Had to be done. Feel free to add more examples.

Seems legit. And certainly not as shoehorned as I've noticed a lot of the characters tropes are. Been thinking about taking a chainsaw to those sections. I mean, what happened to the Real Life ship doesn't matter if it isn't reflected in the actual character here, whether game, manga, or anime version. And having a somewhat high luck stat doesn't make them qualify for Born Lucky, unless they're actually portrayed as super lucky, like Yukikaze. And a bunch of other stupid stuff.

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I'm a bit dissapointed with 12. Not that I wanted a tragic ending, but execution felt lacking. Sure, everyone knew the cavalry would come and save the day, but the whole sequence felt too drawn out. The cycle of 'new ships to save the day, oh no, new threat,' was repeated a few too many times in my opinion. As much as I enjoyed hearing Mamiko Noto say two sentences, there was no reason for Taihou to be involved in this sequence at all.

Especially disappointed that when Nagato and Co. arrived to help, Mutsuki wasn't among them. I feel like it would've been nice, bringing the trio back together for the final torpedo run on the carrier group.

Overall, indecisive anime is indecisive. Fubuki's coming of age arc was done well, and show had moments, but awkward pacing and other annoying bits (by the end I was cringing every time I heard game dialogue; if I wanted to hear them say the same things over and over again, I'd be incessantly clicking on their portraits in game or using the playback system on the wiki) left me with a strong desire to see what could have been given more time/budget/creative freedom.

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Kantai Collection the anime fundamentally does not know what it's doing.

Is it going to be a tragedy? No, can't do that, but we're going to set it up like we could. (It would have made a great one, and the tears of the right-wingers in Japan would have been delicious.)

Is it going to be a right-wing Japan-conquers-all fantasy? No, not doing that either, because it'd upset our huge overseas fanbase and the more moderate folks at home.

Is it going to be a cute slice of life show? No, can't do that, the game has combat in it.

Is it going to be a straight combat show? No, can't do that! We want to get some slice of life stuff in there!

And thus, it fails.◊ The show wasn't just feeling like it was written by committee, but it was written by four different committees. It never knew what it was supposed to be, or what it wanted to be. As the Japanese fanbase said: Collecting what? Why is that? What?

edited 27th Mar '15 5:15:25 PM by Night

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It's as coherent as its art style.

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BTW, just finished watching The Musketeers finale. Well, now THAT is the way to do a finale. The writers knew that they can't kill the main characters, so didn't even try to set up situations that would be hard to back out of. And a nice hook for the next season, not just a "Next Season Coming"- NEVER do that.

edited 27th Mar '15 6:27:52 PM by arahman56

The series was written before they knew there was going to be another season

As someone said on another site, the finale basically seemed like they hastily redid it for account for that. Hence the issues. Basically, know what kind of ending you're going for, your scope, and prepare it out early. Not at the last moment.

edited 27th Mar '15 7:09:52 PM by arahman56

I would have been perfectly fine with "Madoka with Ship Girls".

...How so?

Everything was set up to go the historical route down to the little details except the final episode which abandoned it all completely. It seems unlikely that they would do all that to just abandon one of the ongoing themes in the final episode without pressure to hastily change it.

Watch there be a BD bonus episode 'the historical route'.

edited 27th Mar '15 7:47:06 PM by Memers

Anyone that seriously thinks they were planning to go down the historical route is kidding themselves. A show as generally upbeat as that isn't going to end with a crushing defeat and the death of two major characters. Hell, most downbeat shows wouldn't end with something like that

Also, a lot of the little details were wrong

EDIT: There's also the issue of protecting Akagi being Buki's goal since the first episode, and the finale showing signs of being hastily rewritten to accommodate the MI event, which was in summer 2014

edited 27th Mar '15 8:53:04 PM by Hylarn

Yeah, they were not setting up for the historical route. It wasn't going to happen.

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I found it ironic that, in the same season as Shirobako, which is ABOUT the creation of anime, people are still mistaken that a change as major as that as a whole finale can just be done at the drop of a hat. Something like this has to have been set in motion four or more weeks beforehand, and even then most of the production work would have likely been done by then, meaning whatever changes DO get added would be minor (do recall, in Shirobako, a change that was barely 30 seconds long made people panic about reaching deadlines for WEEKS after).

Also it looked like the general outline of the story had been set in place since at least early 2014. Or need I remind everyone of the freaking late-design Destroyers, who only were introduced in-game during the Midway Event, that appeared during the FIRST PV?

edited 28th Mar '15 1:58:15 AM by MyssaRei

The story outline seems to have been written before the MI event, but with enough of a production delay for things introduced later to show up cosmetically

Well, you do for those of us who didn't keep up with the series until the anime started. (I also want to watch the rest of Shirobako some time. Wonder where my time went. *cough*)

That said, I think the ending was pretty obvious from the start. The entire season was very predictable, including the ending, and especially Bucky successfully protecting Akagi. I thought they'd take a little more damage in the final battle, but that was about it. What was up in the air was how much of a closure it would bring, and how many of all ongoing plots they would tie up.

edited 28th Mar '15 2:12:29 AM by AnotherDuck

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Shirobako is a sanitized and fun look at the industry, but still instructive, particularly with regards to some of the stuff going on in the background of anime production, and just how a production can go into the crapper very VERY quickly.

And with that in mind, suffice to say that to create a clusterfsk of stuff going wrong (like in the finale), stuff had to be going wrong WEEKS beforehand.

edited 28th Mar '15 2:31:22 AM by MyssaRei

Those were the obvious bits.

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Something that occurs to me is that a lot of the stranger parts probably weren't Executive Meddling— To the best of my knowledge, the weird fate shit is unique to the anime, and while it's possible the order not to show the admiral came from above, I really doubt they were instructed to portray them as some kind of minor deity, given the portrayals elsewhere. I'd wager a lot of the issues are due to fights between the writer and the director

Episode 12: Let's Do Our Best! Enemy Planes Dive-Bombing From Above!

YES! YOU GO, FUBUKI!

... OK, something fishy going on here. Did the Admiral think ahead and use the excuse of Yamato's high resource consumption to smuggle those buckets away?

Wait a second, Airfield Princess is unscathed! Why did the first wave say that they've heavily damaged her?!

... She talked. And here I thought they were going to have all the humanoid Abyssals be uncharacteristically silent.

Man, the Abyssals are very lousy shots.

Wow, Kirishima without her glasses. Guess she's not Blind Without 'Em... or she's using her gut instinct to achieve perfect aim, somehow.

... OH MY GOD KITAKAMI IS STILL ALIVE! TT_TT KITAKAMIIIII!

OOI DYNAMIC ENTRY KICK!

... Uh, remind me to not get Ooi and Kitakami's bad side.

Heh, now CarDiv 1 owes CarDiv 5.

Not so tough now without your runways, are you, Princess?

Yes, one do— WHAT? Reinforcements?! And there's a Bigger Bad?! And... OMG SHE'S STILL ALIVE AND REGENERATING AND GETTING BIGGER— Oh, Crap!. She "evolved" into Midway Princess. Bad. BadbadbadbadBAD!

... OK, someone had better have a good explanation why Nagato suddenly up and decided to join the battle when there was no prior indication she was planning to do s— Oh. Ooooohhhh. Admiral, you crafty devil.

... DAMMIT, DIE ALREADY! WHY WON'T YOU DI— Wait. Wait a second. Maybe you're attacking the wrong target all along. THERE! THAT WO-CLASS CARRIER! (Now that scene from the previous episode makes sense: Airfield Princess was just a puppet all along!)

... "My talented girls"? What the hell... Don't tell me that the Admiral— Oh, he's back at the Naval District. Nevermind.

Oh, finally you show your face. Time to settle this once and for all, mano-e-manokanmusu. (... Alright, that sounds stupid even to me. Couldn't help but attempt a Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers shout-out, though.)

Finally. Finally, it's dead. Fleetgirls: 1. Abyssals: 0.

... There has to be some sort of significance to Kisaragi's hairclip suddenly floating like that. We don't know where it is floating up, though. Maybe it's to represent the fact that her soul can finally rest in peace, now that her killer has been slain and thus her death has been avenged?

Kongou, Kongou, Kongou... When are you going to learn to look before you glomp? Besides, the Admiral would never sit there.

... DAMMIT, AT LEAST GIVE US A HINT TO HOW HE LOOKS! (And they never explained the buckets-out-of-nowhere thing either. Or where the Admiral was all this time.)

edited 28th Mar '15 6:46:34 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Isn't it obvious?

The admiral left to work a quick part-time job to earn the extra cash to buy some buckets from the cash shop.

Fear the Gothilolions! | Anime list

I know, right? It's on-screen.

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That's not the reason, actually. He wouldn't sit there because that's not his seat within the room in the first place. If he'd sit anywhere, it would be behind the Very Big Desk In Front of the Very Big Window. You know, where's supposed to be sitting. And she should easily notice that it's a girl sitting in that wrong seat, anyway.

On another note... I'm disappointed with the comparatively anticlimatic execution of this episode. The animation could've been better. Heck, the "battle" is quite underwhelming compared to some previous battles. The Abyssals kept missing even while Fleetgirls were standing stock still in one location for more than a minute. And I expected an epic fight between Fubuki and One-Eyed Wo-class Carrier.

edited 28th Mar '15 9:50:32 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Well, either way, gonna have to see how the second season turns out. Well, too bad it's gonna end up airing alongside Doctor Who (though if the last DW season is anything to go by, and depending on when KC Season 2 starts, there might be 3-4 episodes before DW S09E01.

edited 28th Mar '15 9:57:55 AM by arahman56

I still think they should've gone with Fubuki/Yamato as the official couple, with Akagi being merely her non-romantic senpai.

edited 28th Mar '15 10:02:51 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.