YMMV / High School Fleet

• Accidental Innuendo: One of the cooks wears an apron with an extremely phallic-looking squid and droplets of water that look like they're shooting out of its.... err, tip.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Mike as cheerful and carefree as the series portrays, or is this all a front to keep her crew's morale since she fully understands the dire circumstances that the Harekaze is currently in?
• Complete Monster: The Movie: The Pirate Leader is a ruthless and merciless leader who wants to murder thousands of innocents in the maritime cities of Japan. He manipulates Susan Reyes into believing he will help find her missing father so he can have someone assist him. The Pirate Leader kidnaps and holds hostage many innocent people, threatening them to make the seafort operational. Had he succeeded in using the seafort, he would have caused massive casualties.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Wilhelmina seems to be quite popular, as a foreign character who manages not to be a walking stereotype. In addition, she also appeals herself to many of the naval buffs tuning into the show by displaying a good grasp of tactics, which many of the crew of the Harekaze ...really don't.
• Fan Nickname: "Captain Error Musume" for Mike, due to looking like that character.
• Friendly Fandoms: With KanColle and Girls und Panzer, due to the obvious similarities and parallels. Kantai Collection due to the focus on WWII ships and naval battles, and Girls Und Panzer due to the premise of high school girls crewing WWII vehicles. Also with World of Warships players due to the anime portrayal of a destroyer as the main cast's vessel is almost similar to what players experienced playing as destroyers in the game. This link only intensified when Harukaze and Graf Spee in their HaiFuri colors and captains became available in game.
• Les Yay:
  • The companion manga is full of this. Hiromi Kuroki enrolls at Yokosuka after she meets Mashiro at a Blue Mermaid PR event, and her Childhood Friend Maron only follows her because she wants to keep an eye on Hiromi.
  • In-series, Kuroki seems to constantly worry about Mashiro, something Maron clearly disapproves about.
  • Mimi Toumatsu, the chief accountant of the Harekaze, is attracted to ship lookout Machiko Noma, as she thinks that the latter is "cool".
  • And let's not get into the touchy-feely nature of Childhood Friends Mike and Moka's relationship. When they finally get to see each other again at the end, it almost feels more like a reunion between separated lovers than friends.
• Narm: It gets difficult to feel sad about the sinking of the Harekaze when you realize that she sank in harbor and theoretically could be raised again at any time!
• Narm Charm: Most of the charisma of this show is based on how cute 15-year-old girls behave like severe professional sailors. This effect is achieved even more strongly in foreign translations (especially strongly in english, russian and dutch), when girls begin to use the naval slang.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Fans have joked that the series should instead be called The Hunt for Harekaze, due to the plot similarities to The Hunt for Red October, where a rogue ship is being hunted down by the world's navies. This isn't a coincidence, as the writers admitted that they drew influence from the film.
  • With the revelation in episode 4 that the cause of all those ships going rogue might be because of an unknown species of hamster spreading a Hate Plague, some people have been comparing it instead to Freelancer, which features, among other things, an independent ship getting targeted by previously friendly factions with little reason because it turns out they were mind-controlled by aliens.
  • The Steering's rap of the 10th episode is very popular on YouTube due to its catchiness and incredible narmy.
  • When the Admiral Graf Spee showed up in episode 2, naturally this spawned "Girls und Panzerschiffe" jokes.
• Special Effect Failure: An aerial shot of the ship in episode 9 shows some bad texturing on its deck. The "diamond plate" sheet metal pattern is comically oversized, which each bump about the size of a person.