Haifuri – 02

The gist: wanted for sinking the Sarushima, the crew of the Harekaze must quickly adjust to their new life as falsely accused mutineers. THe girls don’t really grasp the magnitude of this, even after “German exchange-student Battle Ship Admiral Spee” tries to sink them.

Oh, and they cripple the Admiral Spee with a close range live round to the rear and are able to escape, along with an as yet not introduced German girl who tries to join them during the combat.

Also, curry night. Roll Credits!

I suppose its understandable that the girls wouldn’t get how screwed they are yet. For them, this should be easily explained confusion they can’t even explain and, besides, no one has been killed yet.

Cute touches: the crew’s biggest gripe seems to be the loss of cell phones and social media (to prevent the fleet hunting them down). The captain’s decision to arm live munitions, and the process involving keys was neat too. It also makes sense, since they carried so few dummy munitions for this first outing that they have nothing else to use.

Meanwhile, we learn more about XO Munetani-chan and her family’s long relationship with Blue Mermaid. Apparently Japan’s fall into the sea stems from the Ruso-Japan war and that city-ships were the only way to save the nation.

I’m not going to think too hard about this but being told the all-girl nature of BM was an attempt to show Japan’s furious ship building (and aquisition of military craft for conversion into the city ship system) was non-military in nature makes a certain amount of genre sense. The fact Munetani’s great grandmother was the first ship’s commander certainly establishes why she’s such a hard ass, and so disappointed by her own performance.

You may enjoy it: Haifuri is anachronistic, giant cast, cute girl, coming of age, WW2 naval combat at it’s finest. The cute girls aren’t claw your eyes out cute, the cast isn’t so important that not remembering what they all do doesn’t impact understanding what is going on, and the naval combat is decent. It’s well delivered.

I love the idea of an exchange student battle ship too

You may want to skip it: if a safe political mystery hidden under a safe cute girl ‘high school on a warship’ blanket isn’t really your thing. Honestly, it’s hard to say how much the military genre and political mystery lower or elevate it from any other high school SOL?

It’s got my attention and I’m curious where it’s going. So I’m gonna recommend it for now.