What surprised me the most was the story. Summaries given for this series were vague and mostly explained the universe. I knew I was expecting cute girls in battleships, but not exactly in this way. Unlike Girls und Panzer, the battles here are real life-or-death situations. Of course, I should put out there that this is, by all means, not as dark as you may think. It just caught me off guard, that's all. The battles are pretty entertaining, and at times we get some down time where we see more natural interactions with the girls.
There is a large cast of characters, and that's to be expected of a fleet. Not only do we have the main fleet that we focus on more, but there are others shown as well. Obviously, we don't have much time to get to know everyone, so only the most important characters get any true development. As much as I understand it, I would have liked to see what type of personalities everyone else had. There's so many, that most of them I forget who they were and their positions.
There really isn't much to say about the animation. For the most part, it was consistent with a few minor setbacks, but overall it was good. While we get the usual CG for the ships, I still enjoyed the battle sequences.
I would give High School Fleet a pass simply for that fact that it surpassed my expectations of what the show would be. I think I probably would have liked it more if story continued for another season, enough to where there's more plot development and getting to know everyone on the fleet. However, I am still content with what I got.
