KanColle

Kantai Collection: KanColle is an Action, Comedy, Slice of life, Military, Sci-fi anime based of the web browser game created by Kadokawa Games. The anime was created by Diomedéa Studio and was aired on January 8, 2015 to March 26, 2015 and lasting for 12 episodes. Plot The plot follows Special Type Destroyer Fubuki, a young girl who is a Kanmusu, girls who possess a spirit of a naval vessel within themselves and use these spirits to fight the Abyssal fleet who are threatening humanity from the sea. These girls live at naval bases, where they are taught to fight the Abyssal. Fubuki is a newrecruit at one of these naval bases upon her arrival she joins the Third Torpedo Squadron and is sent into battle despite having very limited combat training. While in battle, she is saved by Akagi, An Aircraft Carrier, and afterwards Fubuki decides that she needs to become stronger so she can fight at Akagi’s side. The Show does a good job of explaining its story to the viewer by explaining the different kinds of Kanmusu and what the job in the fleet are. While the fighting is keep at a minimal, the focus of the show is based on Fubuki and her comrades while they train at the naval base which is interesting and funny at the same time. Now, because of the anime having so many character and character building, I going to only give the names of girls and what type of Kanmusu they are: Fubuki, Voiced by Sumire Uesaka – Special Type Destroyer, a part of the Third Torpedo Squadron Mutsuki, Voiced by Rina Hidaka – Destroyer, a part of the Third Torpedo Squadron Yūdachi, Voiced by Yumi Tanibe – Destroyer, a part of the Third Torpedo Squadron Sendai, Jintsū and Naka, Voiced by Ayane Sakura – Light Cruisers, a part of the Third Torpedo Squadron with Jintsū as Flagship. Akagi, Voiced by Saki Fujita – Aircraft carrier, a part of the First Carrier Division Kongō, Hiei, Haruna and Kirishima, Voiced by Nao Tōyama – Battleships, a part of the Second Fleet Nagato and Mutsu, Voiced by Ayane Sakura – Battleships, Secretaries of the fleet. Kitakami and Ōi, Voiced by Yuka Ōtsubo – Torpedo Cruisers Presentation KanColle art style uses a bright blend of colors to breathe life into the show for the viewer. Each of the characters have been given a unique personality, making them stand out compared to one another and easily recognizable to the viewer. The show uses two different animation styles: one for the action scenes and the characters every day life. The use of a different style for the action scenes helps making them more beautiful and interesting to the viewer, thus making them some of the best parts of the show. The voice acting in this is very impressive because of some voice actresses doing multiple characters especially Ayane Sakura, as some of her characters have conversations with each other and the viewer is able to tell which character is talking by their voice. My Opinion KanColle is an anime where I did not know much about before watching, that has made me interested in the Kantai Collection game series. The story, while it not one of the best I've seen was still enjoyable. The characters have been designed with a lot of care in terms of looks and personality, and because of this care the art style over all was appealing to me. The message I got from KanColle is that as long you keep trying your hardest, you can achieve anything you put your mind and heart to. Finally, I love the character development of Fubuki over the course of the show as she always tries her best and doesn't give up. Verdict KanColle is one of the anime that while looking at each part separately, like basic story or characters, is nothing special; however, when combined together makes a very interesting show. Anyone, both fans of Kantai Collection or newcomers, can enjoy its characters, art style and story. While there is better stories out there, I still recommend people to give KanColle a go as it takes a common idea and makes it something unique and new to people watching.

You know what's great? Cute girls. You know what's even better? Playing a game filled with them. Even better? The fact that they all have good artists and VAs. The best part? The diversity of girls makes it so anyone can find a favorite. You'd think it wouldn't be difficult to make a Kancolle anime considering there are anime with similar kinds of situations such as Strike Witches and Girls und Panzer, but instead of having a healthy balance of slice of life and battles, Kancolle just jumps around everywhere, making for a jarring experience. The story is heavily divided, with multiple parts with their ownplot. The parts are segmented into episodes 1-4, 5+7, 6 , 8-9, and 10-12. It winds up being all over the place, tending to be a repeating pattern of slice of life, preparations for sortie, sortie, miracle, and end sortie. Kancolle also tends to tunnel vision on whatever the current episode's plot is and forces the issue. The only overarching drive in Kancolle is Fubuki striving to become one of Akagi's escorts. Honestly, it's how the slice of life elements and combat elements are thrown into the pot together that really inhibit the anime as a whole. Fortunately, the lead designer is great. He really brings to life the ships of so many different artists in one cohesive style. The best part is that the faces are drawn similarly enough to where you can look at both the anime and game styles and see how they correlate. The music is also solid and features a wonderful op and ed. The battle music doesn't quite pack a punch, but still fits thematically. The biggest issue with the Kancolle anime is how the characters are handled. For some reason the writers decided that having all of the characters keep saying in game lines and slightly modified versions of in game lines was a good idea when it actually destroyed life from the characters. Look, I understand that the lines were probably put in because they wanted an easy way to convey the character's personalities, but it's possible to do it without resorting to such an uninspired method. I don't want to continually hear Hibiki's Russian one liners all the time. I want her to speak full sentences, and if Russian words want to be added in at that point, that's fine. Also, the fact that the admiral is never seen and never talks bothers me a lot. It just makes it feel like it's that way for self-inserting purposes, which just saps any joy from interactions with the admiral. Even with all of its problems, I did enjoy watching Kancolle; however, I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. It is definitely something that you have to enjoy from the start, otherwise you would just be bored. If anything, episode 6 was the most consistent episode thematically and consequently the most enjoyable. As someone who has loved playing the game for almost a year and counting, this was definitely a disappointing experience. If you are curious about the anime, give it a shot, as you might enjoy it still.

Finally, we get to see our shipfus animated. Kantai Collection, or kancolle, is a browser game on DMM where you play as an admiral in charge of a number of ship girls based on WWII ships. You send the ships on sorties and expeditions in your campaign against the abyssals who has taken over Earth's ocean, all while praying to RNGesus that your construction or sortie reward yields the ship you want. Its a nice timesink and appeals a lot to its target audience, with a strong fanbase that rivals that of Touhou. With such a large and dedicated fanbase, its extremely tempting to create ananime adaptation to not only provide fanservice, but to also make a quick buck on its popularity. So they yielded and produced this anime. And how does it fare? Condensed version: Why you may pick this up: -Plenty of fanservice (ero and non-ero) for those who have played the game -Poi -Kongou -Shimakaze -Nagamon -Ship waifus are now animated -OP and ED (though to be fair, if you only want the OP and ED you can just search on YT or hikari no akari) Why you may skip this: -Anime does a poor job of introducing game to newcomers or to people who never played kancolle. -Newcomers and people who never played kancolle will not get the references and fanservice -Poor plot direction and pacing -Insufferable CG Long version: Story-5: This is the weakest part of the anime. The story is best described as going through an existential crisis; it does not know its purpose for existing. Does it want to tell a gripping tale about a young maiden's perilous journey through Earth's Ocean with her fellow shipgirls, or does it want to be a Madoka clone, or a SOL comedy, or to introduce newcomers to the game, or to provide fanservice for current players? It has the distinction of being all of the above, and yet somehow being none of the above at the same time. It constantly switches between those identities, like at one point the anime is trying to push the fact that a shipgirl has sunk, and at the next the Akatsuki sisters are entering a curry competition, as if that sinking never happened. It should pick an identity and stick to it. We would have been fine with the anime if all 12 episodes were just the shipgirls seating around the Teitoku's office drinking tea and eating cake, and maybe have cameos from the abyssals as well. They may as well call themselves Headquarters Tea-Time. It’s simple, cheap, fun, provides fanservice for current players, while having many opportunities to introduce the game to newcomers. Art-7: The art is decent during the non-combat scenes. The managed to make most of the shipgirls look moe enough to keep you going. Artillery designs are all based on art from the game and WWII ships, while all the girls themselves look cute enough, unlike some of their in-game counterparts. The main problem is the CG used during the combat scenes, or when they are water skating. It is extremely jarring to watch. The framerate does not make the animation smooth, and this makes the combat scenes very hard to digest, which in turn, makes admiring the shipgirls difficult. The Character designs somehow gets downgraded as they move in a 3D plane, and ruins the entire experience. Fortunately, these scenes are not prolonged, and we quickly return to the moe 2D girls. Sound-8: One reason you may pick up this anime. Both OP and ED are enjoyable, and the ED is one of my personal favourite ED. The soundtrack used are enjoyable to hear when used during the scene is meant for, but are ultimately forgettable. Artillery firing packs a nice explosive punch to them, and all the VAs do their jobs well enough. The VAs in this anime deserve special mention, as they actually voiced multiple ship sisters, each with their own distinct pitch and tone you could’ve sworn were completely different voice actors. Honorable mention goes to Nao Touyama, who voiced the Kongou sisters, Atago and Takao. Her voices can be extremely different from each other, from Kongou’s Engrish to Atago’s playfulness, and yet she manages to do make all 6 characters sound like they have 6 different VAs. Characters-8: Probably the main reason one might pick up this anime. Fans of the game should ALL have a ship they are extremely fond of, and Kadokawa has recognised this, even giving players the ability to marry the ships that they like. To see them animated, with their VAs saying new unique lines and interacting with other shipgirls, is like a wet dream come true to the player base. The story follows Fubuki, one of the special-class destroyers and a starter ship in the game, as she joins fellow destroyers Yuudachi (poi) and Mutsuki in taking the Ocean back for humanity, one abyssal at a time. The character development in this show suffers because of this, as these three are the only characters that receive any development, the rest being there to provide the viewers a chance to see their shipfus animated. While the other characters are lively and fun to watch on screen, they receive little to no character development. Backstories are left in history books since these shipgirls' history are based on their WWII counterparts, like Sendai's love for night battles since she fought most of her battles at night in WWII, or how Yamato's aversion to the word 'hotel' is based on her being used mostly as a hotel in WWII and barely used for combat. Enjoyable, but unless you have played the game, they are not memorable. Enjoyment-8: As a huge fan of the game, my enjoyment of this anime is, of course, biased, since I understand all the jokes, fanservice, and references made in this anime. To see the shipgirls that I often used in the game animated is glorious eye candy, but was shattered when they transitioned to the CG. I also found that I enjoyed the SoL moments more that the action ones. Just 2 episodes of them making curry and looking for Shimakaze are better than 10 episodes of them fighting the abyssals. Overall-7: If you are a fan of the game the anime is based on, feel free to watch this. While the CG is painful to watch, one can get over it through the love for their shipfus. For newcomers who wants to know more about the kancolle craze or wants to know more about the game, the English Kancolle wiki the kancolle forums, Himeuta, has FAQs and general information about the game. IF you are a newcomer, play the game and fall in love with the game or a shipfu first before watching, or else most of the jokes, references and cameos will lose its appeal. For people not interested in Kancolle but is a huge anime fan, do not bother with this. A poor story focus and lack of character development in a large cast of characters brings down the anime, with an ending not worth your time. If you want to investigate what the kancolle craze is about, himeuta or the kancolle wiki is more than enough. If not, you are better off spending your precious time watching other anime.

When the anime for Kantai Collection was announced and a trailer was released, a milestone was placed for a million fans already set in place. While most were happy and excited for the adaption of the most popular casual game in Japan, people who were already familiar with anime and the tropes associated with the media were worried. This was because the production company was a relatively unknown studio, the art was vastly different from the pixiv artists that make the original character pictures, the ever infamous CGI was going to be used, and with all things that attempt to cater to too many people,artistic liberties were likely to be protracted for a generic anime. Unfortunately, generic is exactly what Kantai Collection is and even as an original fan of the game who went in with little expectations I felt disappointed. For those unfamiliar with the series, Kantai Collection (Or Kancolle short) is an online game about ship girls that take their designs based on World War 2 Japanese naval war vessels. Destroyers, battleships, aircraft carriers, you name it. Heavily reliant on moe and the popular concept of girls with war machines (Like Strike Witches and Girls und Panzer), it has become arguably the most popular game in Japan and even parts of Asia not only for otakus but for the casual people as well. The girls fight monstrous demons that rise from the ocean... And well, that's about it for the plot and setting. Not much information on the world is really given and the different sources like the manga and light novels are not official. This is perhaps the biggest problem with the Kancolle anime. Perhaps in order to stay faithful to the game, no real world exploration, setting, or story is set in place. It isn't exaggeration to say the plot of Kancolle is literally just naval fleet girls fighting against monsters with added slice of life in the mix. There is no explanation for how the girls “inherit” the souls of World War 2 ships, no exposition on the current state of the world, no details on what humanity is doing and why they have to rely on the girls, no details on how the Abyssals work. The show blatantly just puts out “it's just how it is” and ends the plotline there. And sadly all of this lacking information makes the Kancolle anime feel that it is devoid of substance and leaves many questions unanswered not only for the fans of the original game but for newcomers as well. This may have not been so bad if the presentation of the show was well done (As sometimes leaving the audience to their imaginations can be entertaining) but the show simply isn’t. It starts off with the inexperienced girl Fubuki who joins a naval base and slowly pushes herself to become better and be accepted as a regular fleet girl. She makes comrades, goes through training montages, and becomes one of the top fleet girls through hard work and determination. Sound familiar already? It should be as this type of story has been done an exuberant amount times before in anime (especially shounen) and any other type of media really. The plot and script follows a terribly formulaic procedure that is it almost insultingly lazy. And sadly as the episodes drag on they become more and more predictable for any anime veteran that has seen the tired recycled tropes that Kancolle constantly uses. With respect to spoilers, there is a particular early episode in the series that attempts a terrible gimmick to grab the interest of the audience (You will know when you see it). It is perhaps one of the worst written, predictable, and incredibly asinine things to have been done in anime and even the most hardcore fans are likely to be put off by it. Sadly, most of the episodes fail to improve where a chunk of the time is spent on low-tier generic dialogue, fan joke “inside” comedy memes, and then a few terrible build-up of melodrama that’s more cringey than B- movies. I do by no means hate slice of life, Kancolle just does a terrible job at it as it is filled with a main cast of girls who are uninteresting, boring, and unappealing, arguably even for the fans of the game, and the interactions they have with one another are incredibly bland. When the girls aren’t spouting lines from the online game, they are droning on endlessly about the food they just ate, how nice looking someone’s room is, or regurgitating repeatedly and unnecessarily about the mission they are undertaking. The writing feels as though the script maker and director wanted to waste time and fulfill their 20-minute-a-episode quota rather than try to make enjoyable interactions. The main cast is dull, the side characters are dull, the script is dull, and the anime constantly reuses the same jokes over and over again as cumbersome service to the game fans. The sad part is that the anime should be a platform to better develop the girls from the game and give a wider outlook to the depth of characters, but you would find more characterization and details in to personalities looking at a fleet girl’s Wikipedia page than the entirety of this anime. In regards to other production values, the battles are all done in CGI which for the most part look fairly fine and is actually done well, at least when you can ignore the awkward looking faces and the strangely placed transition between drawn scenes and CGI that happen from time to time. When the girls are fighting the CGI is acceptable, but tends to look horrible when the girls are talking and out of the battle transitions. Those who detest CGI in their anime best stay away. While the first few episodes are interesting to see exactly how the water-skating fleet girls fight, especially the first episode that shows a beautiful amount of details and work, the future battles are sadly not the same. Do not be misled by the first episode’s battle; past the opening episode the battles become mundane with generic looking enemies and lazily-made shooting sequences that fail to make full potential naval warfare can have. The art itself is mediocre at best and fans may notice a rather drop in quality of their favorite girls (Which may not be entirely blamed on the production company as the online game pictures use various different pixiv artists). There is a number of musical scores within the anime that are soundly produced and pleasing to the ears, and some of the pieces do well to convey the emotions of a scene where the bad script of Kancolle fail. There is a plethora of good voice actors like Nao Touyama and Yuka Iguchi as those who are familiar with the game may know. Unfortunately, the musical ensemble and voices are the best praise this show can receive. Overall, Kantai Collection is everything that is to be expected for good or bad. It's a below average generic show with mediocre writing mostly due to the fact that the producers and director of the show have to cater to an existing fanbas. It is a show that refuses, or is forced not to break out of the mold for any bit of artistic integrity and originality. There are a number of definite fanservice that only the game fans may appreciate; but they are so awkwardly placed within the frame of the anime they feel asinine rather than anything clever and certainly fail to aid new people to the franchise understand Kancolle. With gimmicky writing and no sound source to draw from besides the game which already lacks information on the setting, Kantai Collection simply cannot pass that line to be exceptional or anything ground breaking. It's not a show that I could recommend to someone who isn't a fan of the game or for those that have already watched a lot of anime and can easily predict how the show will proceed. For those who are fans I can only say keep your standards low and expect the expected.