I watched this when it it was airing, and I've been playing since it came out in the west. If you're wondering, that's over 6 years ago since the game got a global server, and little over 4 years since the anime came out.

If you couldn't tell by my pfp (at least at time of typing this review), I adore Sheffield. She's brutally honest, but cute and always does her best for her master. Now, I'm one of the lucky ones that can say their favorite showed up in the anime in more than a cameo. Unfortunately for some people's favorites (at least at the time of the anime's release, because over 200 have been added since), they get shafted.

I had high hopes for this anime, and unfortunately it reeks of compromise or lack of understanding. If you watch the anime, you expect a great deal of fan service, like showing off it's massive cast, or an engaging and interesting story. The anime tries to do both, but fails.

The story itself is a huge mess, and I can tell you it's not much better in the actual game. And for fanservice, hope you like Sakura, Royal Navy, or Eagle Union shipgirls, because you aren't getting diddly squat from Ironblood. Sure, you have a few choice characters, but they don't even do anything in the anime besides Prinz Eugen roundhouse kicking a Siren. Their leader, doesn't even show up until the last FIVE MINUTES of the last episode. Sure, maybe they don't have much point in the story being told, since its more about Eagle Union vs Sakura Empire, you should at least have a duty as the first real anime project for the game to show off it's massive cast and have them do something. I don't know if its because they wanted to stay away from nazi imagery, but if they can do it in the game and distance themselves from that kind of junk, why can't the anime?

The starter ships get their own storyline that is infinitely better than the main story with the warring factions, but Z23 (Ironblood) gets nothing. Sure, she's not a starter ship on JPs server, she still is massively important to the squad, even then.

The animation was also a big deal when this came out. It was so bad, they actually paused the development of the last few episodes until the fixed episodes aired. They also uncensored the bathhouse episode which is more like it in terms of fan service, but it was hilariously censored because of convenient fog.

Thankfully there are better projects that they came out with that are much better fitting for the game, like Slow Ahead or the Queen's Orders OVAs, which just have the girls... do stuff, which is all you need for them to do.

The anime itself is painfully outdated from the game's current state, with such a huge cast and more focus on ships introduced afterwards (like New Jersey, Shinano, Musashi, etc.) trying to watch this as a fan and getting anything out of it isn't really possible, in my opinion.