First Impression – Haifuri: High School Fleet
Girl Meets Fleet
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Live on the Sea, Protect the Sea, Sail the Sea – Blue Mermaids. Let’s join up with the new crew of the good ship Harekaze at Yokosuka Girls’ Marine High School, and see what this latest cute girls doing cute things show has to offer… |
We’ll be on different ships…
Moeka got the bigger boat…
Set a course for adventure! Well it looks like we got a bits of KanColle (boats and water), GuP (girls and military equipment), and Strike Witches (general mechamusume stuff) to start us off, but I’ll get to the show’s creative pedigree in my final thoughts. For now we can focus on the characters and the story; which is what it going to set this show apart from the previously mentioned ones. On paper this one looks to be fairly typical doesn’t it? Even it’s opening doesn’t give a great deal away, letting us settle in, enjoy the sights and absorb the general atmosphere; with some very crisp character animation and deep backgrounds that’s not hard at all.
Love the reactions here…
As I said we got characters to focus on and they lead us right into the main story. First we have Misaki Akeno (Shiina Natsukawa, not her first lead role) and Moeka China (Sora Amamiya, but more on her next episode, I bet) making their childhood vow to enter the Blue Mermaids and serve the seas; which looks to be what lots of little girls do in this world. Misaki has the air of a first among equals kind of lead about her, and is of the “hidden potential over graded aptitude” type of person. She’s a bit airheaded, but not at all unperceptive or slow in response. She really wants to live up to being the “father of the ship”. Then we have Mashiro Munetani (Lynn). She’s very much in the “graded aptitude should be captain, not some rando joker clumsy girl” category. So you can just tell these two mains are going to get along like ships on fire. The rest of the cast is very colorful and quite fun, but we only get them in the broadest of introductions.
This cat is nothing but trouble…
…but still sailing the same seas
Quite the crew…
As far as world building goes, we don’t really have much to go on. The ocean levels have defiantly risen. Just going by an eyeball on the Tokyo Tower, it might be somewhere in the 100 meter range, which is really insane if you think about it. But we’ve not yet explored the reasons why, so exposition will have to wait for further episodes; given how they’ve composed the rest of the episode, that’s quite fine, no one looks to be in any rush. Now for our characters place in this world, that’s not clearly defined as of yet either. Sailing like this isn’t treated as a sport, so we can cleave away from the GuP comparisons, and no one is transforming quite yet, so no KanColle. Also no uber aliens ala SW, so that leaves this show to be it’s own beast. Regardless of the origins, I like the general tone the show is grooving on, so again, I’ll give it time to be the thing it needs to be.
Stand out in the hallway…
They don’t shy away from the girlish hijinks that is for sure. Just the little introductions to the rest of the huge crew of girls on the boat ensure us that won’t stop any time soon – again something that I look forward to, I like my hijinks. But that doesn’t stop the show from showing them what they would be like under fire. No use having all the hardware without showing it off, nor wasting the chance to show off what the girls can really do. What came next was really unexpected. I would have thought just a bit of very rough treatment would have been in order, just for the typical “we have a good excuse for being late”, but seeing as how their instructor looks really warped from previous, something very untoward is happening, and your guess for why the girls were declared mutineers is as good as mine.
Extra Communications
It’s getting hot in the engine room. Who needs the fan service here?
Production IMS has done a really good job with this freshman effort. Every shot was nice and crisp, with just a bit of off-modeling here and there. The character designs are cute, and the movement is pretty darn fluid most of the time; Mei the Very Very Happy Weapons Girl stood out the most in my mind for all the genki they gave her. This is Takaaki Suzuki’s brain child, and he’s got some deep roots in the Strike Witches franchise, not to mention a bit of a toe in GuP as well. But what I think will make this one sail or sink will be Reiko Yoshida’s script and general series composition (she’s the other female anime script writer whom you never hear much about cause OKADA); she can belt out a great story and keep the cute hijinks in frame. It will be a pleasure watching this one in the weeks to come.
He’s watching you….
About skylion
All around nerd that enjoys just about any anime genre. I love history, politics, public policy, the sciences, literature, arts...pretty much anything can make me geeky...except sports. Follow me @theskylion
POWUH: Lovely-pyon~ with 261 comments
OK, I begin to question about something about that show, well…After a big disaster that japan struck, will that country going to comeback for being a…Pro-Nationalistic (Pre WW2 era)…well, i doubt it.
for what i see here is, i think those people (in that show at least) have a habit of creating, Marine Vehicles and Machinery, far more than today i mean from Jet Sports to…Warships, and Speaking of those….i mean why refurbished looking ships (ie: WW2 Era) rather than super futuristic once…
and
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POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
It’s all nothing but speculation at this point. I would sit back and enjoy the cute girls.
POWUH: Lovely-pyon~ with 261 comments
Well, You’re Right, I Guess i’ll follow your lead!
Still, I need to scrutinize some more! even that is a speculation!
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
Where are the cute shotas? This is discrimination! 😛
Aoki Hagane and Kancolle I understand as ships are always she but this?
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
I think the point is that this is happening in, essentially, contemporary times. So the ships they have are the ships they have. Plus, new fancy ships with new tech are expensive as all get out. A single Seawolf submarine cost 3 billion US dollars. With a B. A Virginia-class submarine costs just a little bit less at 2.7 billion. The USS Zumwalt cost almost 4 billion each (and looks like the underside of a ship).
Contrary to that, WWII era ships are pretty darn cheap, and not that ineffective. It all depends on what you’re going to do with them.
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
IIRC, many years ago, someone commented that a cruise missile would shred an AEGIS cruiser. Meanwhile, an Iowa-class would still be steaming along, with a hole in the hull.
Armour-plated ships aren’t exactly cheap either. What we have is a change in naval doctrine over the last 60 years. While today’s ships are a technological marvel, nothing still beats the grace and beauty of a WW2 battleship.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
I don’t know if that’s anything close to a fair comparison. An Iowa-class battleship was designed to be tough big kids on the block (even if they weren’t as big as Yamato) with a displacement of over 45000 tons, and an almost 900 foot length. A Ticonderoga-class AEGIS cruiser is… a cruiser. 9000 tons, less than 600 feet long. It’s a much smaller ship.
I’ll also argue that there’s no chance there will be large-scale naval combat between capital ships ever again.
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
Then you need an good admiral if there be aliens. Liam Nesson! All crew to your Battleship!
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
A Cat Is Fine Too! I support the cat.
Isoroku Yamamoto! Tora-neko! Tora-neko! 😛 Even he saw the folly of such a venture.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
…the cat is evil…
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1692 comments
Given the nature of cats, naming one Isoroku with the rank of admiral seems fitting.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
First half of the show went about exactly as I expected. The second half, not so much. And the end, completely different from what I was thinking it would be. It’s not a super deep story, as yet, but it’s far more than you would usually get taking this kind of show at face value. And the way it did it was with a good buildup. It’s not like they did something stupid and “wacky hijinx ensued”. The story has been set up with a progression of steps, and it’s almost like an episode of Air Disasters (a TV show I really like) or something, where they’ve gone through the timeline, showing the things that went wrong and other things that went ‘wrong’.
Now they’ve got to come up with a way to continue and extend the story, and deal with the aftermath. I really doubt they’ll do the “right” thing, which is immediately stand down, radio back that they have not mutinied and throw themselves on the mercy of the fleet, although that would probably get them kicked out immediately, so they won’t do that.
There are some forces arrayed against these girls, for whatever reason, and at the moment it seems it’ll be interesting to see how it works out.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
I think lots of show’s get lost up their own “end game orifice” when they attempt to get “too deep”; which is a neat play on words given the rising ocean levels. It’s nice to see someone show some restraint. If they take on on the path of all the things that went wrong, or “wrong”, I’m hoping they show us the things that went “right”, or right.
As far as “forces arrayed” I’m hoping it isn’t a huge tease of some sort. I’m also hoping they don’t take a somewhat lazy approach and tie the cliffhanger into the world building in a weird way…
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1692 comments
Mashiro made a comment implying that the crew of the Harekaze are the “leavings” or something to that effect. I wonder if that has something to do with why their instructor attacked them and declared them mutineers for firing back. Seems a rather harsh way to wash them out of the program. Or an extremely tough test for them to have to pass to remain in it.
But their instructor suddenly turning into a villain just doesn’t seem right. I guess we’ll just have to wait to find out what the answer is. The question is, do we find out soon or will it take most of the show?
If Global Warming is advanced enough for virtually all the permanent ice we have now to melt I believe the seas are calculated to rise at least 200ft. So maybe that much of Tokyo Tower would be underwater.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
It’s more an upper limit of 200 ft if all land-based ice melts (which I looked up for Sousei no Gargantia). And using skylion’s link, I think it would be about a 60 meter rise, which would probably be around that 200 feet. I find it a lot less plausible that they’d build cities on ships rather than just… you know… move to where the land is. But hey, you don’t have futurism without implausibility.
I also thought that there would be something to the ‘leftovers’ comment there, and maybe it is a way to wash them out, but it seems like an awful lot of trouble when they could have just not accepted them into the school. It’s not like they’ve been problem children at the school who won’t go away. They just got there.
I don’t know if it’s a sudden turning into a villain, but the circumstances I’ve constructed in my head are as such:
1) why is their instructor not on their ship? It seems completely beyond the pale to leave THE ENTIRE SHIP to a bunch of newbie girls with no supervision at all at all.
2) Perhaps the instructor knew what they’d try to do, even goaded them into doing that, and replaced the dummy training torpedo with a real torpedo. How do these kids know the difference? It’s painted like a dummy? That extends the conspiracy a little bit, since you figure the instructor wouldn’t do the painting herself. Why are there even live-fire torpedos on the ship anyway?
3) The reason I think the torpedo was a fake fake is that for the instructor’s frame-up story to hold up at all, there needs to be damage to her ship. And without damage on the Harekaze, there’s very little evidence of the girls’ story.
4) What did the instructor do with the crew of that ship? That was supposed to be Moeka’s ship, no? They mentioned the automation that would make it easier to sail, which is why I think maybe the conspiracy is more limited. Moeka wouldn’t fire on Akeno, and we didn’t see her on the ship.
So there’s a lot of stuff to talk about, and that’s a kind of thing I like in a show.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
As for the water depth, I based that on an eyeball of the Tokyo Tower. It’s 300 some odd meters tall, the water level looks to come up about a third of the way…It’s back of the napkin for me, you don’t want me off all people to take accurate measurements.
I might be able to add,
5) The instructor is very militarily aggressive, perceives an enemy that no one wants to think about and this boat is her ticket to manipulating events to her endgame. It’s got a bunch of misfits, that can still operate a vessel, so they look credible. It has one on board that has good grades and feels left out of her own captaincy…make her say she was kidnapped in exchange for the promise of her own boat.
Yep, something to talk about is a good thing.
POWUH: and Athenaeum Châtelaine with 2212 comments
An interesting premise and I’m surprised at where it went, I expected your usual classroom antics but with a naval edge, not full on battle experience!
So the Blue Mermaids are like some merger of the WAVES and the SPARS, and now our girls are stuck in some weird position where they are being considered mutineers? I’m wondering what is up with their instructor and where this story is going to go. How serious will it get?
Not what I was expecting, but I’m game.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
It’s not what I was expecting, either. That’s a good thing as it means that someone in the industry is paying attention, and taking a bit of a risk. Not a huge one, mind, but a risk none-the-less.
I’ve grown to like the crew on first blush, and I’m hoping they flesh them out more before the danger hits…
POWUH: and Athenaeum Châtelaine with 2212 comments
I honestly wish they had cool uniforms like her friend had. The fact that they have to stick to common sailor suit high school uniforms make them seem less official. That was pretty much my only disappointment in the episode.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
Yeah, that was an odd bit I wanted to cover in the original post. I don’t know if they do it on purpose, dressing them in the sailor suits rather than the Blue Mermaid garb that’s been estabished. Considering the crew’s mutineer status come the end of the episode, that suggests it’s a long plot they’re working on in regards to that status and how they are differently dressed.