's surprising how the plane shots alternated between hand drawn and the relatively not so outstanding 3DCG, since I only expected to see one or the other to have full focus. Director Hirotaka Tokuda did a good job neatly directing his first ever work under such role and I honestly look forward to see more of his work as a director, it's a shame his top-notch skills are wasted on a such disappointingly mediocre story. The soundtrack isn't particularly memorable for the most part but some of its tracks selectively still stuck inside my mind to this day and I'm fond of the vocal songs it provided.

Long story short, Warlords of Sigrdrifa is an actual textbook example of both being a personal disappointment and how not to make a girls' action story. The story is an incoherent mess with too much interesting plot themes that are either outright missing due to wasted potential or downright rushed to the top, the characters while having interesting personalities and character themes on paper (even boasting one of the kindest casts out there even in their genre), are handled really poorly, characterization and character interactions are very mishandled and unequal, and the pacing is really awful even for a short run. There's also too much focus on a story that doesn't take time to breathe, bad melodrama involving characters outside of the protagonist, clumsy use of tonal shift and inconsistent use of action to slice of life ratio. Basically I had very mixed feelings about this show, and I don't know if only watching the anime is worth it if you're not that passionate, but I'll probably complete its whole franchise to better comprehend its true message someday.