The Sailor Uniform is easily one of the most recognizable variants of Japanese schoolgirl uniform. Though it has many variants and of course only superficially resembles actual naval dress, it certainly is iconic. There are entire anime shows dedicated to the relative prop, and its appearance easily marks a character as what she is supposed to be. I guess it was only a matter of time until somebody decided the schoolgirls should earn their outfits.
Enter High School Fleet, a show that takes cute girls in sailor uniforms and has them… actually sail.
High School Fleet takes place in a future where massive sea level rise as forced humanity, and particularly Japan, to adapt in order to thrive in a new environment with a lot less land. If this sounds familiar, it might be because it’s a similar premise to Atri, which I’ve been doing seasonal write-ups for.
The show itself, though, has more to do with Girls und Panzer. Come to think of it, school in that show was mysteriously on a ship…
In any case, the similarity here is a bright look, cheerful cute girl theme, and a love of outdated military hardware. In this case, the hardware in question is warships that seem to date from the second world war despite this being the future.
So let me get this out of the way at the start. You could excuse the ships in this recycling the names of ships that sank in the past. That is, frankly, common. The Japanese Aircraft Carrier Kaga, converted from a Tosa-class battleship, sunk at the battle of Midway in 1942, while JS Kaga is a destroyer currently in service. However, the ships in this show seem to have the armaments and specifications of their former incarnations, like torpedo launchers and big naval cannons that look and feel really cool but that aren’t considered practical weapons of war any longer. At least Sensha-do had the excuse that it was a sport, so maybe there would be regulations against higher-tech entries.
However, while there’s a good deal of the spirit of Girls und Panzer in this show, the plot is not so harmless. It starts when Akeno Misaki (“Mike”) begins her high school career, enrolling in a girls’ naval academy, which is again a normal thing in this world. She meets up with an old friend, Moeka China (“Moka”) and both are even assigned captain roles for their first class, Moka in charge of the fearsome battleship Musashi, and Mike in charge of the dinky destroyer Harekaze.
Mike gets to know her shipmates, most notably at first Mashiro Munetani (“Shiro”), who hates her luck and is very gruff with Mike, being more book-smart than savvy with people. On their maiden voyage, the Harekaze is delayed by engine troubles. Late to a school rendezvous, a teacher ship comes along… and starts shelling them. With live ammo. Feeling this to be the equivalent of a pop quiz due to the being late, they try to evade the shots for a while, but ultimately decide they have to fight back at least a little in order to get away, launching a dummy torpedo to slow the teacher’s pursuit and escape.
Shortly thereafter, they discover that their ship has been declared to be in a state of mutiny, and thus that they can expect the entire navy to be hunting them down with intent to kill. Oops.
On their way to try to explain themselves, they’re attacked without preamble by German exchange ship Admiral Spee. During the battle, a girl flees from Spee and is injured, who Mike insists on rescuing even at personal risk. They manage to damage Spee’s propulsion enough to escape, plus one mysterious waif.
Then comes a remarkably non-specific distress call from Musashi, which of course Mike wants to answer. However, she understands the difficulty of their situation and decides to try to return to school instead of rushing to a rescue that her ship is in no condition to make.
During a clash with a submarine, the German girl (Wilhelmina) awakens and helps take charge. She reveals that something strange went down on the Spee, and she was sent out to warn others, with the details seeming somewhere between mutiny and mass hysteria. At the same time, the administration at least seems sane (possibly due to Shiro’s mother and older sister being parts of it), and calls the whole school home with an injunction against fighting in the meantime.
On the way, the girls are forced to stop for supplies. While an away team shops, a strange hamster-like creature gets aboard. As the away team returns with a group of friendly ships under school direction, the hamster seemingly drives one of the girls berserk, sending her into a rage where she fires off one of the minor guns before being snapped out of it. This incident, luckily, does not result in breaking the peace, but nobody in-character figures out the little critter was responsible, either. Musashi, meanwhile, seems to be MIA and it’s built up that something evil may have happened over there.
With Harekaze’s name cleared by the instructor who shot at them regaining consciousness, they’re sent to scout out the Musashi, which is locked in battle with several pro ships from a boys’ school. As a Yamato-class battleship in a world that mentions offhand that somehow planes were never invented (yet where they have guided missiles and ships like Akagi and Kaga that are best known as carriers even if they were laid down as gunships), the Musashi is pretty much the most fearsome thing on the sea.
When in view, Mike races off on their little water speeder to try to board the Musashi and find out what’s happening. She sees Moka in the window, looking panic-stricken, but hits a submerged rock that stops her pursuit.
After this, the ship’s cat on Harekaze catches one of those hamster rat monsters, and the doctor student determines that the little thing is, in fact, responsible both for the electrical interference and the berserk incidents they’ve witnessed, bringing us one step closer to cracking why ship after ship has gone off the radar and engaged in violent behavior
However, getting this research back to port is made difficult, first by a mine field in the way, and then by a water shortage, a harsh storm, and then a search and rescue mission. The last of those gives a chance for a handoff of the captive rat and an antibody serum for its tricks, moving us along to the continued hunt for Musashi.
They find a rogue ship, but this time it’s the Hiei. To keep it from making to port (and spreading the rat-based mind control infection to the world) we get a daring plan, and fortunately the authorities in this show are good at their jobs, so it seems like antidotes for everybody. We even, on the side, learn that this seems to be resulting from a formerly sunken research ship being unearthed by the instructors as the school fleet was gathering. This is followed by an encounter with Admiral Spee, which similarly results in freeing the ship from its rodent madness, albeit throught a good deal more combat and boarding action. Thus, her task accomplished, Wilhelmina slides out of the main cast, having given us quite a few good times in the meantime.
The Harekaze takes repairs in the obligatory festival episode, which I have to hand it to the show that it captures both the fun and the lameness of something put on by kids, in a way that’s still enjoyable to watch. After that, it’s back to Musashi as the problem, even as the adults get involved. The big ship shows up closer to the mainland than expected, and Harekaze and some of the adults manage to engage. The adults take the fight, and manage to put some damage on Musashi before getting routed, leaving the battle to the Harekaze. During this, Mike has her big emotional breakdown and catharsis, and we learn that Moka and her closest bridge crew seem to be fine isolating from the people really directing the ship.
Harekaze rushes in to just buy time, slowing Musashi down with a torpedo volley. As all hope seems lost, pretty much everyone they’d helped over the show shows up to provide support and draw fire, allowing a daring plan to smokescreen Musashi and basically sideswipe it, taking loads of damage in the process but boarding the battleship to end the nightmare. Honestly, once the two ships collide, we get the triumphant music. We already know the Harekaze girls win these boarding actions, so it’s just time for a tearful Moka/Mike reunion and the breakdown of the show.
Everybody makes it back to port, hopefully with extermination ready for any weird rats, and as the last crew disembarks the crippled Harekaze decides it’s had enough and finally goes under.
It’s a good scene, but being right there at the pier it’s not going very deep and would realistically be refloated in short order while presenting a navigation hazard in the meantime.
In any case, that was High School Fleet… and I’ve got to say this show was way better than it had any right to be.
The pitch is mixing Girls und Panzer style “Cute girls doing crazy things” with outright Arpeggio of Blue Steel style naval action, and you don’t really think it would blend. But the cute scenes stay cute and the action, which is predominant, stays solid. While there are some very thin excuses for why everyone is still on shelling and torpedos in what is otherwise either the future or the modern day and why schoolgirls are running an entire navy, the actual battles are well-sold and reasonable tactical.
Much as it’s clear someone behind Upotte!! was a real gun nut in the way where they actually knew their stuff, somebody behind High School Fleet really loved naval history and warfare. Every student ship other than Harekaze is a real WWII warship, even down to relative background noise that probably could have been left unnamed, and while I can’t pretend to have an expert’s knowledge on the topic, to a layman such as myself it seemed like the way they fought wasn’t ludicrous or reliant on physically impossible stunts for the most part. Despite that it was as visually impressive as it was engaging.
The characters are… weaker. Most of Harekaze’s crew is pretty one-noted, and even the leading ladies like Mike and Shiro don’t really have a lot. Mike goes through a few stages, learning what it means to be in a command role and then coming to terms with the reality of combat and life-threatening danger after the damage taken in battle with Admiral Spee the second time, but it’s pretty bare-bones all things considered. That said, most of the characters have one rather watchable note and the leads aren’t truly deficient. Everybody serves the purpose they were meant to serve.
Yet I don’t want to oversell High School Fleet. Every episode is basically half screwing around with the huge and colorful crew of notes, half naval battle. Some lean more battle, and the festival episode is all crew and mostly lower deck. Both sides are good, but neither side is really special on its own, and the formula is fairly predictable. High School Fleet, for all its wild and crazy concept, is a show that plays things remarkably safe, for better or worse. For better and worse, really.
I don’t think this is a show you need to rush out and see. If you never pull up High School Fleet, you’re not really missing that much. But, at the same time, I think just about anyone could sit down with this show and be basically pleased and entertained. It’s not bad, not by any stretch, and I would say even goes a fair bit north of average. Just because it isn’t unique or special or moving doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile. This is the perfect show to go to when you just want something safe and fun while still getting in some cannon fire and explosions. In that way, I think it’s kind of the opposite of last week’s entry, Sakurada Reset, which while very unique with an incredible ceiling really needs its viewers to want what it in particular has to offer.
For all that, High School Fleet gets a B. It’s a perfectly respectable grade in my book, but it lacks the ambition to go higher and to an extent the polish to earn a “+” mark on that. It’s a show I’d recommend and will look back on fondly, should I ever have the need to look back on it.