Story:
Remember folks! This is not a story about girls having naval tournament like senshadou in Girls und Panzer, nor its a Kancolle "bizzarre" animation sequence anime like one person thought it was. This is a story of students aiming to become Blue Mermaid, maintaining the safety of the nation's territory from invasion and other unwanted incidents. A certain dialogue in an episode hinted they were trained since middle school, or perhaps even before that.
So it means that what the girls are doing are for their future professional occupation and not for playing around. So believing that this is a funny-happy-go-lucky story especially like Girls und Panzer will leave you disappointed. Also this is not about saving a school, so don't get your hopes on that kind of thing.
However there are flaws just like every other stories or animes. But I don't want to mention it here to avoid unintentional spoiler. But if you don't really mind it surely you can just brush it off. The story alternate between serious and casual. So if you want a hardcore stuff where everyone are arguing against one another in a ship, you might stop watching this kind of anime and start watching movie like Crimson Tide, The Yamato Men or perhaps real historical warfare.
Characters:
The reason I like Haifuri the most and put it in my lifetime favourite is the variety of characters; from the timid to annoying one. Surely there are a lot of anime that has this kind of variety. But having around 32 characters in a single place (ship) is a point for me because it showed how each of them compromised one another; they argue, agree, obey within the chain of command. It indirectly created the "comrades of the sea is a family" vision; they slowly become close to one another and become a "family". Almost all of them are being developed as the series went on. Only few had little development which is a little bit of flaw.
How they were assigned to their post which seems unfit may be due to their exam scores (this is just a theory). Just like Akeno who are unfit to become a captain and she herself believe that. But she had to abide the position assigned to her due to being unable to decline and change her position directly in short amount of time. So rather than thinking the problem with the characters' position you ought to see how they tried to developed their self-esteem and personality.
