Haifuri: High School Fleet – 08
What? It’s a cat in a pipe. What have YOU done today?
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This week’s episode does almost everything right, but I can’t shake the feeling that it could have taken more risks. |
Guts Infusion
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Well, they did the one thing that I was kinda hoping they wouldn’t do, and that’s to spell out what’s going on with the hamsters and the infection and the like. The writer’s pretty much had exactly the theme they wanted, and I really do wish they would have just left the means out of the picture for a while longer or had just made it more mysterious or had chosen another tack. Totalitarian Disease isn’t bad per se, but it I think it should have been kept behind the scenes where most sketchy science stuff belongs.
I love how far Rin has come, she’s still scared, but still does the job…
Which isn’t to say that it didn’t do the job thematically, the most important part of a zombie style story; and Haifuri is almost exactly a zombie style story with it’s sense of isolation, it’s faceless “enemy” and it’s plucky crew of misfit “survivors”. I have to salute a background the get’s rid of conventional air-travel and shoves in some lighter than air ships as an alternative, just to reinforce the tension that comes from isolation, one of the underlying tones of the whole show.
The School of Paying Attention to Details
But I enjoy the best hallmark the show has to offer, and that’s a bit of a tangent. Face it, both Western and Japanese culture have “gamified” a great deal of many thought processes; from commerce to warfare, everything has it’s own set of icons and how you interact with them to receive reward or punishment. It’s a bit disconcerting when you think about it to much. So here we have a variation on one of the zombies themes – the warped mirror the walking dead can make us look into. Here that’s not the case, and the steadfast refusal to kill an enemy and instead go the distance in both mind and body to do the opposite, to save…is a welcome change, and just the thing you would want your moe infused adventure story to do, right?
Plus, there is always these two
But, I do feel that things are getting a bit too stretched from time to time. I know this is an anime original, and so it doesn’t have to suffer from adaption compression or exhaustion or one of the many other issues that can plague a change of medium. But that doesn’t mean it cannot have it’s own troubles. That seems to be one of the same issues that cover adaptions; fitting it into a three month schedule. Sometimes, it’s OK to only have 11 or 10 – Prisma Illya is proof to me that less is more – episodes instead of 12 or 13. I don’t quite know where, but it feels like a great deal of this could have been reworked structurally into other episode, and considering that last weeks was pretty light, I can’t help but feel a bit right about that. But, that’s not to reduce the show below the sum of it’s part, again quite the opposite asI feel it does all the parts right…just needs to be a bit riskier…
After all, “All is well that”…yeah, you get the picture
And what it does well is the combat – that I can’t quite bring myself to write much about as I’m still not good about doing that sort of after the fact thing, and in all honesty it would just be reporting a blow by blow and you’ve already seen that. In this case the combat completely lives up to the potential of the show. It doesn’t over-complicate the situation. It takes into account all it’s variable, it’s lines up it’s shot, it readies, and then fires damn near flawlessly. I wish it could do that with some of it’s sub-plots as Minami’s addition as a sudden prodigy feels tacked on and not so smooth. The hamster situation is to by the book and 1,2,3 without really adding much by going deep; time that could be spent on it’s strengths which has always been character, character, and character. But, I still love it…
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
“What? It’s a cat in a pipe. What have YOU done today?”
On the contrary, The cat save the day once again, i mean that move maybe silly but the crew seem to get an idea to stop that Dragon Ship (Hiei)
Speaking of that, Yup, That’s one Ship Down, that maybe the first of beating the other ships (Graf Spee, Musashi) Without any serious damage or casualties, I kinda impress…
as for the virus, i was thinking of something else, i think it’s not a virus but a Nano-Organic Life form that can manipulate organic or inorganic things, as for a moment Seawater may be nullify that, but That Life form may some how “evolve” and they need to do something with it other than having the Antibody vaccine or sort…But who knows.
Now,one more thing That Black Ironclad Captain (Mafuyu Munetani) had ha habit of…nagging butts, OH MY GA…SERIOUSLY is she a…bah Nevermind…>_<
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
I love it how the Hiei ran afoul and then stopped firing. I don’t know if that’s a bit of lazy storytelling, or a facet of the Virus…
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1692 comments
Running aground especially at speed does terrible things to ships, like popping circuit breakers, tearing open the bottom that results in flooding the engineering spaces which among other bad things knocks out the electrical generators thus losing power to the gun turrets and everything else. Doesn’t happen every time, but it certainly can happen, especially at speed.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
..and so therefore it will happen on a TV show…Thank you for chiming in on this one HannoX.
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1692 comments
Don’t forget movies, especially Hollywood ones. You’re welcome.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
Do you have any movies in mind? I was trying to remember some, but am coming up blank. That might be an excuse to find PT 109.
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1692 comments
No navy war movie comes to mind right now, but there’s The Poseidon Adventure. I realize cruise ships aren’t going to be designed the same as warships, but being able to walk along a propeller shaft to reach an exit at the stern is an example of a horrible design for any ship. The shafts are naturally going to be below the waterline (unless the ship has capsized) so having an open pathway along one and a hatch at the stern is just asking for flooding.
On the two ships I was on in the Navy (a destroyer and an aircraft carrier) the shafts ran through a series of watertight compartments and the only access to the shafts was by way of a ladder that started above the waterline. There was no direct access from one compartment to another. You had to go back up above the waterline then go to where the next ladder started to go from one shaft alley compartment to the next.
I’ve never been on a cruise ship, but I’d think they’d have the same design feature. You really do want to maintain watertight integrity on any ship.
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1692 comments
Oh, I did read the book The Poseidon Adventure and it had the same bit about walking along one of the propeller shafts, so the movie was following that. That did make for a thrilling book and movie, but it was a really stupid premise.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
…most awesome movie moments, when taken from context, are very stupid…
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1692 comments
If you’re looking for good naval war movies, Das Boot is probably the best one ever. Noel Coward’s In Which We Serve is also excellent. Other good ones are The Enemy Below, Run Silent Run Deep and Task Force about the early days of naval aviation through WWII. The Hunt for Graf Spee is very good and a fun fact about it is that the Graf Spee was “played” by an American heavy cruiser. I don’t recall which one, but it’s listed in the credits. Of course, Sink the Bismarck is a classic and pretty accurate.
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1692 comments
Midway has a really hokey, even by Hollywood standards, story centered around Charlton Heston’s character and his son. However, it is very accurate concerning the battle. LtCdr Waldron, commanding officer of Torpedo Squadron 8, was even better than the movie implies. If he had lived he would have had a shot at making admiral before the end of the war. But I’m a bit biased since he was from my state of SD. The bridge across the Missouri between Pierre and Ft. Pierre is named for him. He joined the Navy while living in Ft. Pierre.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
I am soooo spoiled for choice!
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1692 comments
It’s good to be spoiled once in a while.
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1692 comments
Oh, I forgot to mention that also everyone aboard the Hiei would have been knocked on their ass and some would have been knocked unconscious or have had bones broken. But I imagine this anime will say there were only minor injuries, if they mention injuries at all.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
…it felt like “and there were some boo-boos” is about all we got from the aftermath. But yeah, they scrapped for a loooong time; longer than anyone would want a metal hull to scrap into that much stable rock…I guess that’s an issue when the production won’t show us inside these ships?