High School Fleet

If I could have a conversation with the people who came up with this, I think it would go like this; "Let us put a load of sexy schoolgirls on a warship!" "Why?" "Because it has never been done before! Sexy schoolgirls are already everywhere and can do almost anything, so why they could not operate a warship I do not know!" "Well, they cannot carry torpedoes because it would look a bit weird and shady, and how the hell do you justify that?" "Well, magical school! There are plenty of high schools in anime series, so why not start one for training a special crew for a warship?" "It sounds clichéd as hell!" "It is not going to be. Yeah, we are going to put schoolgirls in short uniforms, as I am sure there are going to be fans of that!" "So what about the narrative? This seems like total crap." "Well, we set them up as rookies, and they start a fight with the other ships because there is a misunderstanding, and the battle and suspense are taken care of!" “Aw man, nobody is going to buy that.". So I guess that is it. I like cuteness and cute anime girls; however, this whole thing did not make much sense, and the entire premise of schoolgirls on a warship did not sit right with me somehow. I found the first episode weird, although not in an interesting way. The characters were just cute little girls, so no surprise for me, nothing to write home about. The animation was pretty nice overall, and someone probably did a pretty good job with the ships, even though none of that impressed me all that much. The soundtrack was not great. So my initial feelings regarding this show are rather meh. The FilmBooster reviewer DaweForeman partially compares it to Kantai Collection and points out that this show is much more realistic. He is right about that, although it had the opposite effect on me. Kantai Collection was a bunch of weirdness that I found interesting, though, and the fact that the little girls represent individual ships and the fact that it gets funny, like with the "repair bucket", I found amusing. High School Fleet makes the girls the crew of warships, and I did not find them believable; I doubted they could really do it (same as let's say driving a tank - wait a minute...). On the other hand, when you stop dwelling on this and stop using logic, your impression of the show can start to shift. Over time, I got used to it, and I stopped worrying that sexy schoolgirls and warships do not go together very well and let myself ride the waves of cuteness and pleasant interactions between the girls. In that respect, it was quite an enjoyable anime series because, as I mentioned, cute sexy schoolgirls were aplenty, and almost everyone was charming. So in the end, once again, I got a show where there were things I liked (Lolis! Lolis Everywhere...) and things that did not convince me, and thus, the overall feeling I had regarding this show ended up somewhere in the middle. 5/10. (10/04/2016)