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Kind of surprised by all the favourable reviews on this....

Ok first off I love ships, lolis and moe so when I initially saw this I was delighted thinking it would be girls und panzer meets Kancolle! But god was it was far from it and a chore to finish....

Basically I loved the ships, and the character designs but the characters themselves were all insanely annoying and the plot was just beyond stupid and so so frustrating at times. I would personally avoid and I'm going to go into some more detail on why.

BEWARE SPOILERS!!
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Ok so the story goes that lolis arrive at ... this school where they are to be trained as Blue Mermaids, Japan's naval defence force. In an alternate modern timeline much of Japan has been submerged and has become a major naval nation with a huge and powerful fleet. To assure the rest of the world that their navy is only for peaceful and defensive purposes they have the ships run mostly by young girls.

So straight away the lolis are assigned to WWII ships and sent out to some far off location to commence naval exercises WITHOUT ANY instructors/teachers or anybody older than about 14 on board. While the main lolis are given a destroyer equipped with training and live ammo, another group is given the Musashi! Yes! The Musashi as in one of the most powerful battleships ever made! Again also without anybody older than about 14! Why were they given the Musashi when surely it's a bit dangerous to be letting new recruits who are lolis handle never mind how expensive it was to run??

Anyway we could probably just go with the flow on this one and move along

So all the ships go out to sea and somehow split up and then some rodents somehow get on board the ships that interfere with electronic devices within a mile radius when convenient and infect the crew with a virus that allows the rodents to exert mind control over them and thus cause them to become aggressive towards other ships and humans....

Anyway my first beef begins when the destroyer with the lolis who are all the misfits and low achievers of the fleet get into their first battle. While being attacked with LIVE ammo they lampoon and try act all comical just like the girls in Girls Und Panzer except in girls und Panzer they establish that it's a sport and somehow safe but here they are in a real battle and having moe banter without the slightest bit of concern for their safety. Mind you I guess they don't have too much to worry about cause nobody in the opposing ships during the entire anime can hit them beyond one or two grazing shots.

So they eventually fire a training torpedo at the ship and hit it damaging it enough to get away. It then transpires that they somehow sink the ship and have been declared a rouge ship! That's the end of the first episode and I was interested bu then next episode they decide to just sail about the place and eventually they start heading towards some port a day or two away without explaining why they wouldn't just contact home base and explain that they were attacked without warning.

So yeah I won't go too much more into the story as I'll be here all day but

The characters are super annoying. The captain routinely leaves the bridge in the middle of battle to personally undertake dangerous missions often on her own while the ship is under attack. Surely the captain should stay on the bridge at all times during combat!? When this is pointed out, we're made to feel bad about it and that somehow the captain was right to do things her way. With a ship full of lolis wouldn't they have a team of girls to do these daring missions maybe led by the 1st officer?? At one point they actually do that when a ships is sinking and they have to perform a rescue mission but some asshole civilian on board the sinking ship tells the girls that there's still a little one lost in the ship without saying it was just a kitten. I love kittens but when a ship is about to sink I don't think it's a good idea to trick a loli rescue worker into risking her life and almost killing her. She seriously almost gets killed and when the loli and the kitten are luckily rescued, the person that told her to rescue the kitten tell her that they no longer want the kitten and dump it on her! >_=

So the deputy captain or first officer is mostly useless and the girl they entrust with steering the ship is terrified of everything. I mean why would she be assigned to steering the ship with she obviously has serious mental problems?? It just gets really really annoying.

But oh yeah conveniently for the lolis on the destroyer they have this genius doctor (who's 12!) on board who eventually figures out about the rodents and makes a vaccine. Why was this doctor there and not with the elite students? Never explained.

So anyway on their way back to base they run low on toilet paper and rather than survive for 24hrs they go shopping on a shopping mall ship where naturally they get caught. Again they make no attempt to contact base let them know all that has happened. Luckily for them they are not shot on the spot and somehow they adults believe that something odd is going on.

So the rest of the anime is the lolis on the destroyer going around to the various battleships under mind control and somehow stopping them and rescuing everybody on board. All the while the adults essentially do nothing the entire anime except get beaten when they do engage the battleships in combat. It's not even like the lolis on the destroyer are clever cause they're shown to be almost clueless.

The one ray of hope is a German loli that joins the ship and seems to have a clue on how to run things but after a while they mostly ignore her and jokes are made about her being a German??

Pretty much all the characters are OTT super happy and it just gets really annoying especially when they're in a dicey situation or just get news that friends are in danger.

The story is just balls and they never fully explain how these rodents infect people or scramble electronic devices within a mile at certain times or why the cats are unaffected, or how they even got onto all the ships in the first place. There's no clever zany tactics like in girls Und panzer and even if there was the lolis are often in situations where if they get one direct hit they will all die and they lack of tension just drives me mad.

Anyway my rant is pretty much over. The story sucks and the characters are too annoying. On the other hand the positives are the lolis look cute, the ships can be fun to watch at times, and it usually has decent animation and sound. For me this the worst anime I've watched in the last 6 months at least and I've seen a lot! This is neither Kancolle nor Girls Und panzer although it does do a poor job trying to be them sometimes.