High School Fleet

Episode 8

We've all been through that awkward moment where you mistake a battleship you've never seen before for the one captained by your childhood friend, right? Well, maybe that's exclusive to the crew of the Harekaze, as an encounter with the battleship Hiei begins with them mistaking it for the Musashi. This case of mistaken identity doesn't prove to be a huge deal, as the Hiei is having the same “entire crew has gone homicidal” problem as the Musashi. With the heavily armed ship headed for a civilian port, Akeno decides that she needs to do something. The Harekaze lures the Hiei into shallow waters, where a frantic pursuit forces the Hiei to run aground until a Blue Mermaid ship can arrive to cure the crew.

The good news is that High School Fleet is back to its specialty of having the small, speedy Harekaze take on bigger ships by using clever and unorthodox tactics. This show is reasonably average in most areas, but it tends to do a pretty good job of coming up with interesting challenges for Akeno and company to deal with. The running fight against the Hiei also plays into the growing sense of unity within the Harekaze's crew by having all the different groups work together. The engine room has to keep the ship running at full tilt, the weapon crews need to force the Hiei into shallow water, and so on. The added (and ongoing) problem of not being able to just sink the other ship continues to be an exciting factor, as it pushes each storyline towards more unexpected strategies. From a geeky tactical perspective, this is a reasonably cool episode.

It helps that the action scene makes for decent viewing even if you're not interested in playing armchair admiral. The small islands that the two ships chase each other around help break up the blue-on-blue monotony that sometimes plagues the series on the open ocean. The animation also seems to step things up a notch once the battle starts, which is a good thing considering that the quality level is pretty mediocre whenever characters are just standing around talking. Pacing during the action sequence is also strong, even if it takes forever for everyone on the Harekaze to decide that they're okay with the plan. For a series that specializes in big boat fights as much as cutesy character humor, it's good to see High School Fleet putting together a strong action scene.

The problem here is that the aforementioned strong action scene is bookended by some comparatively weak material. The more time this series spends trying to explain the details of the mind control virus, the more ridiculous it all starts to sound. High School Fleet would probably have been better off going the zombie show route and sticking to a vague description of the contagion's effects. On the other end of the spectrum, the aftermath of the battle scene is entirely too quick to avoid a very big question: how did the girls manage to get the crew of the Hiei to stop shooting at them? Forcing the battleship to run aground would certainly keep it from moving, but you still have to deal with a crew full of crazy people with access to some pretty big gun turrets. Given how much thought the series normally puts into the ins and outs of its battle scenes, this seems like a pretty blatant case of glossing over an inconvenient plot hole. Throw in some arbitrary and awkward fanservice at the end of the episode, and you end up with a critical mass of question marks dragging down the good points.

So yes, this episode is kind of a mixed bag. The show takes a step forward by going back to doing what it does well, but it also takes a step back by surrounding the good stuff with too many nagging problems. It's still hard to say what the series is building up to besides an eventual confrontation with the Musashi, but there's work to be done if High School Fleet wants to end up as more than a passing source of nautical amusement.

Rating: B-

High School Fleet is currently streaming on Crunchyroll, Funimation, and Daisuki.

Paul Jensen is a freelance writer and editor. You can follow more of his anime-related ramblings on Twitter.