Kantai Collection, the OTHER moe battleship series (2014)

While the series itself is slated for a 2014 slot, it's better to get this out of the way now.

For the uninitiated, Kantai Collection, or Kan Colle to its apparently growing legion of followers, is a browser-based card game where you control a personal fleet of battleships represented by cute girls, all of whom are based on real ships of the IJN from WW 2. The girls in question are also by the way voiced by V As many of you guys might be familiar with like, oh, Megumi Nakajima, Saki Fujita, or Ayana Taketatsu.

Given how the focus of the game itself is the growth and development of your fleet of battleship girls, and battling either generic enemies (like the Wo-Class Aircraft carriers) or other players, makes me wonder where'd they go with regards to the plot that will be used for the show itself.

Of course the production could just leave it WITHOUT a plot (cute battleship girls doing cute things), but that's kind of wasting the possibilities with the ton of characters it has (like fan-favorites Shimakaze or Takao). There are the generic enemies, who are by the way have a different design aesthetic to them (quite alien actually), but that might make it veer a little too close to, oh, Arpeggio of Blue Steel...

Hmmm, definitely waiting on the developments for this one.

I'm just hoping it doesn't turn out to focus on the admiral and his ship harem >_>

Also, I'm wondering if it'll still be popular by the time the anime is released; these things tend to have short lifespans

A valid concern, but given the timeframe, all we can do is wait and see. Though it DOES make me curious about the game, as quite a few of the people I follow on Twitter play it.

Also LOL at comparing it to Touhou. What?

edited 30th Sep '13 7:50:31 PM by MyssaRei

I was thinking Koihime Musou can be a precedent in that instead of having the battles originally found in the game, they just went with cute-genderbent-historical-characters doing cute things. They even removed the original male main character.

I only know about this from danbooru, but if the animu doesn't have Tenryuu, I will be disappointed.

Not every production is as lucky as Sengoku Collection (if you're a movie geek, watch it) I suppose.

Re: Touhou

Kan Colle seems to be edging Touhou out as the most popular fanart source.

Jo Jo seems to be a close second, interestingly enough.

Sn K has been kind of buried.

What was the first moe battleship series?

It's a bit of a joke, but I think a good chunk of those in the know consider the Arpeggio of Blue Steel/Aoki Hagane no Arpeggio manga to be this. I think someone even did a comparison of how each version of Takao, Kongou, etc. looked.

Personally I like the tsundere heavy cruiser version of Takao from Arpeggio, but I can see how Takao the "heavy" cruiser in Kantai looks fine too...

edited 2nd Oct '13 7:33:32 AM by MyssaRei

Hi, it's been a while.

For pictures there is duall Takao Arpeggio/KC crossover

That said Arpeggio isn't realy moe-centric and goes with character development and plot. KC looks more like Upotte.

...Yeah, I think it will be something like that.

edited 2nd Oct '13 7:41:22 AM by Tenzen12

.... Yeah. No.

Weren't the Kongo's kind of crap anyways?

Not in the game apparently.

The game has the player-insert Admiral and his ship girls fighting monstrous/alien generic ships so the weaknesses of their real world counterparts don't really need to be addressed.

I think a lot of fanartists are very aware of said weaknesses for the sake of working them into moe points.

Plus there are ship cannon futa cock jokes made in the form of pictures, which may or may not contribute to further appeal.

edited 3rd Oct '13 6:48:39 AM by Culminus

Yeah, hearing the sinking quotes for each ship girl can be quite depressing.

Apparently they are in the game, I was looking to see what non-Japanese ships were in. Check for an extra u.

In a general sense a Kongo was never going to stand up to a modern fast battleship, but tactically that was never their intended role in the IJN when World War 2 dawned; they were meant to face off against raiding heavy cruisers, particularly in the job of keeping them away from the carrier force. Their closest real threats were the British Renowns, which they could go one for one with pretty easy, and Hood, which they could gang up on.

The North Carolinas and South Dakotas only really altered that equation in 1941 and 1942, and by then it was too late. Even then if the Japanese screening forces at Second Guadalcanal had properly identified SoDak and Washington as BBs rather than CAs, Kirishima probably wouldn't have gotten itself into quite the mess it actually did.

edited 4th Oct '13 6:27:59 PM by Night

What's the one before?

Anyway this seems to be getting a huge popularity with characters cosplaying as Shimakaze.

Arpeggio of Blue Steel. Which starts airing tomorrow

edited 6th Oct '13 3:38:54 PM by Hylarn

Actually the Miko sisters (Kongou etc.) seem to be more popular, it's just that Shimakaze's outfit... is pretty memetic. Every other ship has at least someone else that has a similar dress (see Takao, or Akagi and the archer-carriers), but Shimakaze's thong-dress is singular.

But given the Cast of Snowflakes aspect of the game, its easy to gravitate to a particular kanmusu. Maru the idol-ship has been gaining traction lately for example.

edited 6th Oct '13 4:34:50 PM by MyssaRei

It ought to be. Shimakaze was itself singular, whereas most of the other ships in the game are part of a class.

Just found about a 4-koma manga based on this.

I have to wande if it was released recently or if it was just recently that people took interest in it. Yes, there is a difference, no I'm not saying.

Edit: I believe that it's relevant to mention that there is another manga about ships as girls. It's called Battleship Girl. No, seriously.

edited 7th Oct '13 1:51:30 PM by minusmagniaxe

Oh and for those curious, I checked out the game last night (after some VPN wrangling) and apparently you CAN choose to have a female Admiral. So rather than your military battleship harem, you can also raise a yuri battleship harem.

I'm actually surprised you can choose to be a male admiral.

Huh, I'd been assuming that the admiral just didn't have any traits assigned to them. Does gender do anything?

Need to double-check on the Kantai wiki for that (... which is in Japanese) to see if the Gender choice for the Teitoku does anything.

Still, the fact that you CAN choose the Admiral's gender opens possibilities for the adaptation.

P.S. Huh, so not even a placeholder page anywhere. I suppose I could make one and stick it in Video Games, but please tell me how to create redirects.

edited 9th Oct '13 5:52:24 PM by MyssaRei