High School Fleet

Episode 6

It looks like High School Fleet has reached that point in the action series life cycle where the characters stop panicking because they don't know what's happening and start panicking because they've realized that the situation is worse than they thought. The cause of the electronic problems and crazy crewmembers has been officially linked to the hamster-rat creatures, and it seems to be spreading quickly. Multiple ships are going missing, and the Musashi continues to act strangely after attacking a group of instructors. Just in case that wasn't enough trouble for the crew of the Harekaze to deal with, their ship wanders into a minefield just as Akeno starts to wonder if she's really suited to be captain.

Giving the characters multiple problems to deal with is all well and good, but it also means that the show ends up with multiple storylines to juggle. High School Fleet tries to do a little more than it has time for this week, and the result is an episode that feels pretty disjointed. Instead of a single narrative, this episode plays out like a bunch of individual scenes that happen to occur in the same world. The transitions from one scene to another aren't particularly smooth, and most of the storylines don't get enough screen time to play out naturally. I felt like I was watching a twenty-minute recap of a thirty-minute episode; everything was there, but nothing felt complete.

The show has been playing with the tension between Akeno and the more by-the-book members of the Harekaze's crew for a while, so you could be forgiven for expecting a little more drama out of the deal. Characters argue and trade loaded remarks with one another, but the only consequence appears to be a few moments of soul-searching on Akeno's part. With no decisive resolution to be found, I imagine we'll see more of this storyline before the series wraps up. For the time being though, it's a little underwhelming.

Apart from an interesting lesson on how to go about clearing sea mines, the minesweeping scene doesn't have a whole lot to offer. High School Fleet is clearly capable of delivering tense and exciting action sequences, but it seems to have missed an opportunity here. You'd think we would have gotten a few heart-pounding moments of the girls on the boat carefully steering their way though the mines, but the show just rushes ahead to the inevitable explosion. It's as if the series is reluctant to linger on the idea of the girls being in any serious danger; more than a few moments of peril have been hastily followed by assurances that everyone's all right. That may work in a show like Girls und Panzer, where the battles are supposed to be safe and simulated, but it becomes a problem if we're expected to believe that the characters are fighting for real. If there's never any genuine risk involved, the show's battle scenes are going to lose some of their impact.

For all my complaints, this isn't a terrible episode. It's still a breezy, watchable, girls-and-battleships experience. What annoys me isn't so much any actively bad decisions as the absence of anything noteworthy. When a series puts in multiple strong performances like High School Fleet has done in previous weeks, it's natural to be disappointed when new episodes lack that kind of impact. If this show really wants to take a serious approach to its story, then it will eventually have to grow some teeth when it comes to conflict between characters and physical danger in action scenes. It doesn't have to be all blood and tears, but it's important to at least make the audience believe that a bad outcome is possible.

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.